Report Released on 2010 BP Oil Spill

From al-Jazeera

A U.S. board's investigation into the 2010 BP oil spill concluded that a last-ditch safety device on the underwater well had multiple failures, wasn't tested properly and still poses a risk for many rigs drilling today.

The report issued Thursday by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board zeroes in on what went wrong with the blowout preventer and blames bad management and operations. They found faulty wiring in two places, a dead battery and a bent pipe in the hulking device. And that, they said, led to the dumping of 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the worst U.S. offshore oil disaster.

From the looks of it, no where does the report suggest that the government reconsider whether it should reconsider its decision from a few months ago to lift the ban of BP bidding for new federal drilling contracts (here). This really is an issue bigger than just BP. It sends a message to the whole industry that a companies safety record is of minimal importance when determining drilling access in the United States. If the government really wants to prevent these kind of disasters in the future, this seems like the opposite of the message they need to send.

Al-Jazeera Article on Renewable Energy Investment

The results of the report should give governments the confidence to embark on plans to cut emissions by investing in renewables before the 2015 climate change conference in Paris, Steiner said...
 
The renewable market and cost reductions are out-pacing the impacts from reduced investments and government support, Nathanael Greene, director of the National Resource Defense Council's renewables program, told Al Jazeera. 


So from the sounds of it, renewable electricity generation may finally be becoming competitive with fossil fuels. It would be all well and good to see a big push of public sector support for renewable right now, which is what the National Resource Defense Council seems to be pushing for. What would be just as good though is if renewables are able to maintain their expansion without such an outpouring of public money. Aside from the fact that that would save tax payers money and be easier to manage politically, it would set renewable energy capacity on a stronger  base independant from the ephemeral support of strained government budgets. It seems like this is where the technology is taking it anyway, but if renewables are proving themselves able to grow even as public support withers, might that be the trajectory we want to maintain?