An impressive list of environmental organizations and celebrities would like to see hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, banned or severely curtailed. Ironically, the shale gas revolution, a revolution partly enabled by fracking, seems likely to produce enormous environmental benefits for Americans. Yet opponents of shale gas production continue to turn a blind eye to that possibility, just as the right once turned a blind eye to climate science. 

While most scientists believe climate change is a reality, the question of how to best combat global warming is far from decided. The most promising approach could emerge from a controversial and largely unproven field known as geo-engineering (aka climate engineering) — an intentional large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system.

Professor David Spence finds that Texas's electricity supply woes have much more to do with the state's own need to incentivize gas-fired power plants than any sinister EPA regulatory specter.

David Spence of EMIC shares his thoughts on natural gas regulation.

Despite paying the highest monthly electric bills, the latest UT Energy Poll shows cooperative utility customers are the most satisfied among all electrical subscribers.

A new study by The University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute finds no direct connection between hydraulic fracturing of shale formations to extract natural gas and reports of groundwater contamination.

It’s not that Republicans want to kill the pipeline; they would just prefer that a Republican president approve it in 2013. 

Our misperceptions about energy prices may have more to do with our latest trip to the ballot box than we'd like to think.

There is more bipartisan support than you might think for more renewable energy company tax exemptions and offshore drilling, according to the UT Energy Poll.

CAFE standards might encourage people to drive more fuel-efficient cars — but it won't incentivize them to drive less.

Vestergaard Frandsen (VF), a European company, is giving away inexpensive water filters to Kenyans, reducing carbon emissions on a voluntary basis, and selling the carbon credits.

A look at diversification benefits and costs within the energy industry, and why the the previous trend toward diversification may have begun to disintegrate. 

McCombs will host the Alternative Investments Conference on Friday, September 23, 2011.

Although futures prices can indeed be used to forecast commodity prices, the futures prices themselves are not the forecasts. Prices of commodity options can be used to gauge the accuracy of those forecasts. And the options markets tell us that we should not put a lot of confidence in the price forecasts that can be obtained from the futures markets. This does not suggest that there exist forecasts that are better — just that commodity prices are difficult to forecast. Here's a bit of background about how to understand the relation between futures prices and the prices that we expect will be realized in the future.

Plentiful and comparatively clean, but also politically charged, there is almost no question that natural gas will play an important role in the U.S. energy future. With the almost continual upward revision of reserves from shale gas, there is sufficient supply to replace some coal burning power plants with cleaner burning natural gas power plants, and perhaps, use natural gas as a transportation fuel, either directly or indirectly with electric vehicles. Professor David Spence, the UT McCombs expert on energy policy, shares his insights on the future of shale gas with Sheridan Titman.

Branko Terzic of Deloitte Services outlines the proposals and possible impacts of cap-and-trade legislation currently making its way through Congress.

Petrobras' stock price suffered even though they were not connected to the oil spill. Exxon's and ConocoPhillips' did not.

Long-term predictions on oil prices are difficult and involve several unknown variables.

Derivative markets are side bets that only indirectly influence the actual price of a commodity.

Why are we spending billions of dollars on green energy subsidies? Where does the money go?