As the big oil companies reported their earnings this week, not even Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two American industry leaders that posted results on Friday, could escape the fallout from a market of deteriorating oil prices and declining profit margins from refining.
Tesla Motors is accustomed to being at odds with the rest of the U.S. auto industry. So it was again on Tuesday, at an industry conference in bucolic northern Michigan, where a Tesla executive took the industry to task for not trying hard enough to sell electric vehicles.
The auto industry will need to step up introduction of fuel-saving technology to help the U.S. meet aggressive goals to combat climate change despite manufacturers’ requests for relief from existing rules, the Environmental Protection Agency’s top transportation official said.
After cruising along for more than two years, California’s vaunted cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions has run into a few recent snags.
Oil markets continue to debate the vagaries of how much crude and refined products are stored in big white tanks and floating carriers. The feeling is that there is too much sloshing around. That’s why the oil price is under siege again, down 10 percent in the past three weeks
California regulators are facing pressure to tighten up their rules for zero-emission vehicles.
To the delight of motorists everywhere, the price of oil suddenly halved in the second half of 2014, dropping from over $100 to less than $50 a barrel. It’s safe to say no one saw the fall coming:
A corner of the nation that seemed poised only a few years ago to become a new energy hub is now gripped by a debate over whether transporting volatile, hazardous crude oil by rail through cities and environmentally delicate areas can ever be made safe enough.
As these vehicles inch tantalizingly closer to reality, we are starting to imagine an entirely new transportation system, in which self-driving electric vehicles are organized into shared city fleets, and dispatched by smartphone to satisfy transportation demand.
Energy storage technology is a hot item these days, and the latest news from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology just made things a little hotter.
