Author: Keith Johnson

After more than two years and over 2,000 posts, Environmental Capital is closing its virtual doors.

It’s been, in equal measure, a fun, grueling, and educational ride.

Special thanks are owed to the folks who got it all started and kept it going—Mark Gongloff, Jeff Ball, and Russell Gold—not to mention all the Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal folks who fed the beast so well all this time.

Of course, the biggest thanks of all goes to our readers—both of you. You’re what got us out of bed in the wee hours every morning. Well, that–and the paycheck.

And you can still get your fix of environmental and energy news right here, at the WSJ Environment page and the Energy, Oil, and Gas page.

Two years ago, when we launched Environmental Capital, we set out to chart the tectonic shift in the global energy landscape, affecting everything from what keeps the lights on to what’s under the hood of your car.

A big part of that shift was—and still is—environmental concern. The world’s (half-hearted) efforts to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions were meant to spur (and might yet) the development and deployment of a whole new world of cleaner energy.

But we also noted another rationale for a shift in the way the world produces and uses energy: the bottom line. Whether it’s a big-box retailer changing the way it packs and ships goods or the growing conviction that energy efficiency and “negawatts” are the cheapest, cleanest source of energy available today, the cleaner way of doing things is very often the smarter way of doing things.

That it isn’t always the case is less of an indictment of clean energy than of the current energy system itself.

To take a single example: The price that American drivers pay at the pump, frightening as it is these days, does not reflect the cost of oil and gasoline. There are additional costs to the reliance on oil that simply don’t show up in the twirling numbers at the gas pump, whether they are the environmental costs of oil extraction, transport and combustion, or the cost of U.S. military engagement to protect oil supplies and keep vital sea lanes open.

For economists, all these hidden costs are called “externalities.” They’re as real as they are hard to spot, from the Fifth Fleet’s operating expenses to the pernicious health costs of a coal-fired electricity sector.

For policymakers, these externalities represent an opportunity as much as a headache. For all the worries that a bigger role for government in the energy business—from cap-and-trade schemes to solar-power subsidies—represents a retreat from free markets, that’s hardly the case. Energy markets aren’t “free” today, and the playing field is anything but level.

New energy policies that seek to redress those problems, and unleash rather than further stifle a genuine market for energy, will point the way toward a new energy future that makes sense, both environmentally and economically. That’s because, if new policies set out to tackle those externalities once and for all, the environmental answer will quite often become the economic answer. Everything has its price—and its cost.

Here’s a stumper: Why are shares in the global leader in the most mature renewable-energy technology so moribund?

Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, the biggest maker of wind turbines in the world, can’t get any love from investors. Its share price, after an up-and-down 2009, is roughly where it was at the start of last year.

Some analysts think that’s out of whack. HSBC today put a “buy” on Vestas shares and reiterated a target price of 500 Danish kroner; the stock today trades at around 333, well off the highs it reached last spring and summer. Jeffries Research also put out a “buy” recommendation today, though with a slightly lower target price.

HSBC’s reasoning is simple enough: Since the beginning of December, turbine orders have started to flow again. Vestas is maintaining its position behind General Electric as the number-two turbine company in the U.S., the world’s biggest wind market. And that market can only grow, the bank figures, as Washington hands out more clean-energy grants and prepares to pass a national renewable-energy standard. HSBC says that Vestas’ 30% discount to its peer group is “completely unjustifed.”

Jeffries makes similar arguments, highlighting a big new turbine order expected in Kenya to stress the strength of Vestas’ order book and its unparalleled global reach.

Sure, Vestas—like GE, Gamesa, Siemens and other big turbine makers—have worries. The explosion of China’s wind industry has proven a double-edged sword. First, that big and fast-growing market was partly closed to foreign suppliers. And the rapid growth of China’s wind industry has created scores of wind-turbine makers itching to start exporting their wares to Europe and America—which could, one day, threaten market share and margins for the established players.

In the meantime, HSBC says, investors could do a lot worse than to hitch their wagon to a global leader whose shares look cheap.

Crude oil futures hovered around $80 a barrel amid renewed confidence in the economic recovery. “Sentiment is such that dips below $80 are seen as buying opportunities,” an analyst tells Bloomberg.

The U.S. CFTC will outline today limits on positions energy traders can hold, the belated response to worries speculators were behind big price spikes in 2008, in the WSJ.

Iran will start winding down fuel subsidies, which eat up 30% of its budget, AP reports in the WSJ.

