http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/IhYgiNVT28c/5353

Number of active oil rigs falls by 10

HOUSTON (AP) -- The number of rigs actively exploring for oil and natural gas in the United States fell by 10 this week to 945, down nearly half from a year ago.

Of the rigs running nationwide, 741 were exploring for natural gas and 196 for oil, Houston-based Baker Hughes Inc. reported Friday. A total of eight were listed as miscellaneous.

A year ago, the rig count stood at 1,839. The U.S. count is down 53 percent since the end of August as weak energy demand has hampered oilfield activity.

Oil climbs above $53; manufacturing declines slow

NEW YORK – Oil prices rose sharply Friday as a trade group reported that deterioration in the American manufacturing sector appeared to be slowing.

Heavy industry is a major energy consumer and layoffs and factory shutdowns on a global scale has resulted in huge stockpiles of unused natural gas and crude. As a result, prices have fallen hard since last summer, but have edged up throughout this week.

Scientists say device charges cars smarter

SEATTLE - Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., say they've come up with a way to recharge electric cars that won't strain the power grid.

The smart charger controller is a device that automatically figures out the best and cheapest times for drivers to recharge cars.

The technology communicates with the power grid and can temporarily stop charging when there is stress on the system, scientist Michael Kintner-Meyer said.

Drivers could get a charge out of Chevrolet Volt

WARREN, Mich. — Based on the thin evidence available, folks who buy or lease the Chevrolet Volt electric car — scheduled to go on sale in November 2010 — should be surprised and pleased.

If the so-called Volt mules that General Motors provided for a few miles of driving around the GM Tech Center campus here Tuesday were representative, Volt owners will be treated to remarkably punchy performance from the electric drivetrain and a level of quiet refinement that appears to lead the industry.

Ford’s U.S. vehicle sales fell 32 percent in April

DETROIT - Record sales of its fuel-efficient Fusion helped Ford grab a bigger slice of the U.S. car market in April, even as its overall sales dropped 32 percent.

The gains could come at the expense of its Detroit rivals, which are struggling to attract buyers soured by shrinking incomes and auto bankruptcy worries. General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC report April sales later Friday.

U.S. lawmakers discuss more government power over grid

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States must develop policy allowing the federal government to lead the expansion of the electricity grid to meet any new renewable energy mandates, a key lawmaker said on Thursday.

"We can not and will not maximize the production of renewable energy in this country unless we fix the transmission problem," Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee meeting.

Giving the Power Grid Some Backbone

The U.S. needs a high-voltage transmission system to deliver plentiful energy from wind and sunshine to power-hungry cities. At least one plan has emerged.

Power to the people

It costs £45 in hardback. It has a crashingly dull cover and title. And it has been launched without marketing pizazz. But a new academic book written by David MacKay, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge, is being hailed by some as a "game changer": a text that could revolutionise popular thinking about our future energy needs and how we could supply them.

Goldman Sachs raises Suncor Energy, Petro-Canada

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs raised Suncor Energy Inc, Canada's second-largest oil sands producer, to "buy" from "sell," citing lower operating and capital costs and a positive outlook for crude oil in the second half of 2009 through 2010.

Analyst Arjun Murti also upgraded Petro-Canada to "buy" from "sell," owing to its pending acquisition by Suncor, which was also added to the conviction buy list.

Capitalism in Wonderland

Apologists for capitalism continue to occupy Wonderland, because it is only in Wonderland that environmental problems either do not really exist or can be solved by capitalism, which can also improve the quality of life for the mass of humanity. Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and political scientist (now an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School), picked up Simon’s torch, publishing his salvo aimed at environmentalism, The Skeptical Environmentalist, in 2001. Lomborg argued, for example, that attempting to prevent climate change would cost more and cause more harm than letting it happen. Lomborg’s book was immediately praised to the skies by the mass media, which was looking for a new anti-environmental crusader. Soon after the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, environmental scientists documented the countless flaws (not all of them inadvertent) in Lomborg’s reasoning and evidence. Scientific American devoted part of an issue to four articles by leading scientists sharply criticizing Lomborg. As a result of its serious flaws, the book was rejected by the scientific community. Yet, despite the adamant rejection of The Skeptical Environmentalist by natural scientists, all of this seemed only to add to Lomborg’s celebrity within the corporate media system. The Economist touted the book and its conclusions, proclaiming it to be “one of the most valuable books on public policy,” having dispelled the notion of “looming environmental disaster” and “the conviction that capitalism is self-destructive.” Time magazine in 2004 designated Lomborg as one of the 100 most influential people in the world; while in 2008, Britain’s Guardian newspaper labeled him as one of the “50 people who could save the planet.”

From fame to shame: The coming crisis of unecological economics

Economics, as it has been taught for well over a century, is unecological. It overlooks or explains away long run natural constraints to economic growth. Nonetheless, the penetration of physics into economic thought has made the most fundamental condition of human existence unavoidable in debates about the future:

The terrestrial sphere is thermodynamically closed.

Is Sustainable Development of Deserts Feasible?

Every year, each square kilometer of hot desert receives a solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil, and about 57 million TWh of solar energy falls down on all hot deserts of our planet. In contrast, the worldwide energy consumption in 2005 was as low as 135,000 TWh. The Sahara alone, with an area of 9.1 million km2, receives about 20 million TWh of heat per year, which, even with the today's 10-15 % solar energy/electricity conversion efficiency, is ten times more than the overall energy consumption in the world. This gave a rise to a lot of projects aiming at utilizing solar energy, ranging from photovoltaic batteries to power plants with sunlight concentrators. However, the direct implementation of these sun-powered technologies as separate processes is strongly hindered by the high expenses caused by the transportation of produced power, negative environmental impact on desert wildlife, and the absence of highly efficient power storage technologies, which are needed to supply power when the Sun is not shining. It should be noted that the implementation of these technologies alone is nearsighted because this solution cannot slow down desertification, bring deserts back to the stock of arable lands, and contribute to solving the problems of the growing deficit of water and food.

Solar energy system topic of upcoming public hearing

Lebanon, NY — Town of Lebanon residents will have their opportunity to weigh in on a proposed solar energy system being considered by town officials. If approved the system would be the first municipal solar system in Madison County.

Evergreen Solar posts big loss, shares dive

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Evergreen Solar Inc posted a first-quarter net loss after taking a big write-down and said second-quarter production would be below targets as the economic downturn and weak credit markets depress solar demand, sending shares down 15.6 percent.

$50 billion needed to fix rail transit, study says: Many trains, equipment, facilities of largest agencies near end of useful life

WASHINGTON - More than one-third of the trains, equipment and facilities of the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies are near the end of their useful life or past that point, the government said Thursday. Many have components that are defective or may be critically damaged.

A report by the Federal Transit Administration estimates it will cost $50 billion to bring the rail systems in Chicago, Boston, New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., into good repair and $5.9 billion a year to maintain them.

Those seven systems carry 80 percent of the nation’s rail transit passengers, making more than 3 billion passenger trips a year. They also include some of the oldest subways and commuter railroads. Some of their facilities date back more than a century.

With Marathon expanding plant, more fuel is on the way

GARYVILLE, LA .— From a distance, it looks like a small city is rising out of the sugar cane fields here in this small town between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

On closer look, it becomes clear that the dozens of cranes and towering structures that fill the sky and the armies of workers below are part of Marathon Oil Corp.’s $3.4 billion effort to make its oil refinery here among the biggest in the nation.

Expected to be completed later this year, the project will expand the 256,000-barrel-per-day refinery, now the country’s 18th largest, to a facility with a crude oil processing capacity of 436,000 barrels per day, the fourth biggest.

Is Summertime the Right Time for Refiners?

It was in October that we last visited the independent refiners, who at the time had seen their stock prices plummet on average 75% from their 2007 highs. So we were compelled to ask the question, are refiners too cheap to ignore? Although we found that many appeared cheap, none stood out as especially compelling investment propositions.

Mexico's Pemex posts $1.9 bln loss as output falls

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's state oil company Pemex posted a net loss of 27 billion pesos ($1.9 billion) in the first quarter, hurt by lower production and oil prices and a rise in its debt costs as the peso declined.

FACTBOX - Mexico shuts down to stem flu outbreak

The government has yet to specify what parts of major oil exporter Pemex will close. Some operations at the state-run company, such as gas stations, will continue as usual.

Flu heightens Mexico’s economic sickness

“They put all their eggs in one basket by relying so much on the US,” said Luis Carlos Nino, Latin America strategist at Capital Economics. A belt of plants in north Mexico that supply the US auto, aerospace, plastics, and electronics industries has been ravaged.

“Demand has fallen off a cliff, and on top of that the commodity bubble has burst. They have regarded their oil industry as the goose that lays the golden egg, spending the money instead of putting it aside in a sovereign wealth fund for a rainy day, as Chile has done with copper. It’s raining now,” he said.

Chevron’s profit tumbles as oil prices fall

HOUSTON - Chevron Corp. says its first-quarter profit fell 64 percent as it, along with competitors, was stung by lower oil and natural gas prices.

Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said Friday its profit for the first three months of 2009 amounted to $1.84 billion, or 92 cents per share. That compared with $5.17 billion, or $2.48 per share, in the quarter a year ago.

TransCanada profit falls

TORONTO (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp., Canada's biggest pipeline company, on Friday reported first quarter profit down 26 percent from the year ago, when it posted extraordinary gains.

TransCanada, which has expanded its gas pipeline network across much of North America and built up its power generation business, earned $334 million, or 54 Canadian cents a share, matching analysts' expectations.

Coal Industry

Our near-term outlook for the coal industry is neutral. Decreased demand for steel and electricity caused by a global recession has pushed global coal prices down off their highs of 2008. In the U.S., this has been perpetuated by mild weather, low natural gas prices and high coal stockpile levels at power generators.

While production cuts will help prices from falling off a cliff, these will likely impact earnings in 2009 as higher unit costs and lower met realizations shrink margins. Until the economy and investors start to see the tangible effects from the late '08 and early '09 monetary and fiscal stimulus packages put in place on a global scale, there will not be any catalysts to move stock prices in the coal space -- thus trading flat through 3Q’09.

India: 30 coal-based power plants running at critical stock level

Shortage of coal continues to play havoc with thermal power companies as 30 coal-based plants have stocks that will meet their requirements for less than seven days, according to CEA data.

Texas coastal windstorm policies may increase 5% per year

AUSTIN — Coastal residents insured by the state windstorm fund could see increases of 5 percent per year for the next three years under a bill passed Thursday by the Senate.

Water scarcity to be major issue in Asia

A Central Asia summit on how to share dwindling water resources broke down in bitter disagreement this week.

The region's five leaders meeting in Kazakhstan couldn't find any common ground on the contentious issue in one of the world's driest regions. The Asia Society's Leadership Group on Water Security is warning that Asia could see many more of these disputes in the decades to come. By 2050, as many as three out of four people around the globe could be affected by water scarcity, according to the UN.

Saudi Arabia - Experts call for greener development

(MENAFN - Arab News) Expressing concern over global warming, experts called for immediate preventive measures to minimize its effects by adopting greener technologies in a seminar held at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry's auditorium here on Wednesday.

'Cash for clunkers' kicks in gear

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- A congressional effort to subsidize new cars sales for consumers who scrap old ones is gaining momentum, as leaders seek to help the struggling auto industry.

So-called cash-for-clunkers legislation introduced in January aimed to encourage the purchase of more fuel efficient cars. Consumers with old, gas guzzlers could get $1,500 to $5,000 vouchers funded by the government to use toward the purchase of new cars.

The goal: reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel car sales. How far the legislation should go to accomplish those often competing goals has become a bone of contention on Capitol Hill.

Floating oil lake likely to curb future oil prices

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil companies are storing a record volume of oil at sea in giant tankers as world crude supply outstrips demand, and this floating oil lake is now so big that it is likely to keep a lid on prices for some time.

Shipping analysts say around 100 million barrels of crude and about 25 million barrels of refined products, such as gas oil, are held in fleets of Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) in Europe, West Africa, the U.S. Gulf and off Asian ports.

The volume of oil stored at sea has risen to record levels because the price of oil for use now is well below the value of oil for future delivery -- a market structure known as contango, typical of a bear market.

China tightens grip on rare earths

THE late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping once said: "The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths".

Now his successors could add: "And we also have Australia's rare earths".

And that means China keeps its control of the global rare earths market - and allows it to call the tune on the future of a number of industries, including electronic and green technologies.

Suniva CEO: Solar industry closer to grid parity

When it comes to the solar industry, the holy grail is achieving "grid parity” -- or being able to generate electricity with solar energy at the same cost as by burning fossil fuels.

While the industry isn’t quite there, it’s getting close, John Baumstark, CEO of Suniva Inc. told a gathering of tech entrepreneurs and investors at the ATDC Entrepreneurial Showcase on Wednesday.

Report Ignites Biofuels Debate

A new report charges that government subsidies for biofuels aren’t working and that policy makers should rethink where they spend public funds intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

White House finishes review of ethanol draft rule

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The White House has finished a review of a rule that aims to cut emissions from alternative motor fuels like ethanol, federal environmental regulators said on Thursday.

The Office of Management and Budget has completed the review of the Environmental Protection Agency's rule and "we will determine what further action to take," the EPA said in a prepared statement.

Václav Klaus: Green hysteria shackles our economic growth

I am surprised so many people in Europe, the US and elsewhere have come to support policies underpinned by hysteria over global warming, particularly cap-and-trade legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions and subsidies for "green" energy sources.

I am convinced this is a misguided strategy - not only because of the uncertainty about the dangers that global warming might pose, but also because of the certainty of the damage that policies aimed at mitigation will cause.

Drilling of oil and gas wells is expected to plunge 41% in Canada in 2009

The number of new oil and gas wells to be drilled in Canada will drop by 41% to 10,000 this year as low prices and capital worries hammer the country's oilfield service sector, an industry association forecast yesterday. Drilling activity has plunged to the lowest level since 1999 as weak commodity prices convince oil and gas companies to husband their cash and restrain exploration budgets until higher prices return, the Petroleum Services Association of Canada said.

Is this really the start of the oil rebound?

With oil languishing around $50 a barrel, it no longer makes sense to drag mega-tonne machinery through the Canadian tar sands or sink new drills in the farthest reaches of the ocean. The colossal deepwater drills that were being rented out at $500,000 a day last year are now standing idle.

And just as cranes have disappeared from city skylines, the Mid Western plains are no longer filled with land rigs. In the US, rig counts have declined roughly 50% from their September 2008 peak levels. They’re down 8%-10% elsewhere. Faced with falling revenues, big oil is trying hard to push some of that pain on to its suppliers in the oil services industry, driving down the cost of renting rigs and refining their oil.

Yet a degree of optimism has crept into the industry in recent weeks. When oil services group Schlumberger reported a 30% drop in profits this week – a little better than Wall Street was expecting – investors sent the shares 7% higher. “This is a big bullish sign for oil services,” said the Daily Crux.

Repsol Says Planned Refinery Strike Called Off

Bloomberg) -- Repsol SA YPF, Spain’s largest oil company, said a planned refinery strike has been averted after it reached a preliminary agreement with trade unions.

Operations at Puertollano, La Coruna and Tarragona will not be disrupted, company spokesman Kristian Rix said in a telephone interview today.

Norway-U.K. Langeled Gas Pipe Said to Shut Next Week

(Bloomberg) -- The Langeled natural-gas pipeline from Norway, the U.K.’s largest source of imports, will close next week for three days of onshore maintenance, four people familiar with the work said.

Shell repairs Nigeria flowstations

ABUJA (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell has resumed operations at flowstations feeding into its Trans-Niger oil pipeline in southern Nigeria, a spokeswoman said on Friday, two weeks after it was shut down due to a fire.

Woodside Freezes Wages, Cuts Budget After Oil Drops

(Bloomberg) -- Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-biggest oil and gas producer, said it will freeze salaries and has made “substantial” cuts in its 2009 budget as the global recession causes a slump in energy prices.

Uncertain economic conditions are making cost controls “critical,” Michael Chaney, chairman of the Perth-based company, said today in an address to shareholders sent to the Australian stock exchange.

Gazprom's Medvedev included in Time most influential list

NEW YORK (RIA Novosti) - Gazprom's deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev has been named in Time magazine's top 100 most influential people on the planet for 2009.

Medvedev, described as Russian energy giant Gazprom's "link to the outside world," is listed among the Builders and Titans category, which also includes U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and designer Stella McCartney.

Huaneng, Shaanxi Coal to Build Power Plant in Western China

(Bloomberg) -- China Huaneng Group, the nation’s biggest electricity producer, and Shaanxi Coal & Chemical Industry Group Co. started building two power generating units with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts each in the western province.

Climate Change and Peak Oil as an Actionable Investment Theory

Since Caps is an investment based game it would only make sense to make peak oil applicable as an investment theory. Now I’m not going to claim that I’m the first on this site to base a portfolio on these issues but I do consider it an important investment area to be cognizant of. The best way of describing the opportunity of peak oil is that demand is constantly growing as emerging markets want a taste of the good life. At the same time production is falling dramatically and that represents a phenomenal spread for investors. If oil production falls 2.5% percent a year and demand rises 3% a year extrapolated over the decades that it will take the major global economies to get off of oil the spreads only get wider. This falling oil availability along with rising demand for energy is a virtual investment sweet-spot.

Conserving forest key to fighting global warming

COLUMBUS: What happens in forests around the world will have a big effect on Ohio, its coal-burning utilities and their electric customers.

Avoiding the destruction of the global forest should be a critical strategy to fight global warming and is one of the most cost-effective and needed ways for American businesses to assist, according to participants in a recent daylong conference sponsored by the Nature Conservancy and American Electric Power.

Global warming strongly divides Christian clergy

When the Rev. James Merritt wants to talk about the environment, he does what any good Baptist preacher would do. He picks up the Bible.

"The first assignment that God gave to Adam was to take care of the Garden," said Merritt, who was president of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention from 2000-02. "As far as I know, that job has never been revoked."

While most Christian ministers agree that human beings are to care for creation, they disagree on the details. That's especially true about the topic of global warming.

Southern Glaciers Grow Out Of Step With North

ScienceDaily — The vast majority of the world’s glaciers are retreating as the planet gets warmer. But a few, including ones south of the equator, in South America and New Zealand, are inching forward.

A new study in the journal Science puts this enigma in perspective; for the last 7,000 years New Zealand’s largest glaciers have often moved out of step with glaciers in the northern hemisphere, pointing to strong regional variations in climate.

