At this point, you have to wonder who in their right mind will ever do business in Venezuela again as long as Chavez is in power. The risk that Chavez will steal your property is simply too great. During his administration, Chavez has seized phone companies, electric utilities, private real ...

I have written several articles over the past couple of years that argued that there is a low probability that any of the would-be algal biodiesel manufacturers are going to make it. These essays included:More Reality Checks for Algal BiodieselThe Prospects for Algal Biodiesel ...

If we are to seriously encourage a move to biofuels, incentives are going to be required because the economics of biofuels just can't compete with petroleum (regardless of what Vinod Khosla thinks). Eventually depletion will cause petroleum to become very expensive, and then the economics of certain biofuels (especially ...

Thanks to a reader for sending me this story:Company trying to turn waste into biofuelSalem businessmen to turn dairy dung into butanol for vehiclesDiesel Brewing would burn dairy waste and turn it into butanol.Butanol is mainly used as a solvent, but company ...

I don't normally post press releases that are e-mailed to me (I get 4 or 5 every day), but this one is important to me. (See my essay The Case for Higher Gas Taxes for my revenue-neutral proposal which is along the same lines as the bill that has ...

Still on vacation, but an interesting announcement yesterday by Rentech:Rialto ProjectOur proposed Rialto Renewable Energy Center (Rialto Project) will be located in Rialto, California. The facility is designed to produce approximately 600 barrels per day of pure renewable synthetic fuels and export approximately 35 megawatts ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a website called The Reef Tank about doing an interview with them on Energy and The Marine World. At first I said that this was a bit outside my expertise, but they said that was OK; I could just ...

This will be the conclusion of Vinod Khosla's (VK) recent lengthy interview at the Milken Institute 2009 Global Conference. The interview was conducted by Elizabeth Corcoran (EC) of Forbes and can be viewed here.In Part I, VK discussed the role of government money, capital ...

I recently wrote an essay called A Lost Litigation Opportunity in which I discussed the root of the so-called 'hot gas' issue. I firmly believe that this is all about the big business of lawyers who sue people for a living. The California Energy Commission had ruled out temperature ...

Thanks to a reader for bringing this to my attention. Vinod Khosla (VK) just did a lengthy interview at the Milken Institute 2009 Global Conference. The interview was conducted by Elizabeth Corcoran (EC) of Forbes. You can see the video of the interview here:Milken: Khosla ...