If North Sea oil and gas production was already reeling, the recession kicked the industry while it was down and lowered investment in the region, in the FT.

Want to know why President Obama’s clean-energy dreams have failed to materialize? Because it’s the same “magical thinking” that has prevailed since the Carter years, argue Nordhaus and Shellenberger in Foreign Policy. What’s needed instead is hard-headed investment in energy technology, they argue.

Now that the health-care fight is over, T. Boone Pickens is back on his natural-gas powered soap box, in the NYT.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says a decision on the Cape Wind offshore wind farm is due before April, a sign the decade-long scrum between clean energy and clean vistas is drawing to a close, in the NYT.

The U.K. is going full hog on offshore wind, but that doesn’t mean the strategy is without its risks, in Green Inc. Offshore wind makes more sense for the U.K. than the U.S., but America still needs to do something big when it comes to clean energy, argues Geoff Styles. Because “small wind” sure isn’t doing the trick, in the WSJ.

U.S. utilities are struggling to plan major infrastructure investments after two years of declining demand for electricity, throwing the sector into turmoil, in the WSJ. Utilities in California won’t meet their 2010 targets for renewable energy despite a heroic last-minute push, at Earth2Tech.

Germany’s done too much—but the country is close to reaching an agreement to cut generous subsidies for solar power, hoping to avoid a Spain-style implosion, in Reuters.

Finally, could China lose its appetite for coal? It could if reliance on coal starts to hurt, rather than enhance, energy security, at the FT’s Energy Source.

Is the climate part of energy-and-climate legislation about to get thrown under the bus?

As Congress gets back to work, one of the big questions looming on the Hill is whether it’s time to park plans for a national curb on greenhouse-gas emissions and focus on a narrower energy bill. The rationale? Energy reform, even to boost clean energy, enjoys some cross-aisle support. Capping greenhouse-gas emissions has proven a tough slog even within the majority Democrats. And the health-care fight has undoubtedly dented enthusiasm for another bruising battle.

There’s plenty of chatter out there to that effect. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said yesterday that “I think you can expect everything but cap-and-trade,” referring to upcoming Senate work on energy legislation. Politico details the back-and-forth.

Sen. John Kerry, co-author of two of the four cap-and-trade bills bouncing about, is horrified by the prospect. He told E&E News:

“If you separate climate from energy reform, you slow your ability to create those clean jobs because every market expert tells you those energy reforms can’t take hold unless you price carbon. Unless you do something comprehensive you’re just going a more expensive, less effective route and you’ll keep trailing other countries.”

But is that really the case? Sure, a higher price on carbon emissions would be good news for everything that’s low-carbon, including renewable energy, nuclear power, and clean coal. But plenty of big countries have made huge strides in clean energy without putting a pricetag on carbon emissions.

America’s favorite green bogeyman, China, has the world’s most vibrant wind-power market, huge plans for growth in solar power, and a very ambitious schedule for new nuclear plant construction. All without any domestic caps on greenhouse-gas emissions (or international cooperation on emissions limits, either.)

When the Energy Information Administration crunched the numbers on the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill—passed last summer by the House—it found that the clean-energy provisions and cap-and-trade plan would indeed boost clean energy. But, it’s complicated.

The EIA found that all the costly and cumbersome provisions in Waxman-Markey would only boost renewable energy a modest amount over what would be built anyway. Renewables would provide 878 billion kilowatt hours in 2020 under the bill, including its nationwide renewable-energy standard, compared with 708 billion kWh if nothing was done.

It’s hard to say just what the cap-and-trade part of the bill would do for wind and solar. State-wide renewable-energy policies, for example, are a huge driver of new investment.

Yes, nuclear power and clean coal could be big beneficiaries of concerted energy and climate policies. But even that’s not a slam dunk. The EIA found that in a “high-cost” future, when nuclear and clean coal cost more than expected (ask the nuclear industry about budget overruns), nuclear power increases only marginally and clean coal stays a niche power technology.

In other words, many legislators, the White House, and and environmentalists are circling the wagons to fight this year for “comprehensive” energy and climate legislation. But cap-and-trade plans still place plenty of pushback.

There’s reason to think a clean-energy future could still be in the offing even if Congress does take the path of least resistance and scraps plans for cap-and-trade this year.

Crude oil futures fell below $80 a barrel after Chinese banking rules raise fears the country might slam the brakes on growth. “The Chinese decision doesn’t affect physical oil demand, but it does affect sentiment, and that’s the most important thing for driving prices,” an analyst tells Bloomberg.

