海角大神

听written by Monitor reporters David J. Unger and Jared Gilmour, and delivered to inboxes each Saturday.

Yo-yo: Mixed signals make for turbulent oil markets. On the one hand, ample US oil stocks and Saudi price cuts kept downward pressure on oil prices last week. But new data shows听, and will continue to do so in the coming months. That gives traders a reason to believe the oil price collapse has听hit something resembling a floor. Either way,听听with more ups and downs to come.

LNG: Even if prices do begin to recover, the tide may have already come out on liquefied natural gas projects in North America, East Africa, Russia and elsewhere across the globe.听听as low prices undermined the economic viability of capital-intensive export projects. For years there鈥檚 been growing interest in LNG exports as a way for producers to connect with high-priced Asian markets. But as prices collapse,听.

FutureGen: Last Tuesday,听, prompting concerns over the viability of a technology that aims to clean up the world鈥檚 dirtiest (and most dominant) electricity source. But the FutureGen project is just one of many CCS experiments across the globe (just a day later,听). Coal isn鈥檛 going away overnight, and a breakthrough in even one of those CCS experiments would help rein in heat-trapping emissions.

In the pipeline

• Tuesday, Feb. 10: LONDON 鈥撎�. The report鈥檚 release will be closely watched by traders searching for any signs of if and when oil markets will settle.
• In the coming week: WASHINGTON 鈥撎�, according to various reports. The move would finally force President Obama鈥檚 hand on the pipeline, with most expecting he would veto the bill.

听

Drill deeper

Africa鈥檚 quiet solar revolution听[海角大神听]
Could Africa 鈥� a continent that skipped land lines for cellphones 鈥� also leapfrog traditional generation for distributed solar power? Start-ups are giving it a try, building on lessons learned from ill-fated attempts to spread solar power across the continent in the 1970s and 鈥�80s. Most units generate just enough to power lights and charge a phone 鈥� but if scalable, they could help spread cleaner, safer energy across Africa.

听[Quartz]
The nonagenarian lithium-ion battery inventor says the world desperately needs a super battery to store intermittent renewable power. Good news: He鈥檚 on it. 鈥淚 want to solve the problem before I throw my chips in,鈥� John Goodenough tells Quartz. He鈥檚 not alone, either: 鈥淭here are a lot of people working, and none of them is stupid. I don鈥檛 say I鈥檓 the only one who can solve the problem.鈥�

The US is losing the clean energy race. Why that's OK.
[The Breakthrough Institute via 海角大神听]
For years, global clean energy innovation has largely been framed as one of cutthroat competition not unlike the Cold War-era space race. Alex Trembath of The Breakthrough Institute makes the case that the approach is shifting more toward the collaborative 鈥� and that the future of energy and the environment is the better for it.

Energy sources

• : "The eventual export of US crude and condensates to Mexico would be a significant shift of policy in both countries. The US would take an additional step toward easing export restrictions that have been in place for a long time. Mexico would import crude oil for the first time since the first half of the seventies."
• : "Given recent large declines in oil prices and the uncertainty of oil price projections, the ... low price scenario included in the Final [Keystone XL environmental impact statement] should be given additional weight ... due to potential implications of lower oil prices on project impacts, especially greenhouse gases."
• : "Oxford University scientists, after a year of research, have determined the best technology to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and try to reverse global warming. It鈥檚 trees."

Unplug

听written by Monitor reporters David J. Unger and Jared Gilmour, and delivered to inboxes each Saturday.