Freeman Dyson and the irresistible urge to be contrary about climate change

Dyson's purpose seems to be to throw out "heretical" ideas that can then spur further debate...

"I like to express heretical opinions," Dyson said, with an impish gleam in his eye. "They might even happen to be true."

Krugman: An Affordable Salvation

Yes, limiting emissions would have its costs. As a card-carrying economist, I cringe when “green economy” enthusiasts insist that protecting the environment would be all gain, no pain.

But the best available estimates suggest that the costs of an emissions-limitation program would be modest, as long as it’s implemented gradually. And committing ourselves now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/lXcD31-7AZI/5348

There is a good deal of evidence that we are now a little past "peak oil". Many of us find it doesn't feel quite like we had imagined.

A lot of us had expected that peak oil would be basically a liquids fuels crisis, caused by geological limits. We expected that the solutions of the Department of Energy's Hirsch Report would be sufficient to forestall a crisis, especially if we had started 20 years ago, instead of now. These solutions included things like more oil from tar sands, improving automobile efficiency, and electrification of transport.

Now, when we seem to be at peak oil, we find the current situation feels a lot more like a "box" caused by limits to growth, rather than a liquid fuels crisis. The limits are of many forms--not just geological limits relating to oil--but other resource limits as well, such as fresh water, and concerns about climate change and the environment. The financial system is even behaving strangely.

The fact that the financial system is also in distress is a surprise to many people. There is good theoretical reason to expect that once growth in underlying resources slows, a financial system based on compound growth will run into difficulty. This was predicted by M. King Hubbert and many others. The connection is not easy to see, though, and it is understandable that many would believe that the financial system would have had problems, even apart from limits to growth.

The fact that so many limits are involved makes it difficult to substitute one resource, such as biofuels, for another, such as petroleum products.

The fact that so many limits are involved also means that it is not just liquid fuels that are being constrained by the limits to growth box. In the diagram above, I show electricity, the credit system, the industrial system, and the agricultural system as being fenced in by limits, in addition to liquid fuels. I could probably have included many other systems as well, such as the international trade system, governmental systems, and long term promises, such as pensions and social security systems.

The world is finite, so it should not come as a great surprise that the various limits are being reached, to varying degrees, simultaneously. Systems such as the electrical system, the credit system, and the agricultural system all depend on availability of finite resources, so are affected as we start reaching limits of various kinds.

Timing

Another thing that some don't think is quite right about the current situation is timing. The peak in liquid fuels production seems to have come and gone, but nothing too terrible has happened. The stores are full of food. The price of gasoline is fairly reasonable, compared to a year ago. Here again, I think if we look at our situation in terms of the limits to growth box, it is not just liquid fuels that are important, but a whole group of networked systems, all of which are affected (to varying degrees) by the constraints of the limits to growth box.

At this point, it seems to me that we are in the lull before the storm. Demand has dropped, because society could not afford high priced petroleum products, but the supply has not yet declined to reflect the lower price level. Stimulus packages have been put in places, but the cost has not yet filtered through the system. People are hopeful for a rebound, and this is reflected in the stock market prices.

To me, the most vulnerable system is the international monetary system. As long as countries trust each other, trade will continue as usual. Once this starts breaking down, it seems likely that countries will need real goods to barter, rather than relying on promises to pay. A breakdown in the international monetary system could cause a major interruption to trade and start a downward spiral. It seems like this could happen at any time.

Whether or not there is a crash, and the timing of such a crash, really depend on how all of the systems work together. Any kind of destabilization, such as new upward price pressures on fossil fuels, could telegraph through the system. Financial disruptions are especially likely.

It is my view that because of this networking, all systems will eventually fail together. A person cannot expect that one system, such as the electrical system, will greatly outlast the other systems. If either the electrical system or the financial system fails, other systems are likely to fail as well.

I see collapse as being stepwise--things may look good for a while, and then there will be a sudden step down. This may happen several times. We are on a step right now.

What Should We Do Now?

It is hard to get any group of people to agree on an answer.

Method of Long Ago

We know one system which more-or-less worked in ages past. People lived in small communities, in very simple homes. Land was tilled by hand or using animal labor. All wastes were returned to the soil, so as to maintain soil fertility. Water was either from hand dug wells or from rainwater catchment systems. People burned whatever was close at hand (dung, peat, wood, coal) to cook their food and heat their homes. Transportation was by foot or using animal power.

Most people don't really want to return to a system such as this. We have 6.7 billion people on earth now. It is not clear that this system could support more than 1.0 billion, even if techniques more advanced than those of our ancestors were used, such as better crop rotation. Life expectancies would likely be very short.

Intermediate Approaches

There are several possible intermediate approaches:

• Find new fuel alternatives--thorium; cold fusion; fourth generation biofuels (Question: Is there time?)

• Build out what we can of alternatives that perhaps aren't running into limits as badly as other things - for example wind turbines, or if one is not concerned about climate change, increased coal generation of electricity; electric trains. (Questions: Will we just run into limits we haven't considered? What do we do when these solutions fail? How many years will these solutions really work?)

• Build out lower tech solutions that have worked in the past--home gardens, small wind mills for farmer, rainwater catchment systems for homeowners, cotton gins, coal fired trains, raising donkeys for labor.

• Build communities of people who want to try to live in more of a sustainable fashion.

One can also work on solving parts of the problem:

• Start teaching skills so that returning to the methods of long ago will not be so problematic.

• Develop open pollinated seeds that will provide a balanced diet for many different climate areas.

• Start encouraging late marriages and one child families.

It seems to me that if limits to growth is really the issue, we should be very cautious about undertaking 20 or more year projects to do anything, unless we believe that the intermediate results will be worthwhile in themselves. There are just too many connections with systems that are likely to fail within the next 20 years.

Instead, it seems like we should concentrate on projects where a more immediate payoff is clear, or that will help us better reach a sustainable long-term situation. This would suggest that we should be starting more at the bottom of the above list of types of actions, rather than at the top.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/nTfE_HxEXeY/

We told you last week about American Superconductor, Inc – the company that is trying to revolutionize the power grid by developing superconductors to deliver more power, more efficiently, through smaller wires.



What we didn’t tell you is that American Superconductor’s main business is not building power lines - it’s building electrical equipment for wind turbines.  They build their superconductors into the very guts of the turbine, which boosts performance since the wires can carry 100 times more power than their copper counterparts. 



In fact, at least one of the reasons that current wind turbine technology tops off at around 5 or 6 megawatts per turbine is that the wires couldn't handle more power, at least according to American Superconductor vice president Daniel McGahn.  He claims that his company’s superconductors will allow engineers to design a 10 megawatt turbine - something we haven't seen thus far.  Similar HTS (high temperature superconductor) wind turbine research is taking place in Demark, and at Zenergy Power, another superconductor company.



Realistically, though, there are other reasons why we don’t see any 10 megawatt turbines.  They are the same reasons the vast majority of wind turbines out there are in the 1-3 megawatt range, even though we could go higher if we wanted: building humongous wind turbines is a pain in the butt.  Just transporting the blades is a remarkable feat of engineering.  Giant turbines are expensive to build, install and maintain.  It’s usually worth your while to build 10 1.5 megawatt turbines than attempt to put all your eggs in one behemoth.



Via Physics Today

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/IaCRazuGnDI/

Leviathan Energy has come up with a way to improve wind turbine efficiency that has nothing to do with the size or angle of the blades. The company's Wind Energizer is instead a donut-shaped structure made of plastic and steel that wraps around the base of the turbine to maximize wind velocity.

The Wind Energizer can be customized to any size turbine. The shape and size of the structure depends on the turbines height, blade length, wind direction and strength. Once all those aspects are factored in, Leviathan constructs the Wind Energizer to funnel the wind flow so that the highest velocities hit the blades.

The initial tests have shown a 20-40 percent increase in output compared to control turbines. At lower wind speeds, the Wind Energizer has an even greater effect, increasing output by as much as 150 percent.

The company estimates that the Wind Energizer pays for itself in about four to five years in increased performance and that maintenance costs will decrease for users as well because the structure balances the wind load on the turbine.

So far the product has only been tested on smaller-scale turbines, so further testing will need to be done to determine the exact results for larger turbines.

via Cleantechnica

 

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/37tTBvzGo60/5355

What's ahead?

Political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon is the editor of Carbon Shift, a collection of essays by Canadian academics and journalists, including The Gazette's William Marsden, that address two closely related questions: How do we assure future energy security and how do we act on climate change?

It's a predicament for policy-makers. If the world is running out of conventional oil, as some experts warn, many of the hydrocarbon alternatives like coal and heavy oil would add significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.

Meeting the world's insatiable demand for energy while reducing emissions at the same time seems like an intractable problem. The essayists in Carbon Shift can't agree on what the priorities should be - something the reader is likely to find frustrating.

ExxonMobil Takes Steps to Preserve War Chest As Profit Falls

Exxon Mobil Corp. is taking steps to preserve cash in the market downturn, positioning itself to take advantage of new investments and make acquisitions.

Mexico's Oil Operations Hum Along Despite Swine Flu

Mexico's state oil industry is still humming along despite a deadly flu outbreak that forced the government to declare a national holiday from May 1 to May 5 to combat contagion.

A Petroleos Mexicanos spokeswoman said Thursday operations are normal and that such strategic activities as oil production are excluded from the government's work stoppage. The company is preparing a statement on how it is handling the flu threat.

Chrysler aftershocks to hit industry hard

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The bankruptcy at Chrysler LLC is likely to soon be felt across the auto industry, disrupting production at plants of healthier rivals within a week or two, according to industry experts.

Kuwaiti Amir to visit China May 10-13

KUWAIT -- Negotiations are ongoing between the two countries for constructing an oil refinery in southern China comprising a refinery and a petrochemical complex at a total cost of USD nine billion, to be completed by 2012, he added.

Investors see bright future in wind energy

Revenue from solar, wind power, ethanol and biodiesel fuel grew 50 percent to about $116 billion last year, according to Clean Edge Inc., a research and publishing firm. The spike in green revenue, and the backing of the federal government to explore these energy sources has excited investors.

"They favor green investment right now because they think that's the way the world is going," said David Wood, director of the Institute for Responsible Investment at Boston College's Center for Corporate Citizenship.

Prius in Seattle

This is the man who still reminisces over his life-long love affair with cars. Photos of his 1950s high school hotrods line the walls of his workshop. Next to them, a picture from his college days, standing proudly in tie-dyed T-shirt beside his ‘57 Volkswagen Beetle. To this day he bemoans the never-ending repair bills from our series of kid-safe late ‘70s Volvo station wagons. More recently he's entered a middle-aged phase with a penchant for big trucks and sport utilities.

But the past is past. He now claims our hybrid purchase is the best automobile decision of our lives and I have to agree. Owning a hybrid has been an interesting ride. Re-learning to drive and maximize the gas mileage in "my" new car has become "his" favorite pastime.

Russian gas output collapse deepens in April

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Natural gas production at Russian gas giant Gazprom fell by a more than a quarter last month to the lowest levels in a decade, continuing its spiral downward in response to plummeting European demand.

Oil extraction, however, continued to climb in April despite concerns that the lower oil price and lagging investment would lead to a repeat of last year's decline, data from the Russian Energy Ministry showed on Saturday.

In April, Gazprom's gas output was 1.15 billion cubic metres (bcm) per day, 7 percent down from 1.24 bcm in March 2009 and 28 percent down from 1.60 bcm in April 2008, the data showed.

Analysts say such low production levels have not been seen in a decade, but they predict a recovery in the second half when gas prices are expected to catch up with the lower oil price, which they follow after a lag of six to nine months.

U.S. bill to create clean energy investment agency

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation this week that would establish a new independent agency to spearhead government clean energy investments.

The bipartisan bill, introduced by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman and ranking member Lisa Murkowski, would establish a Clean Energy Deployment Administration within the Energy Department.

Petrobras Pumps First Crude from Massive Tupi Field Offshore Brazil

Brazilian state-run energy giant Petrobras (PBR) celebrated May Day in style Friday, pumping the first crude from the Western Hemisphere's largest oil discovery in 30 years.

Oil punt makes big bucks but coastlines at risk

LONDON (Reuters) - Big international oil companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars storing crude on tankers offshore in a trading play that environmentalists say sidesteps shipping rules and puts coastlines at risk.

The $100 per barrel drop in crude oil prices since July, to around $50, has pushed the market into an unusually sharp contango -- a scenario where the cost of oil today is much lower than the price of oil in the future.

Saudi Aramco strives for lower production costs using new technology

While the demonstrations show promising results and no one doubts that new technology will allow completion of more advanced wells, the Extreme Reservoir Contact wells may not quickly replace existing technology. Even with the generation of electric power by upward fluid flow in the casing of the well, the system may run into limitations long before fifty laterals can be added.

New Report Shows Hydrogen Vehicles will Drive Change

Today, the National Hydrogen Association released a new report called the "Energy Evolution: An Analysis of Alternative Vehicles and Fuels to 2100." The Energy Evolution shows that a scenario which initially includes a mix of alternative vehicles, and is later dominated by hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles sales is the only way to simultaneously cut U.S. greenhouse gas pollution by 80% below 1990 levels; reach petroleum quasi-independence by mid-century; and eliminate nearly all controllable air pollution by the end of the century. The report also shows that an expansion of hydrogen stations is more affordable than most people think.

Bolivia nationalises BP aviation unit

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivian leftist President Evo Morales told hundreds of supporters he nationalised the local unit of BP's aviation division on Friday, further tightening state control over the energy industry.

At a May Day rally, Morales said he signed a decree to take over Air BP, a division of British oil major BP. The poor Andean nation had been in talks with the company over a possible takeover.

"I want to ask the Bolivian armed forces along with (Bolivian state energy company) YPFB to gain control of Air BP, the multinational that sells jet fuel. With this decree Air BP is now nationalized," Morales said in a speech outside the presidential palace in La Paz.

Hard times for Pdvsa

The board of directors of state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) has been under pressure as petrodollars continue to decline and financiers in the international markets refuse to fund companies in emerging countries. Therefore, the conglomerate has decided to include Venezuelan banks among its financing options.

Oman sees oil output up 6%

Oman's oil output in the first two months of 2009 rose by 6.1 per cent on the year to 780,000 barrels per day (bpd), government data published on Saturday showed.

Energy firm lays off more employees

Halliburton laid off more workers in the Grand Valley on Friday, marking the third time the energy-services company has laid off local employees in the past two months.

Oil companies push Florida legislature for offshore drilling

Late in the legislative session, a group of mostly anonymous oil and gas companies have hired at least 20 lobbyists to push bills that would allow offshore drilling in Florida.

“Realists” and “optimists” in the permaculture world

I have a running discussion with one of my best friends (an optimist) concerning the role that hope should play in the way we shape our views, thoughts and subsequent behaviors. He feels that hope is absolutely instrumental in living his live. That is not how I live my life. Hope, for me, is derived from “faith, hope and charity”, which is not a stable foundation upon which to base possible life threatening (or even pleasurable) decisions. I want to know the odds. That chair will probably support me. Less oil with greater demand will probably lead to conflict.

My friend hopes that Obama will pull us through this mess. I perceive that the likelihood of that happening is very low given that the O-man selected and stands behind Timothy Geithner (TG) and Lawrence Summers (LS). Those two guys are major players in the game that got us to where we are now! Trusting them is like believing that democracy should be two foxes and a chicken deciding the dinner menu.

Book Review - The Party’s Over

I went back in time this week (if you can call five years ago back in time) and read Richard Heinberg’s, “The Party’s Over“. I was curious to see how the thinking about our addiction to fossil fuels and the need to adopt renewable energy has changed. Well, it really hasn’t.

Bipartisan Resolution in Congress Urges Preservation of Single, National Fuel Economy Standard

A single, national fuel economy standard for passenger cars and light trucks will do more to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gases than the 14 separate programs sought by California and other states, lawmakers outlined today in a resolution.

The resolution, introduced by Reps. Bobby Bright, D-Ala., and Lee Terry, R-Neb., supports maintaining a single, national fuel economy standard to give the auto industry the regulatory stability and certainty necessary to build the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles that consumers demand.

Overselling "Climate Conflict"?

Will global warming turn into global warring?

It's a hot question in need of cool-headed analysis.

The nexus of national security and climate change is a burgeoning field, and one that's coming under some scrutiny at a time when increasingly bigger claims are being made on its behalf.

Green aspirations

Manhattan's Empire State Building has long been an iconic part of the New York City skyline. But now it is embarking on a quest to become an "icon of sustainability," a showpiece of environmental innovation that will demonstrate to the world — including 3.8 million tourists a year — how retrofitting office towers can significantly reduce carbon emissions and help build an environmentally sustainable future. First Canadian Place, a significant presence on Toronto's skyline, may be a later-generation building, but it's undergoing a major retrofit as well. Here's a comparison of the two projects and what they hope to achieve.

Sea Salt Holds Clues to Climate Change

(PhysOrg.com) -- We know that average sea levels have risen over the past century, and that global warming is to blame. But what is climate change doing to the saltiness, or salinity, of our oceans?

This is an important question because big shifts in salinity could be a warning that more severe droughts and floods are on their way, or even that global warming is speeding up.

North-east left to wonder what might have been

AS LONGANNET Power Station looks poised to become the first in Europe to harness carbon capture, those connected with the north-east’s biggest generating facility have been left to ponder what might have been.

It looked for years as if Peterhead Power Station was going to become the first in the world to use the potentially planet-saving technology, using a gas separation technique to extract reserves from the Miller oil field.

However, the scheme failed to win the backing of the UK Government and, last year, Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks admitted Labour had torpedoed the plans to save British taxpayers “hundreds of millions of pounds”.

The Dark Lord

Lord Stern came to international prominence in 2006 after writing a blatantly biased review for the British government on the economics of climate change. It was -- hardly coincidentally --published the same week then-chancellor Gordon Brown appointed Al Gore as an advisor. The report claimed that the likely costs of "business as usual" were horrendous -- the equivalent of both world wars plus the Great Depression -- while the costs of slashing carbon emissions were modest.

Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus

WASHINGTON — The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/z-2k6ltx20o/5343

Two weeks ago I posted a review of an article with an optimistic view on the future availability of oil. Written by R. Aguilera, R. Eggert, C. Gustavo Lagos and J. Tilton and published in the Energy Journal of the International Association of Energy Economists. After a short correspondence Dr. Aguilera and his team have been kind enough to respond to the five points of disagreement I raised in my review. Their response is shown below. I hope our readers can react respectfully as to create a meaningful discussion.

