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Energy Technology

Fueling jobs

Posted: November 15, 2010 by Ken Cohen

When we stop and think about it, it’s obvious how critical energy is to our daily lives. But, because energy is supplied reliably 24 hours a day with little or no disruption, we sometimes take it for granted. But for millions of hard-working Americans, energy is just as important to their livelihoods – and they certainly don’t take it for granted. According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the oil and natural gas industry supports more than 9.2 million jobs in the United States, accounting for 5.2 percent of total U.S. employment.

Today, we posed a question on the front page of the Wall Street Journal: How much of a gallon of gas is lost to heat, friction and other factors in a vehicle instead of actually being used to power the wheels? If you haven’t already seen the answer we gave in the ad, you be might be surprised. Your car only uses 20 percent of each gallon of gasoline to actually get you where you want to go — the other 80 percent is lost due to various sources of inefficiency throughout the car.


Today’s lead editorial in the New York Times (“Remember renewable energy?”) calls for more “generous subsidies” to support renewable energy sources.

Oil and natural gas projects, no matter where they are in the world, require significant planning and investment to get them up and running. A casual observer is often unaware of the years of preparation and logistics required – and the amount of economic activity that results – when creating the infrastructure that helps deliver essential energy supplies to the world. But that’s not the case for citizens of the Pacific Northwest and Montana, who have for some time been reading and hearing about our Kearl Module Transportation Project in the local and national media, as well as on various blogs.


What does it mean to be green?

Posted: September 9, 2010 by Ken Cohen

As policymakers and the public discuss ways to help stimulate our economy, the effort to create green jobs has been getting a lot of attention. But what exactly does it mean to be green? The government has been trying to create a definition that will guide funding for green jobs, but this is still up for debate.

David Sandalow, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, said in a Huffington Post article about electric vehicles on Tuesday that “It’s strange that we are utterly dependent on [gasoline] for mobility.” But in a market-based economy, it’s not “strange” that petroleum-based products remain the transportation fuel of choice; it’s a century of real-world economics.



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