Keith Hennessey with a reminder:

"If (when?) battery technology leaps forward to make hybrid or electric vehicles a significant share of the market, then electricity and its sources will begin to act as significant substitutes for gasoline and diesel fuel. At that point R&D to reduce the cost of solar power, wind power, nuclear power, hydro power, and natural gas power could start to affect the price at the pump enough for you to notice. But until then fuel and electric power are for all practical purposes separate issues, and when an elected official’s response to high fuel prices is more research on or subsidies for some form of electric power production, he is either confused or misleading you. More from the EIA here.

But until then fuel and electric power are for all practic... more »

Kudos to a Kansas City television anchor who got about eight minutes with the president this week and used one of her four questions to ask him about energy. That's the good news. The not-so-good news is the answer she got contained quite a bit of misinformation. Let us count the ways ...

P: "The fact of the matter is, we use 25 percent of the world's oil, and we only have 3 percent of the world's reserves."

As long as we're talking facts, the fact of the matter is usage has nothing to do with reserves. The United States has at least 116 billion barrels of oil that's off limits by federal policy, technically classified as undiscovered. And the fact of the matter is the 3 percent figure refers only to proved reserves and doesn't include unconventional sources such as shale oil. More detail... more »

President Obama's Twitter town hall yesterday was pretty neat - the Tweeter-in-Chief fielding questions from the public on a range of issues, including some on energy. The president trumpeted renewable energies while saying America needs to reduce dependence on oil. More on that below. First, some interesting context on renewables, from a live chat held last week by the Energy Department. Dr. Arun Majumdar, director of the department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, responded to the public's emails and Tweets for about 45 minutes. You can check out the video here. Key takeaways on renewables:

• Futuristic technologies, including biofuels, electrofuels and powerful car batteries, remain just that: in the future. "The technologies that are required to make us secure ... all of them... more »

Kudos to the White House for today's presidential Twitter town hall - which will feature the president in the East Room this afternoon for a live webcast in which he answers selected questions submitted via Twitter. Others have their questions for the chief, below are mine. (Feel free to get in on the event by asking your own energy-related questions or retweeting these - using the hashtag #AskObama.) Five Questions for the Administration

1. The Keystone XL pipeline would create American jobs and increase our energy security. Why is approval taking so long? #AskObama

2. EIA says in 2035 oil + #natgas will supply 60% of our energy. Shouldn't we try to produce as much of it as possible here at home? #AskObama

3. By 2030 92% of our liquid fuels could be filled by secure US/Canadian production... more »

On Wednesday, after the President's speech on energy the following tweet popped up in our Twitter stream:

@whitehouse - Hey, Heather Zichal here with the WH to take your energy questions, send them along

And people did, quite a few actually. The White House team was unable to get to all of them, understandably, so we have decided to help them out. But first we have to address a gross inaccuracy in one of the five answers that they did provide. @wilcoxgolf asked:

@whitehouse why do you not drill in the US? We have enough oil!

to which the White House responded:

@willcoxgolf Last year US oil production reached highest level since 2003, oil cos. sitting on many unused leases http://wh.gov/a2u

The last part is simply not true. The administration only can make this statement by defining actio... more »