STUFF

Apache plugged Kenyan well - no commercial oil or gas.

NG quietly moving back up to $3. Coal parity, so it's reported.

Carlyle buying Cogentrix N Am - 3 coal, 2 solar projects in 4 states; NG pipeline development; clean/ren E projects; and Charlotte team. 4Q close. Money not disclosed.

Peco Energy (Philly) suspended smart meter installs last month after 26 caught fire. 3 vendors. Spending $650M to upgrade system. $200M DOE grant for 600K meters by '14. PA requiring all large utilities to install smart meters. All fires with Sensus Metering Systems. But location specific embroglios. > 200K meters in. Peco installing software for auto shutdown with overheating.

Tres Amigas stopped courting county, now asking Clovis for $2B industrial revenue bonds. City has experience with IRBs. $155M property taxes Tres may not have to pay over 20 yrs with IRBs. TA project to connect US' 3 major grids with superconducting wire. Build in phases over many years.

Drought causing smallest US soybean harvest in 9 years. Inventory lowest in 40 years. 32% of crop deemed good or excellent by USDA. 5-yr avg 60%.

Existing enviro regs hampering US water utilities to adapt to clime change, more extreme wx events. Decade or 2 window to make changes.

EU supports E efficiency rules as it pursues plan to cut oversupply of carbon credits.

Norway will reimburse big E users for emissions-cutting costs.

Shell exec calls on Canada govt to tax CO2 emissions. Related report says trading CO2 tax for elim of clean E incentives would leave clean E industry worse off.

Comp touting chem-free fracking facing fraud charges. (OOIL?)

BP says it will clean up Gulf spill oil exposed by Isaac. Way to go I just want me life back BP. Aw, hay. We all make mistakes.

Intl Ass of Drilling Contractors calls Romney's plan to turn over fed lands to states for fossil fuel production, enviro regs "populist raw meat". Unfeasible "hodgepodge" of state regs. Even AZ gov vetoed bill to allow state to take over fed lands in concern for leaseholders.

EU biofuels plan to limit fuels includes promise to end all public subsidies by '20. Sector now ~17B Euros/y. Subsidies only for substantial GHG redux, non-food, non-feed crops. (About time.) Biofuel now ~4.5% total EU transport use ('11).

Inner Mongolia rivers feeding China coal industry. Turning grassland into desert. Thousands of India farmers protesting water to feed coal-fired plants, driving farmers to suicide. China and India to build $720B of coal-burning plants next 20 yrs.

Energy abundance is king. World has 343 sextillion gallons of seawater, 2 quintillion tons of atmos CO2, 173 quintillion watts of solar E/y. Let alone wind, hydro, geo, wave/tidal, etc. Or even sensible nuke. Comps heading for commercialization now: Joule (reported in earlier STUFF), Sapphire, Aurora Algae (Australia), Algenol (algae-to-eth). Farther down the road: El Dorado Biofuels (algae), Ceres (salt-tolerant switchgrass), NASA's OMEGA offshore system. Seaweed-based tech: Bio Architecture Lab ("Bullseye Fuel"), U of GA/U of Puerto Rico, Statoil and SES, Ecofys, Novozymes and Sea 6 Energy (eth from seaweed). And Brazil, Ireland, Israel efforts.

Fueling Cal released "Comp Analysis of Current Research and Outlook for Future" brief on Cal's Low Carb Fuel Stds.

Great Lakes Biodiesel to be largest biodiesel producer in Canada this fall with opening. Approved for production incentives up to $65M over next 5 yrs. Govt mandate 2% minimum biodiesel in fuel and heating oil.

Austrian Center of Industrial Biotech working to optimize enzymes developed from fungus Trichoderma reesei. Normally grows on decaying wood (those mushroom-looking things?). Could bring down costs of cellulosic eth prod from E-crops like miscanthus and wastes like wheat straw. Speaking as former wheat rancher, tho, the fallow straw staying in the ground, then plowed under in spring, builds up top soil and, because it fallowed over winter, the higher the straw, the more snow caught for spring moisture. But, maybe that's just east Colorado hard red winter wheat. Balance.

Australia researchers ID'd several sites for large-scale algae production for biofuel in W Australia using GIS (I don't know what GIS is. Yet.)

~100 large hotels in Bangalore India preparing biogas production on site this month to get power from food waste. That's a cool story. Food waste bad enough. At least use it for power if it ain't good enough for pigs.

Costa Rica to start 10% eth blend in '13. Several false starts.

Could cost only $5B/y to get material into stratosophere to block, reduce sunlight hitting Earth. Fraction of cost of doing nothing for global warm'n.

New research shows massive wind power deploy won't damage atmos or nagatively impact clime change. 4M turbines would be able to produce 1/2 world E needs (don't have year on that). (And might reduce # of tornados, hurricanes, typhoons. "Might" is my proposition.)

Methane hydrates (in continental shelf ocean and beneath permafrost) the most abundant fossil fuel on Earth. And we have been talking abundance.

Chevron Calif oil refinery fire last month: air monitoring mistakes delayed public warning.

US trade deficit went up to $42B in July. When will US stop their suck? Or is it give?

Calif comp - Artemis - joined race to space solar. NASA funding. Wireless power transmission. Cost probs. Meteors. And the world turns at 1K mph. And do airliners and other planes have to avoid the beams?

More big biz sees risk from clime change. Investors call for more disclosure. C redux action.

NRDC ID'd 193 House members, 39 Senators as "dirty air boys (and girls?)".

Spain E minister to urge oil comps to cap pump prices to curb inflation. Name a country that can afford higher interest rates other than China. (Higher interest rates come from inflation.)

Dow Chem and farmers struck deal on 2-4-D and GM crops.

Brookings: state-run banks could wean clean E off subsidies. Well, can they wean fossil off subsidies?

NRDC poll: Americans favor transportating over roads. Do that math.

FL: $880M in Everglades restoration. For 'cane? Algae? Sumthin' new?

Cal gov signed new forest lumber tax into law.

USDA also lowered corn crop projections.

Wy gov asking Interior to scale back fracking rules.

Verdant successfully testing tidal turbine in NYC's East River. I talked with these guys back in '03 asking them if it would work in Ohio River. And it was a lot of work to find out Ohio River flow rate ( < 1mph, except after rain or winter).

UK looks to Chinese investors as nuke reactor funding dries up. (Well, new nuke tech or no? Beryllium or Thorium? Modular?)

Retail store chains dominating solar aps (besides utilities).