In Washington, the fate of energy and climate legislation hangs in the balance. The question: Is it wiser to try to pass stand-alone energy legislation, without all the controversial climate-change bits, or push for the whole enchilada? In Politico and Green Wire.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s position is clear: Climate legislation now would strangle U.S. businesses still struggling with the recession, also in Green Wire. NASA’s James Hansen also hates cap-and-trade, and plans more acts of civil disobedience, in The Guardian.

So what about geo-engineering? Scientists will convene a conference this March to study emergency options for checking temperature increases, also in The Guardian.

More fallout post-Copenhagen: China’s Janus-faced approach to international affairs reveals a “dragon in sheep’s clothing,” says a NYT op-ed: “As Copenhagen revealed, China is not the self-touted rising superpower but a scheming power that uses poor states as a front to obstruct progress through procedural wrangling.”

Either way, China and other developing countries will meet later this month to detail their voluntary actions on climate change, part of the follow-up to the much-attacked Copenhagen Accord, in Reuters.

The NYT’s Room for Debate looks at “green civil war,” or the battle between preservation and the development of new clean-energy sources.

T. Boone Pickens gets colder feet: The oilman-cum-wind maven halves his wind-turbine order and now says plans for a big Texas wind farm are shelved, in the Dallas Morning News.

From the Detroit Auto Show, General Motors has a recipe for success: Build more trucks. China’s BYD has electric cars, but isn’t sure yet how to attack the U.S. market. And more video on Tesla’s electric roadster, all in the WSJ.

Finally, Venezuela may be oil-rich, but it’s energy-poor. The country will start five months of rolling blackouts to deal with electricity shortages, in Bloomberg.

The aviation business is perennially in the spotlight for its role in greenhouse-gas emissions: Jets burn tons of fuel at high altitudes. So far, much of the focus on next-generation aviation technology has landed on big, high-profile planes, such as Boeing’s Dreamliner or Airbus’ A380, and all the fancy gimmicks they incorporate to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions.

But the real battleground for aviation over the next two decades could play out among smaller, regional jets–100-plus seat planes that play an increasingly large role in air transportation in the U.S., Latin America, and Asia.

That’s the target market for Pratt & Whitney’s newest jet engine, the Pure Power PW1000G, which will be fitted to the latest regional jets from Bombardier and Mitsubishi in 2013 and 2014. The new engine is “the biggest step in engine technology since the 747,” says Alan Epstein, P&W’s vice-president for Technology and Environment and a 30-year veteran of MIT.

The new P&W engine, which garnered Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New” award last year, promises to cut fuel consumption by between 12% and 15%. That by itself is good news for carriers wracked by high oil prices. But lower fuel consumption also means fewer carbon emissions. The engine also cuts down engine noise, which means the new planes could operate from more airports with strict environmental standards.

P&W’s engine marks a departure from traditional turbofan engines used in jets: It has a big, 250-pound gear in the middle of it. That means it can use a bigger fan in the front, generate a lot more thrust, and still cut fuel consumption. The redesigned engine also has fewer, lighter parts than traditional engines. The company says that can cut maintenance costs by $1.5 million annually per plane.

P&W, a unit of United Technologies, is banking on the engine’s efficiency to become a big selling point with regional-jet makers; Bombardier alone expects to sell 6,300 new 100-to-150 seat aircraft over the next twenty years.

Just in case, though, the Obama administration is helping out: P&W got one of the biggest awards, worth $110 million in clean-tech manufacturing tax credits, from the $2.3 billion announced by the White House Friday, to retool its factory to produce the new engine.

Crude oil futures fell toward $81 a barrel amid forecasts of warmer weather in the U.S., Bloomberg reports.

Chevron warns on fourth-quarter earnings due to a weak refining environment that couldn’t offset higher oil prices, in the WSJ.

Natural gas finds a new, shallow-water frontier: McMoRan’s potentially huge shallow-water find in the Gulf of Mexico raises hopes of abundant, low-cost supplies, in the Houston Chronicle.

More scorecards on President Obama’s first year in office. Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress figures the president went 10-for-10 on the think thank’s clean-energy prescriptions, at Grist.

California is studying ways to return money from climate-change plans to consumers, through rebates or tax cuts elsewhere, in the WSJ. California’s approach represents another way of buying support for oft-controversial climate plans, in Greenspace.

