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In RealTime posts, PIIE senior staff and colleagues discuss the fast-moving economic news, financial developments, and public policy choices confronting the United States and the world.
Is the world making progress on climate change? Recently, the OECD [pdf] struck a hopeful note, reporting that emissions were growing more slowly than GDP in both the high-income and developing countries, including China. This decoupling of emissions and growth, if true, would be good news indeed, since it would suggest that the world can [...]
As a result of revolutionary gas extraction techniques (hydraulic fracturing combined with horizontal drilling), the United States suddenly enjoys a dramatic reversal of fortune in energy production and trade. The Department of Energy (DOE) is now processing several applications for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, as producers are eager to take advantage of large price [...]
Those who follow energy are fond of discussing where, when, and under what circumstances countries holding strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) might release them. This debate has ignored, however, the prospect of the US beginning to liquidate oil from its strategic stocks in the near future. Decreasing domestic consumption and increasing domestic production will allow us [...]
Within the space of two days, the Indian government, spearheaded it appears by the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, has taken a series of policy steps to get India out of the funk it had been sliding into. First, it enacted measures to reduce fuel subsidies on diesel and limit the subsidy on cooking gas. Second, [...]
In Lord Richard Attenborough’s movie Gandhi, an underling of the British Empire heatedly warns his supercilious boss that Mahatma Gandhi’s impending protest march to the sea poses a far greater threat than the Raj realizes: “Salt, sir, is a symbol.” This elicits the memorable sneering put-down from the boss (played by Sir John Gielgud): “Don’t [...]
At the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009, the United States committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020—a target included in cap-and-trade legislation that had passed the House of Representatives earlier that year. With the death of cap-and-trade in the Senate and the Republican takeover of [...]
With average US gasoline prices approaching $4 per gallon, markets are trying to gauge the impact of high oil costs on a fragile US economic recovery. Some analysts have argued that surging unconventional oil production in North America will make this price spike less harmful than those in the past. But for the political class, [...]
While the world’s attention is focused on the European financial crisis, a storm is brewing in the Mediterranean that could cause havoc in the region and have wider international consequences. At its center are conflicting claims between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots over a potentially large natural gas discovery off the island’s southern coast. [...]
The term “energy poverty” is used to describe the 1.6 billion people in the developing world who lack access to electricity or the more than 2 billion who still rely on biomass as their primary source of energy. This phenomenon presents a significant barrier to economic growth in poor countries. But data released last week [...]
As disaster relief operations proceed in Japan, ongoing problems in power generation are expected to extend into the fall, if not beyond. Japan is facing as much as a 15 gigawatt (GW) electricity shortage when demand ramps up in the summer. Supply may be increased by 5GW primarily by bringing power generating plants currently under [...]