GLG News in Energy & Industrials

    The Court’s July 11, 2008 decision vacating the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) caused the price of SO2 emissions allowances to decrease less than the cost of operating a scrubber to reduce the SO2 emissions.  The discussions that follow discuss this and the likelihood of this happening.

    As the article points out, natural gas-fired generation may be cheaper than coal-fired generation in certain parts of the nation.  The section below discusses some of the items that go into the decision to fuel switch from coal to natural gas.

Senior Associate Editor Judy R. Clark reported in the August 11 issue of the Oil & Gas Journal that technological advances in the use of high temperature heat to produce heavy crude oil may resolve major problems. Both dependence on politically unstable sources of foreign oil and generation of greenhouse emissions could be drastically reduced by using the heat from a nuclear reactor to refine...

Cummins decision should allow the SCR camp to breathe a sigh of relief. All eyes must now be on Navistar, and a possible 2009 pre-buy.

When the new decree that regulates the Feed-in Tariff for photovoltaic solar systems is approved, the profitability of these installation will be reduced a 45 % for roof type systems and a 65 % for ground type solar systems. The FIT will be reduced from 0,44 €/kW·h to 0,33 €/kW·h for roof type systems, and 0,29 €/kW·h for ground type systems. This reduction in tariff...

Christopher Swann (Bloomberg) in Washington reported in the August 12 issue of the International Herald Tribune that the World Bank has provided funding for the Tata Ultra Mega power plant in western India. This comes one year after Robert Zoellick, president of the bank, pledged to assist in fighting climate change. But the bank is not slowing its investments in fossil-fuel projects that emit greenhouse...

There is much hope that orders for new coal cars will increase in the near future, lifting production rates at Freightcar America (RAIL). Coal exports are up almost 80% from a few years ago and domestic demand should increase significantly when the 52 new coal-fired generating plants which are currently under construction come online. The latter are expected to require about 20,000 railcars to move...

Cemex sent a letter to all "valued customers" on 8/4/08 informing them of a $25/CY price increase on all ready-mix concrete products in the United States. Cemex is making a bold move in a declining ready-mix market (both volumes and prices have been declining in the past year in various major markets across the US) that may end up hurting them in both the short term and the long term. The economic...

General Motors may not actually have a plan to compete with Toyota in the hybrid market. General Motors engineering and purchasing was disastrously shortsighted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and its product planning group remains so even now. All of GM's product planning and sourcing errors were made under the rule of Rick Wagoner. GM's board of directors either doesn't understand carmaking or...

Cummins Inc. announced they are switching to SCR in their Heavy-duty ISX model for 2010. It was previously to utilize Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) at a higher rate than today, along with higher injection pressures and other enhancements - plus emissions credit trading. While this changes the “few changes” pitch they had for 2010, this puts them more in line with the rest of the marketplace. Now...