Abstract of Aguilera et al. (2009)

"This study assesses the threat that depletion poses to the availability of petroleum resources. It does so by estimating cumulative availability curves for conventional petroleum (oil, gas, and natural gas liquids) and for three unconventional sources of liquids (heavy oil, oil sands, and oil shale). The analysis extends the important study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (2000) on this topic by taking account of (1) conventional petroleum resources from provinces not assessed by the Survey or other organizations, (2) future reserve growth, (3) unconventional sources of liquids, and (4) production costs. The results indicate that large quantities of conventional and unconventional petroleum resources are available and can be produced at costs substantially below current market prices of around US$120 per barrel. These findings suggest that petroleum resources are likely to last far longer than many are now predicting and that depletion need not drive market prices above the relatively high levels prevailing over the past several years.(Aguilera et al. 2009, page 141)"

Response by R. Aguilera, R. Eggert, C. Gustavo Lagos and J. Tilton

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your review of our article. I have organized my response around your five concluding statements. At the end of my comment, I also make several additional points.

1) The data from USGS (2000) of the yet to be found estimate in 102 geological provinces has been used to estimate the future potential in 835 geological provinces which were not assessed in USGS (2000), resulting in an additional 539 billion barrels of expected discoveries by Aguilera et al. (2009) in addition to the 939 billion barrels estimated by the USGS (2000). The original USGS (2000) is too optimistic as it implies that the declining discovery curve which has been declining since the 1960s will turn around. This methodology produces an estimate of 539 billion barrels, which is also too optimistic.

Extrapolating discovery data can provide useful information, but does not consider reserves that are created through reserve growth. The latter is much less costly and less risky than exploration. The USGS has found that, about 10 years into the study, their estimates for new discoveries are behind schedule. On the other hand, actual reserve growth has been much larger than they anticipated (even growth of 2P reserves; see Charpentier, 2005). This means that investors have chosen to invest in development of previously discovered fields, instead of exploration. Therefore, the fact that the USGS undiscovered estimates are not being realized as fast as expected does not necessarily mean that their estimates are overly optimistic (see Klett et al., 2005 for an evaluation of the study). The Hubbert curve pattern of expected discoveries, shown by the blue line in Figure 2 of the article review, was never predicted or even implied in the USGS study.

2) Aguilera et al. (2009) have double counted reserve growth because they made the incorrect assumption that the USGS (2000) did not apply a reserve growth function for the estimate of yet to be discovered fields.

We are aware that the USGS only applies reserve growth to known volumes and that their undiscovered volumes are already ‘grown’. However, it is important that reserve growth be applied to both known and undiscovered volumes, since undiscovered volumes may experience future growth in the same way known volumes are growing at present. For example, recovery factors of oil are likely to continue to increase, so that will apply to known volumes as well as presently undiscovered volumes.

3) A large number of factors that limit production have not been incorporated, including the availability of water and natural gas which play a large role in the production of unconventional crude oil.

We recognize that those are very important factors, along with other serious environmental impacts of unconventional oil production. The role of advancing technology will be crucial in reducing the need for inputs such as water and gas, while mitigating environmental damage. However, our paper did not aim to address these challenges in detail. We simply wanted to estimate how much could be available at average costs of production.

Still, our paper does mention the caveat:

“..despite the considerable efforts by governments around the world to internalize over the past several decades the external costs associated with energy production, such as environmental pollution and global warming, there is still considerable disagreement over just how large the remaining external costs are. For this reason, we have not attempted to include external costs in our cost estimates. As a result, the full social costs of fossil fuels production are higher than the reported production costs.”

The paper also mentions some of the points raised by your readers:

“..there are challenges associated with unconventional resource production. First, the ‘energy returned on energy invested’ ratios (EROEI) are much lower than for conventional petroleum. Second, unconventional sources are usually more expensive and so less economical, mainly because they are harder to extract and refine. Third, the environmental problems are more serious. Heavy oil, oil sands, and oil shale production cause much higher amounts of greenhouse gas emissions than conventional petroleum.”

4) A direct comparison between the production of conventional and unconventional oil has been made while production mechanisms for these types of oil differ significantly, leading to a comparison between apples and pears.

It is typical for supply curves to include different sources of liquids in one curve (e.g. conventional oil, heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, deepwater, CTL, GTL, etc). See, for example, the IEA (2008) curve to which you refer. This consolidation is appropriate, first of all, because the different production mechanisms are reflected in the reported production costs. More fundamentally, we and others include both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons on the same availability curve because conventional and unconventional resources substitute for one another in actual fuel use.

5) It is incorrect to take historic production costs from a single to a set of years in a given oil province and extrapolate them into the future to obtain future costs. Costs are likely to change permanently in the future as cost decreases due to technological innovation have largely played out, and cost increases are expected to play a bigger role. These changes are expected because of declining quality of the remaining oil, more remote and politically difficult locations of extraction, and smaller and smaller fields in these locations.

In the paper, we describe the uncertainty over how production costs change over time as a race between the cost increasing effects of depletion and the cost-reducing effects of technological advancement and substitution among energy sources. Given this uncertainty, we only made an attempt to estimate static availability curves. We mention this caveat, stating that rising costs over time would shift our curves upward and falling costs would shift them downward. On this point, we are far from certain that “cost decreases due to technological innovation have largely played out.”

Since we’re reporting 2006 production costs, they’re going to be lower than those of the latest IEA (2008) supply curve. If you compare our costs to their IEA (2005) version, they’re similar. Recent estimates by others also compare to ours (e.g. Deutsche Bank, 2009; Farrell, 2008).

"Going beyond your five concluding points, we have some additional comments:

First, the first sentence in your article review does not accurately summarize the conclusions of our study. We did not conclude that the “recent high oil price spike was an aberration”; rather we concluded that depletion need not drive prices above the relatively high levels of the recent past. There are a number of other (political, environmental, and social) reasons prices could rise but geologic depletion is not one of them.

Second, rather than take the USGS (2000) estimates at face value, we critically reviewed the study and determined that it’s based on geological and statistical procedures recognized as being valid throughout the world. For this reason, we decided to use their estimates as a starting point.

References:

Aguilera, R. F., Eggert, R.G., Gustavo Lagos, C.C., Tilton, J.E., 2009, Depletion and the Future Availability of Petroleum Resources, The Energy Journal, Vol. 30, No.1, pp. 141 -174.

Charpentier, R.R., 2005, Estimating undiscovered resources and reserve growth: contrasting approaches, in Dore, A.G., and Vining, B.A. (eds) ,Petroleum Geology: North-West Europe and Global Perspectives—Proceedings of the 6th Petroleum Geology Conference, pp. 3 - 9.

Deutsche Bank, 2009, The Cost of Producing Oil. London: Deustche Bank AG, Global Markets Research.

Farrell, A., 2008, Energy Notes: News from the University of California Energy Institute, Vol. 6, No. 2, p. 3.

International Energy Agency (IEA), 2005, Resources to Reserves - Oil and Gas Technologies for the Energy Markets of the Future, Paris: IEA Publications.

International Energy Agency (IEA), 2008, World Energy Outlook, Paris: IEA Publications.

Klett, T. R. et al., 2005, “An Evaluation of the U.S. Geological Survey World Petroleum

Assessment 2000.” AAPG Bulletin. Vol. 89, No. 8, pp. 1033 - 1042.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/-8_KIm1qSAA/5358

This post is an open thread to discuss the implications of H1N1 (or future variants) on energy. Who knows how serious this flu strain will be, or the next one? What we do know is that 1) our current long run energy decisions are largely being based on the erroneous but comforting assumption that price is a valid signal of future scarcity, 2) we have 6.77 billion humans, about 50% which are connected daily through a complex just-in-time delivery system of basic needs and information, and 3) we have an economic marker system that has way overshot what it was attempting to mark. What then might happen to future energy supplies if either the perception, or the reality of a flu or other pandemic in the next few years sweeps the globe?

Sproradic news updates on the advancement and uncertainty surrounding H1N1 flu virus and human reaction to it continue this weekend:

The president of the Asian Development Bank(ADB), Haruhiko Kuroda, warned on Saturday in Bali, Indonesia, that A/H1N1 may cause a severe impact on tourism, aviation and other industries in Asia. He said the judgment was based on experience from SARS and avian flu, but it was is difficult to make a proper assessment of the impact at this stage. Source

In each of the four major pandemics since 1889, a spring wave of relatively mild illness was followed by a second wave, a few months later, of a much more virulent disease. This was true in 1889, 1957, 1968 and in the catastrophic flu outbreak of 1918, which sickened an estimated third of the world's population and killed, conservatively, 50 million people. Source

As I'll write about in an upcoming essay, the recent global plunge in commodities and stock markets due to too much credit/debt has been a generation in coming. The US peaked in oil production in 1970 and in real wages in 1974. In 1971 we went off the gold standard. Soon after that debt began its ascent, and took a moon shot trajectory starting around 1999, both in US and abroad. The first stage of credit/leverage unwinding last fall caused oil and gas prices to drop to roughly 1/3 of where they were last summer, when they were at levels sufficiently high to bring on all sorts of production at the margin, (as well as marginal renewables). Many of these projects are now being scrapped or produced at a loss. Since oil and gas are not really storable (or rather, there is finite storage once outside their natural reservoirs), the volatility in monthly/yearly price signals is high - higher still when leverage and credit abound in our financial system. But since commodities are priced at the marginal unit, each spike or plunge cannot possibly both give the correct long term market signals to flow/cost/availability of the resources. In fact, the inflation adjusted price of oil is the same today as it was 36 years ago, even though we have used 875 billion barrels of oil in the intervening 36 years:

What would happen if a real global health pandemic called a 'natures time-out' to energy investment during the liminal space before sharp natural decline rates in oil and natural gas begin to accelerate? Travel to malls, restaurants, vacations etc. would be curtailed so demand would drop. Storage is nearly at capacity for oil, so the reduction in demand (since markets are always in equilibrium, would drop. The generation of economists that are conditioned to respond to price signals would then waste even more time in a)reducing cultural conspicuous consumption and b)increasing infrastructure for harnessing renewable ecosystem flows. The only hoarding that might occur would be by those countries who recognize 'the Prize' by buying geographically vital energy assets in the ground.

On another resource perspective, I am sure there are some out there, aware of our 300% increase in global population since the wide scale use of fossil fuels began 200+ years ago, that are secretly waving little "Go H1N1" banners in the privacy of their homes. Natural disasters somehow have immunity from cultural conformity and political correctness. Fewer people means more resources for the future, and less primary productivity taken from that which comprises the planet's biodiversity.

A quote from yesterday's Drumbeat

We now have the capability of incredible war; would you like more murder, more famine, more accidents? Well, here we can see the human dilemma-everything we regard as good makes the population problem worse, everything we regard as bad helps solve the problem. There is a dilemma if ever there was one. - Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy

I have no idea whether this flu strain will be a big deal or have little to no impact. But our energy future is now on extremely fragile footing, for the many reasons discussed on this site.

Here are a few general discussion questions for the Campfire:

1. What impact would a global pandemic in 2009 or 2010 have on our future energy landscape?

2. Would such a pandemic accelerate a movement towards relocalization and away from globalization?

3. Would a global pandemic have any silver linings, either in fact, or in raising awareness of how fragile a just-in-time food/energy/water system is?

4. As with anything uncontrollable (and with many things that are), there will likely be some unintended consequences from public/official response to a virulent flu strain. Any insights?

Additional thoughts, comments, links, are welcome.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/moncktons-de

Our favorite contrarian, the potty peer Christopher Monckton has been indulging in a little aristocratic artifice again. Not one to be constrained by mere facts or observable reality, he has launched a sally against Andy Revkin for reporting the shocking news that past industry disinformation campaigns were not sincere explorations of the true uncertainties in climate science.

The letter he has written to the NY Times public editor, with its liberal sprinkling of his usual pomposity, has at its heart the following graph:

Among other issues, it is quite amusing that Monckton apparently thinks that;

• trends from January 2002 are relevant to a complaint about a story discussing a 1995 report,


• someone might be fooled by the cherry-picked January 2002 start date,


• no-one would notice that he has just made up the IPCC projection curves

The last is even more amusing because he was caught out making stuff up on a slightly different figure just a few weeks ago.

To see the extent of this chicanery, one needs only plot the actual IPCC projections against the observations. This can be done a number of ways, firstly, plotting the observational data and the models used by IPCC with a common baseline of 1980-1999 temperatures (as done in the 2007 report) (Note that the model output is for the annual mean, monthly variance would be larger):

These show clearly that 2002-2009 is way too short a period for the trends to be meaningful and that Monckton's estimate of what the IPCC projects for the current period is woefully wrong. Not just wrong, fake.

Even if one assumes that the baseline should be the year 2002 making no allowance for internal variability (which makes no sense whatsoever), you would get the following graph:

- still nothing like Monckton showed. Instead, he appears to have derived his 'projections' by drawing a line from 2002 to a selection of real projections in 2100 and ignoring the fact that the actual projections accelerate as time goes on, and thus strongly over-estimating the projected changes that are expected now (see here).

Lest this be thought a mere aberration or a slip of his quill, it turns out he has previously faked the data on projections of CO₂ as well. This graph is from a recent presentation of his, compared to the actual projections:

How can this be described except as fake?

Apart from this nonsense, is there anything to Monckton's complaint about Revkin's story? Sadly no. Once one cuts out the paranoid hints about dark conspiracies between "prejudiced campaigners", Al Gore and the New York Times editors, the only point he appear to make is that this passage from the scientific advice somehow redeems the industry lobbyists who ignored it:

The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential for a human impact on climate is based on well-established scientific fact, and should not be denied. While, in theory, human activities have the potential to result in net cooling, a concern about 25 years ago, the current balance between greenhouse gas emissions and the emissions of particulates and particulate-formers is such that essentially all of today’s concern is about net warming. However, as will be discussed below, it is still not possible to accurately predict the magnitude (if any), timing or impact of climate change as a result of the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. Also, because of the complex, possibly chaotic, nature of the climate system, it may never be possible to accurately predict future climate or to estimate the impact of increased greenhouse gas concentrations.

This is a curious claim, since the passage is pretty much mainstream. For instance, in the IPCC Second Assessment Report (1995) (p528):

Complex systems often allow deterministic predictability of some characteristics … yet do not permit skilful forecasts of other phenomena …

or even more clearly in IPCC TAR (2001):

In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states….

Much more central to the point Revkin was making was the deletion of the sections dealing with how weak the standard contrarian arguments were - arguments that GCC publications continued to use for years afterward (and indeed arguments that Monckton is still using) (see this amendment to the original story).

Monckton's ironic piece de resistance though is the fact that he entitled his letter "Deliberate Misrepresentation" - and this is possibly the only true statement in it.

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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/welcome-to-t

As imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we've naturally been delighted that a number of sites have sprung up over the past few years with missions complementary to our own focussing on the science of climate change. Last year, we were introduced to "climate ethics", whose mission it is to focus on the ethical dimensions of climate change. Now there is "RealClimateEconomics", whose aim it is to focus on the economic considerations surrounding climate change. Neither this site nor climateethics.org has any formal relationship with RealClimate, despite the similarity in name. We do nonetheless welcome them to the fray. We are pleased to add them to our blogroll, which we hope has become a useful resource for those wishing to explore the broader discourse on climate change that lies beyond the science.

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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/hit-the-brak

There is a climate splash in Nature this week, including a cover showing a tera-tonne weight, presumably meant to be made of carbon (could it be graphite?), dangling by a thread over the planet, and containing two new articles (Allen et al and Meinshausen et al), a "News & Views" piece written by two of us, and a couple commentaries urging us to “prepare to adapt to at least 4° C” and to think about what the worst case scenario (at 1000 ppm CO2) might look like.

At the heart of it are the two papers which calculate the odds of exceeding a predefined threshold of 2°C as a function of CO₂ emissions. Both find that the most directly relevant quantity is the total amount of CO₂ ultimately released, rather than a target atmospheric CO₂ concentration or emission rate. This is an extremely useful result, giving us a clear statement of how our policy goals should be framed. We have a total emission quota; if we keep going now, we will have to cut back more quickly later.

There is uncertainty in the climate sensitivity of the Earth and in the response of the carbon cycle, and the papers are extremely useful in the way that they propagate these uncertainties to the probabilities of different amounts of warming. Just looking at the median model results, many people conclude that a moderately optimistic but not terribly aggressive scenario such as IPCC B1 would avoid 2°C warming relative to pre-industrial. But when you take into account the uncertainty, you find that there is a disturbingly high likelihood (roughly even odds) that it won't.

Both papers come to the same broad conclusion, summarized in our figure, that unless humankind puts on the brakes very quickly and aggressively (i.e. global reductions of 80% by 2050), we face a high probability of driving climate beyond a 2°C threshold taken by both studies as a “danger limit”. Comparing the two papers is obscured by the different units; mass of carbon versus mass of CO₂ (moles, anyone? Is there a chemist in the house?). But chugging through the math, we find the papers to be broadly consistent. Both papers conclude that humankind is already about half-way toward releasing enough carbon to probably reach 2°C, and that most of the fossil fuel carbon (the coal, in particular) will have to remain in the ground.

We feel compelled to note that even a "moderate" warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture. Given the drought that already afflicts Australia, the crumbling of the sea ice in the Arctic, and the increasing storm damage after only 0.8°C of warming so far, calling 2°C a danger limit seems to us pretty cavalier.

Also, there are dangers to CO₂ emission other than the peak, such as the long tail of the CO₂ perturbation which will dominate the ultimate sea level response, and the acidification of the ocean. A building may be safe from earthquakes but if it is susceptible to fires it is still considered unsafe.

The sorts of emission cuts that are required are technologically feasible, if we were to build wind farms instead of coal plants, an integrated regional or global electrical power grid, and undertake a crash program in energy efficiency. But getting everybody to agree to this is the discouraging part. The commentary by Parry et al advises us to prepare to adapt to climate changes of at least 4°C, even though they recognize that it may not be possible to buy our way out of most of the damage (to natural systems, for example, including the irreversible loss of many plant and animal species). Anyway, how does one "adapt" to a train wreck? There is also the fairness issue, in that the beneficiaries of fossil energy (rich countries today) are not the ones who pay the costs (less-rich countries decades from now). We wonder why we were not advised to prepare to adapt to crash curtailing CO₂ emissions, which sounds to us considerably less frightening.

p.s. For our German-speaking readers: Stefan's commentary on the KlimaLounge blog.

