Could gasoline be more green than biofuels, the farm-grown darlings of Iowa farmers and Willie Nelson?

The counterintuitive, provocative question has been posed by several University of Texas researchers in a pair of recent papers that look at how much water is required to produce fuels such as gasoline and ethanol.

The papers underscore the trade-offs at play as the United States plots its energy future.

Gov. Rick Perry told energy experts that as a matter of foreign and economic policy, the nation must reduce its dependence on foreign oil by building a deeper, more diverse energy portfolio.

“America’s national security and economic stability are seriously threatened by the fact that we rely on other nations for 70 percent of our oil supply.” Perry told the Clean Carbon Policy Summit and Project Expo, hosted by the Clean Coal Technology Foundation of Texas Oct. 10.

Perry said that to attain energy diversification, Texas must foster collaboration between government, industry and academia to promote clean coal as well as other alternative energy technologies.

Faced with an aging workforce and a growing demand for skilled workers in emerging markets like China and India, companies in the West are grappling with a talent crunch of unprecedented scope. According to experts at Wharton and The Boston Consulting Group, firms are increasingly questioning their workforce requirements and quality, training and development, and wage levels. Responses include over-hiring to meet future needs, upgrading training in concert with universities and in-house corporate schools, and extracting greater productivity through innovation.

A nuclear energy renaissance is in full swing in the Lone Star State. Luminant Generation recently filed a federal permit to build two new reactors at its Comanche Peak nuclear plant in Somervell County. That makes six new nuclear reactors pending statewide, which would more than double the state's production of electricity from virtually carbon-free nuclear power.

Texas is the second most populous state in the nation with more than 23 million people, many of whom are busy driving cars, working to support their families and heating and cooling their homes. As the population of Texas grows, the people of this great state are using more energy than ever before, facing higher energy costs and looking for cheaper solutions. The fact is – whether measured at the pump or on your electric bill – the energy that drives our lives will remain expensive long into the future.

Everyone it seems has been investing in green energy – from Google to ExxonMobil. But this year the booming sector is suddenly in a serious funk. So is this time to get out – or jump in and snap up some long-term winners?

Texas is in an enviable position in that we have more than enough mineral resources to meet our energy needs. But environmental activists are tightening the screws on Texas to keep those resources in the ground and out of our power lines. How should Texas balance our growing energy needs with environmental concerns? Dr. Sterling Burnett, a Senior Fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis and for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, recently wrote a paper entitled, "Power for the Future: The Debate Over New Coal-Fired Power Plants in Texas," and he is our guest on this week's Texas PolicyCast.

Last week, a power plant operated by Milwaukee-based We Energies became the first to begin capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide from its exhaust with the sole purpose of keeping the planet-warming gas out of the atmosphere. It uses a new chilled-ammonia technology developed by French power equipment company Alstom Power. But successor technologies have recently emerged that could make scrubbing carbon dioxide from smokestacks (the most expensive part of the process) much cheaper. In the past few weeks, research groups have reported of materials that can accumulate enormous volumes of carbon dioxide on their surfaces and can also be easily reused.

For months, the new chairman of the Public Utility Commission, Barry Smitherman, has been telling audiences that Texas will soon need a more power plants to sustain a growing population and economy.

Some have argued that Texas' future power demands can be satisfied largely through a combination of conservation and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. But even under the most optimistic assumptions of their potential, the state's utilities still will have to construct dozens of base-load power plants in the next several decades.

Chicken fat and a $3.5 million investment are behind a breakthrough in the way Texans heat, cool and light their homes and offices.

Polar bears, children with tarred faces and melting ice caps seem to be everywhere these days. As Hollywood genuflects before Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, I am trying to determine what actual good is coming from all the noise on global warming.

When the sun shines bright on their home in New York's Hudson Valley, John and Anna Bagnall live out a homeowner's fantasy.

Their electricity meter runs backward.

Though embraced by state political leaders as a clean, renewable electricity source and welcomed by many rural landowners as newfound income, wind farms are gathering fresh opposition from Texas ranchers who say they are an ugly, noisy blight on the wide-open landscape.

The editorial "Focus 2007: Global, national, area issues demanding attention" (Dec. 31) listed energy policy as one of five issues that have priority this year. The editorial called for an emphasis on conservation and alternative energy sources, including renewable forms such as solar, wind, biomass and geothermal.

Cap-and-trade is an environmentally sound program that significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. If TXU honors its promise to reduce its allowed emissions by bringing online more efficient power plants and closing older plants, it will be doing its part under cap-and-trade to make Texas air cleaner.

Reality dictates that Texas is going to need new coal-fired power plants such as the 11 units that Dallas-based TXU is proposing to build. And the state will need them sooner rather than later to ensure a reliable electricity supply that isn't vulnerable to frequent interruptions.

As Congress moves to curb industrial pollution linked to global warming, top executives at TXU Corp. are trying to persuade federal lawmakers to support the company's plans to build 11 coal-fired power plants in East and Central Texas.

Instead of just regular, plus, and premium, gas stations in a few years may well be offering fuel made from corn, soybeans, and plant fiber. And new cars would be engineered to run on them.

Texas accounted for nearly a third of the new wind power installed in 2006. The top five states in new installations, measured in megawatts, were Texas (774), Washington (428), California (212), New York (185) and Minnesota (150).