STUFF

Beijing alone has more vacant homes than all of US.

Retailers reducing packaging. Finally. No longer - hopefully - will our bags and boxes be half-full when opened.

Halliburton lower margins warning attributed to shortage of guar beans from India. Guar gum used in fracking.

NJ sued over cap and trade reversal. Legislature voted twice for return. Christie vetoed 1 already.

China National Nuclear Power - largest developer in country - planning IPO to help fund >$27B of projects.

Several US govt agencies sponsoring $100K prize for personal air pollution sensor that also measures physiological response to contaminants real-time.

Western pines being killed at higher rate by mountain pine beetles, their population soaring in part because temps no longer plunge as low in winter, so fewer killed off.

EPA will issue final soot standards for autos, smokestacks, industry by mid-Dec. What about trucks, trains, ships?

Aquion Energy (Pittsburgh) preparing to launch production of sodium-ion hybrid battery. Hopefully game change for clean off-grid E storage.

IEA report projects cost of wind E will keep dropping.

From not all bad news dept: climate change may improve harvests in parts of India. So ... if in parts of India ...

Study: after BP spill, biodiversity dropped along shoreline.

Survey: Amazon deforestation threatening birds. Let alone the atmos.

Poll: Americans value conservation/energy efficiency ahead of vacations. Huh.

Researchers at Center for E Research at UC San Diego demo'd performance ~4x higher than any other solid oxide fuel cell operating directly on ethanol without external reformation.

Algeria state oil comp plans to increase investment in NG, petrochem sectors to $80B next 5 yrs, $12B more than planned.

Root of Argentina seizure of YPF: early this year, Repsol revised estimates of their field's shale oil/gas in Argentina to 23B bls, enough to dub their output. But also estimated $25B/y to develop and Argentina would have to overhaul its E policy to attract necessary investment. Then Argentina seized YPF.