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Military embraces green energy

The Department of Defense is the single largest energy consumer in the United States. Last year it bought nearly 4 billion gallons of jet fuel, 220 million gallons of diesel and 73 million gallons of gasoline, said Brian Lally, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment.

American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are using more fuel each day than in any other war in U.S. history. When oil prices spiked last summer, the Defense Department's energy tab shot up from about $13 billion per year in 2006 and 2007 to $20 billion in 2008. The Army alone had to make up a half- billion-dollar shortfall in its energy budget, said Keith Eastin, assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment.

"That was, I think, a grand wake-up call that we somehow had to get a handle on what is loosely called energy security," Eastin said.

Gulf NOCs eye low construction costs to build new refineries

Three national oil companies (NOCs) in the Gulf are trying to use the prevailing low construction costs to build new refineries, according to industry insiders.

Construction projects of three refineries that had been put on the backburner during the real estate boom have been revived in the past week.

Saudi Arabia most likely to host Gulf central bank

DUBAI - While the race will be tight, Gulf Arab leaders meeting this week are most likely to choose Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest economy, as the headquarters of their common central bank, a Reuters’ poll showed on Sunday.

The world’s top oil exporter will face tough competition from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which were neck-and-neck in the second and third spot in the poll of 21 economists.

After the Bubble

With a massive restructuring of the U.S. auto industry under way, there is an important point to consider: Just how many cars can Americans be expected to buy in a post-bubble economy?

Invoking the Sputnik Era, Obama Vows Record Outlays for Research

Mr. Obama made clear that a new burst of advances in energy technology, medicine and other important arenas would not come from money alone, but required scientists to get out of their laboratories and find ways to inspire young people “to create, build and invent — to be makers of things, not just consumers of things.”

US families rely on handouts in world's richest country

Roach says that while some residents have been left in a desperate situation by the local lumber industry shedding jobs, most of those forced on to food stamps and other welfare are still in employment.

"I blame everything on the price of gasoline. When it went up to $4 a gallon 18 months ago it affected everybody. It forced up the cost of food and utilities. People were working all day and they still weren't earning enough to pay all the bills," he said.

"Food prices you can combat a bit because people can grow their own gardens. They can kill deer, fox. You can eat 'coon. But gasoline affects everybody. They just can't make it."

Russia to build floating Arctic nuclear stations

Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists.

A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.

The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years.

BG price protection combats ‘gas glut’

This is not a good time to be in the gas business. Rising supplies from new projects coming on stream have met faltering demand from businesses battered by the global recession, creating a “gas glut”. While the price of oil has risen this year, the price of gas has continued to decline. This year the benchmark gas price has dropped about 40 percent in the US and 51 percent in the UK. Yet BG Group, the exploration and production company spun out of the old British Gas, is coping well under the pressure.

Brazil will use more natural gas

Brazil plans to more than double the amount of natural gas it uses to generate electricity and will increase Bolivian imports to help meet demand, said Maria das Gracas Foster, energy chief at Petrobras.

Culture change key to growth: Shell chief

When Jeroen van der Veer looks back on his five years as chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, he reaches for a phrase from John F Kennedy. One of his priorities, he says, was to change the culture, so Shell employees thought less about themselves, and more about “what you can do for the company”.

In the fevered atmosphere of the company in 2004, after it was revealed that its oil and gas reserves had been misreported for several years, that culture change was badly needed. The incentives for managers and staff had to be put straight. “If you do good for the company, you make progress in the company or you get more salary,” van der Veer says now. It is an approach that is characteristic of his management style.

Schlumberger has hope for Iraq: But energy giant doesn't see a quick comeback in North America

Schlumberger cast further doubt on the prospect of a swift recovery for the oil and gas business in North America, saying it doesn't expect a rebound until at least next year.

"We do not see any significant recovery in North American gas drilling before 2010," Chairman and CEO Andrew Gould said, citing continued weakness in commodity prices and reduced exploration and drilling spending by oil companies.

Parl. says Iraq's water share condition for signing pact with Turkey

(MENAFN - Aswat Al-Iraq) An Iraqi parliamentarian on Saturday said that the Parliament had stressed the addition of an article about Iraq's share of water to the Iraqi-Turkish agreement as a condition for signing the pact.

Kuwait Central Bank fearful of Moody's downgrade

Kuwait's central bank has urged its leaders to bring in a better political climate and measures to weather the financial crisis, after Moody's said it may downgrade the country's sovereign rating.

Saudi crown prince's surgery raises questions

(CNN) -- Saudi Arabia's crown prince was convalescing Saturday in Morocco where he arrived this week after surgery for an undisclosed illness in New York City, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said.

New Hawaii petroleum tax hike likely to raise gas prices

Looking for money to finance renewable energy and food security, state lawmakers have agreed to increase a per barrel tax on petroleum products sold by distributors, which could cost consumers a few cents more per gallon of gasoline but eventually help wean the state off fossil fuel.

The barrel tax, which is now collected to help the state respond to oil spills, would increase from 5 cents per barrel product to $1.05. The $1 hike could generate $31 million a year to help the state explore alternative energy and protect local agriculture.

Russia Digs In Alongside Breakaway Territories

MOSCOW — Russian border guards on Saturday began taking up long-term positions along the boundaries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, an arrangement that will probably mean sustained tension in the two breakaway Georgian territories.

Generating Energy From the Deep

LOCKHEED MARTIN is best known for building stealth fighters, satellites and other military equipment. But since late 2006 the company has taken on a different kind of enterprise — generating renewable power from the ocean.

An ill wind blows away renewables optimism

Miliband's bubble was burst on Tuesday morning, when an announcement issued from Aarhus on the east coast of Denmark reached his desk. Danish wind energy giant Vestas was about to deal a hefty blow to his vision of building thousands of jobs and new businesses around the "low carbon" economy. Vestas chief executive Ditlev Engel revealed the company was axing 625 jobs in Britain and planned to close its manufacturing plant on the Isle of Wight.

Although the City has become almost blasé about such announcements during the recession, the surprise statement knocked policymakers sideways as it meant jobs were being lost in an industry which had been viewed as Britain's next great industrial hope.

Here Comes the Sun. Right?

Despite the recession, a German solar company sees the United States as a promising market.

Laser quest: The scientist with a planet-saving plan straight out of Spider-Man

Clean energy forever. That, in a glorious theoretical nutshell, is what nuclear fusion – the reaction that gives stars and hydrogen bombs their immense power – could deliver. The urgency of the climate-change debate and the renewed impetus to tackle the 21st century's glaring energy problems have put fusion back on the agenda... and, thanks to key contributions from the British-trained scientist Dr Brian MacGowan, the highly volatile process may be harnessed to provide us with a viable source of green electricity sooner than previously expected.

Briefing: Electric vehicles

Just how realistic is Irish politicians' target of having 350,000 plug-in vehicles on our roads by 2020?

Brookhaven Finds Its Star on the Rise

The 5,300-acre laboratory, established in 1947 on the grounds of a former Army base called Camp Upton, has moved past its local villain status of a decade ago. It has never been a scientific slouch — six Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work done at the lab — but now its star is clearly on the rise.

In late March, Energy Secretary Steven Chu selected the lab as the site to announce how $1.2 billion in stimulus funds would be spent at the country’s 10 national laboratories, with Brookhaven receiving a $184.3 million chunk.

Bringing Efficiency to the Infrastructure

IN the mid-1990s, the Internet took off because its technological time had come. Years of steady progress in developing more powerful and less expensive computers, Web software and faster communications links finally came together.

A similar pattern is emerging today, experts say, for what is being called smart infrastructure — more efficient and environmentally friendlier systems for managing, among other things, commuter traffic, food distribution, electric grids and waterways. This time, the crucial technological ingredients include low-cost sensors and clever software for analytics and visualization, as well as computing firepower.

At the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, a Pipe Leak Raises Concerns

Some experts worry that a threat to the safe operation of aging reactors across the country may lurk in underground pipes.

In a Senegalese Slum, a Building Material Both Primitive and Perilous

In an upside-down world where garbage is sought for and dumped among homes, not removed, “people have no alternatives; they are left to themselves; they can only count on themselves,” said Joseph Gaï Ramaka, a leading Senegalese filmmaker, who made a documentary about an incomplete government effort, the Plan Jaxaay, to build modern housing for people in vulnerable neighborhoods.

“These are people who are proud of being clean,” said Mr. Ramaka, who now lives in New Orleans. “When they have to buy garbage, it’s because they don’t have any choice. The garbage, at least, allows them to sleep with their feet out of the water, and in their own house.”

Australia: Green group calls for one child policy

AUSTRALIA should consider having a one-child policy to protect the planet, an environmental lobby group says.

Sustainable Population Australia says slashing the world's population is the only way to avoid "environmental suicide''.

National president Sandra Kanck wants Australia's population of almost 22 million reduced to seven million to tackle climate change.

Depopulate and die of boredom

If you believe that population growth will eventually lead to the collapse of our civilisation and planet, then the last millennium of human history must be very confusing. Over and over, we have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to innovate our way out of any theoretical "limit to growth".

So it takes a strange sort of intellectual hubris to imagine that the exact moment you are alive just happens to be the exact moment in human history that we cross the "too many people" line. In the 1970s, zero population growth advocates were pretty sure the end was nigh, but humanity has managed to barrel on for a few more decades. Anyway, few species have found flirting with extinction a particularly effective survival strategy.

Ethanol test for Obama on climate change, science

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's commitment to take on climate change and put science over politics is about to be tested as his administration faces a politically sensitive question about the widespread use of ethanol: Does it help or hurt the fight against global warming?

Proposed Federal Acid Rain and Mercury Control Act

A Central New York congressman, seeing an opportunity that may never come again, has introduced a bill requiring the most drastic cuts in U.S. history to the pollution responsible for acid rain.

Securing future harvests of farmers in dry areas

The world's dry areas – which cover 41% of the earth's land area, and are home to a quarter of global population – will be facing the brunt of Climate Change. This will lead to unprecedented challenges to food security particularly with the food and economic crises on top of evermore erratic weather patterns.

"But these challenges can be overcome if policy makers, researchers and development agencies work together, in genuine partnership" stressed Dr Mahmoud Solh, Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).

Thrifty Gardeners Live Lightly on the Land

Water is precious and expensive. In California, moving water from its source to where it’s needed requires the largest energy expenditure in the state! The energy involved in pumping and distributing water can also be a significant source of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The less water we lavish on our gardens and lawns the better for all.

Carbon trading could hurt coal industry

LIVELY GROVE -- When the Prairie State Energy Campus cranks out its first kilowatt hour of electricity -- which is scheduled for two years from now -- it could end up costing ratepayers way more than anyone had predicted.

That's because of recent efforts by the Obama White House and Democrats in Congress to begin the regulation of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. More than half the world's industrial CO2 comes from coal power plants.

Big business attacks plan to cut carbon emissions

NEXT YEAR Tesco will be forced to pay £40m to the government to comply with a new – and little known – regulation designed to reduce carbon emissions through energy efficiency.

The supermarket is just one of 5,000 firms that will be subject to the government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which takes effect from April 2010.

Buildings face carbon clean-up

The internal combustion engine. The jumbo jet. The desktop computer. In the fight against climate change, they have all been targeted by lawmakers and eco-warriors alike.

Yet the biggest baddies of them all, buildings, have so far slipped under the radar. That could be about to change. According to research from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the world’s houses and office buildings consume 40% of global energy and emit the same proportion of gases, making them the single biggest source of pollution in the world. Transport, at 30%, is the next biggest culprit.

Yet unlike the motor sector, where stringent regulations dictate what comes out of the exhaust pipe, no similar system exists for buildings.

Climate Change: How The '2 Degrees Celsius Target' Can Be Reached

ScienceDaily — If CO2 emissions are halved by 2050 compared to 1990, global warming can be stabilised below two degrees. This is shown by two studies by a co-operation of German, Swiss and British researchers in the journal Nature.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/LUXTlM5heSo/5347

The following is a guest essay on the role of media in expanding awareness of Peak Oil related issues by Kurt Cobb. Kurt speaks and writes frequently on energy and the environment and is featured on many sites including Energy Bulletin and EV World. His personal weblog is Resource Insights.

If you remember one thing about mass communication, remember this: Effective mass communication is sloganeering. Unfortunately, this truism makes mass communication a poor fit for a complex issue such as peak oil.

The main assumption behind much of the communication alerting people to the risks associated with world peak oil production is as follows: If people just understood the facts, they would take appropriate action. There are two problems with this assumption. First, facts by themselves do not explain their implications, their importance or their connections with other facts. Second, there are countless examples of human societies and individuals ignoring ample warnings of danger.

My experience is that many more people are now aware of the peak oil problem than just two years ago. Skyrocketing oil prices last year helped to propel the issue into mainstream publications and broadcasts. But even before the historic price rise, most people I met acknowledged that society's oil dependence is a problem. Most of them also shared a belief that we have all the necessary solutions to that problem.

Therein lies a knotty obstacle. To convince such people that something other than benign neglect is necessary to address oil dependence, one needs not only to explain peak oil (which is hard enough to do), but also to debunk the myriad silver bullets that are currently on offer: ethanol, hydrogen, compressed natural gas, and unconventional sources of oil such as tar sands and oil shale. It is one thing to go through this process with a friend, family member, colleague or even a small group gathered to hear your case. It is quite another to attempt it with a mass audience.

It is certainly an appropriate strategy to take up an issue as complicated as peak oil with opinion leaders and policymakers. Convincing these groups of the risks of peak oil can in theory have far more impact than convincing well-meaning citizens who may not necessarily be networked with elites in society or with policymakers. For those who have tried this avenue, if they've gotten any favorable response at all, they have probably heard something that goes like this: "Yes, I understand how serious the problem is. But I can't even go near this issue until the public is better informed and ready to accept the difficult task of addressing it." Like the current White House resident, they are saying, "Make me do it!"

Which brings us back to the conundrum of peak oil and mass communication. Peak oil isn't one problem; it is a set of highly interdependent issues including oil demand, technological change, oil and natural gas exploration and infrastructure investment, consumer preferences, alternative energy, unconventional oil resources, energy policy, climate change policy, geopolitics and so many others. Sometimes peak oil is a stand-in for ideas about limits to growth, population and sustainability. Not everyone who utters the words peak oil has the same concepts and concerns in mind. So, it is no wonder that there is no unified message when it comes to peak oil.

And, even if there were agreement that peak oil is a serious problem, there would probably be no agreement on what needs to be done about it. For some, the marketplace will bring about the necessary energy transition, however tumultuous that may be. For others, massive government intervention in the form of subsidies and taxes will be necessary to move the marketplace in the right direction quickly enough. For yet others, the only hope is rapid and extreme energy conservation combined with the relocalization of production and commerce. These three general approaches in the order I've presented them imply increasingly urgent timelines. For some the peak oil issue is one that can be addressed over several decades. For others our response must be immediate and thoroughgoing to avoid extreme hardship for world society or at least to lessen that hardship.

With no agreement about the nature of the peak oil problem and no agreement on a set of responses and a timeline for those responses, there seems little hope for convincing the broader public that peak oil is a problem which requires urgent attention. If you ask someone whether they want to contribute money to help find a cure for breast cancer, that person will either accept or decline your request. He or she will not argue with you about whether breast cancer is a problem. Peak oil, however, does not fit into a category that people readily classify as a problem such as disease.

Another not inconsiderable impediment is that there is no peak oil study or advocacy organization with the resources to mount a widespread and sustained mass media campaign. One could say that the cornucopian lobby has so far fielded only sporadic efforts at a direct rebuttal of the peak oil argument. But this lobby has the upper hand because the cornucopian idea is embedded in nearly every advertising and public relations message to which the public is now subjected. The cornucopian assumption that we have virtually limitless resources is constantly reinforced by these messages, and the mass consumer society would not exist without such messages.

Why is this ongoing campaign so effective? Because objective circumstances such as currently low oil prices and plentiful, cheap consumer goods as well as recent historical experience tell the public that no matter how bad the current downturn is, growth and prosperity will return.

There is, however, reason to believe that public receptiveness to the peak oil message can and will change. First, objective circumstances such as the high oil prices of last year have created a more favorable backdrop for the peak oil message. And, new spikes in the oil price--which many in the peak oil movement expect in the next few years--will further erode the public's confidence in pronouncements of plenty. Second, the number of people who are aware of peak oil is steadily growing. And, the number of those who can speak with some facility on the topic has vastly expanded. This is important because mass communication of the peak oil message can really only make people aware that there might be a problem and cause them to seek more information.

Third, the Internet has become a vast repository of information about peak oil and responses to it. Fortunately, mass media campaigns have proven quite effective at steering people to the Internet for more information. Fourth, public confidence in reports from governmental sources and financial firms (both of which often evince a cornucopian view on energy) has been severely eroded by the ongoing financial crisis. That means there is an opening for the peak oil argument from so-called "non-official" sources that may be seen now as more reliable than the government or Wall Street.

Still, there remains the problem of what to say. There are many successful approaches for addressing people one-on-one or in small groups. These are outlined extensively on several peak oil sites, so I won't detail them here. When it comes to mass communication, however, the single most important factor will be a unified message.

One possible solution to creating a unified message might be to bring together many of the prominent voices in the peak oil movement, taking care to create a group with a wide range of views. The group, with the help of some facilitators, would work to find a set of principles, statements of fact and suggested responses that all can agree on. Do they agree, for example, that increasing local food production is an important response? Do they agree that alternative energy sources should neither exacerbate global warming nor endanger food supplies? Do they agree that the expansion of passenger rail ought to be a priority? Once a consensus is reached, the group would issue a joint declaration that would serve as a messaging blueprint for the peak oil community.

Some will argue that such a document would be watered down to the point that it would evoke little response from the public. That is why it would be important for the organizers of such a meeting to set some minimum guidelines for participation. One guideline might be that only those who have publicly stated that peak oil is an urgent problem would be invited. Another might be that they agree that no single approach can solve the problem. This second criterion would weed out most of the hired lobbyists and think tank pundits who toil on behalf of narrow interest groups such as the coal and nuclear industries. The event could also be by invitation only to provide some assurance that participants meet the minimum criteria.

