I’m very enthusiastic about the potential for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV’s) to provide a big piece of the ultimate solution to America’s “oil addiction” problem.  The PHEV will have an extended-range all-electric capability and a small gasoline engine that will re-charge the battery when it begins to run low, thus providing ample total range on a tank of gas.  

A PHEV with a 20 mile electric-only range will allow many drivers do all their normal daily chores while using only minimal gasoline, if any - thus getting virtually …

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Our current investment trauma marks the end of an era of excesses in credit and real estate markets, of course.  But it also denotes that the United States is undergoing a far more general and significant transition - not only to a new government with a radically different agenda, but more lastingly into a whole new climate for investments. 

Gone is the era of wind-to-the-back investing powered since 1982 by continually lower interest rates and the virtuous influence of the baby boomer demographic bulge working its way through the U.S. economy …

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Cars are the challenge de jour on several obvious levels. 

   1. There’s no currently discernable path to profitability for G.M. and Chrysler and thus no exit strategy for the bailout funds they need.  So G.M. and Chrysler are like suicide terrorists wandering around the business community threatening to blow up both themselves and everyone else in the room.  Nobody knows whether to feed them or shoot them. 

   2. Cars cause America’s “oil addiction” which in turn has caused so much of America’s balance of payments and foreign policy and military …

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Here’s a phrase you might want to remember: necessity is the mother of invention.  Catchy, don’t you think?  What made me coin this phrase was watching last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” story about Saudi Aramco.  Among the many wonders of the guided tour hosted by the Saudi oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, was a research lab where the Saudis are working to develop new ways to make oil into a cleaner burning and more efficient fuel.  Clearly the Saudis are concerned about the future of their primary export.  They see the …

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I’ve followed the progress of Better Place with great interest because it is the most radical and comprehensive attempt to solve the Peak Oil problem.   As I’ve written before, the plan, which has snagged Israel, Denmark, and Australia as customers, includes all-electric vehicles, a massive public and private re-charging infrastructure, and government assisted renewable electricity generation facilities, usually solar and/or wind.   The basic idea is that consumers will purchase a certain number of all-electric miles per month, much as they now purchase cell phone minutes.  The company …

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Stocks are clearly in panic mode; prices no longer correlate remotely with valuations.  My son asks me as the market tanks another 500 points who is buying.  Someone has to be buying. It’s a brilliant question.  I suppose the answer is that people who think the price being offered discounts all the risks of continued panic are buying.  So the price must be dramatically lower - that’s the only price able to find a buyer. 

What started the stock market tanking is the global credit market chaos about which we seem …

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The reality that’s been revealed by Russia’s Georgia adventure is captured in the following statement by Prof. Steven Blank at Penn. State: ““Russia’s energy objective is to monopolize all Caspian energy flows to Europe, so that it can then blackmail Europe and force political changes to European policy,” Prof. Blank said.

That is the new national security challenge presented by Russia that I discussed recently.  It’s historical and strategic dimensions are set forth in a excellent piece of journalism published today in the Globe and Mail and …

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I recently had lunch with a top U.S  Department of Energy executive.  He’s “in charge” of half the world - mostly the half that exports oil.  This very charming individual was unable to define what the present U.S. energy policy is.   I suppose he understands, but cannot admit publicly, that our policy under the present nitwit administration is to give oil companies and oil supply companies, e.g. Halliburton, everything they want - tax breaks, drilling rights, lack of oversight - and to give the 44 farm-state senators a mandate …

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A study released on 7/30/08 by Amercan Clean Skies Foundation and Navigant Consulting states that U.S. unconventional natural gas deposits are sufficient to supply 118 years of U.S. demand at 2007 levels.  Newly developed fracking and horizontal drilling techniques have made it possible to recover enormous quantities of gas from tight sands, coalbed methane, and gas shale formations, reports the Oil & Gas Journal (8/4/08) On the demand side, some leaders are starting to advocate the use of NG in lieu of petroleum to power cars.  Two Congressmen, Rahm …

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There are two oil myths currently making the rounds.  The public could become convinced that pursuing these myths is a solution to the energy crisis so the danger the myths represent is partially the environmental risk but more importantly the risk of our not pursuing a truly useful energy policy.   Both myths envision  the U.S. being delivered  from dependence on evil foreign oil sellers  by one of two Fairy Godmothers.  The two are:   1.  drilling for oil in the Outer Continental Shelf and the Alaskan National Wildlife Preserve …

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People are mighty miffed at the price of gasoline and my favorite presidential candidate, Sen. Obama, does not seem to be offering much.  Yes, he talks about a grand “go to the moon” scheme of “alternative energy” development a la Kennedy and like Mitt Romney.  But he’s tied to orthodox Democratic objections to more drilling and to nuclear power, both of which people sense are needed.  More important, Obama has not brought his own more progressive thoughts into a clear focus that people can understand as meaningful.   It’s not just …

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Gore vs. Pickens vs. Congress vs. McCain

The U.S. Congress is pursuing such brilliant energy policy alternatives as:

1. Suing OPEC for anti-trust

2.  Stopping “speculation”

3. Subsidizing corn-based ethanol while taxing imports of foreign ethanol.

  4. Leasing more U.S. land for oil and gas drilling.

These ideas range from idiotic (1 and 2) to counter-productive (3) to moderately useful in the longer term (4). 

To be more specific on drilling, my view is that since there would be no additional oil flowing from drilling the OCS or ANWR for 7 - 12 years, and since …

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Much is written about “alternative energy” and the relief from high oil prices that might come from solar, wind, nuclear or some other approach.  But all of these are “solutions” to a problem that as of now does not exist: a lack of electricity. Our oil problem is caused by too much use of petroleum, not a lack of electricity.  The only way we are going to solve the oil problem is to drive cars that do not include the current petroleum based power plants and to transition freight and …

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J. Peter Lynch, author of the essay posted below, is not the famous former manager of Fidelity’s Magellan Fund named Peter S. Lynch.  Nonetheless he has addressed an important topic, the full cost of our use of fossil fuels. 

I find the most seriously compelling indirect cost of oil is the national security cost.  This essay addresses primarily the military aspect of the national security costs of our global oil-protection policy, which is truly enormous.  Beyond that is the potential cost associated with the risk that the oil to which we have become addicted may not be …

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This is an editorial - and a confession.   I’ve become a Bush Democrat.  I’m so convinced, thanks particularly to the Bush years, that the Republican party is on the wrong track fiscally, internationally, environmentally, and socially in terms of judicial appointments that I would vote for a broomstick if it were a Democrat against any Republican for any office.  That even includes Charlie Christ and a few other Republicans whom I respect greatly.  I just don’t want that party in power any more. But (you knew there was a …

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