Crash Survival Zone

By Thomas L. Friedman

I am really encouraged by President Obama’s commitment to clean energy and combating climate change. I just have three worries: whether he has the right policies, the right politics and the right official to sell his program to the country. Other than that, things look great!

Last week, House Democrats, with administration support, [...]

How to achieve genuine energy independence.

By Fareed Zakaria

Energy independence sounds like such a great idea. If only we could be free … of what, exactly? The single biggest energy exporter to the U.S. is Canada. And even the petrostates we don’t like have to sell us oil at whatever price the market sets. We buy [...]

The Department of Energy has tentatively awarded its first alternative-energy loan guarantee, breaking a four-year logjam in the federal loan program.

The $535 million loan guarantee will go to Solyndra, Inc., which said it would use the money to expand its production of photovoltaic systems at its facilities in Fremont, Calif. The company said that the [...]

Investments of $750 billion could create a “Green New Deal” to revive the world economy and protect the environment, perhaps aided by a tax on oil, the head of the U.N. environment agency said on Thursday.

Achim Steiner said spending should focus on five environmental sectors including improved energy efficiency for buildings and solar or wind [...]

By Thomas L. Friedman
What if a laser-powered fusion energy power plant that would have all the reliability of coal, without the carbon dioxide, all the cleanliness of wind and solar, without having to worry about the sun not shining or the wind not blowing, and all the scale of nuclear, without all the waste, was [...]

President Barack Obama is encouraging state officials to get on the front lines of the government’s program to revive the ailing economy.

Obama stopped by a conference Thursday with state officials gathered in the capital to discuss carrying out the $787 billion economic stimulus program. He said he believes the American people are behind his administration’s [...]

Cutting-Edge Energy Technologies Such as Solar Panels Don’t Deliver as Much Bang as Plugging Leaky Homes

Like a lot of Americans, moving-company owner Art Delaney has been trying to curb his energy use to help the planet and pinch pennies. First he got serious about recycling. Then he traded in his SUV for a Toyota Prius. [...]

Politicians are pinning their hopes for delivery from global warming on a technology that is not quite airtight
A recent American television advertisement features a series of trustworthy-looking individuals affirming their faith in the potential of “clean coal”. One by one, a sensible old lady in a hat, a lab-coated scientist standing by a microscope, a [...]

The International Energy Agency on Friday forecast that world oil demand will drop for two consecutive years, the first time it’s done so in 26 years.

The Paris-based energy group, in its monthly report, slashed its estimate of 2009 demand by 1 million barrels of a day, to 85.3 million barrels a day.

It also cut its [...]

From the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, giant supertankers brimming with oil are resting at anchor or slowly tracing racetrack patterns through the sea, heading nowhere.

The ships are marking time, serving as floating oil-storage tanks. The companies and countries leasing them for that purpose have made a simple calculation: [...]