The joint declaration itself would probably generate little media coverage. But with such a consensus in hand, it might be possible to coordinate a common message strategy which the entire peak oil community could get behind. It might also be possible to raise funds specifically for mass media efforts which would most likely emphasize public relations--that is, placement of peak oil related stories in major media outlets--and perhaps some paid advertising in carefully targeted venues. A consortium of organizations might be assigned the task of implementing such a media strategy, or a separate entity funded by the consortium and/or wealthy donors might be created to carry out the plan.

The most important task of the entity charged with coordinating and executing any mass communication strategy will be to boil down the peak oil message into a few slogans and visual illustrations. That won't be easy. And, once that's done, having the discipline to repeat those slogans and spread those illustrations often and everywhere will be even harder. But with what's at stake, the peak oil movement must find that discipline or continue to limp along on the edges of the mainstream media and public consciousness.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/wduMQjD7Lwg/5361

Peak Oil: Global Oil Production’s Peaked, Analyst Says

Dust off those survivalist manuals and brush up on your dystopias: Peak oil is back.

Global production of petroleum peaked in the first quarter of last year, says analysts Raymond James, which “represents a paradigm shift of historic proportions. Unfortunately, mankind better get ready to live in a peak oil world because we believe the ‘peak’ is now behind us.”

Raymond James’s notes that non-OPEC oil production apparently peaked in the first quarter of 2007, and given precipitous falls in oil output from Russia to Mexico, there’s not much hope for a recovery. OPEC production—and thus global output—peaked a little later, in the first quarter of 2008, Raymond James says.

The contention rests on a simple argument: OPEC oil production actually fell even as oil prices were above $100 a barrel, a sign of the “tyranny of geology” that limits the easy production of ever-more crude.

Going green can cost too much green

Going green isn't easy, especially during a recession.

For two years, the city of Durango, Colo., bought electricity for all its government buildings from wind farms. The City Council ended that program this year, reverting to electricity derived from coal-burning plants and saving the cash-strapped city about $45,000.

"It's very hard for us to lay off an employee to justify green power," City Manager Ron LeBlanc said. "Those are the tradeoffs you have to face."

Across the country, government agencies are either cutting or shrinking programs that use or fund renewable energy projects. Green power — from wind farms, solar power or other renewable energy sources — remains more expensive than traditional power sources.

Time For A Trade-In

"We are on the cusp of a period of technical innovation like the automobile industry has never seen," says Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, the largest U.S. auto retailer. "There will be more change in the next five to 10 years than there was in the last 100."

The first victim of that rapid change may be the Prius-style hybrid.

U.S. sees continued stream of LNG cargoes

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States saw a steady supply of liquefied natural gas imports during the weekend and increased imports are expected in the coming days and weeks.

U.S. import terminals that sat largely idle during the winter are now seeing an uptick in cargoes of the super-cooled gas as demand elsewhere falls toward summer, leaving more cargoes for the United States to absorb.

Tupi oil is 'second independence for Brazil'

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called Friday for officials to finalise new oil laws giving the country a greater stake in recent oil finds, saying the legislation was urgently needed to guarantee Brazil's future.

"This is a second independence for Brazil," Lula said, commemorating the first crude oil pumped from the Tupi field off the country's southeast Atlantic coast.

Lula wants a working group he formed last year to complete work on proposals to change Brazil's concession-based oil law, said a Dow Jones Newswire report.

The president has pledged to use the newfound oil riches to ease Brazil's crushing poverty and improve the country's education system.

Saudi Stocks Surge to November High on Signs Recession Easing

(Bloomberg) -- Saudi shares climbed to the highest since November as Gulf markets gained on signs the global recession is easing and oil traded near a five-week high.

Power play: Metering tools slash energy costs

(Fortune Small Business) -- The minute a lightbulb burns out in your place of business, Don Howell can tell you about it. By e-mail, that is - the tall Virginian won't show up at your office door. His company, ADMMicro, installs power metering equipment that can tell when an air conditioning filter needs to be changed or whether a freezer door has been left open.

How the crisis is changing you

A new set of American values is emerging from the ashes of 600,000 layoffs a month, a lost decade in stocks, and the worst housing crash ever. These values may ring familiar to anyone who lived through the Great Depression. But for most of us it amounts to a large-scale makeover of the way we think about money and life.

We're not just cutting our bills, we're rejecting materialism. We're placing safety and intrinsic rewards like relationships and personal growth ahead of profit. We're embracing family and community and asking how we can help others, not just ourselves.

"We've hit a hard pendulum swing," says Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University in Houston. And he, along with many others, believes the changes in the nation's core values could last for decades.

Prosperity without Growth? - The transition to a sustainable economy

Prosperity Without Growth? says that the current global recession should be the occasion to forge a new economic system equipped to avoid the shocks and negative impacts associated with our reliance on growth. Ahead of the G20 Summit in London, the report calls on leaders to adopt a 12-step plan to make the transition to a fair, sustainable, low-carbon economy.

Chinese subsidies boost rural consumption

In an effort to get thrifty Chinese to spend more money, Beijing expanded a pilot programme to subsidise electronics purchases for farmers in February.

The government pays 13% of the retail price for designated models of refrigerators, washing machines, colour television sets, mobile phones and personal computers.

Official figures show rural electronics purchases surged by 70% in March from the previous month. The scheme is expected to run till 2012.

Altering Planes, and the Way They Fly, to Save Fuel

FOR the aviation industry, its fate inextricably linked to the price of oil, fuel conservation is more than environmentally sound — it’s a matter of survival. That is why, in research labs and in airline conference rooms, any measure is open for discussion if it reduces the use of fuel.

More riders, fewer buses

RENSSELAER — Even as the Capital District Transportation Authority posts another record-breaking year of ridership gains, it still plans to continue slicing bus service.

Ridership for the regional transit system grew by 11 percent in the fiscal year ended March 31, rising to nearly 15.2 million. That compares to an 8 percent increase the year before, to 13.8 million, which was the highest in at least 20 years.

Yet CDTA is poised to roll back another 10,600 hours of service on May 24 in the second of three phases planned this year. CDTA expects to reduce spending by some $2.2 million this year by cutting about 35,000 hours of service in all.

Saudi cuts oil drilling as demand slows

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia plans to release 15 oil rigs by the end of the year as it reduces drilling activity with slowing global demand, oil industry sources in the kingdom said on Monday.

"We feel we have huge extra capacity," said one. "Why do we need to drill?"

Industry 'disappointed' with Norway round

Norway's oil and gas industry said today the latest oil and gas licensing round was "disappointing" after the government accepted bids for only about a fifth of the offshore acreage sought by companies.

THOMAS HOMER-DIXON AND JULIO FRIEDMANN: Clean coal? Go underground, Alberta

Alberta appears to be in a box - an energy box - that constrains policy options in every direction. The province's wealth is critically tied to exploitation of its vast hydrocarbon resources. But faced with declining reserves of conventional oil and natural gas, it has been forced to turn increasingly to the tar sands, which pack a huge carbon punch. And in a warming world, carbon is seen as a menace. The strategy could severely crimp Alberta's ability to sell energy at home and abroad, even make it a pariah.

There is an alternative: coal.

It can be done but what is it we are doing?

"Oh Lord, make me carbon-neutral, but not yet.”

If St Augustine were in charge of UK energy policy, he might utter such a prayer. The sheer scale and cost of putting Britain on the path towards zero carbon is only beginning to become apparent.

Carolyn Baker: Review of A Presidential Energy Policy by Mike Ruppert

This is probably the most important book review I've ever written because A Presidential Energy Policy is unquestionably the most crucial book for anyone aware of the collapse of civilization, which is well underway, to read and understand. It is second only to Mike's first masterpiece, Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of The American Empire at The End of The Age of Oil (2004).

Population Growth And Its Dire Consequences For The USA (review of America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans, by Frosty Wooldridge)

Solving the problem is basic to our future. It will of course be solved, since Mother Nature has a way of balancing imbalance, but if left as at present, the balancing will continue harshly in places like Darfur, but also here at home. Solutions seem submerged at present in the effects of our pressing economic problem not the causes of which population growth is a primary contributor. We obviously need to curb our present runaway importation of legal and illegal immigrants, as well as increase our foreign aid for family planning, but this book gives all readers the facts, underling the urgency of our plight.

Pakistan: Village electrification through solar energy

BALOCHISTAN is rich in renewable energy (RE) resources and the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) has identified many RE projects in remote areas of the province.

Though the AEDB says it is all set to launch the identified projects, the federal government has not provided funds so far this year for the projects. In the long-term, solar thermal power plant is considered as an economical and cost-effective energy source, since there is no fuel cost.

Mexico's symptoms signal a wider malaise

The deepening crisis led, inevitably, to a search for scapegoats. Those deemed responsible for the toxic waste were identified and 16 were rounded up and taken to be beaten and harangued in the public square.

No, this is not what lies in store for those who presided over the decline and fall of the global banking industry but the fate of millers and bakers in Paris found guilty during the Great Famine of the early 14th century of adulterating flour with animal droppings. The French could stage a good demo even then.

The Parisian protests were not an isolated incident; they took place during the long disintegration of the early medieval economy, which started in the second half of the 13th century and culminated in the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century.

Responding to the triple crunch: Financial meltdown, climate change and dwindling energy supplies demand a newer world order

There is no sense of vision. The world faces not just the credit crunch, but a triple crunch – in financial meltdown, in energy supply and in intensifying climate change. The global peaking of oil is imminent, leading to a potentially cataclysmic rundown in supplies within perhaps 40 years, and of gas supplies within 100 years. Most scientists now believe that on present trends, global average temperatures will reach 3-4ºC higher than pre-industrial levels by 2100, twice the "safe" threshold, unleashing destruction of croplands, biodiversity and water supplies that could threaten the survival of a majority of the world's population. Yet the political response worldwide to these overwhelming challenges is glacial.

Shell, Hess, BP Profit From Storing Oil in Contango Trade

(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Hess Corp. are among oil companies whose first-quarter earnings were boosted by storing crude in tankers in anticipation of higher prices.

Since at least November, oil traders have benefited from the so-called contango market, where crude contracts for delivery in the future are more expensive than near-term supply.

Consolidated Edison Says New York Summer Power Prices Will Fall

(Bloomberg) -- Consolidated Edison Inc., owner of New York City’s utility, said customers will pay less for electricity this summer than last year after natural-gas prices declined.

The average New York City residential customer’s electricity bill may drop 7.6 percent to $96.27 a month, based on 300 kilowatt-hours used, said Michael Clendenin, a spokesman for the New York-based company, in a telephone interview.

Qatar to Export 500 Megawatts of Summer Power in Three Years

Bloomberg) -- Qatar, the world’s largest producer of liquefied natural gas, will be able to export 500 megawatts of electricity during the peak-demand summer months within three years, the nation’s energy minister said late yesterday.

The exports will be possible after the country more than doubles its electric-generation capacity in the next two years, Abdullah bin al-Attiyah said in an interview at a conference in the capital, Doha.

Australia: Government attacked over 'anti-rail' report

CLAIMS in a NSW Government report that buses are a better public transport option for Northern NSW than putting trains back on the Murwillumbah-to-Casino track or extending the rail line to Coolangatta have been slammed by NSW Greens.

How it works: Volt’s beauty is flexibility

The hybrid powertrain will act as the bridge between today's conventional gasoline-powered cars and trucks and tomorrow's fuel cell-powered transportation. This link is important for a couple of reasons - the use of electricity reduces the world's dependence on fossil fuels and it cuts emissions, most notably greenhouse gases. Depending upon the hybrid vehicle in question and the manner in which it is driven, potential fuel savings range between two and 3.25 litres per 100 kilometres. So, what's the hang-up? The problem is that the word "hybrid" is largely misunderstood.

Egypt Aims to Cut Wheat Deficit to 25 Percent by 2012

“Our wheat self-sufficiency is at 56 percent,” said Saad Nassar, an adviser to Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza, in an interview in Cairo today. “We are adopting several strategies to raise it to 75 percent in three years.”

Egypt, the Arab world’s most-populous nation, aims to improve wheat productivity per feddan (1.03 acres) to 24 ardabs from 18 ardabs now, he said. The country will increase the area devoted to wheat cultivation and reduce waste created during the delivery process, Nassar said. It will also end a rural practice of using wheat as feedstock for domestic animals and birds.

U.S. Energy Independence? Get Real, Oil Execs Say in Survey

(Bloomberg) -- Most oil-industry executives scoff at the idea that the U.S. can wean itself off foreign crude in the next couple of decades, a survey showed.

Only 16 percent of oil and natural-gas executives said that by 2030 the U.S. will be able to depend solely on its own energy supplies, according to a survey by KPMG LLP’s Global Energy Institute. A majority said it will be after 2015 before it’s “viable” to mass-produce alternative energy.

“The executives’ perceptions of energy independence mirror their views on the viability of alternatives in the near-term,” Bill Kimble, executive director of the institute, said in a statement. KPMG surveyed 382 U.S. financial executives in the oil and gas business last month.

OPEC’s Oil Output Fell 0.3% in April, Survey Shows

(Bloomberg) -- The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut oil output by 0.3 percent in April as Mideast members moved closer to production targets agreed to last year, a Bloomberg News survey showed.

Oil output averaged 27.58 million barrels a day last month, down 75,000 from March, according to the survey of oil companies, producers and analysts. The 11 OPEC members with quotas, all except Iraq, pumped 25.255 million barrels a day, 410,000 more than their target of 24.845 million.

Crude Oil Declines in New York After Reaching Five-Week High

Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell in New York, after closing at a five-week high at the end of last week.

Crude oil for June delivery fell 55 cents, or 1 percent, to $52.65 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 12:24 p.m. London time.

China to Shut Small Oil Refineries, Metal Smelters

(Bloomberg) -- China, the world’s second-biggest energy consumer, plans to shut more small-scale oil refineries and outdated metal smelters by 2011 to boost efficiency and lower pollution.

Amazon Crude: Ecuador's Fight With Chevron

(CBS) Chevron is America's third largest company behind ExxonMobil and WalMart. One way it became that big was by buying Texaco in 2001. Now, that purchase of Texaco has pulled Chevron into a titanic struggle in the Amazon.

The people who live in a remote region of Ecuador are suing Chevron, saying reckless oil exploration poisoned the most important rain forest on earth.

Borrowers to Sell $6.5 Billion of Company Bonds as Yields Fall

(Bloomberg) -- China Petroleum Corp., the country’s biggest oil refiner, and Bahrain are among borrowers with plans to sell bonds this week after yields on investment-grade debt fell to the lowest level in seven months relative to benchmark rates.

Plant managers face prison for 2002 oil spill

From January 2001 to June 2002, however, employees routinely bypassed the facility’s treatment system in order to discharge nearly 13 million gallons of untreated liquid waste directly into the sanitary sewer system.

Additional evidence showed that the company’s management staff took steps to conceal the lack of treatment from regulatory officials by making false statements and by tampering with legally required compliance samples.

Federal officials were tipped off when nearly 70,000 gallons of used industrial oil was dumped into a Dearborn storm sewer in April 2002. From there, it flowed into the Rouge River, the Detroit River and Lake Erie.

The dumping affected 17 miles of shoreline and cost more than $4 million to clean up.

U.S. students try life on Qatar campuses

Qatar — a tiny, oil-rich Persian Gulf nation — is offering substantial financial aid to most foreign students who need it — often chopping tuition to a quarter of what it costs at home, according to the government.

Qatar has struggled to diversify its economy away from oil and gas revenue. It sees the university sponsorships as a way to build its academic credentials — locals also attend classes — and bolster its workforce. The government offers foreign students the option of repaying each year of study with a year of work in Qatar.

Traffic set to slow as stimulus gears up

Drivers across the country will have to contend with far more roadwork — and all the frustration that goes with it — as states prepare to launch a spate of new highway projects this summer. The work is part of President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package and is meant to create jobs by repairing roads and bridges.

"People will see more construction. There's no question about it," says Brian Blanchard, the chief engineer for Florida's Department of Transportation. That work will begin at the same time more cars will likely be vying to squeeze onto the roads, because gas prices are expected to be lower this summer than they were last year, AAA spokesman Troy Green says.

Food banks see more who need and more who give

The recession has caused more people to seek help at food banks, but it's also prompted an outpouring of generosity.

"We're up in terms of food and funds," says Ross Fraser, spokesman for Feeding America, the nation's largest network of food banks. He says food donations are up 20% and cash donations are up 46% from a year earlier.

Vacant foreclosed homes spawn blight, crime

Officer Mark Castillo pulled up to a vacant foreclosure near International Boulevard that was surrounded by mounds of garbage. After checking on the house, he went to the backyard and grasped the boards nailed in front of the garage door. The door readily opened, and he recoiled from the stench of urine and filth. Inside, an elderly man huddled on a makeshift bed surrounded by fast-food wrappers, matches and old clothes.

"I know I can't be here," the man, Alfonso Granera, 71, told Castillo. He agreed to meet the officer in a couple of hours for a ride to a shelter.

"These places quickly become a breeding ground for all kinds of crime," Castillo said, pointing out the crawl spaces under the house, which he said criminals use for illegal stashes. "Drug crews run a corner, they use vacant properties to hide drugs and weapons."

Seniors at home in co-housing

Annie Russell lives alone but not in solitude.

While she was laid up for almost nine months by an injured knee, neighbors checked in on her regularly. They brought her ice packs, fetched water and did her grocery shopping.

Twice a week year-round, everyone in Russell's community is assured dinner with friends in the large common house of Silver Sage Village in Boulder, Colo. It's a potluck of sorts. Residents can cook the meal together in a communal gourmet kitchen.

"If somebody just wants a place to live and doesn't want to commune with their neighbors, this is not for them," says Russell, 68.

Projects such as Silver Sage are called co-housing. European-inspired housing built around a common area and a social compact that all residents agree to, co-housing has existed on a small scale in the USA for years. Now, the concept is coming to senior housing, a trend supported by advocates who favor independent living for the old.

BLM to get $300 million for stimulus projects

LAS VEGAS – The Interior Department is sending more than $300 million in federal stimulus money to the Bureau of Land Management to update its facilities and jump-start renewable energy projects across the country, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Saturday.

China triples wind power capacity goal: report

BEIJING (AFP) – China has more than tripled its target for wind power capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2020, likely making it the world's fastest growing market for wind energy technology, state press said.

China is aiming for an annual wind power growth rate of 20 percent for the foreseeable future, Feng Junshi, an official with the National Energy Administration, told a Beijing conference, according to the China Daily.

