On Peak Oil and National Energy Plans

Michael Giberson

Energy consultant Michael Lynch, appearing in the New York Times, says peak oilers don’t know the oil business. “Peak Oil Is a Waste of Energy.”

NRG Energy CEO David Crane, in the Washington Post, asserts we need a national energy plan with a regional focus: solar for the Southwest, wind for the Great Plains, nuclear power for the South, a push for electric cars in the Northeast, and clean coal as a “national project.”  “An Energy Plan We Can Start Now.”

At the Houston Chronicle‘s NewsWatch: Energy blog, Tom Fowler reports on an interview with Daniel Yergin, closing the report with an observation that serves as a kind of neat rejoinder to the points raised in the two previous stories:

Yergin mentioned … the huge potential of so-called unconventional natural gas in the U.S. thanks to the coming together of a number of technology break-throughs.

“Only in the last two months or so has Washington awakened to the reality of unconventional gas,” Yergin said. “There was no master plan here, no 10-year technology road map. It was just a question of finding a combination to pick that lock.”

NewsWatch: Energy also draws attention to Yergin’s article appearing in a Foreign Policy special report, Oil: The Long Goodbye.  I’ve only looked at the Yergin piece, but several others look good too.