As millions of people approach the summer vacation season under the threat of $4-per-gallon gasoline, Congress is scrambling to respond. But don't wait for anything that will drive down prices at the pump. A Senate vote on a GOP plan is scheduled for Tuesday, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised to bring up a Democratic package before the Memorial Day congressional recess. Except for halting the flow of oil into the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, neither plan is likely to go very far. Both will be challenged by filibusters by opponents, meaning they would require 60 votes to advance.

Americans will pay higher energy costs under a U.S. Senate bill to limit greenhouse gases, but how much will depend on how well the country can shift away from burning fossil fuels, an Energy Department analysis said Tuesday. The Energy Information Administration in the U.S. Energy Department said annual energy costs per household could increase on average of as little as $30 (euro19) or as much as 10 times that by 2020. ...The bill is expected to come up for Senate debate in June, although it is unlikely that it will pass this year. Some Republican senators have promised to try to use Senate rules to kill the bill unless it is dramatically changed.

From Texas to Scotland, new clean energy projects that might disrupt wildlife habitats (or vacation views) have become an internecine battleground among green warriors. Fighting climate change by adding renewable energy is good; but upsetting pristine landscapes is unconscionable. ...The bottom line is that all power sources need transmission lines to carry electricity to population centers. Since wind and solar power are often sited in remote locations, like ridgelines or deserts, the need for new transmission lines is even bigger. Texas ...is still grappling with the costs and complexity of getting all the wind energy onto the power grid. Even clean-energy veterans like Denmark fret over transmission.

If Congress limits the amount of greenhouse gases that power plants may emit, the country will face a big challenge building enough transmission lines to support renewable power plants that don't emit carbon dioxide, a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official said Thursday. That could be a headache, because "nobody wants a transmission line in their backyard," FERC Commissioner Suedeen Kelly said to a Gulf Coast Power Association conference on Thursday. Transmission lines are just one niggly detail policy-makers will have to sort out if the U.S. regulates carbon dioxide emissions. There are also lots of details around storing or selling carbon dioxide, and who is responsible if the greenhouse gas leaks.

Wind 2008 -- the not so good news -- The Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is the independent system operator that manages the region's grid with oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). As SGN reported in March 2008 (see Smart Grid News article link below), ERCOT operators had to react promptly on February 26 to balance load through demand response (DR) because of system reliability problems caused by wind intermittency. But systems reliability was not the only issue caught in the headlights by this event. The Wall Street Journal also spotlighted the economic impact; namely that the unexpected loss of wind generation caused wholesale power prices to soar from $299 per MWH to $1,055 per MWH in West Texas.

Think long term for solar and wind investments, three experts say. Everyone it seems has been investing in green energy - from Google to ExxonMobil. But this year the booming sector is suddenly in a serious funk. So is this time to get out - or jump in and snap up some long-term winners? To find out, the Monitor's Laurent Belsie recently talked with three experts who closely follow the field: Matt Patsky, portfolio manager of the Winslow Green Growth Fund, Paul Hilton, director of advanced equity research at Calvert, and Eric Becker, portfolio manager with Trillium Asset Management. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Energy independence is not a new idea in American politics. Richard Nixon first started talking about it in 1974. The problem is it's no more feasible today than it was then. We live in an interdependent world, from jet fuel and gasoline to fresh flowers and iPods. In 2005, the U.S. imported crude oil from 41 countries. Virtually every cellphone and running shoe Americans use is imported. And yet, all the presidential candidates are touting the same line. In December, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The American people are simply being lied to. Energy independence is neither doable nor desirable.

Canada has warned the US government that a narrow interpretation of new energy legislation would prohibit its neighbour buying fuel from Alberta's vast oil sands, with "unintended consequences for both countries". In a letter to Robert Gates, US defence secretary, Canada said that it "would not want to see an expansive interpretation" of the Energy Independence and Security Act 2007. ...Amy Myers Jaffe, energy expert at Rice University, said cutting out the oil sands as a source of fuel would also limit global supplies further, forcing up the price of oil: "$106 a barrel is going to look cheap." ..."The Canadians do, in fact, have something to worry about, particularly from a Democratic administration," Ms Jaffe said.

Michael Economides, University of Houston chemical engineering professor and one of the world’s most influential energy consultants, discounts a number of beliefs about the future of the oil and gas industry. [Including:] a) Solar and wind energy, Economides said, is not a solution. It will account for no more than half a percent of demand. b) Getting people out of large SUVs and into subcompacts won’t put a dent in the demand for fuel, he contended. c) And, he said, ethanol is not the solution. He pointed out that the equivalent of 1.6 gallons of gasoline is needed to produce each gallon of ethanol.

While the US Department of Energy has spent $57.5 billion over the past 30 years for research & development on advanced energy technologies such as Ethanol, solar and wind power the nation's energy usage has not dramatically changed-fossil fuels today provide 85% of the nation's energy compared to 93% in 1973. Many technical, cost and environmental challenges must be overcome in developing and demonstrating advanced technologies before they can be deployed in the US with greater impact. Those were just some of the not-too-encouraging conclusions the Government Accounting Office told the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology today. ...· Wind technologies: DOE is assessing its long-term vision of generating 20% of the nation's electricity using wind energy by 2030. Its current R&D efforts, however, are focused on more immediate expansion of the wind industry, particularly on utility-scale wind turbines. One of DOE's targets is to increase the number of distributed wind turbines deployed in the United States from 2,400 in 2007 to 12,000 in 2015. Although wind energy has grown in recent years, from about 1,800 megawatts in 1996 to over 16,800 megawatts in 2007, the wind industry still faces investors' concerns about high up-front capital costs, including connecting the wind farms to the power transmission grid, the GAO said.