Electric cars stole the show at the opening of the Detroit Auto Show, even if they and their hybrid cousins are still terribly niche. GM warns of teething pains, in the NYT:”’It’s going to take us three generations of range-extended electric vehicles to get any anywhere near reasonable costs,’ said Thomas Stephens, G.M.’s vice chairman for product development.”

GM’s Bob Lutz also warns that first-generation batteries will be very fickle things, especially in winter, in the WSJ. More on all the new models at Earth2Tech.

Venezuela’s teetering economy could take another hit from power shortages, brought about as low rainfall cripples key hydroelectric plants. Who’s to blame—El Nino or La Corrupcion?, in the FT.

It’s official—China scraps the restriction on foreign parts in turbines used for wind farms, potentially opening up the world’s fastest-growing market to more foreign investment, in AFP.

Finally, what ever happened to that blue-ribbon panel meant to find an answer to Yucca Mountain? It has yet to be formed, leaving the nuclear industry to struggle still with the waste question, in Greenwire.

The idea that America’s clean-energy push has become, first and foremost, a jobs push is now indisputable. The White House announcement Friday of an additional $2.3 billion in clean-energy manufacturing tax credits was specifically touted as a vehicle for jobs creation first and a way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, second.

The link between jobs and energy has been with Team Obama since the presidential campaign; and given the recession and 10% unemployment, it’s probably the only way to advance environmental legislation at all, as Jeff Ball notes today in The Wall Street Journal.

That doesn’t mean there’s not plenty to be wary about in the latest White House announcement.

For starters, the $2.3 billion is expected to help create about 17,000 jobs. That works out to roughly $135,000 per job—and remember, a “job” is defined as one year of employment. (To be fair, private-sector clean-energy job-creation may not be a lot cheaper. The White House estimates the new tax credits will spur an additional $5.4 billion in private investment, creating 41,000 jobs at a cost of $131,000 a head.)

The latest green-jobs push is also confusing in its timing. Some of the projects eligible for tax credits, the White House notes, are already up and running—suggesting they don’t necessarily need federal money to make a go of things. Other projects that won’t be completed until 2013 are also eligible for the tax credits—hardly a short-term stimulus to tackle double-digit unemployment.

But the bigger question, it seems, is whether clean-tech manufacturing is really the best way for America to jump on the green bandwagon. Manufacturing jobs in all sectors have for decades been fleeing to countries with lower costs for labor, energy, and raw materials. Why should clean energy be any different?

China, for instance, in the space of a few years has become a global leader in the manufacture of equipment for solar- and wind-power. It’s also making heady inroads in other areas, from batteries for electric cars to gear for the smart grid.

Granted, Chinese equipment still faces plenty of technological challenges. The country is a huge producer of wind turbines, for example, but has yet to start exporting them at a large scale.

But even Tom Friedman, a tireless cheerleader for a clean-energy revolution in the U.S., recognizes that America isn’t going to win a workshop battle with China to build clean-tech gear. Instead, he envisions a partnership, “with the U.S. specializing in energy research and innovation, at which China is still weak, as well as in venture investing and servicing of new clean technologies, and with China specializing in mass production.”

Which raises the question: Should the billions being poured into American factories be steered toward American laboratories instead?

Natural gas is often seen as the “bridge fuel” to a clean-energy future—it’s abundant, reliable, and has about half the emissions of coal. Today, a couple of reminders of just how tricky it can be to really make that gas-powered energy revolution a reality.

In California, state regulators are concerned that new emissions rules from the Environmental Protection Agency could actually “retard” the state’s efforts to clean up its energy mix, The Wall Street Journal reports today.

How’s that? California plans a massive increase in the use of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power—but needs new natural-gas fired power plants as backup. New EPA rules on greenhouse-gas emissions from big emitters—power plants and the like—will now require permits for gas-fired plants. That could actually set back California’s green dreams, the paper reports:

In a Dec. 24 letter to the EPA, the California Energy Commission, which oversees energy policy in the state, said the EPA’s proposal “will likely retard, rather than facilitate,” reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from its electricity sector.

Half a world away, Britain is doing its own gymnastics to meet two often irreconcilable goals: Cleaner energy and energy security. The U.K. is racing ahead with ambitious plans for offshore wind power; last Friday’s offshore tender would provide enough clean energy, on paper, to supply one-quarter of British electricity needs.

But, as in California, all those wind farms require lots of new natural-gas plants to act as backup power. Unlike the U.S., most European countries aren’t awash in natural gas—most import it from Russia, Norway, or North Africa.

