What happens when you don't build more power plants? Get ready for spiking electricity rates, brownouts and even blackouts as demand soars. If you think runaway oil prices are upsetting, just wait for what's in store for electricity. Similar forces are in play. Demand is rising fast; supply is not.
Everyone wants his laptop, or smart phone, to run a week between recharges. Of course while playing a hi-def movie or surfing the Net, respectively. Verizon Communications would like its cell towers to run at least a day, instead of minutes, during power outages. The military would like its slick but power-hungry communications and surveillance…
Apparently, it's time to ban Edison's venerable, now vilified, light bulb. European leaders, green pundits and the widely reported light bulb provisions of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 all urgently push the abandonment of incandescent bulbs. The plan appears to be to convince everyone to switch to compact fluorescent lights (CFL),…
Live in an average-sized house? Took a vacation at a typical resort? Attending college in one of the newer dorms? Got lucky and bought a vacation home? In energy terms, some people would have just one word for any of the above: Oink.
From the Fed to the top business periodicals, analysts are trying to unravel the underlying explanation for an economy pushing past a Dow 14,000 with oil in the $80 per barrel range. Conventional energy- economic wisdom had it that the latter would kill the former.
Talk of an alternative energy "bubble" started percolating in the trade and cyber-press over the past several months. The fact is, the staid Dow Jones industrial average has done as well or better than most alternative energy indexes. So, hot, or not? Since global energy demand is rising unabated, the core question is, how big…
