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.