Maryland Energy Report

Solving our energy and climate challenges will require us to find new ways of tapping into the creativity of our fellow humans. We need solutions — not just new hardware but also new behaviors, new attitudes and new ways of interacting that lead to sustainability. World Without Oil is the name of an experiment with [...]

Petroleum supply has been a central anxiety of U.S. leaders since World War Two.  In the context of the BP Gulf oil spill disaster, we are starting another national debate over energy and the environment — one that has important implications for Maryland.  Let’s pause to consider the “official projections” that inform this debate by [...]

While the public and the media are understandably focused on what’s happening now in the Gulf, BP’s executives are keeping one eye on their swelling river of cash. Several conclusions follow from this chart (data from the Financial Times.) The first is that BP is simply a gigantic cash machine, like the other “oil majors.” [...]

When President Obama makes his first Oval Office address to the nation tomorrow night, the topic will be the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf.  He cannot mobilize our people in support of a sensible energy strategy if they don’t have the crucial facts about the U.S. petroleum situation. Here are three: 1. Domestic [...]

The BP Gulf of Mexico disaster will be a transformative moment — just as the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill was.  What we don’t know is the direction that transformation will take. For a century, Americans have learned to identify petroleum consumption with prosperity and power.  That mythology was semi-sensible only so long as we [...]