Arctic Energy Production: Let’s Move Forward, Not Backwards
By Maureen Crandall -- August 5, 2010A new frontier for the world energy market is atop the world where thawing sea ice (a positive externality in this case) has opened up the possibility of major energy and other mineral production. The U.S., Canada, Russia, Denmark (via Greenland), and Norway have stakes in the Arctic domain:
Estimated potential resources are substantial (see below). The challenge is to turn potential resources in proven and probable reserves of both oil and gas.
New Developments: One Bad, One Good
Unforeseen events can have an enormous impact on the development of new markets and on public policy. Two such events occurred in April 2010.…
Continue ReadingSmart Grid Problems Revealed: The NERC Study
By Kent Hawkins -- August 4, 2010The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), an international regulatory authority whose purpose is to ensure reliability of the bulk power systems in North America, has just released a study on the Reliability Impacts of Climate Change Initiatives. It provides a comprehensive review of future reliability risks including smart grid initiatives. NERC appropriately looks at a number of future time frames, or horizons, which provide perspective in its analysis – 1-10 years, 10-20 years, and 20-plus years (up to 2050).
A review of the NERC study by Environment & Energy Publishing (E&E), reproduced as an appendix to this post, noted:
“A task force on climate change formed by North American Reliability Corp. urges that policy makers not count on large amounts of renewable energy, demand reduction from smart grid systems or new storage technologies before they prove they can be worked into the grid without endangering the system’s reliability.”…
Continue ReadingComments to the InterAcademy IPCC Review: Is It Time to Start Over?
By Chip Knappenberger -- August 3, 2010In May 2010, the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was selected to “conduct an independent review of the IPCC processes and the procedures by which it prepares its assessments of climate change.” In June, economist David (P. D.) Henderson shared with MasterResource his rather critical comments submitted to the IAC which centered around the IPCC’s lax adherence to their own set of governing principles. In this article, we highlight several other submissions to the IAC that Dr. Henderson thought MasterResource readers may find particularly interesting.
Additionally, we offer a compilation of all other IAC submissions that we could find scattered across the web—a service that the IAC does not itself provide.
Background
The IAC bills itself as “a multinational organization of science academies created to produce reports on scientific, technological, and health issues related to the great global challenges of our time, providing knowledge and advice to national governments and international organizations” and as such has been asked by the United Nations to:
… Continue Reading[E]stablish a Committee of experts from relevant fields to conduct the review and to present recommendations on possible revisions of IPCC processes and procedures.