The U.K., in particular, is worried that its drive for cleaner energy, which will require more natural gas at least until wind farms and a new generation of nuclear plants are built, will actually undermine its energy security.

With variations, that’s a theme that repeats itself across the Continent (as well as in the U.S), with three energy goals often at odds with each other—cleaner energy, cheaper energy, and energy security.

Natural gas offers a seemingly easy way to tackle one of those challenges. That doesn’t make it a silver bullet for all of them.

Crude oil futures are nudging $84 a barrel thanks to colder weather and a weaker dollar, but industrial demand will be the real test, Bloomberg reports.

What’s next for U.S. policy on energy and the climate? Joe Romm argues that climate legislation actually enjoys surprising bipartisan support—but could be scuppered by the anti-science crowd.

Actually, even pioneering states are having a rethink. Meg Whitman is making opposition to California’s cap-and-trade plan a centerpiece of her gubernatorial campaign, in the L.A. Times. There’s even a ballot measure to nix the plan until unemployment falls, on the WSJ edit page.

And California is one of several states asking the EPA to go slow with new emissions rules, fearing that new regulations could hurt—not help—efforts to clean up the economy, in the WSJ.

Tom Friedman calls China’s “Green Leap Forward” the biggest event of the past decade, and says the U.S. response will be the key to American competitiveness. Chinese progress includes a huge new deal for concentrated solar power, in the NYT, and the world’s fastest high-speed rail, in MIT Technology Review.

The whole clean-energy fight is indeed a jobs battle, notes Jeff Ball in the WSJ—there’s little chance environmental legislation can pass if it doesn’t tackle double-digit unemployment. New government money for fuel-efficient cars is another way to spur job creation, also in the WSJ. And Ford is hoping to make the new Focus a poster-child of fuel efficiency, in the WSJ.

The U.K. announced contracts for even more offshore wind power than expected Friday—the plans for 32 gigawatts of wind farms will require a similar effort to the creation of the North Sea oil and gas industry, in the WSJ. Of course, all that wind also requires a lot of natural gas, which threatens the U.K.’s energy security, in the FT.

Here’s a canary in the coal mine: Coal production in Wyoming fell last year for the first time in a decade; whether that’s a blip of the sign of things to come remains to be seen, in the Billings Gazette.

Makers of green household products are ramping up their marketing efforts to take on mainstream rivals, in the WSJ.

Finally, the L.A. Times pays tribute to Art Rosenfeld, the father of energy efficiency, who’s leaving his job this week after decades of pushing California along the Rosenfeld curve.

The debacle in Copenhagen already spawned one cottage industry—the blame game. The fiasco might have another, longer-lasting effect: Giving fresh momentum to geo-engineering.

The idea of tinkering with the earth’s climate to keep temperatures down—whether that means seeding clouds, spraying particles into the atmosphere, or building huge sunshades—already had appeal in certain circles. Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus—no relation to the star-crossed climate conference—recently gave a hearty thumbs-up to the idea of making clouds whiter to reflect more sunshine, for instance.

For some folks leery of the whole idea of curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, geo-engineering offers a seemingly attractive techno-fix—and a cheaper one, too boot. You might recall a recent dustup involving geo-engineering and a pair of best-selling authors. Lou Grinzo even wonders if Chinese reticence at Copenhagen might not have something to do with the idea of becoming a big player in geo-engineering in a decade or two when the world urgently needs a quick fix.

The big question is: Will climate engineering get more appealing the less progress is actually made at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions? Copenhagen certainly lowered the bar for global action on emissions; there’s plenty of worry that even the best-case scenario envisioned by the UN won’t prevent a dangerous rise in temperatures. Chris Mooney at Mother Jones anticipated a Copenhagen failure would put the spotlight back on geo-engineering.

But the big problem with geo-engineering are the “unknown unknowns”—even if such schemes actually work to keep temperatures in check, nobody really knows what else they’ll do. MIT Technology Review has a great takeout on the pros and cons—mostly cons, actually—of climate engineering. That includes the fear that countries might resort to using geo-engineering schemes unilaterally.

Which suggests that all the buzz around geo-engineering might just have one other side effect: It could drive a lot of the countries around the world back to the negotiating table, in a bid to find some way to govern the geo-engineering genie, if not lock it back in the bottle.

In that sense, the diplomatic meltdown at Copenhagen might yet have a more productive diplomatic denouement.

