Thinking about Energy with Newsweek Magazine

Newsweek Magazine’s Special Edition for December 2006 to February 2007 is dedicated to energy and is appropriately titled as “Breaking Out”, where the energy boom will lead us. It was interesting reading during the Christmas and New Year Holidays. Among its outstanding articles are those authored by Daniel Yergin, Fareed Zakaria, Gordon Brown and Mathew Simmons. Richard Branson of Virgin Group elucidates his vision of an airline operator exploring a US$ 3 billion investment in a green future. Of the interviews, Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist presents his extremely perceptive views on the possibility of niche markets for alternative fuels from biomaterials.

A number of articles also present fascinating but contrarian views. Of these, the stand out piece is the interview with the Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach. He presents the possibility that petroleum could be non-biological in origin and thereby confronts the conventional view that it is undeniably a fossil fuel. He narrates the outcome of the suggestive experiment conducted with a diamond anvil that recreates the intense pressure of the earth’s plates which produced methane. Separately, Kurt Eichenwald highlights Enron’s corporate and financial innovations such as weather derivatives and long-term energy contracts that have been adopted by other unrelated firms with some success. The moral of the story: “…often, even a corporate corpse carries a wallet.”

It is obvious from the publication that the search for an alternative or supplementary energy source in underway and that some of the ideas that are featured in the publication will be big winners in the lab and subsequently in the markets too. The challenge to human ingenuity and market reliability is posed here. We look out for the results. Five Stars for the editors.

My disappointment comes from the fact that for a very comprehensive review of ongoing research and cutting-edge ideas regarding the trajectories of energy research, investment and petroleum industry growth, I did not encounter any opinions or mention of the bold claims by the technology solutions firm Steorn and which formed an earlier post on this blog. I may have to adjust the odds below the 5% that I allowed then.