ADB head: Asia must tackle poverty, climate change

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- Asia must do more to cut poverty and take the lead in fighting global warming, the Asian Development Bank president said Monday, as the region emerges from the economic crisis with more clout on the world stage.

The global turmoil suggests the era of rich Western nations having unlimited appetite for Asia's exports "has passed," Haruhiko Kuroda told the bank's annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia. That puts the onus on the region's governments to boost their own domestic economies, he said.

Australia Delays Carbon Trading Because of Economy

(Bloomberg) -- Australia delayed plans to trade carbon-dioxide emissions by a year to 2011, blaming the economy, while remaining open to reducing greenhouse gases under an international agreement.

The decision was made amid signs the proposal will detract from growth as the nation’s economy heads into its first recession for 17 years.

Bolivia's Chacaltaya glacier is gone: Bolivia's Chacaltaya, A Tourist Favorite, Has Melted Away

CHACALTAYA, Bolivia -- If anyone needs a reminder of the on-the-ground impacts of global climate change, come to the Andes mountains in Bolivia. At 17,388 feet above sea level, Chacaltaya, an 18,000 year-old glacier that delighted thousands of visitors for decades, is gone, completely melted away as of some sad, undetermined moment early this year.

''Chacaltaya has disappeared. It no longer exists,'' said Dr. Edson Ramirez, head of an international team of scientists that has studied the glacier since 1991.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/xFK0PiwmWtE/5356

On April 27/28, 2009 the Europe Forum Lucerne organized a workshop entitled Energy - A Conflict Area: Trends and Horizons.

In the tradition of a townhouse meeting, the Swiss public was invited to Lucerne to listen to an impressive number of high-caliber politicians, scientists, and journalists discussing issues of energy security that Switzerland and the world will be facing in the coming years.

The author of this report attended the conference and wishes to report to the readers of The Oil Drum what he heard at the meeting … and also what he didn't hear.

It is certainly a laudable goal to get the public involved in discussions concerning energy security issues as these undoubtedly affect all of us directly. We need to be informed in order to be able to contribute to the solution of the problems facing us and in order to reach the best decisions for ourselves.

Yet this conference once again missed an opportunity to inform in an unbiased way. The discussions were dominated by political interest groups, and the people attending the meeting were sent home with assurances that there is nothing to be worried about. We were told that we still have oil and gas for decades to come.

The conference had two separate parts: a public discussion held on Monday evening, followed by a symposium that took place all day Tuesday.

The public discussion featured presentations by three high-ranking politicians. First, we heard from Moritz Leuenberger, the Swiss minister (Federal councilor) responsible for energy and the environment. For 40 minutes, he presented his views on energy policy challenges for Swiss politics and the economy.

He told us that he often needs to make difficult decisions, because energy security considerations naturally lead to conflicts of interest. The Swiss public demands clean energy. The people are willing to pay more for energy that protects the climate. Yet, industry demands cheap energy in order to keep Switzerland competitive in the international markets. Electricity produced from hydro power plants is clean, but additional reservoir lakes may impact the local ecology. Electricity produced from nuclear power plants generates less greenhouse gases than electricity produced from fossil fuels, but in return poses a potential security risk and leaves nuclear waste behind that we don't know yet how to dispose of safely. Hence climate and environment protection are often in conflict with each other.

Most nations have separate ministries of energy and the environment. Here in Switzerland, both tasks are within the responsibility of the same minister, which means that he gets bombarded from all sides with demands and requests that are impossible to reconcile. Yet, it is very clear for him that all sides must be heard and all concerns must be taken into consideration, because if we base our decisions on economic considerations alone, our energy situation will end up in the same mess that the financial markets are currently in.

He told us that the Swiss electric grid is fully integrated into the European grid. We trade electricity back and forth, and consequently, energy security decisions must be reached in concert with our neighbors. Switzerland needs to coordinate its energy policies with those of the other European countries. Separate and incompatible energy regulations would be hardly practical.

He told us furthermore that he is aware of the dwindling fossil fuel resources. This will lead to an energy gap here in Switzerland in the coming years. He also mentioned that fossil fuels are not the only resources that are in short supply. In particular, he mentioned drinking water as another precious resource that is challenged in many regions of our globe by our growing world population. Dwindling resources can lead to resource wars, and Switzerland must be prepared to offer its good services to the world to help mitigate and resolve such conflicts.

He recognized that Switzerland has lost ground in recent years in comparison with our neighbors in the development of alternate sources of energy, such as solar and wind energy. New government incentives are needed to close this gap.

Leuenberger came across as sincere, informed, and engaged. He certainly didn't play any games with the audience. He told us what he thinks needs to be done, and he did so in clear and unambiguous terms. I liked his presentation a lot. It left me with the conviction that our energy ministry is in good hands.

The second speaker was Michael Reiterer, EU Ambassador to Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein. Reiterer is of Austrian origin. The topic of his talk concerned the security of European energy supply torn between domestic, foreign, and climate protection policies.

Reiterer is more of an economist than an energy specialist. Consequently, his remarks were a bit less pointed than Leuenberger's comments. Reiterer reminded the audience of the recent problems with gas supplies from Russia through the Ukraine. He told us that enhanced energy security for Europe cannot be achieved except by strong cooperation among the European nations. Enhanced energy security requires additional investments into diversification of energy suppliers and supply routes that all European nations need to finance together.

He pointed out the intimate relationship between energy consumption on the one hand and greenhouse gas emissions on the other. He is a strong advocate of the international trade of CO₂ emission certificates. It is more cost-effective, according to Reiterer, to invest in measures for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in developing nations than here in Europe.

He expressed his conviction that the U.N. Climate Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009 may offer a very last chance to control and limit the effects of global warming.

The third and final speaker was Wolfgang Clement, a former German minister of economy and labor. He offered some reflections on German energy policy.

Clement reminded us of the strong links between greenhouse gas emissions on the one hand and the state of the general economy on the other. He told us that, if the current economic downturn here in Europe continues, we won't have any difficulty meeting our commitments to reducing our CO₂ emissions. De-industrialization will solve our climate problem. Yet, this is not a solution to strive for. Several large developing nations are only now undergoing their own industrial revolution, and consequently, they will emit more greenhouse gases in the future.

He told us that, whatever Europe does in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is effectively irrelevant as long as we don't get China and India on board as well, because any European reduction efforts will be more than compensated for by increased emissions from the rapidly developing industries of these countries.

Clement is a strong advocate of deregulation. He does not believe in regulating greenhouse gas emissions at all. His recipe would be to get all nations to invest in research in the development of cleaner technologies. He believes that such measures have a much more realistic chance of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the future than any regulatory efforts that we may devise.

In good Swiss tradition, we heard from three different high-ranked politicians from three different European countries, one from the political left, one from the center, and one from the political right. Each of them reiterated his political dogma, emphasizing those aspects of the problem that support his views while leaving out everything else.

Neither of them cared to tell the audience what the true nature of the problem is that we are facing; neither of them bothered to tell us what the potential consequences of not solving this problem are; and neither of them offered a comprehensive view of how this problem might be tackled. Hence the attendees were offered bits and pieces of information, but no help was forthcoming as to what they should do with that information.

In order to bridge the gap between the different points of view, the evening ended with a panel discussion moderated by Erich Gysling, one of our most seasoned Swiss journalists. Gysling invited Reiterer and Clement to join him on the podium, but also Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Rolf Schweiger, a Swiss politician, and Raphael Vermeir, an exponent of the oil industry.

Gysling was provocative, as he should be. He dared to utter the P-word. He mentioned peak oil. None of his guests wanted to talk to him about peak oil. They all were evasive and simply reiterated their own introductory statements. Finally, Gysling asked Vermeir directly, how long he thought that gas would still last. Vermeir was visibly uncomfortable answering that question, but when cornered, he said what he was supposed to say: that we still have gas for many decades to come. Yet he didn't look at the audience while saying it. He looked down at the floor. He is clearly not an experienced liar which makes him a likable chap.

Gysling then talked about the dependence of our private transportation system on imported fossil fuels. He asked Schweiger why he wasn't in favor of supporting the production of electric cars here in Switzerland. A prototype of such a car had been developed recently at ETH Zurich. Schweiger didn't want to answer that question either. He only laughed.

Then Gysling's allotted time was up, and this brought the evening to a close. I hoped that the second day would bring a more specific and direct discussion of the true nature of the beast. I hoped that someone would give it a name and that we might talk about the consequences of not addressing the daunting problems that lie ahead of us in a timely manner. I was to be disappointed.

The morning of the second day was placed under the heading of global energy shortage.

First we heard from Fatih Birol, who told us about the energy gap: global scenarios. Birol showed us a graph from the 2008 World Energy Outlook:

The dark blue curve is what we are used to seeing here at The Oil Drum. It is the typical Hubbert scenario of declining oil production after the peak. The top of the yellow curve is what we need. This is the amount of oil that the growing world population under the assumption of growing living standards in the developing countries demands. As there is a gap between these two curves, that gap must somehow be filled … and fill it IEA does, somehow.

IEA assumes that all of the known but not yet developed oil reserves will be developed simultaneously in the coming years. This generates the clear blue curve on top of the dark blue curve. This assumption may not be totally realistic as there is a reason why this oil hasn't been produced in the past. It is too expensive to produce. It cannot be produced economically at current crude prices. Yet when we no longer have enough oil to satisfy current demand, the crude price will rise, and then, these deposits may indeed become producible.

Unfortunately, oil will still be starting to decline after just a few more years, maybe around 2013 or 2014. This cannot be allowed. Hence, we'll need to find new oil fields. This is the red area placed on top of the clear blue area. Suddenly, we'll have to find many more new oil deposits. Birol said so himself: within 20 years, we'll have to find four new Saudi-Arabias. This is simply not realistic. It ain't gonna happen. Yet as this is the only way how demand can be met, Birol assumes that it will happen nevertheless, somehow.

While it is clear to the readers of The Oil Drum how unrealistic this assumption is, this is not clear at all to the average Swiss attendee of the symposium. They look at Birol's graph and see that oil will continue to be coming their way for at least the next few decades. So they are happy. What is there to be worried about?

We then heard from Qiang Liu from the Energy Research Institute in Beijing. He spoke about the Chinese state energy policy and low carbon scenarios. His was a hopeful talk as it demonstrated that the Chinese are just as much concerned about CO₂ emissions as the Europeans are, and the instruments that are being investigated in China for curbing greenhouse gas emissions are essentially also the same. China hasn't signed the Kyoto protocol, but they are very much interested in tackling this problem.

After the coffee break, I experienced one of the most severe disappointments of the conference. Christof Rühl, Vice President and Chief Economist of BP, formerly with the World Bank, offered his views on energy resources: the point of view of the energy industry. He talked about peak oil, and why peak oil is merely an invention by a bunch of crazies. According to Rühl, we have not reached the peak at all. There never was any difficulty of oil supply meeting demand. The price of crude increased last spring, because of inertia in the system. As the demand for oil rose, the oil companies were too slow to recognize the growing demand and didn't increase their production in time. Hence the spare production shrank from 4% to 2%, and consequently, crude became much more expensive.

When the Saudis recognized that the oil became too expensive, they declared that they would raise their output, but the market doesn't react to declarations, only to available reserves. Once again, inertia came in the way. It takes 5-6 months for increased production to propagate through the system into the reserves. At that time, the financial markets had crashed, and therefore, the demand had shrunk. With the suddenly much larger stock due to the increase in Saudi output, the price of crude broke through.

The price decreased first to $35/barrel, but then climbed back again to $50/barrel. The reason is to be found in the contango. As the future price of crude (12 months into the future) has consistently been above the spot price in recent months, the oil companies prefer to hold back on selling their stock and instead are renting oil tankers to go in circles in the Atlantic, waiting for the spot price to rise and meet the contango price.

Rühl is clearly very experienced in telling his story. He could do so without ever getting red ears. According to Rühl, we have both oil and gas for many more decades to come, and peak oil is not going to happen for many years. The oil market can yet meet rising demand for a very long time.

Even Rühl admits that the price of crude is likely to rise, but his explanation has nothing to do with peak oil. He claims that, as many of the traditional oil producers reach the end of their production, the remaining oil is in the hands of an ever decreasing number of countries. Several of these countries are unwilling to let the international oil companies handle their oil. Instead, the oil will be handled more and more by a few national oil companies, and this will drive the crude prices up.

Oh well.

After Rühl finished, a "rebuttal" was offered by Werner Zittel, an energy expert, who provided a "critical evaluation" of energy resources: the point of view of the energy industry. Zittel gave the usual peak oil spiel, explaining how the new discovery of oil fields has decreased exponentially for several decades already, how this allows us to estimate the total amount of oil that can be produced, etc.

This is all stuff that is very familiar to The Oil Drum readers, but how is the average Swiss attendee supposed to know right from wrong? To him, these are simply two opposing views, and of the two speakers, Rühl came across as much more confident of himself, and also his graphs were more slick and beautiful and professionally made in their green and yellow colors of British Petroleum.

After Zittel, we were introduced to Anja Hochberg, head of global economics of Crédit Suisse, who told us about investment opportunities in the context of volatile oil prices. She told us that times of economic instability offer the best opportunities for making money fast.

Oh well, once again.

The morning ended with another panel discussion, this time moderated by Jürg Meier, another Swiss journalist, much "nicer" than Erich Gysling. He wouldn't dare ask any uncomfortable questions.

He invited the three previous speakers to the podium. Each of them quickly reiterated his (her) point of view, and then it was almost time to go for lunch.

As the audience was given an opportunity to ask one question, I wanted to ask the panelists why EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) had not been mentioned by any of them. I explained to the attendees that, as oil becomes more expensive to produce, its production also consumes more energy, not only more money. Thus, at the latest when one barrel of oil needs to be burned in order to produce another barrel of oil, the game is over irrespective of the price of oil at that time and/or the amount of oil still in the ground. I wanted to know why this concept hadn't been mentioned by any of the experts, why they didn't consider this important.

Rühl answered that, as oil becomes more expensive, more oil can be economically produced, i.e., he evaded my question, although I am convinced that, as an economist with BP, the concept of the EROEI must be familiar to him.

After lunch, several speakers made shorter presentations, reiterating some of the aspects discussed earlier. Klaus-Ewald Holst talked about the need for diversification and new investments in the European gas distribution network and Pierre-Alain Graf told us how the Swiss electricity grid is connected into the European electricity grid with electricity imports coming from France, Germany, and Austria, and electricity exports flowing mostly to Italy, to mention just two of the talks.

Panel discussions ended each of two sets of presentations, but both of them were shortened as most of the talks had run over their allotted time, and they didn't offer much in terms of new perspectives.

The second day ended with another highlight of the conference. Andreas Fischlin of ETH Zurich, one of the lead authors of the IPCC reports on climate change, told us about the work of the IPCC; what data they had been working with, and how they had come to the conclusions that they had reached. His talk entitled sustainability – why even a radical change in technology is still not enough offered a rather alarming analysis of the effects of energy utilization on climate change.

When I walked out of the conference, I was rather satisfied at first with what I had heard. The conference had been very professionally organized. The speakers were all of a very high caliber. Yet, the longer I thought about the conference, the more upset I became … not about what I had heard, but rather about what had not been said.

What if we don't find four new Saudi-Arabias in time? Well, in that case, we'll have to learn to live on less energy. How do we do this? Where do we start? How do we save energy? How much energy can we save? Where can we save energy?

What are the implications of reduced energy availability on our ability to feed ourselves? Can famine be avoided? How can we minimize the negative effects of energy starvation on our agriculture?

How much time do we have left before energy starvation sets in?

None of these question was answered or even raised. The people who attended the conference were reassured that everything is just hunky-dory. If they attended the conference because they had been worried before, their fears were abated. Our government will take care of them. The four Saudi-Arabias will surely be found in time.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/ZTWsApnGq90/5239

This is a guest post by André Diederen. Diederen is a senior research scientist at TNO, Holland, where he has been working since 1997 on defence related matters. His background is mechanical engineering (1987). Because a ruling paradigm in defence related matters is the precautionary principle and since this sector applies various non-abundant metals, he took a closer look at the availability of metals. The implications of metals scarcity reach far beyond the "niche" of defence related materials and might affect our entire industrial civilization.

---

Metal
minerals scarcity:
A call for managed austerity and the elements
of hope

Dr. A.M. Diederen, MSc.

TNO Defence, Security and Safety

P.O. Box 45, 2280 AA Rijswijk, The Netherlands

andre.diederen@tno.nl

March 10,
2009

Abstract

If
we keep following the ruling paradigm of sustained global economic
growth, we will soon run out of cheap and plentiful metal minerals of
most types. Their extraction rates will no longer follow demand. The
looming metal minerals crisis is being caused primarily by the
unfolding energy crisis. Conventional mitigation strategies including
recycling and substitution are necessary but insufficient without a
different way of managing our world’s resources. The stakes are too
high to gamble on timely and adequate future technological
breakthroughs to solve our problems. The precautionary principle
urges us to take immediate action to prevent or at least postpone
future shortages. As soon as possible we should impose a co-ordinated
policy of managed austerity, not only to address metal minerals
shortages but other interrelated resource constraints (energy, water,
food) as well. The framework of managed austerity enables a
transition towards application (wherever possible) of the ‘elements
of hope’: the most abundant metal (and non-metal) elements. In this
way we can save the many critical metal elements for essential
applications where complete substitution with the elements of hope is
not viable. We call for a transition from growth in tangible
possessions and instant, short-lived luxuries towards growth in
consciousness, meaning and sense of purpose, connection with nature
and reality and good stewardship for the sake of next generations.

Introducing
metal minerals scarcity and managed austerity

Undoubtedly,
the global economic growth of the last century, fuelled
by and accompanied by exponential growth in population and
consumption of resources like fossil fuels, water, food and metal
minerals, is unsustainable. Now that we are nearing the second decade
of the 21^st
century, we are beginning to notice the consequences of supply gaps
of various resources. This paper focuses on the issue of metal
minerals scarcity within the constellation of interconnected problems
of scarcity of water and food, pollution and climate change and most
notably scarcity of energy. In case of unlimited energy supply, metal
minerals extraction would only be limited by the total amount of
mineral resources. However, due to the scarcity of energy, the
extraction rates of most types of metal minerals will cease to follow
demand. Probably the only acceptable long-term solution to avoid a
global systemic collapse of industrial society, caused by these
resource constraints, is a path towards managed austerity. Managed
austerity will have to be a combination of changes in technology and
changes in both individual and collective human behaviour. Managed
austerity could prevent non-desirable ‘solutions’ by doing much
too little much too late (also known as ‘business as usual’)
which could ultimately result in large scale conflicts, global chaos
and mass starvation of the world’s population.

