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The inimitable John Geesman files 3-4 minute dispatches from the long twilight struggle of our time. Backed by accomplished studio musicians, his vocal patrols the same frontier captured in writing by the recondite blog, GreenEnergyWar.com/ Primary Format : Environment Language : Unknown Also Listed as: State/Province : CA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of greenenergywar's Podcast Podcasts Methings.com listings of greenenergywar's Podcast Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

View the full archive of greenenergywar's Podcast Efficiency: California's Oldtime Energy Religion October has not been a particularly uplifting month on the climate front of the Green Energy War.  The worldwide financial freeze-up has sent summer soldiers across the globe scurrying for the presumed security of retreat.  Even the nominal master of ceremonies of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change puts it flatly:  "If industry is in a difficult pass, most sensible governments will be reluctant to impose new costs on them in the form of carbon-emission caps. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Feed-In May Ease Southern California Squeeze A surprise announcement last week by  Southern California Edison that it plans to adapt its 2009 Renewable Procurement Plan to include feed-in tariff provisions for projects under 20 MW in size could be a game changer. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | IEA Report, Pt. 2: Decarbonising Generation The climate strategy published last week by the International Energy Agency, an analytic response to the commitment made by G8 leaders in 2007 to "seriously consider" GHG emission reduction targets of 50%, is emphatic about the need to "decarbonise" the generation of electricity. The IEA identifies three principle ways to achieve this: READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | IEA Report, Pt. 3: Transport Sector Most Difficult The agenda-setting function of last week's IEA climate report was reinforced by two developments yesterday. First, German Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed US President George Bush's plans for a "major economies" climate summit held in conjunction with next month's G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan. And second, a 2050 GHG reduction target of 50% was jointly recommended by the national science academies of thirteen countries, including all of the G8 nations as well as Brazil, China, In ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | IEA Report, Pt. 4: Five Weak Links Depending upon the outcome of next month's Hokkaido G8 summit, especially its "major economies" side event, the IEA's recent climate report could establish the framework by which the world struggles to develop the successor agreement to the Kyoto Accord. How useful this will be is likely to turn on the specificity attached to George Bush's acceptance of a binding target for the US and the meaning of China's and India's embrace (through their national science academies) of a 50% re ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | German Cabinet Bolsters Merkel's Hokkaido Stance Combatants on the climate front of the Green Energy War have long looked to Germany for inspiration. Despite deepening rifts in Angela Merkel's "grand coalition" government, and some obvious soft spots in the package, the CO2 reduction measures endorsed by her cabinet last week will reinforce the German imprint on any progress which comes out of next month's G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Stage Set for New Renewables Strategy in UK This morning's press briefing by the Prime Minister's Spokesman confirms that the long-awaited UK Renewable Energy Strategy will be published in two days. The report, underway for some time, is being rushed forward after a blistering criticism of the Gordon Brown government's performance by a committee of Parliament. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | A Policymaker's Cookbook for Feed-In Tariffs The nature of the Green Energy War varies considerably around the world, but support for feed-in tariffs is an increasingly common litmus employed by renewables advocates globally to evaluate the efficacy of government efforts. Remarkably successful in bringing large amounts of renewable capacity online in Germany and Spain, the feed-in tariff has become the preferred policy mechanism for jurisdictions more intent on tangible results than the creation of abstract trading instruments, interm ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | EIA Fudges Update to Longterm Oil Price Forecast In the ocean liner turning process that characterizes a great nation's change in view of strategic inputs, nimbleness and agility are more applauded in speeches than observed in practice. Media coverage of yesterday's release by the US Energy Information Administration of the "highlights section" of its International Energy Outlook zeroed in on the "high price case" which sees oil climbing to $186 per barrel, unadjusted for inflation, in 2030. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | California's Climate Plan Snowball Starts Its Roll Wading into one of the most self-regarding political cultures on the planet, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, last week injected a small bit of perspective into California's celebration of the release of the "Draft Scoping Plan" for implementation of its heralded "Global Climate Solutions Act." READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | UK Renewables Policy: No 'Rule, Brittania' Just Yet Because the Green Energy War has to date been driven by a proverbial coalition of the willing -- only the growing number of climate jihadis and the somewhat smaller sect of renewables zealouts see the subject as determinative of mankind's fate -- government commitments, with some notable exceptions, have been long on rhetoric and imagery and short on tangible performance. "You say you want a revolution," the esteemed British energy analyst, John Lennon, might say -- "well, yo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | UK Renewables, Pt. 2: Churchill or Friedman? The bipolar personality of the electricity chapters in the UK's renewable energy consultation document is more than simply the kind of literary tic often associated with government reports written by multiple authors. It vividly illustrates a deep conflict in the government's policy objectives between meeting commitments made to the European Union concerning 2020 targets for renewables and fostering the vision for competitive electricity markets pioneered by the UK in the 1990s. Lurking in ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Will the UK Require New Coal Plants to Use CCS? With thousands of demonstrators expected to converge this weekend on Kingsnorth, a powerplant site in Kent where the German utility E.On hopes to build the first new coal units in Britain since 1974, a much larger battle is emerging in Parliament that may force-feed private sector embrace of carbon capture and sequestration. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Discount Rates: The Divine Right of Economists Strategists in the Green Energy War are forced to make do with the analytic tools the early years of the 21st Century have made available to them. How to properly value future costs and future benefits has long been a conundrum for decisionmakers in all walks of life who are called upon to choose between alternatives in the present. The "time value of money" is a truism of economic orthodoxy, but ethicists have always questioned whether it gives proper attention to the interests o ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Discount Rates, Pt. 2: Why They Matter So Much Pragmatists in the Green Energy War tend to consider natural gas a necessary transition fuel for electric generation. They are cognizant of the role quick start, fast ramp gas generation will play in integrating intermittent wind and solar generation until large scale, dispatchable demand response and storage technologies become commercial realities. They embrace the material environmental benefits offered by modern gas-fired plants when compared to coal, even if only a half-way step toward ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | So, How Expensive Is US Gasoline Anyway? Strategists attempting to gauge the likely scale and scope of Green Energy War initiatives after the clamor of the current election cycle is past may gravitate to the lodestar of gasoline prices. Posted outside every service station in statutorily prescribed type-size, these context-less numerals are the primary navigational aids by which most Americans determine whether energy is a problem or not. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Enhanced Geothermal: Drill Here, Drill Now? A surefire indicator of hubris in American business is the misbegotten belief that success in one enterprise is a predictor of likely success in another, unrelated one.  Established companies periodically flirt with this conceit -- whether for executive ego gratification, perceived risk diversification, or earnings growth imperative. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Enhanced Geothermal: Drill Here, Drill Now, Pt. 2 As Albert Einstein famously observed, "politics is more difficult than physics."  The US congressional energy debate end-game these next two weeks seems destined to prove this out. At its core is bipartisan recognition of an inchoate, nationwide, don't-just-stand-there-do-something groundswell.  Where this sudden, tidal upheaval leads in the months ahead is anything but certain.  While empiricism and reason may exert some gravitational pull over time, for now the p ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | IEA Climate Report: The Relentless Logic of War Two days after the derailment of the long-awaited climate debate in the US Senate, the International Energy Agency last week issued its how-to-do-it report on achieving a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The self-regarding greatest deliberative body in the world got sidetracked by a demand to have the 491-page bill read out loud. The IEA, energy think tank to the western nations that make up the OECD (think NATO without guns), made abundantly clear that achieving even the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Where, Oh Where, Have the CCS Projects Gone? Two dispatches from the carbon capture theater of the Green Energy War's climate front make clear that to describe current efforts as being at a standstill might be wildly optimistic. READ MORE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache |