The energy business has one of the longest timelines of any industry. Decisions are being made today for oil or natural gas fields that will only begin to flow fifteen years from now. A power plant approved tomorrow may be operating for half a century. And, increasingly, many of the big decisions will be measured not in the hundreds of millions, but billions, of dollars.

The dramatic run-up in oil prices in recent years has been the subject of much attention and many headlines. What has received far less attention is another increase: the parallel rise in the costs of drilling for oil and building the infrastructure necessary to pump it out of the ground.

This surge in costs has a significant impact on the oil industry's ability to meet growing global demand for oil and the timing of developments.

When it comes to energy, Brazil is on its way to becoming a "global brand." Although the United States recently outpaced Brazil in ethanol production, Brazil is by far the leader in sugar-based ethanol. Its exports are growing, and it could become a major energy supplier to the world. But what Brazil is particularly known for is its grand conversion-moving almost 40 percent of its automotive fuel from gasoline to ethanol.

The world today depends on fossil fuels to meet over 80 percent of its energy needs, a simple fact of the way the industrial world has grown up. But dependence brings with it major challenges: rising demand because of economic growth and new consumers; the global distribution of resources; growing concerns about environmental impacts of energy production and use; and the timescales associated with transforming how we produce, deliver and consume energy.

Renewable electric power is beginning to soar. The current surge of activity, which has been accelerating over the last few years, is driven by several factors: high fuel prices; ongoing improvements in renewable power technologies; and increasing political support, which grows out of concern about energy security and climate change.

Although renewable power is still generally more expensive than electricity generated from fossil fuels, the cost of renewables has declined significantly.

The global electric power landscape is changing fast, and increasingly, the action in it has been shifting to Asia. On average, in each of the last three years, China alone has added as much new generating capacity as all of existing capacity in Texas. The shift to Asia will continue.

CERA's Dawn of a New Age scenarios project that Asia will account for well over half of the increase in worldwide power generation capacity over the next 25 years.

Biofuels are hot. But how hot? Here are "just the facts." But first, what are biofuels? These are fuels derived from plants or animal fat that can replace such familiar oil-based transportation fuels as gasoline or diesel.

Ethanol can be distilled from corn, sugarcane or even straw and other cellulosic plant materials such as wood chips or grasses.

Today, as U.S. electric power demand grows and environmental and energy security issues become more urgent, there is a growing concern that the current balance encourages the construction of new power plants rather than investment in the conservation of electric power.

This subject is coming to the fore, in part, because of the capacity challenges that the electric power industry will start facing in the next few years.

The energy challenge certainly ranks at the top of the world's agenda. What makes it particularly difficult to deal with is that it is created by two forces.

Though not usually put in these terms, one is globalization-and, in particular-the success of globalization. High growth rates, the emergence of large middle classes in countries like China and India, the continuing integration of the global economy-all this is powered by energy.

The road is getting much clearer.

This week, legislation will emerge from committee, and almost certainly soon head to the floor of the U.S. Senate. It might not get that much notice in itself, but it ought to, because it tells you how much has changed on energy issues. And, given its probable passage (or that of something along its lines), the new legislation will have a big impact on the automobile industry, on gasoline consumption, and on what people drive.