Pump jacks and wind turbines were at odds in an energy bill the House approved this week, creating a quandary for North Texas where both could share the horizon. ...But he thinks it's unfair to penalize one sector of the energy industry to benefit another, Michael Frohlich, spokesman for the Lubbock Republican, said. Increasing taxes on five of the biggest oil companies will drive up energy prices for consumers, Frohlich said. "The Democrats are shooting at big oil companies, but they're hitting Americans in their wallets," Frohlich said.

A draft utility industry analysis of comprehensive climate change legislation awaiting Senate floor action concludes that the bill would sharply raise electricity prices, force many utilities to switch from coal-fired generation to natural gas, and impose an average cost of $1,500 on every U.S. household beginning in 2015. ...Fuel-switching by 2020 would increase natural gas wellhead prices by 22% above projected levels, while prices for coal, which now produces roughly half of all electricity, would fall to 30% by that year as more than 37% of existing coal-fired generation would be retired, CRA said.

Most energy experts agree that global warming is a serious threat, and they also agree that green technology has the power to fundamentally reshape how business gets done. But at this early stage, these experts -- including investors -- are finding it hard to separate truth from exaggeration when it comes to the benefits green technology offers. That was the consensus of industry speakers at the recent Wharton Energy Conference who participated in panels on renewable energy, oil and gas, energy finance and power. ..."We are not in a bubble [for renewables], but there are valuation issues," said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of New Energy Finance, an energy consultancy. "There is $100 billion of new money that has been invested in clean energy across all sectors and countries. What you have is enormous inflation of asset prices, which is driven by that liquidity, not by fundamentals. In the fear-and-greed balance of capitalism, we're definitely in the greed phase." People are so giddy over solar power's potential that they are making investments that simply don't add up.

Governors who want clean energy to be a national priority are trying to bring together states with wildly different ways of producing power, like tapping ocean temperature differences off Hawaii and mining coal in West Virginia. But a souring economy has tightened state budgets and forced spending cuts that could temporarily short circuit renewable energy development. Twenty states now project budget gaps, which together total $34 billion for 2009. The National Governors Association launched its "Securing a Clean Energy Future" initiative in December and will reintroduce the plan this weekend at its winter meeting in Washington, D.C.

Greenspan said it is "quite remarkable" that the US economy is able to do reasonably well with oil prices near historic highs. He also remarked, "Global warming is real, but its solution is going to be much more difficult than we'd like to admit." He said, "There's a presumption that we'll solve this [fuel and climate] problem with new technologies. I wish that were true." But then he also said that the use of electric-powered vehicles to displace much of the 9 million b/d of gasoline and 2.5 million b/d of diesel fuel used on US highways to electric "will have a large impact on world petroleum demand." Greenspan advocated greater use of nuclear energy and warned that a "mandatory cap on carbon emissions risks capping energy inputs into the gross domestic product while lowering production and increasing unemployment." He said, "I'm a strong advocate of competitive market capitalism.

Driven by soaring energy demands, the high cost of gas and oil and worries about global warming, an expansion of peaceful nuclear power increasingly appears to be inevitable. "I believe very strongly that new nuclear plants will be built in the U.S. in the coming decades to address problems with respect to higher energy demand, high prices and global warming," said Sudarshan Loyalka, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia. "I believe the nation has no other choice."

The chairman of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Friday he believes the US will, once again, turn to natural gas to fuel new generation over the next decade. ...While the role of coal "is significant going forward," Kelliher maintained that "there is a question about coal" that has led to the cancellation of 54% of new coal-fired projects proposed since 2000. ...He said FERC and the industry also recognize limitations with wind energy.

These notes were prepared after attending two sessions at the Wind Power Finance and Investment Summit, Feb. 7, 2008, San Diego, CA.

A president's priorities become clearer at budget time, even if Congress eventually rearranges things entirely. And that's true about the place of energy and climate change in President Bush's spending plan for next year. Coal and nuclear power see big boosts in the 2009 Energy Department budget request sent to Congress Monday, and Mr. Bush is again calling for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The budget favors nuclear and "clean coal" options over renewable power sources, McClatchy Newspapers noted.

GWEC figures wind power's capacity in 2005 was about 24%-that is, wind turbines spin 1 hour out of 4, year-round. That will improve, but slowly. Bigger and taller turbines, in more favorable locations-especially offshore-will make wind turbines more efficient. But it will be a long time before wind power's paper strength starts to be reflected in real electricity generation. GWEC's own figures point to wind power creeping toward 30% efficiency over the next twenty years. Wind power may be the most mature horse in the renewable-energy stable. But even a thoroughbred is going to have a tough time catching up with the supertanker that is the fossil-fueled energy establishment.