The Future of Energy - Join our News Hunt

In the face of the BP disaster, it would be all too easy to lose hope about our energy future. But there may be a silver lining in that oily cloud: if we're lucky, the spill may prompt a deeper conversation about the need to find new, global, scalable solutions to meet our energy needs.

As part of that conversation, we invite you to join our Energy News Hunt. From June 7 to 20, 2010, NewsTrust is partnering with The Long Now Foundation and its Long News initiative to find good (and bad) journalism about the future of energy -- with a focus on low carbon technologies and innovative solutions that can scale quickly to power the whole planet.

During this two-week Energy News Hunt, we will collectively post and review stories on that issue from a wide range of news providers, covering a variety of clean energy sources (e.g.: solar, wind, nuclear, fusion, geothermal, etc.). On Wednesday, June 23, we'll feature on this blog some of the best (and worst) coverage we found together on this important topic.

On June 16th, 2010, The Long Now Foundation is hosting a talk about fusion energy by Ed Moses of the National Ignition Facility. We encourage you to check their podcast to learn more about his groundbreaking work on laser fusion. This Energy News Hunt is intended as a companion for this talk, to help our members share quality news and information about this and other promising energy sources.

For a sense of the scale required to power our planet, check out Long Now speaker Saul Griffith's talk on Climate Change, Recalculated. We also highly recommend reading Long Now founder Stewart Brand's excellent book on these issues, Whole Earth Discipline. His research for the book is posted online, along with copious excerpts on this topic.)

Join the Energy News Hunt - and get more informed!

News Hunt Schedule
Here's a day-by-day schedule for the next two weeks:

• Monday, June 7: Future of Energy
• Tuesday, June 8: Nuclear Power
• Wednesday, June 9: Solar Energy
• Thursday, June 10: Geothermal Energy
• Friday, June 12: Efficiency/Weekend Reads
• Saturday, June 11: Gulf Oil Spill


• Monday, June 14: Wind Power
• Tuesday, June 15: Biofuels
• Wednesday, June 16: Fusion Energy
• Thursday, June 17: Politics of Energy
• Friday, June 18: Bad Journalism

Featured Stories
UPDATES: Throughout the News Hunt, we will update this blog post to feature some of each day's best finds: stories recommended by our hosts and editors for each of our sub-topics.

Monday 6/7 - The Future of Energy

• The Future of Energy: A Realist's Roadmap to 2050 Popular Science
• The dangerous new era of "extreme energy" Slate
• Hard Core Peak Oil Forecast Econbrowser
• A Spin on Efficiency: Better Turbines Scientific American
• Western U.S. Grid Can Handle More Renewables MIT Technology Review
• Google gets go-ahead to buy, sell energy CNET News

Tuesday 6/8 - Nuclear Power

Overviews

• The Nuclear Option - Marketwatch
• Nuclear Energy Guide - Council on Foreign Relations
• Can Nuclear Power Make a Comeback? - New Yorker

Opinions

• The Case For and Against Nuclear Power - Wall Street Journal
• Let’s challenge these myths of Chernobyl - Spiked Online
• Obama's nuclear policy takes one step forward and two steps back - Scientific American
• Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero - TED

Wednesday 6/9 - Solar Power

• The Rise of Big Solar: Growing pains - The Economist
• European Dream of Desert Energy Takes Shape - Der Spiegel
• Loan to Kick-start U.S. Solar Thermal Industry - MIT Technology Review
• How home solar arrays can help to stabilize the grid - Scientific American
• Making Solar Technology a Competitive Force in the U.S. - ClimateBiz (Opinion)

Thursday 6/10 - Geothermal Energy

• Geothermal power - Wikipedia
• One Hot Island: Iceland's Renewable Geothermal Power - Scientific American
• Using Carbon Dioxide to Extract Geothermal Energy - MIT Technology Review
• Geothermal quake risks must be faced - Nature
• Google-Funded Geothermal Drilling System Could Reduce Costs - Energy Boom

Friday 6/11 - Weekend Reads

• Europe Energized - International Herald Tribune (Opinion)
• Goodbye, bullet trains and windmills - Salon (Opinion)
• Water Adds New Constraints to Power - New York Times
• Bottled Wind Could Be as Constant as Coal - Wired
• Amid Oil Leak, Business Leaders Urge Energy Sector Investment, Research - PBS NewsHour