Crude oil futures neared $75 a barrel ahead of an expected decline in U.S. oil inventories, Bloomberg reports.

China makes another move to ensure energy supplies, signing a deal with Venezuela to help develop offshore oil fields, in the WSJ. With Iraqi elections looming, the country has another chance to put its oil wealth at the service of its citizens, writes a former oil minister in the WSJ.

Who was really to blame for the meltdown in Copenhagen? China, without a doubt, says Mark Lynas in an insider’s account of how Beijing sabotaged the climate summit, in The Guardian: “The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful ‘deal’ so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame.”

In any event, the Copenhagen Accord is coming under increasing fire, with the very developing countries who helped draft it now criticizing the agreement, in the FT.

The real lessons from Copenhagen weren’t in the summit, but in Denmark’s ability to chart a new energy course, writes Tom Friedman.

If cleaning up the electricity sector is so hard, why not target oil instead? By focusing on the transportation sector—and expanding the use of alternative fuels—the rich and poor world alike would benefit, in Foreign Policy.

Copenhagen didn’t kill the chances of the climate bill in the U.S. Senate—the health-care debate did. That’s the take from both sides of the aisle (except the always optimistic John Kerry) in Politico.

The clean-tech sector regroups after the disappointment of Copenhagen. Luckily, there are plenty of local, state and national clean-energy policies that could be more important than vague global agreements, in the WSJ.

And the Copenhagen fiasco amounts to a stay of execution for coal-fired utilities, which seem undervalued by the market, in the WSJ.

Finally, Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand talks with Yale’s Environment 360 about the new generation of environmentalists and the allure of nuclear power.

Could Homer Simpson derail the nuclear renaissance?

Don’t laugh—the idea has some currency in Canada. Homer’s bumbling nature—you’ve seen him at work inside the Springfield nuclear power plant—simply reinforces public worries about the safety of nuclear power. Mr. Burns doesn’t much help the industry’s image. Three-eyed fish don’t help, either. And Lisa Simpson’s eco-activism is the icing on the cake.

That’s from philosophy professor Bill Irwin, who’s been making the rounds on Canadian radio in the wake of the decision by the province of Saskatchewan to nix plans for a new nuclear reactor. Dr. Irwin wrote “The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer,” one of his several books on the confluence of TV and philosophy. (Wait for Tony Soprano on cap-and-trade.)

The idea that the Simpsons could influence public attitudes toward nuclear energy isn’t so far-fetched: As much as we harp on mundane issues such as economics, lead times, supply chains, and the waste issue, it’s entirely possible that Homer has a bigger audience than MIT reports.

Indeed, public-opinion surveys show that nuclear-plant safety is at the top of the list of concerns among folks still leery of nuclear energy.

Still, it seems that Saskatchewan’s decision to hold off for now on the construction of a new nuclear plant has more to do with economics than with Homer or plant safety.

Simply put, nuclear power plants today are an expensive proposition. Without a hefty price for carbon emissions that makes traditional power sources less appealing, nuclear reactors are hard to justify—even if, in the U.S., nuclear power accounts for 70% of clean electricity.

In any event, to make nuclear power a bigger part of the energy mix, policy makers and the public will have to grapple with issues a lot weightier even than Homer. The big question is what weighs more in the balance: A few radioactive rods bouncing through a title sequence, or the need to shift the world’s energy mix away from carbon-intensive power sources.

Here’s the thing about OPEC’s decision to maintain current levels of crude-oil production today: It really amounts to a production cut, but the market doesn’t care.

The oil cartel for the fourth time this year maintained current production levels, pretty much as everyone expected. With one big caveat: OPEC honchos called for oil-producing states to comply with their output quotas after an alarming lack of discipline since the spring.

That is, OPEC announced total production cuts of 4.2 million barrels of oil a day late last year. For once, cartel members didn’t cheat too much earlier in the year, and took about 80% of that oil off the market. That helped send crude from the $30s last Christmas back toward the $70 range.

And those higher prices, in turn, tempted oil producers to keep pumping. Compliance with the cut has fallen to somewhere between 58% (says the IEA) and 61% (says Bloomberg). That is par for the course, historically, for OPEC. Which means there’s a lot of oil sloshing around that shouldn’t be.

OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri called for oil producers to get back to a 75% level of compliance, the WSJ reports. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al Naimi went further, introducing the novel idea of 100% compliance with agreed-upon production cuts.