Energy
scarcity

Humanity
has depleted a significant part of its inheritance of highly
concentrated energy resources in the form of fossil fuels. Although
huge quantities of these resources remain untapped, the
worldwide extraction rate (production flow) has reached a plateau and
will soon begin to decline [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The result is an ever
widening supply gap because sustained global economic growth requires
sustained growth in available energy. Figure 1 gives the general
depletion picture for oil and gas [1] in giga barrels of oil
equivalent (Gboe) and the left part of the bell-shaped curve strongly
resembles a logistic curve. The initial stage of growth is
approximately exponential, growth slows as saturation begins (‘the
low-hanging fruit has been picked’) and at maturity growth stops
and a maximum is reached. The maximum production rate is referred to
as the ‘peak’ and is not a sharp deflection point in the curve
but rather a plateau region.

Figure 1: Depletion curve for oil and gas [1]

It
is important to realise that the peak date
in the depletion graph (figure 1) is not the same as the half date
because production can continue for a long period after the peak. The
actual depletion curve will presumably be asymmetric, having a peak
date before the half date. Although the exact peak date for oil and
gas is being contested (ranging from 2005 to somewhere during the
next few decades), experts and authorities seem to converge on a peak
date within the next few years. Oil and gas are currently the world’s
most important energy sources. Transportation for instance is
currently almost entirely dependent on oil. Coal will not be able to
fill the energy gap after the peak in oil and gas. According to [7]
coal may peak around 2025. Again, this does not imply exhaustion of
coal reserves, it is quite possible that more coal will be left for
extraction after the peak date than has been extracted in total in
the years before. The crucial point is that a maximum production rate
will be reached after which supply can no longer follow demand. It is
estimated that oil, gas and coal combined will reach their ‘peak
all fossil fuels’ close to 2020 [8]. All other energy resources
combined (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, biofuels, tidal, geothermal
and so on) cannot fill the supply gap in time [9,10,11,12]. Timely
and massive utilisation of these other energy resources is limited by
various constraints like lack of concentration, intermittency, issues
related to conversion and storage and last but not least the required
massive input of fossil fuels and metal minerals. Therefore we will
probably be confronted with a peak in global energy production within
the next 10 to 15 years, despite progress in technology.

Metal
minerals scarcity

The
depletion graphs of most metal minerals
will resemble the curve for oil and gas (figure 1). Figure 2 gives an
example for zirconium mineral concentrates [13].

Figure 2: Depletion
curve for zirconium mineral concentrates [13]

Many
warnings in the past of impending metal
minerals shortages have been proven wrong because of the availability
of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. Every time the ratio of reserves
to production of a certain metal mineral became uncomfortably small,
the reserves of that mineral were being revised upwards because it
became economically feasible to extract metals from the so-called
reserve base or resource base. Reserves are defined as those ores
that can be economically extracted at the time of determination and
the term reserves need not signify that extraction facilities are in
place and operative. The decades-old paradigm which states that
reserves will be revised upwards (to include lower ore grades) as
soon as supply gaps are looming, is no longer valid without cheap and
abundant energy. Mining and extraction (concentration) consume huge
amounts of energy. The energy required for extraction grows
exponentially with lower ore grades. This is illustrated in figure 3
for iron ore and aluminium ore [14]. The highest ore grades have
already been depleted or are already being mined. Because of energy
constraints, the largest parts of mineral deposits are out of reach
for economically viable exploitation, see figure 4 [15].

Figure 3: Relation between required energy for
extraction and ore grade [14]

Figure 4: Mineralogical
barrier for most elements [15]

Below
the so-called mineralogical barrier (the
red shaded area in figure 4), one would essentially have to pull the
rock chemically apart to extract all individual elements. This is of
course prohibitively energy intensive. For this reason it is very
doubtful that meaningful parts of the reserve base or resource base
of many metal minerals will ever be upgraded to reserves [16]. It is
even questionable whether all currently stated reserves are fully
exploitable given the ever growing constraints with regard to energy
required [13].

The
trend of geologically and physically based minerals scarcity will be
further enhanced by other factors. Global (‘average’) shortages
will most likely be preceded by spot shortages because of geopolitics
and export restrictions, as many important metal minerals are
concentrated in just a few countries, often outside the western
industrialized world (e.g. China).

Extraction
rates and reserves of metal minerals

Known
data of extraction and consumption rates of metal minerals and their
reserves indicate that the so-called ‘peak production’ for most
metal elements will lie in the near future. The data
from table 1 and figures 5 through 9 support this statement.

Table
1 represents an overview presented by the US Geological Survey [17]
of global annual primary production and global reserves of a large
number of metal minerals. Their production goes into various products
and compounds, part of them being steels, alloys and metal products.
The remaining ‘lifetimes’ are calculated based on a modest
consumption growth of 2% per year. The elements predicted to have a
‘lifetime’ of less than 50 years are summarized in figure 5. Of
course, these minerals are not completely depleted in this period,
but their peak production lies well before the estimated moment.
Compare the result for zirconium with figure 2: the remaining
‘lifetime’ of zirconium is 19 years and the peak date is already
behind us (1994). Although exact data fail, the elements strontium
through niobium (of figure 5) will soon reach their peak production
or have already passed their maximum extraction rates.

Figure 5: Years left of reserves at a sustained
annual global primary

production growth of 2% (based on
table 1)

Figure
6 through 9 depict in more detail global annual production rates and
the known reserves. The annual primary production of iron dwarfs all
other metal elements combined. Despite its huge reserves, iron will
last less than 3 generations (less than 50 years) as far as cheap and
abundant primary production is concerned, due to the enormous scale
of its annual global consumption. The only viable long-term
alternative to iron and in fact all metals at this scale of
consumption would be magnesium. Magnesium reserves are virtually
unlimited because of its abundance and associated accessibility in
seawater [20].

Figure 6: Distribution
of annual global primary production (based on table 1)

Figure 7: Distribution
of annual global primary production without iron

(based on table 1)

Figure 8: Distribution
of global reserves excluding magnesium (based on table 1)

Figure 9: Distribution
of global reserves excluding magnesium and iron

(based on table 1)

On
a trajectory of ‘business as usual’, we
will have much less than 50 years left of cheap and abundant access
to metal minerals. The production rate of metal minerals will start
to decline well in advance of the depletion of reserves as it will
take exponentially more energy input and metal minerals input to grow
or even sustain the current extraction rate of metal minerals. To
sustain and increase current production rates, resources have to be
extracted at ever more distant locations (including deep mining and
ocean floor mining) and at ever lower ore grades which require
exponentially more energy to extract. In this sense it could even be
stated that metal minerals scarcity aggravates energy scarcity.

Consequences
of unmitigated metal minerals scarcity

During
the next few decades we will encounter
serious problems mining many important metal minerals at the desired
extraction rates. Amongst them are all precious metals (gold, silver
and platinum-group metals), zinc, tin, indium, zirconium, cadmium,
tungsten, copper, manganese, nickel and molybdenum. A number of these
metals are already in short supply (e.g. indium). Metals like
gallium, germanium and scandium are not incorporated in table 1 by
lack of data, but these metals suffer from a very low extraction rate
as they are by-products (in very low concentrations) of other metal
minerals; independent production growth is therefore not an option,
thus making an increasing role for these elements impossible.

Besides
the minerals with obvious constraints (low ratio of reserves relative
to primary production), we can distinguish different ‘categories’
of metal minerals in table 1. First, several metal minerals which
have a high ratio of reserves relative to primary production suffer
from relatively low absolute amounts of reserves and associated low
extraction rates, effectively making them non-viable large-scale
substitutes for other metals which will be in short supply. It is up
for debate for example whether lithium is a viable large-scale
substitute for nickel in accumulators for electric energy as far as
land mined lithium is concerned (it might be extracted from seawater
in future [20], albeit at higher cost). Second, other metal minerals
have no acceptable substitutes for their major applications, which is
of special interest for those metals which will run out relatively
fast at the present course, manganese being an important example.
Third, even metals with a high ratio of reserves to primary annual
production combined with large absolute amounts of reserves and
associated extraction rates, can be susceptible to future supply
constraints because they are located in just a few geographic
locations. An example is chromium which is mainly located in
Kazakhstan and southern Africa.

Without
timely implementation of mitigation strategies, the world will soon
run out of all kinds of affordable mass products and services. A
few examples are given here. First, a striking example are cheap
mass-produced consumer electronics like mobile phones, flat screen
TVs and personal computers for lack of various scarce metals (amongst
others indium and tantalum). Also, large-scale conversion towards
more sustainable forms of energy production, energy conversion and
energy storage would be slowed down by a lack of sufficient
platinum-group metals, rare-earth metals and scarce metals like
gallium. This includes large-scale application of high-efficiency
solar cells and fuel cells and large-scale electrification of
land-based transport. Further, a host of mass-produced products will
suffer from much lower production speeds (or much increased tooling
wear) during manufacturing owing to a lack of the desired metal
elements (a.o. tungsten and molybdenum) for tool steels or ceramics
(tungsten carbide). Among the affected mass-produced machined
products are various household appliances and all types of motorized
transport (cars, trains, ships and aero structures). The lack of
various metal elements (a.o. nickel, cobalt, copper) for
high-performance steels and electromagnetic applications will affect
all sectors which apply high-performance rotating equipment. Besides
transportation this includes essential sectors like electric energy
generation (coal/oil/gas-based and nuclear power plants, hydropower,
wind power). Also the vast areas of construction work in general
(housing, infrastructure) and chemical process industries will be
affected. The most striking (and perhaps ironic) consequence of a
shortage of metal elements is its disastrous effect on global mining
and primary production of fossil fuels and minerals: these activities
require huge amounts of main and ancillary equipment and consumables
(e.g. barium for barite based drilling mud).

These
threats to the global economy require political, behavioural and
governmental activities as well as technological breakthroughs. Of
the breakthroughs, intensified recycling offers the opportunity to
buy us time and innovative substitution may lead to sustainable
options [18,19].

Efficiency:
Jevon’s paradox

A
potent partial solution for metal minerals scarcity would be a better
extraction efficiency, if it wasn’t for Jevon’s
paradox. Jevon’s paradox is the proposition that technological
progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used,
tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of
that resource. So, technological progress on its own (without
‘control’) will only accelerate the depletion of reserves.

Recycling:
delaying of effects

Recycling
the current and constantly growing
inventory of metal elements in use in various compounds and products
is the obvious choice in order to buy time and avoid or diminish
short- to medium-term supply gaps. Although recycling is nothing new,
generally the intensity could be further enhanced. We should keep in
mind though that recycling has inherent limits, because even 100%
recycling (which is virtually impossible) does not account for annual
demand growth. At the present course we need to continue to expand
the amount of metal elements in use in order to satisfy demand from
developing countries like China and India whose vast populations wish
to acquire a material wealth comparable with the standard of living
of the industrialized western world. Furthermore, recycling also
costs lots of energy (progressively more with more intense recycling)
and many compounds and products inherently dilute significant parts
of their metal constituents back into the environment owing to their
nature and use. So even with intense recycling, we will need a
continued massive primary production to continue our present
collective course.

Substitution:
the elements of hope

It
is self-evident that - at our current
level of technology - substitution of scarce metals by less scarce
metals for major applications will lead to less effective processes
and products, lower product performance, a loss in product
characteristics, or lead to less environmentally friendly or even
toxic compounds. An important and very challenging task is therefore
to realise the desired functionalities of such products with less
scarce elements and to develop processes for production of these
products at an economic scale. The best candidates for this
sustainable substitution are a group of abundantly available
elements, that we have baptised ‘elements of hope’ (see figure
10). These are the most abundant elements available to mankind and
can be extracted from the earth’s crust, from the oceans and from
the atmosphere. They constitute both metal and non-metal elements.
Hydrocarbons for production of materials (including plastics) could
be extracted progressively more from biomass, albeit at a much lower
extraction rate than from concentrated (fossilized) biomass (oil,
natural gas and coal). Not coincidentally, all macronutrients of
nature (all flora and fauna including the human body) are found among
the elements of hope: nature either uses these elements (metabolism,
building blocks) or has shown to be tolerant to these elements (in
their abundant natural forms). Substitution based on the elements of
hope therefore is potentially inherently environmentally friendly.

Figure 10: The elements
of hope; the green elements are macronutrients, the elements

within the thickened section are
metals (Si being a metalloid)

Responsible
application: frugal and critical elements

We
can look at the remaining global reserves of metal minerals as a
toolbox for future generations (see figure 11).
An important part of the toolbox is reserved for the elements of
hope. Another part of our toolbox is reserved for less abundant but
still plentiful building blocks, the ‘frugal elements’. These
elements should only be applied in mass for applications in which
their unique properties are essential. In this way their remaining
reserves will last longer (most notably copper and manganese). For
the sake of completeness, also the non-metals belonging to this
category are included in figure 11. Finally a small corner of the
toolbox is reserved for all other metal elements, the ‘critical
elements’, which should be saved for the most essential and
critical applications. Not described in figure 11 but also belonging
to the critical elements are other non-metals and the metal trace
elements with high atomic mass (not previously mentioned in this
paper by lack of data from [17]).

Figure 11: The toolbox
containing the elements of hope, the frugal elements and the critical
elements;
PGM = Platinum-Group Metals;
REM = Rare-Earth
Metals;
the red elements are non-metals;
B,Si,Ge,As,Sb,Te
are metalloids

(for a better resolution version of fig. 11, see this link )

Conclusion:
a call for action, ingenuity and responsible behaviour

Because
of the surging scarcity of energy, even large-scale substitution and
recycling cannot circumvent supply gaps in
metal minerals. This is because production of metals consumes vast
amounts of energy and so do substitution technologies and intensive
recycling. The introduction of managed austerity is required to
convince us all to live using less.

With this paper we call for action. We can
increase the lifespan of the reserves of various materials by making
a shift towards large-scale application of the elements of hope with
a sensible use of the frugal and the critical elements. In order to
do this mankind will have to mobilize its collective creativity and
ingenuity. Technology alone is not enough to achieve this goal, nor
can the challenge of metal minerals scarcity be treated as an
isolated problem: it is part of a host of interrelated problems. A
solution calls for nothing less than a globally co-ordinated societal
response. The scarcity of energy, of food and water, of metal
minerals and the effects of pollution and climate change all call for
intervention by authorities to facilitate a transition towards
collective responsible behaviour: managed austerity. They call for a
transition from growth in tangible possessions and instant,
short-lived luxuries towards growth in consciousness, meaning and
sense of purpose, connection with nature and reality and good
stewardship for the sake of next generations.

TABLE 1 (data in metric tons from ref [17])

(for a higher resolution version, see this link )

References

[1] Association for the
Study of Peak Oil and gas (ASPO), Newsletter
No. 97, compiled by C.J. Campbell,
Staball Hill, Ballydehob, Co. Cork, Ireland, January 2009

[2] Energy Watch Group
(EWG), Crude oil - the supply
outlook, EWG-Series No 3/2007,
Ottobrunn, Germany, October 2007

[3] International
Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook
2008

[4] Koppelaar, R., Meerkerk, B. van, Polder, P., Bulk, J. van den,
Kamphorst, F., Olieschaarstebeleid (in Dutch),
slotversie, Stichting Peakoil Nederland, October 15, 2008

[5] Simmons, M.R., The
energy crisis has arrived, Energy
Conversation Series, United States Department of Defense, Alexandria,
VA, June 20, 2006

[6] The Oil Crunch
– Securing the UK’s energy future,
Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (ITPOES),
October 2008

[7] EWG,
Coal: Resources and Future
Production, EWG-Series No 1/2007,
Ottobrunn,
Germany, March 28, 2007

[8] Sousa, L. de,
Mearns, E., Olduvai revisited 2008,
posted February 28, 2008 at the website The Oil Drum: Europe

[9] EWG,
Uranium Resources and Nuclear Energy,
EWG-Series No 1/2006, Ottobrunn,
Germany, December 3, 2006

[10] Savinar,
M.D., "Are We 'Running Out'? I
Thought There Was 40 Years of the Stuff
Left",
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net, originally published December
2003,
revised December 2007

[11] Peter, S., Lehmann,
H., Renewable Energy Outlook 2030,
Energy Watch Group / Ludwig-Boelkow-Foundation, November 2008

[12] Wirth, C.J., Peak
oil: alternatives, renewables, and impacts,
www.peakoilassociates.com, July 5, 2008.

[13] Bardi,
U., Pagani, M., Peak Minerals,
ASPO-Italy and Dipartimento di Chemica
dell’Università di
Firenze, posted October 15, 2007 at the website The Oil Drum:

Europe

[14] Meadows,
D., Randers, J., Meadows, D., Limits
to Growth – The 30-Year Update,

Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004, ISBN 1-931498-51-2

[15] Skinner,
B.J., Exploring the resource base,
Yale University, 2001

[16] Roper, L.D., Where
have all the metals gone?, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia,
USA, 1976

[17] United
States Geological Survey (USGS),
Mineral commodity summaries 2008

[18] Bardi,
U., The Universal Mining Machine,
posted January 23, 2008 at the website
The Oil Drum

[19] Gordon, R.B.,
Bertram, M., Graedel, T.E., Metal
Stocks and Sustainability,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., v.103,
n.5, January 31, 2006

[20] Bardi, U., Mining
the oceans: Can we extract minerals from seawater?,
posted September 22, 2008 at the website The Oil Drum: Europe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/M0HtTfOCes8/

Polystyrene is marvelously useful stuff. Lightweight packing materials have certainly saved billions of gallons of fuel since they were first introduced, so I'm not 100% against them. Of course, they are never re-used or recycled, so they end up being buried, and will never degrade, which kinda sucks.

But a new study from Iowa State University shows that polystyrene can simply be dissolved in bio-diesel "like a snowflake in water." Mixes of between 2% and 20% polystyrene by weight show that the optimal concentration of polystyrene is 5%. Anything above that, and the polystyrene doesn't increase power output as much and the fuel becomes more and more viscous.

Not surprisingly, polystyrene does increase non-CO2 emissions like soot and NOx gasses. Plus, gathering polystyrene and shipping it to biodiesel refineries would be a costly process as polystyrene is, by design, very bulky. And if we're collecting it, we might as well find other ways to re-use it, instead of burning it.

