Credible, dispassionate, informed: Dan Yergin on The Charlie Rose Show, Friday, June 27, 2008.Dr. Daniel Yergin is the Chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a preeminent source of independent analysis and information on the global energy picture. In Friday's appearance on Charlie Rose, Dr. Yergin gave a nearly hour-long interview on the current energy situation.
Dr. Yergin explained the combination of factors that have given us $140/bbl oil. He described the urgency of expanding our use of energy efficiency to help in the short-term. He suggested the most important energy problem our leaders should focus on is natural gas. With so much natural gas used to produce electricity, we are growing dependent on imported natural gas, which suffers from the same pricing and political risks we see in our dependence on imported oil. Our prodigious consumption of natural gas for electricity generation links electricity prices to the vagaries of natural gas, spreading the impact of natural gas price increases well beyond the home heating market and chemical industry.
After laboring in the "Lovins vineyard" with my colleague, David Bradish, I was refreshed by the remarks of an energy professional who was obviously well informed and clearly dispassionate about the facts. Dan Yergin was not selling a point of view or asking the audience to accept certain assumptions he and his acolytes make about the nature of the problem or range of solutions. He simply shared what he knows from studying the problem very deeply and objectively.
If you would like to hear his profile of the global energy situation, look for a rebroadcast of Friday's show on your local PBS station. The show should also be available in the video archive at the Charlie Rose Show web site soon. Two of Dr. Yergin's previous appearances on the show (March 16, 2005 on alternate energy and May 6, 1996 on oil) are already available there.
FULL DISCLOSURE: In pursuit of well informed, objective sources of energy data and analysis, NEI subscribes to CERA's power and natural gas advisory services.
UPDATE at 9:30am, 6/29: Here's the link to the video. It should be showing in the next couple of days. Hat tip to Eric McErlain.
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