Saturday 6/12 - Gulf Oil Spill

• In gulf oil spill's long reach, ecological damage could last decades - Washington Post
• Punishing BP Is Harder Than Boycotting Stations - New York Times
• Energy Transitions Past and Future - Oil Drum
• Spill forces fossil fuels rethinking - Star Phoenix

Monday 6/14 - Wind Power

• How Texas Lassoed the Wind - Scientific American
• Bottled Wind Could Be as Constant as Coal - Wired
• Seeking Wind Energy, Some Consider the Sea - New York Times
• Why VCs Are Circling Wind Power for Once - GreenTech Media (Opinion)

Tuesday 6/15 - Biofuels

• The Next Generation of Biofuels - Scientific American
• Exxon $600 Million Algae Investment Makes Khosla See Pipe Dream - Bloomberg
• Algae to solve the Pentagon's jet fuel problem - Guardian
• EU biofuels 'should be certified' - BBC News
• Can 3rd And 4th Gen Biofuels Wean Us From Our Petro-Addiction? - GreenTech Media (Opinion)

Wednesday 6/16 - Fusion Energy

• Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes - BBC
• World's highest-energy laser to create mini-stars - New Scientist
• Can world's largest laser zap Earth's energy woes? - CNN
• Fusion Power: More Promising Than Ever, but Hamstrung by Budget Concerns - BNET

Thursday 6/17 - The Politics of Energy

• Climate Bill Lacks Momentum Even After BP Spill, Democrats Say - Bloomberg
• A 2-Cent Solution to Help Fuel an Energy Quest - New York Times
• Obama signals need for new energy agenda - Grist

Friday 6/18 - Bad Journalism

• Obama unleashes big government - Glenn Beck Show
• Cheney silence on oil spill speaks volumes - Countdown with Keith Olbermann
• Using oil to focus energy - Hardball with Chris Matthews

Join the News Hunt
Joining the Energy News Hunt is easy -- and you can contribute your expertise in just minutes. Simply go to our Energy topic page and review some of its stories. As you review these stories, you will learn more about important energy issues, and you will become more aware about the quality of the news you consume.

If you come across good stories we're missing on this topic, please post them on our site (be sure to tag them "Energy" under Topics in the Edit form, so they will be listed in our News Hunt page). And if you find an evergreen story that you think will still matter in years from now, please tag it as "Long News" under Topics, so it gets added to our special "story bank" on the Long News page.

If you are not yet a NewsTrust member, please sign up on our special welcome page for this project. This will let you review stories on NewsTrust and get the full benefit of our free service.

Please join us for this fascinating experiment, along with our co-hosts Kirk Citron, Mike La Bonte, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington -- and other NewsTrust members like you!

Happy Hunting!

-- by Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala

Photo: Fangleman / Flickr

Comments

[orbit7er]

The most important thing the US can do immediately to save oil, energy, green space and greenhouse emissions is to
actually operate public transit wherever it already exists.
Transportation uses 70% of US oil usage and most of that is for cars and trucks. Yet over 150 cities and communities are CUTTING public transit, hiking fares when it is most needed.
In major Metropolitan areas like New York, New Jersey (more people per square mile than China), Washington, DC, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston public transit trains and buses are seen as primarily serving work commuters.
Weekend and off-peak service is minimal, connections are lacking in suburban areas even to Corporate Offices such as shuttle vans as well as safe bikeways or even sidewalks.
Where train service already exists it needs to be increased in frequency and move to a local/express model.
Shuttles can be provided from many existing train stations to malls, Corporate offices and other key destinations.
In 2008 driving plummeted by double digits while transit ridership increased by a whopping 17% without ANY increase in transit service. The sole reason was that gas prices hit $4 per gallon. By simply increasing the Federal gas tax
to $1 per gallon, possibly in phases and giving back part of that money in tax cuts and the other part to public transit only for increased operations and service we could cut US gas consumption by 20% in 1 year.

[Atlanta Geothermal]

Geothermal energy is making a strong push as the next solution for heating and cooling residential and commercial properties.

While they might cost a little more than the standard older systems, the savings in the long run more than pay for the system.

As well there are many government rebates available to help offset that initial cost and get you into saving money fast.