Brazil’s sugar cane industry has recently been trumpeting that five of its processing mills have been approved by the US government to sell their ethanol in the US. The fact that the mills are bothering to go through the registration process, which includes filling out forms and allowing an engineering review, is significant, and shows renewables are no longer the pet project of many Americans. With the US perhaps distracted by its pressing economic difficulties, producers in other countries have started to get in on the act.
A slightly confusing report has just dropped into my inbox from the German consultancy EnergyComment. It carries the provocative title Offshore oil drilling: Public costs and risks are too high and states (underlining the author’s own):
This is considerably more hardline than the current position even of the US government, which has implemented a six-month ban on new deepwater drilling (in this case, drilling at depths of over 500ft).
But when I look for the justification for such an assertion, it is difficult to find. Much of the report focuses on the problems that come with depth, rleaving out shallower drilling altogether. It also seems to set a high bar on what is a “justified risk”. Here’s a sample argument:
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