They aren’t really trifling figures. Getting back to 75% compliance would mean taking about 1 million barrels per day off the world market, right as China and Japan are getting back on the oil wagon. Reaching 100% compliance would mean removing 1.7 million barrels per day from global markets.

If OPEC announced a production cut of 1 to 2 million barrels per day, oil markets would have a heart-clutching “Oh, Elizabeth” moment.

Yet they didn’t. Crude futures in New York were up less than 0.5% in early-morning trading.

Which suggests that, for all the calls from OPEC heavyweights to improve the cartel’s compliance, nobody gives much credence anymore.

If demand in industrialized countries is as soft as OPEC suspects, the cartel might someday soon have to really announce a production cut it will partially comply with in order to protect the “perfectly priced” oil in the $70s.

Crude oil futures slipped toward $73 a barrel after OPEC, as expected, maintained current oil-production levels. Of course, that should mean a cut—the cartel really wants members to start complying with their output quotas, both in the WSJ.

The blame game for Copenhagen gets started in earnest—and it ain’t China’s fault. George Monbiot goes off the reservation and slams Barack Obama, invokes Iraq war lessons, and hears the orchestra on the Titanic. Naomi Klein gets in the same groove: “There are very few US presidents who have squandered as many once-in-a-generation opportunities as Obama,” both in The Guardian.

More Copenhagen post-mortems: Eric Pooley explains why rush-hour climate diplomacy didn’t work in Copenhagen (“Imagine that a Department of Motor Vehicles office joined forces with an Alitalia ticket counter and set out to save the world”) and won’t work in Washington, in Bloomberg.

Speaking of which, the United Nations says it agrees the current process for tackling climate change needs a reform, in the FT.

Dave Roberts at Grist sets out to untangle the mess that Copenhagen’s left behind.

And former Thatcher minister Nigel Lawson has a Plan B to save the world: Spend money on adapting to climate change and a bit of R&D, in the WSJ.

Finally, the clean-energy battle is really shaping up in the Mojave Desert. Plans to preserve the desert from development have some greens seeing red, in the WSJ. Either way, just the specter of legislation has already stunted clean-energy prospects there, which will make it a lot tougher for California to meet its renewable-energy targets, in the NYT.

President Barack Obama put in 13-hours of negotiations and appears to have saved the Copenhagen climate talks from utter collapse with his last-minute push. But is George W. Bush the real victor?

One of the early and overwhelming conclusions in the wake of the “Copenhagen Accord” is that the United Nations process for reaching agreement on climate change is broken. Take this, for example, from Newsweek: “The best chance of reining in emissions of greenhouse gases and avoiding dangerous climate change is to stamp a big green R.I.P. over the sprawling United Nations process that the Copenhagen talks were part of.”

The goal of giving every country, big and small, equal say in crucial issues and the need for unanimous consent led to countries such as Sudan and Tuvalu playing an outsize role in global negotiations. British climate secretary Ed Miliband called the two-week process a “farce,” and called for a reform of the UN process, saying “We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way.”

Indeed, it’s not clear whether the summit’s conclusion underscores the need to ditch the existing UN framework or whether that framework has already been scuttled.

Thanks to the opposition of a handful of countries—luminaries of international cooperation such as Bolivia, Venezuela, Sudan, and Cuba—the conference ended not with a formal agreement but simply by “taking note” of the 3-page climate accord. Which, in diplomatic language, means pretty much what it means when you tell your mother-in-law you’ll “take note” of her suggestions.

So what’s that leave? Perhaps a return to climate talks between a handful of major economies which between them account for the vast majority of greenhouse-gas emissions. As Michael Levi puts it:

This conference has also starkly demonstrated the limits of the UNFCCC process. Future climate arrangements are far more likely to be hammered out in small groups like the one that gathered Friday night to salvage a deal than in plenaries of nearly two-hundred countries…this is likely to be the last time that the world places such high hopes on the global climate conference.

Yes, there’s a name for that—the Major Economies Meeting or Forum. That’s something that then-president George W. Bush started, and which President Obama kickstarted. It puts the emphasis on reaching emissions agreements between countries—with the U.S. and China at the forefront—whose climate policies actually will make or break global attempts to rein in emissions, and whose economies produce clean-tech gear and generate the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to help the rest of the world adapt.

Of course, as Mr. Levi points out, President Bush’s idea alone wouldn’t bear fruit: Witness the rest of the world’s intransigence on taking steps without some sort of U.S. commitment in writing.

That is, the breakdown of the UN process in Copenhagen may drive climate talks in a more productive direction—but even that won’t go far unless the U.S. Senate takes up climate legislation in earnest next year.

