What we absolutely, positively, need

So the WSJ runs a nice piece on EVs, complete with plaudits and pics of FedEx trucks.  Could we blog about anything else today? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405191875066292.html In a nice play on ...

Posted Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 12:37 pm | Filed in: Economic Security, Electrification, Energy Efficiency, Energy Security

More Utilities Offering Electric Vehicle Charging

The Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf will be available by the end of 2010 - the first wave of mass-produced electric vehicles (EVs) to hit the American auto market. Anticipating this, power companies are setting special rates for th...

Posted Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 12:44 pm | Filed in: Electric Utilities, Electricity

Political Roundup

At the beginning of the week, Democrats were clinging to slim hopes of an energy bill passing through the Senate.  On Tuesday, it became clear that the Senate calendar would not allow for both an energy debate and the confirmatio...

Posted Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 8:58 am | Filed in: Electrification, Legislation

The world’s greatest deliberative body?

An interesting set of articles this morning as the fall-out continues from the Senate's failure to deal with even a limited oil spill liability bill.  Darren Samuelson has a great opening in his Politico article (http://www.poli...

Posted Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 8:20 am | Filed in: Alternatives, Electrification, Energy Security, Environment, Oil Dependence

Energy, Security and Rare Earths

Rare earth elements (REE) are a collection of seventeen chemically similar metallic elements (scandium, yttrium and the fifteen lanthanides), forming the largest chemically coherent group in the periodic table. Due to their versat...

Posted Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 1:30 pm | Filed in: Economic Security, Energy Security

Electric Vehicles: Cleaner or Dirtier?

There is a considerable amount of confusion on whether electric vehicles (EVs) bring about environmental benefits in the form of lower CO2 emissions when compared to conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Who s...

Posted Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 1:24 pm | Filed in: Electricity, Electrification, Environment, Transportation