There must be solutions with less severe tradeoffs than shale gas and tar sands oil.
FORBES: Frack That! The Innovators in Maine Have Plans to Power the Entire State with Offshore Wind
Scary emissions numbers related to the Canadian Tar Sands oil Keystone XL would carry trumpeted by activist groups like NRDC have little credibility.
FORBES: Keystone XL and New York Fracking Delays - "Mass Hysteria!"
Earlier this year, Dole and Chiquita caught flak from activists after removing posts from their Facebook pages related to their consumption of tar sands oil.
FORBES: Under Pressure from Sponsor, American Idol Pulls Plug on Plastic PSA
Also looming is a decision whether to grant a permit to the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would transport carbon-laden tar sands oil from Canada to Texas.
Writers Lisa Song, Elizabeth McGowan and David Hasemyer were recognized for a project that began with an investigation into a million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010.
That day will mark a new crest in the rising tide of public demand for action, beginning with a definitive rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline that would enable the exploitation and export of Canada's tar sands oil.
The Line 9 hearing comes as two other potential routes for tar-sands oil face problems.
While there are legitimate environmental worries, replacing gas exports with tar-sands oil is vital for economic growth, argues Matthew Akman, an analyst at Scotiabank.
For their calculations, the two assumed that where there was a gap between demand and conventional supply it would be filled with synthetic fuels, first with tar-sands oil and later with oil from coal and shale. (According to high-end estimates, coal and oil shale could together yield some ten trillion barrels of unconventional crude.) They then calculated what the impact would be on global carbon-dioxide levels.
He has batted away all criticisms of the Albertan tar sands, where oil extraction is an especially dirty business, and placed his faith in carbon capture and storage, an unproven and expensive technology.
While the pipeline project is a better alternative from a carbon pollution standpoint than shipping the oil by rail, the emissions created by harvesting tar sands, processing them into oil and eventually burning it in automobiles in the U.S. and abroad will contribute to global warming.
Production of oil from tar sands bitumen produces between three and five times the greenhouse gas pollution of conventional oil production.
FORBES: How Bridgestone's Innovative New Tires Will Save You Fuel
Investment is pouring into the tar sands, but potential oil exports will outstrip pipeline capacity by 2015.
Light sweet crude is depleting quickly, and now the industry is going after heavy crude and tar sands and thermally enhanced oil.
The company that has been producing oil from the tar sands the longest is known as Suncor. (Suncor used to be a part of Sun Oil, now Sunoco, but today it is owned and operated independently.) One day this summer, I went to take a tour of its operations, which sprawl across several hundred square miles.
Extracting oil from tar sands causes more carbon emissions than traditional drilling.
And Canada is still fighting for an exemption from a rule inserted into the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act that bars the American government from buying fuels whose production causes more greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional petroleum sources, as producing oil from tar sands does.
Some hours north of where I am on a trip with BACKROADS, a travel company based in Berkeley, California, sits the vast and controversial Canadian tar sands containing vast amounts of oil and natural gas, which are some day going to be sent through an 1800 mile pipeline to the Louisiana Gulf Coast that the US State Department has just approved.
They have worked out how to squeeze oil from the tar sands of Alberta.
WSJ: Big Oil Companies Are Shifting Their Focus Back to the West
Environmentalists dislike the project chiefly because it would increase America's imports of oil from the tar sands of Alberta.
Oil shale and tar sands are other sources of liquid fuel that are harder on the environment than petroleum.
These pipelines will distribute gas from the fracked shales and deliver oil from the tar sands, giving us the biggest energy boom in 60 years.
They will soon bioengineer bacteria to melt oil out of tar sands, turn grass into diesel fuel and scavenge natural resources of every kind out of low-grade, thinly dispersed deposits.
He plans to take a more active role in lawsuits challenging both federal and state governments on issues such as the use of oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada.
In the oil business, for example, Ceradyne is working to have its ceramics used to squeeze hydrocarbons from oil sands and tar, such those found in great quantity in Western Canada.
Crude from the tar sands and other unconventional sources could keep oil flowing well into the middle of the century, and perhaps beyond.
He wrote part of an energy bill passed in 2007 that seemed to ban American government agencies from buying oil produced from the tar sands.
The greens may not be able to stop the Canadians from extracting oil from the Alberta tar sands, but they would succeed in wiping out American coal-fired power.
应用推荐