Pundits everywhere are passing judgment on the climate-change deal reached in Copenhagen early Saturday. The market is too—and it isn’t mincing words.

Prices for carbon-emission permits in Europe are tanking on Monday, with a fall of nearly 10%, the biggest decline in almost a year. That’s a pretty clear sign that whatever the other merits of the “Copenhagen Accord,” it does nothing to actually tighten limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. More here, here, and here.

For all the Monday morning quarterbacking on the political implications of the last-minute deal in Copenhagen (more on that later), money talks. And it isn’t happy. Businesses wasted no time expressing their concern with the watered-down agreement reached in Denmark.

Basically, lots of businesses—from banks to power-equipment makers to those who brew advanced biofuels–wanted clear rules on just how and when the clean-energy future is to be built. They didn’t get it. Take this reaction, reported in today’s The Wall Street Journal:

“If we’d had bankable emissions reduction targets for 2020, it would have given a stronger price signal for carbon,” said Joan McNaughton, senior vice president, Power and Environment Policies, at Alstom Power SA, an engineering company which is a leader in clean coal. “That would have kick-started a lot of the needed investment in clean technology.”

And much of that would have had to pass through Wall Street. However low expectations were for an ambitious deal in Copenhagen, the underlying hope—among the pinstripe set, at least—was for some sort of global version of Europe’s emissions-trading plan. That would have laid the foundation for a huge, worldwide, liquid commodities market in permits to emit carbon dioxide. Bank of America Merrill Lynch carbon boss Abyd Karmali made as much clear last week.

So where to from here? The near-term prospects for European carbon prices—and, by extension, the vaunted “price signal” for a clean-tech investment rush–don’t look to great. There’s already a glut of permits, which has kept prices lowish. And there’s a fresh set ready to be issued in February, adding even more permits to a market that has more than it knows what to do with.

Crude oil futures are tickling $75 a barrel on geopolitical worries after fresh attacks on Iraqi pipelines and renewed violence in Nigeria, Bloomberg reports. Shell can’t MEND the Nigerian mess, and is ready to throw in the towel on its Nigerian onshore operations, in the WSJ.

Ready for the Copenhagen post-mortems? The moderate climate-change accord reached over the weekend in Denmark has pleased pretty much no one, and punts all the big questions for resolution at a later date. That’s the most horrifying conclusion out of Copenhagen, in the WSJ: “Far from resolving the issue, the Copenhagen conference set up months more of international haggling over what to do about climate change.” The FT offers a detailed look at how the final accord came to be.

It’s time for the blame game over who killed Copenhagen. U.K. climate minister Ed Miliband blames China, in The Guardian. China, for its part, is satisfied with a “goaless draw,” also in The Guardian. Europe feels blindsided by the last-minute talks brokered by President Obama, in the NYT.

What does the Copenhagen accord really mean? For Michael Levi of CFR, it’s a meaningful agreement but raises questions about the utility of the UN process for tackling climate change. Harvard’s Rob Stavins takes a deep dive into the accord, and weighs the potential impact internationally and in the U.S.

Speaking of which, there’s a division of opinion on whether the climate deal helps or hurts U.S. legislative prospects. For Bloomberg, getting developing countries to agree to something makes a climate bill an easier sell in the Senate. For Politico, the U.S. gave away too much and got too little in return.

The WSJ edit page is clear on what happened: “What Copenhagen offered instead was a lesson in limits for a White House partial to symbolic gestures and routinely disappointed by reality.”

Tom Friedman milks Copenhagen head-shaking to make another call for a clean-energy revolution: “An Earth Race led by America — built on markets, economic competition, national self-interest and strategic advantage — is a much more self-sustaining way to reduce carbon emissions than a festival of voluntary, nonbinding commitments at a U.N. conference.”

So what about that clean-energy future? A couple of green-versus-green battles shaping up. Sen. Dianne Feinstein will introduce legislation to protect the Mojave Desert from despoilers–and renewable energy, in the L.A. Times. And the Sierra Club is both for and against newfangled natural-gas production, which may be cleaner-burning than coal but the production of which gives enviros the heebies, in the WSJ.

Earth2Tech offers a detailed look at Solyndra, the solar power company just emerging from stealth mode and preparing a public offer.

Finally, from China with love: Duke Energy is in talks with China’s State Grid to build transmission networks in the U.S. with Chinese technology, in the WSJ.