Pop quiz. Looking forward 10 years, if you had to choose between two groups - Group 1: Investment bankers and GWB or Group 2: The NRDC and WWF - to guess which group’s actions will have had bigger positive impact on the course of environmental policy, cleantech and green living over that time - which group would you choose? If you chose Group 2 - then you obviously don’t know a trick question when you see one.

Battery Companies are poised to reap billions from the federal stimulus package. Serious questions remain, however, as to the viability of this plan… Is the money better spend on other technologies such as biofuels and hydrogen?

Its not an enviable job to sort out the variables that go into oil price projections - but given the magnitude of the revisions we are seeing in these projections I have to wonder how effective the projection models are in dealing with the volatility that the market is showing - what good model that results in a projection that changes by 30 to 100% on a yearly basis? I have no idea as to how much this impacts the volatility of oil prices - but it can’t help.

The pricing volatility for oil is not only hurting price projection efforts - but its having an impact on production planning. Will it impact green investment in alternatives as well?

BP and Berkeley (and the DOE) have teamed up to pour $500MM into research for biofuels. There was a fluff piece on NPR today about that effort. While on the surface it might be considered admirable that a big oil company would invest in our research of alternative fuel technologies - when you peel back the onion and really look at the deal - its a big giveaway to big oil wrapped in a public relations friendly package.

I find it pretty comical that in one year the IEA model has projected a 100% increase in its long term price fo oil - mostly attributed to lower economic demand over the same period as was projected in last year’s World Energy Outlook. As someone that used to be required to project things for a living it really makes me wonder about the IEA projection model - is the model that sensitive to changes in economic inputs? Or has the world economic outlook for the U.S., Europe, which are still the largest oil users - and will be for the forseeable future - that much dire than 12 months ago given a 22 year tail?