Energy & Fuel

Few energy conferences can match the annual event, organized entirely by students, at MIT for sheer unbridled enthusiasm.

"The Obama administration is considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to rapidly rising gasoline prices brought on by turmoil in the Middle East, the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, said on Sunday."

Besides being a keystone of the ocean ecosystem, coral reefs are of huge commercial value. But they are seriously threatened by floods, runoff, rising ocean temperatures and acidity which are all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy.

"The Department of Energy said on Thursday it has offered a conditional $102 million loan guarantee to support a wind farm in Maine. The financial aid will support the Record Hill wind project, a 50.1 megawatt wind power plant and transmission line in Maine."

Past efforts to regulate toxic and polluting waste from oil and gas drilling operations were thwarted when back-room industry pressure subverted the law and science that justified it. Today, history may be about to repeat itself.

"As prices for agricultural land surge across America’s grain belt, regulators are warning that a new real estate bubble may be forming."

"Corn-based ethanol is the renewable fuel environmentalists love to hate. But as turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has sent oil prices soaring, U.S.-made ethanol is making a comeback."

A new report from the Royal Society of Canada provides a mixed verdict on the environmental impacts of oil sands extraction in Alberta.

"The California utility whose gas pipeline exploded last fall had rejected federal recommendations to install more automatic shut-off valves to help reduce the risks from a rupture and fire, an investigative panel was told Tuesday."