Alaska governor Bill Walker used the moment to make a push for natural gas development, and for the opening of protected federal land in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The technique has become especially controversial in Pennsylvania, the epicenter of a big push for natural gas locked in the Marcellus Shale, a formation stretching from West Virginia to upstate New York.
Flexitricity, a business that works with companies which commit to cutting power demand when supply is tight, said the auction results showed the government needed to rethink its push for new gas.
David Cameron is keen to push for shale gas in the UK at any cost, and one of the carrots that he offers us is the possibility of tens of thousands of jobs created as a result of the development of the fracking industry.
George W. Bush took much flack from the left for his refusal to push for greenhouse gas limits.
This push for natural gas vehicles is "the hottest energy fad in Washington," according to a Wall Street Journal editorial titled "Boone-Doggle," since the fad has been spurred in part by petroleum billionaire T. Boone Pickens and his "Pickens Plan".
But the demise of Liberal power was already foreshadowed by years of corruption scandals in the construction industry involving high-ranking municipal and provincial officials, illegal political funding by mafia bosses, and strong opposition to a Liberal push for shale gas exploration in Quebec.
California's energy-efficiency policies were adopted in 1978, long before the widespread push for greenhouse-gas reductions, but the data they provide is highly relevant to the current economic debate.
However, environmental advocates who have pushed for natural gas buses immediately criticized the study, saying that while it might show that natural gas and hybrid buses can produce comparably low levels of the pollution known as particulate matter, it did not analyze the toxic qualities of those tiny particles.
They also decided on a joint push for oil and gas pipelines through Pakistan to India: from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan; and from Iran and Qatar.
