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U.S. president Trump's executive order reversing parts of the Clean Power Plan of president Obama may extend the life of older coal powered plants, but overall it is unlikely to change the shift away from coal for the U.S. utility industry. It will do little to reverse the market forces that are leading to a shift to natural gas for the utility industry with the increasing availability of natural gas. In this WSJ report Cassandra Sweet cites Duke Energy Corp. CEO Lynn Good, who says natural gas for Duke will be the leading fuel followed by coal by 2026, and natural gas now makes up 28% of its mix with coal at 34%. He says a $11 billion ten year investment in natural gas and renewable energy will go through regardless of what the Trump administration does because of the economics- the declining price of renewables, the competitive price of natural gas. Companies are loath to base their long term plans on changes in administration as they see the economics dictated by advances in technology, and the general sense that cleaner energy is here to stay for the long run. Already in the U.S. 34% of total power supplies are from natural gas and 30% from coal for 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Department. This may change slightly as coal is used where it is economical and makes sense without the carbon rules, yet the long term trend is clearly towards natural gas. ...

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Following the executive order by U.S. president Trump reversing Obama administration policies on climate change and clean energy, BBC correspondent points out that the strategy of the Trump administration and Republicans is to change the narrative to job creation and with court challenges let the Clean Power plan be delayed. This would be followed by a different plan with less regulation of the coal industry. The clean energy policies were unpopular in states where Republicans had support.

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The critical exchange between oil companies and auto companies about who is at fault for the energy crisis. In one ad that ran last year, Chevron argued that "if automakers improved fuel economy across the board by just 5 mpg, we'd save over 22 billion gallons of gasoline a year." The criticism is also sparked by the high price of oil which is hurting sales of pickups and large SUV's that the automakers depend on for profits. One ad by Exxon Mobil shows a cartoon of a large SUV filling up at a gas station and hints that the problem rests with the automakers who have failed to build the kind of highly fuel efficient vehicles that are needed. The ad says that the average fuel economy of new U.S. autos has not gone up much in two decades, the small gains have been offset by the increases in the size and weight of vehicles.

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Revised auto fuel efficiency standards win the support of GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda and Hyundai. These standards would lower the average fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, a decline from the initial target of 56.2 mpg. The revised proposal calls for a 5% average annual increase in fuel economy for cars and a 3.5% increase for light trucks through 2021. After 2021 both cars and trucks have to meet a 5% annual increase. Useful innovation in the new standards is to provide credits for hybrid pickup trucks, and give credits for technological advances that improve fuel economy but don't show up in EPA tests such as the one that shuts of the engine when a car is idling. Other credits would be offered for solar roof panels on electric vehicles. It includes incentives for "promoting early market penetration of tailpipe CO2/fuel consumption reducing technologies." This comes after a long period in which the U.S. lagged behind other countries in fuel economy. It could be one of the main achievements of the Obama administration, and help build a new auto industry around new technologies....

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The Obama administration is pushing for new U.S. fuel efficiency standards of 56.2 mpg by 2025. In May 2009 President Obama announced domestic car and light truck fuel efficiency standards of 35 mpg by 2016. Europe is expected to reach fuel efficiency of 60 mpg by 2020. This would still leave Europe considerably ahead of the U.S. in fuel efficiency for automobiles, but the gap would be much smaller. For the last several decades the U.S. has fallen sadly behind Europe and Japan in fuel efficiency. The perception of poor fuel efficiency hurt the automakers badly during periods of high fuel prices and when buyers were facing difficult economic choices. The automakers are beginning to grasp this fact. Mark Reuss, president of General Motors, commented that- "it's very challenging, but its upto us engineers to provide high value to the customer and support the environment." This is an issue that has serious national and global implications as it affects the future prices and demand for oil, emissions, and future economic growth. It would also bring the U.S. in line with Europe and Japan when it comes to fuel efficiency of automobiles. ...

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The Japan Automobile Dealer's Association says Toyota's Prius hybrid was No. 1 in sales in Japan in 2009 with 209,000 sales, three times the sales in 2008. This shows the high popularity of green cars in Japan and a sign of future trends. Hybrid sales made up 10% of new vehicle sales in Japan in 2009. By comparison hybrid sales in the U.S. were 2.8%. Second in car sales in Japan was the Honda Fit, third the Toyota Vitz, both small fuel efficient cars. About 1.6 million Prius cars were sold worldwide from 1997 to 2009, according to Toyota. Toyota has kept the price of the Prius affordable by pricing it at around $22,000.

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The constructive contribution made by the G-20 meetings of leaders towards building agreement on economic and other policies for peace and progress in the global economy. The meetings were especially useful for coordinating policy and addressing issues arising in the global economy after the 2008 financial crisis. Here Li Baodong, China's vice minister for international organizations and conferences, international economic affairs, describes the path ahead: IMF reforms implementation, better coordination of macroeconomic policies, pursuing the anti-protectionist and free trade policies with further support to the WTO and ministerial MC9 meeting in Bali in Dec. 2013, and infrastructure financing proposals for developing countries on the agenda at the St Petersburg, Russia, G-2- meeting in Sept. 2013. Baodong says the mechanism called the Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth as part of the G-20 meetings is a major achievement. Each G-20 economy submits it macroeconomic policy plan for a Mutual Assessment Process under this arrangement. The progress from the Bretton Woods financial architecture to the new arrangement- from the G-6 to the G-20 to include developing countries from India to Mexico and Brazil- is another major achievement, not fully recognized by the public, says Baodong. Interestingly Baodong makes particular mention to global rebalancing, rather than pushing what he calls the impossible task of increasing demand to get growth. This is a realization coming to China's economic policymakers under the new Jinping-Keqiang administration after the overly aggressive effort to stimulate demand in the 2009-2011 Stimulus, and the ensuing financial problems in the banking and credit system. It is indicative of the policy shift and its implementation underway in China in 2013-2015....