Braving the inquisition that passes as passport control, I told the guard for the third time, phrased differently from my previous two attempts, that I was coming to Israel to study environmental policy in an exchange program between Harris and Tel Aviv University. You know, water and stuff?
At that, he laughed skeptically and waved me through the gates. Environmental policy in Israel is relatively new; the Ministry of Environment was created only ten years earlier and in some ways, skepticism is warranted. Transparency is lacking in national level policy. …

Commuting by bicycle is a “green” way to get around, but few people do it for that reason alone. Personally, gliding alongside Lake Michigan on a bicycle is one of my favorite things about Chicago. With few stop lights and no car traffic, Chicago’s 18-mile Lakefront Trail is a cyclist’s scenic expressway.
The mood of the lake, like that of city’s inhabitants, changes with the weather. Under gathering clouds, waves crash into the shore and spray into the air. On a clear day, the serene blue-green expanse dazzles in the sun, …

As my hometown of New Orleans basks in the glow of the Saints’ divinely ordained Super Bowl victory, the rest of the nation is using the opportunity to take stock of the city’s recovery. The pre-Mardi Gras and Super Bowl hoopla coincided with the city’s mayoral election, where Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu won with 64 percent of the vote.  While there might be general discomfort regarding the implications of a Landrieu political dynasty (his father was the last white Mayor the city has seen since the 70’s, his sister U.S. …

One of the greatest hurdles to implementing widespread renewable energy installations is storing the power for when it is actually usable. For example, wind normally blows the most at night. I read a rather interesting article today in the EU Energy Policy Blog about an innovative (and rock solid) way of solve this, which is already being used across Europe:
The pump-storage technology allows the transformation of low-altitude water into high-altitude water using off-peak electricity, and then the production of electricity at peak periods releasing water through turbines like in any …

Critical to a productive conversation about energy in the United States is an understanding of what the current state of affairs exactly is. One of the best (and quickest) ways to do this is with Sankey Diagrams. Below are two diagrams of US energy flows, the first of which is from a 2007 Science article* by Whitesides and Crabtree (via Sankey Diagrams blog and Thoughts from Kansas). The second is from Energy Information Administration’s 2008 Annual Energy Review (via Sankey Diagrams blog).

The two most interesting conclusions for me are the …

Business and economic policy are tied to energy policy in more ways than we often care to admit. One of the more important of these in the upcoming years is the relationship between the value of the dollar compared to other currencies and the price of oil. Energy Outlook has done some interesting analysis on this. In a 2007 post, Energy Outlook summarizes the relationship between valuation of the dollar and crude oil prices:
So imagine a closed loop, and follow it around a cycle:

The value of the dollar drops.
Non-US demand …