Via New Scientist

 

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/qW1fEw0ScAY/

This isn't the first solar company who's said they'll be competitive with grid cost of electricity within the year, but they are certainly notable. Skyline Solar is keeping costs down from every possible angle to make their dreams of grid parity (at least in California) a reality.

The system is a concentrating trough that focuses light on a tube containing inexpensive silicon cells. The mirror troughs are being built in auto-industry plants that are currently not being used, and are being designed to be stackable for shipping and easy deployment.

The passive heat-management system should keep the photovoltaics cool enought to maintain optimum efficiency without adding much to the cost.

So far, confidence in the company is fairly high, with almost $25M in venture capital and a $3M grant from the DOE under it's belt. A demonstration plant should be online within the year.

Via GreenTechMedia

 

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/DpTHmUulv7M/

Protecting wildlife and existing ecosystems is a growing concern as renewable energy projects spread across the country. Environmentalists are often torn between the issues of climate change and conservation.

The Peñascal Wind Farm in Texas, a 202-MW wind farm that lies right on a heavily-traveled migration path, has found a way to balance both. It has started using powerful radar technology developed for NASA and the Air Force that detects birds flying four miles away and stops the turbines if there is a danger of the birds flying into the blades.

The radar analyzes weather conditions, the birds' altitude, numbers and visibility to determine if the birds will fly in the path of the blades. During inclement weather, birds fly lower than in normal conditions and can become disoriented, which raises the risk of them flying into the turbines. During normal weather, birds usually fly well above the height of the wind farm. Once the birds have passed, the radar system restarts the turbines.



During the fall of 2007, a study showed about 4,000 birds an hour passed over the Peñascal farm, but nationally only about 7,000 birds are killed each year by turbines. The risk to birds posed by wind farms is still low compared to other obstacles during migration, but it will definitely need to be a consideration as more wind farms are built and this radar system seems like a great solution.

via Guardian

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/2SLnkIb5f2Y/

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid announced yesterday that the almost-century-old Capitol Power Plant, which provides heat and hot water for congressional buildings, has stopped burning coal. Over the past few years, the plant has used increasing amounts of natural gas in place of coal and since March, the plant has solely used natural gas.

This news is definitely something to cheer about, but Congress could take this even further. While any reduction in the amount of coal being burned around the globe is a good thing, if Congress really wants to set an example, they should be switching to renewable energy sources, or at least integrating them into the current plant. Natural gas is far better for the atmosphere than coal, but solar, wind, geothermal and biomass are even better than natural gas.

Switching lightbulbs and updating government fleets to more fuel-efficient vehicles are all helpful and necessary changes, but the government could make a much more dramatic change that shows that they are fully invested in the climate and energy bills they are writing by using renewable energy technologies and making the Capitol more sustainable.

via Boston Globe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/EixZfeQt8a8/5362

Richard Heinberg: Somebody's Gotta Do It

If all of us world-savers can’t get on the same page about what’s wrong, our efforts are likely to lack coherence, or might even cancel one another out. There are no doubt full-time humanitarians who believe that the world needs to be saved from people like me!—from people, that is, who are non-believers and who insist that the size of the human population has to be reduced.

Moreover, if we professional world-savers can’t agree on what the problem is, how do we know there is a problem in the first place? Might the world be better off if we spent our personal energies elsewhere—figuring out how to get rich, or teaching elementary school, or inventing the next generation of social networking software?

Economic casualties pile into tent cities

For the economic homeless, the American ideal that education and hard work lead to a comfortable middle-class life has slipped out of reach. They're packing into motels, parking lots and tent cities, alternately distressed and hopeful, searching for work and praying their fortunes will change.

"My parents always taught me to work hard in school, graduate high school, go to college, get a degree and you'll do fine. You'll do better than your parents' generation," Marshall says. "I did all those things. … For a while, I did have that good life, but nowadays that's not the reality."

Surge in renewable power fuels fears of energy crisis

BRITAIN is facing an energy crisis as a rise in renewable power is pushing the "outdated" National Grid to breaking point, experts warned yesterday.

Analysts say the network cannot cope with the extra electricity generated by wind, wave and solar sources.

They fear the increase in renewables will overload a system that was not designed to accept so much incoming power.

Duke Profit Falls 25% as Industry Slows

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Power generator Duke Energy said Tuesday that its first quarter earnings fell 26 percent as the deep recession cut demand for electricity among its industrial customers. The company also cited expenses from damage caused by winter storms for the decline.

MMS Releases Latest GOM Energy Forecast, Deepwater Report

In a press conference today at the 2009 Offshore Technology Conference the Minerals Management Service (MMS) announced the release of the Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Production Forecast: 2009-2018 and the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico 2009: Interim Report of 2008 Highlights.

In the forecast report, Gulf of Mexico (GOM) oil production is forecasted to increase substantially over the next several years, possibly reaching 1.8 million barrels of oil per day. GOM gas production is forecasted to continue its decline over the next four years due to aging projects in shallow water. Future increases depend on the successful development of undiscovered resources in the Gulf.

The Potential for Energy Industry Takeover Activity

Between 2004 and 2008, data from SharkRepellent.com shows that there has been roughly a tripling in the number of unsolicited/hostile takeover transactions and an equally large increase in the number of proxy fights.

According to the FactSet MergerMetrics report for 2008, unfriendly transactions represented 23% of all announced deals involving full acquisitions of U.S. public companies. This was well above the percentage of unfriendly deals witnessed in the past five years where 2006 saw the next highest percentage of just 14%.

Nigeria: Averting disasters during fuel scarcity

Lining up for fuel in Lagos

This is another season of fuel scarcity. Indeed, it is a return of agony and hardships. Although Nigeria is an oil producing nation, the sixth largest in the world; its citizens have had the misfortune of frequently being exposed to the hazards of acute shortage of petroleum products.

Two New Projects Revving Up in Alaska's Oilpatch

Oil prices are down and some oil-patch work is being throttled back, but North Slope producers are going full steam ahead on two large projects. Several hundred people have been put to work and the numbers will increase as the work continues, the companies involved say.

Despite Slump, Major US Oil Cos Forge Ahead with Investment

The weak quarterly results of major U.S. oil companies show they are not immune to lower oil and gas prices and the economic downturn. But their decision to keep investing billions in capital projects reflects optimism about an eventual rebound in energy markets.

Iran to Inagurate New Rig to Explore for More Caspian Oil

Iran plans to launch a domestically-built 14,000 ton offshore platform in its territorial waters of the Caspian Sea to increase its oil output.

Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhoseyn Nowzari says President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad is scheduled to inaugurate the Iran-Alborz semisubmersible drilling rig in "the coming weeks."

'Two-year delay on Hormuz bypass pipe'

The United Arab Emirates will complete a pipeline for oil exports to bypass the Strait of Hormuz around two years later than initially scheduled, the project's director Dieter Baluberg said today.

The pipeline would allow the world's third-largest oil exporter to pump around 60% of its crude exports to a port on the Gulf of Oman, avoiding the strategic shipping chokepoint at the Strait of Hormuz.

Hamm, Producers Try to Combat a New Concern in Oil Industry

The United States has been concerned for many years about the influx of foreign oil, mostly from the Middle East into the United States. But now, a new concern from Canada is beginning to worry some oil producers, and, led by Enid's Harold Hamm, they are taking steps to fight it.

The Domestic Energy Partnership Alliance is an organization created three months ago as a vehicle for oil and gas companies to combat the arrival of millions of barrels of foreign oil through pipelines into Cushing, which has the largest storage capacity in the world.

People of Plenty

In my book, Terrestrial Energy, I talk about historian David Potter's 1956 book, People of Plenty, which redefined Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis." Whereas Turner said that an abundance of land had been the defining experience in the American character, Potter argued it was actually an abundance of natural resources.

Following this line of thought, I argued that since our domestic oil production went into decline in 1970 we had entered a new era of American history where we became a "people of scarcity." It was a pretty good argument at the time, but I think now I'm going to have to revise it for the next edition. Once again we have become a People of Plenty -- this time in natural gas.

Workers like staying home

The concept of telecommuting — employees working from home or another remote location instead of the office — has been around for decades. It was touted as an answer to the energy crisis in the 1970s, heralded in the 1980s as a way to balance work and family, and now is being lauded as a way to boost productivity and trim facilities costs.

Telecommuting isn’t as popular as ’70s futurists predicted. But its use is on the rise, and many predict that it will become more widespread as employers overcome concerns about how to keep information secure and monitor remote workers’ productivity.

Winds need time to mature

Blade cracks suffered by Suzlon, Clipper Windpower and others are just indications of the immaturity of the wind power business. The steam turbine industry went though similar teething problems when power levels were increased during the late sixties and during the seventieth energy crisis. Companies like Clipper, Suzlon and others just do not have the depth of complex rotating machinery test facilities and sophisticated and proven system vibration analysis tools. GE and Siemens have the tools and offer the most reliable wind turbines, as well as Vesta having developed their expertise over a very long time span with continuous government support. For now 2 MW is the best power level for the selection of a reliable wind turbine. Higher power levels increase blade vibration forces and gear wear of the present wind turbine configurations and need time to prove new designs.

Study Sees 'Alarming' Use of Energy, Materials in Newer Manufacturing Processes: Making manhole covers is more efficient than making microchips

According to a recent study, new manufacturing systems are anywhere from 1,000 to 1 million times bigger consumers of energy than more-traditional industries. In short, pound for pound, making microchips uses up considerably more energy than making manhole covers, for example.

Manufacturers have usually been more concerned about factors like price, quality, or cycle time, and not as concerned about how much energy their manufacturing processes use, said Timothy Gutowski, a professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s department of mechanical engineering, who led the analysis. If energy prices rise again or if a carbon tax is adopted, energy use will become more important as the new industries scale up, Gutowski said.

New processes will be optimized and improved over time. But over the past several decades as traditional processes such as machining and casting have increasingly given way to newer ones for producing semiconductors, MEMS and nano-materials and devices, energy and materials consumption has increased dramatically.

Peak oil and the end of economic growth?

“American Scientist” has a provocative article on peak oil and what that means for the chimera of unending economic growth. The authors remind us that population growth and increased food production have both literally been fuelled by ever more energy use, much of it wood or fossil fuel. This is not sustainable.

The authors are Hall and Day, and here’s how “American Scientist” describes their thesis, “They have re-examined some of the data that led to the discrediting of the ‘limits to growth’ theory and have shown that both resource use and costs have only risen, and are no longer being mitigated by market forces. Although new sources of energy have been found, they are much more expensive to extract, a declining return on investment that Hall and Day think could lead to large societal problems in the near future.”

When The Economy Starts Whirring, We'll Get Another Big Oil Spike

Below is a chart, via a paper (.pdf) from Boston College economist Eyal Dvir and Harvard economist, Kenneth Rogoff that shows three seperate oil price spikes in the past century and a half. In each case they found that there was industrial growth coupled with uncertainty about oil supplies.

A new phase in the Gulf: Gulf of Mexico oil production could peak in 2013

Oil production in the Gulf of Mexico could peak at more than 1.8 million barrels per day by 2013 under the industry’s best-case scenario, but natural gas production will likely continue its decadelong decline, according to a government study released Monday at the Offshore Technology Conference.

Chesapeake 1st-qtr loss widens, shares drop 7.5 pct

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp reported a larger first-quarter loss on Monday as the natural gas company took a $6.02 billion charge to write down the value of its oil and gas properties and said it may cut spending more.

The U.S. recession has cut into industrial demand for natural gas, causing supplies to swell.

Oil Traders Are Likely to Start Selling Stored Crude, JBC Says

(Bloomberg) -- Oil traders who have been keeping as much as 100 million barrels of crude on tankers to profit from forward prices are likely to start selling the cargoes as the incentive to store wanes, consultant JBC Energy said today.

BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Hess Corp. are among oil companies whose first-quarter earnings were boosted by storing crude in tankers. By anchoring laden vessels offshore, companies were able to profit from the so-called contango, where crude contracts for delivery in the future are more expensive than near-term supply.

Oil May Break Resistance, Rise to $71.55: Technical Analysis

(Bloomberg) -- Crude oil may be headed for $71.55 a barrel after breaking through $56.10 a barrel, according to Barclays Capital.

Should the June crude oil contract push through the high of $56.10 a barrel reached on March 26, futures may climb past the Jan. 6 intraday high of $59.66 to $62 a barrel, Barclays Capital analysts, led by Jordan Kotick, said in a May 4 report.

Oil could jump to $71.55 a barrel as traders attempt to exit the large number of short positions, or bets that prices will fall, creating a so-called short squeeze, the analysts said. This is equal to the upward moves oil has made from a so- called head-and-shoulders bottom pattern starting in December.

Action on peak oil essential for business survival, say UK transport chiefs

If you’re fighting to stay afloat in the teeth of a recession, you’re not going to worry about distant threats like peak oil and climate change, right? Wrong, say Brian Souter, Moir Lockhead, Will Whitehorn and Richard Brown. The UK’s leading transport chiefs tell Martin Wright why action now is essential for their business survival.

Web providers must limit internet's carbon footprint, say experts

The internet's increasing appetite for electricity poses a major threat to companies such as Google, according to scientists and industry executives.

Leading figures have told the Guardian that many internet companies are struggling to manage the costs of delivering billions of web pages, videos and files online – in a "perfect storm" that could even threaten the future of the internet itself.

"In an energy-constrained world, we cannot continue to grow the footprint of the internet … we need to rein in the energy consumption," said Subodh Bapat, vice-president at Sun Microsystems, one of the world's largest manufacturers of web servers.

EDF mulls sale of British power grid - report

PARIS (Reuters) - French utility EDF is considering selling its British power grid to help it pay for takeovers and new power plants, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing sources close to EDF's board.

EDF is considering a sale of the grid, estimated to be worth some 3 billion pounds ($4.46 billion), after debt rose to nearly 25 billion euros and as it plans billions of euros of investments in costly nuclear power plants, the paper said.

A 'robust' new fuel supply for nuclear power plants is emerging

PIKETON, Ohio -- A group of U.S. engineers and technicians sat down one day in 2001 to figure out where the nation's future nuclear power plant fuel was going to come from. Their decision was to leap backward 30 years and re-engineer an idea perfected during the Cold War and then abandoned here in 1985.

Obama to form interagency biofuels group

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will direct the heads of three U.S. agencies to make the biofuels industry cleaner and encourage output of ethanol made from non-food crops, according to a draft memo obtained by Reuters on Monday.

The Biofuels Interagency Working Group, to be headed by the secretaries of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture, will be asked to identify policies that would make biofuels more environmentally sound and encourage production of "flex-fuel" cars that can run on either gasoline or fuel that is mostly ethanol, according to the memo.

EU bioethanol producers see rising output to 2020

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe is likely to pump out increasing amounts of bioethanol over the next 10 years, posting gradual annual output rises as an EU-imposed deadline nears for boosting renewable energy, an industry official said on Monday.

While wide discrepancies remain among the European Union's 27 countries in terms of their bioethanol industries, overall production has jumped exponentially since the EU launched its first biofuels directive with renewables targets in 2003.

U.S. biodiesel output falls sharply in March: group

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. biodiesel output is down sharply, an industry group said on Monday, and it called for release of federal regulations to require use of advanced biofuels.

The National Biodiesel Board said production fell in March to 30 million gallons, compared with 49 million gallons in March 2008, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.

If the trend continues, U.S. output would be half of the 700 million gallons produced last year, the NBB said.

Yes One Can: Prince Charles Hires Obama's Web Wizards

He doesn't write e-mails or - perish the thought - use a BlackBerry or iPhone. Indeed, the Prince of Wales still deploys a fountain pen to scratch out letters and instructions of such calligraphic idiosyncrasy that they are collectively known in the royal household as "black spider memos." Yet despite appearances, the heir to Britain's throne is not insensible to the power of technology. A campaign to save the rain forests launched by the Prince today is based around a 90-second film that he hopes will go "viral", and relies on state-of-the-art software and Internet strategy honed during Barack Obama's election campaign.

U.S. House climate control negotiations intensify

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Negotiations in the U.S. House of Representatives on how to cut industrial pollutants that cause global warming reach a critical stage this week as President Barack Obama huddles with key lawmakers on Tuesday and Republicans ready for a fight.

A House Energy and Commerce panel hopes to fill in details later this week on a bill that aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 -- using 2005 as a base year.

Climate change 'cultural genocide' for Aborigines

SYDNEY (AFP) – Climate change would force Australia's Aborigines off their traditional lands, resulting in "cultural genocide" and environmental degradation, a human rights watchdog warned on Monday.

Australia's original inhabitants, whose cultures stretch back many thousands of years, Aborigines would be deeply affected by the impact of global warming, the government-funded Human Rights Commission said.

Oil Little Changed, Paring Earlier Losses as Equities Advance

(Bloomberg) -- Crude oil traded little changed, paring earlier losses as advancing equity prices in Europe improved investor sentiment toward commodity markets.

An Energy Department report tomorrow is forecast to show that crude stockpiles climbed from the highest level since September 1990. Inventories increased 2.55 million barrels in the week ended May 1 from 374.7 million the previous week, according to a Bloomberg survey before the report.

Possible Outcomes of Copenhagen Climate Change Talks

The most anticipated climate meeting in years will be held in the Danish capital in December. Out of those talks a broader climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol is expected to emerge.

But the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen are fraught with risks and pit the ambitions of rich nations against those of the developing countries, whose emissions now comprise more than half of mankind's greenhouse gas pollution.

Nicholas Stern and Haruhiko Kuroda: Why global warming could make or break south-east Asia

South-east Asia has the most to lose from global warming but could gain much by developing a low-carbon future

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/CyYXwGQcQTc/5360

Only a few places still remain for those who want to take part in the informal Oil Drum - ASPO meeting that is being organized in Italy in June of this year. Oil Drum readers are welcome to join the discussion with Oil Drum staff and ASPO members. This meeting, to take place on 26, 27 & 28 June in Italy at the “Alcatraz free University” near Perugia, will have a spontaneous self-organized program according to the ‘bar camp’ rules. People can bring any topic to the informal meeting that they want to discuss. The only limitation being the wide ‘systems boundary’, so that issues should be directly or indirectly related to the heart of ASPO & The Oil Drum, discussions about energy and our future.

In order to reserve a place, please send a message to Rembrandt Koppelaar contact@peakoil.nl also in copy to Ugo Bardi (ugo.bardi@unifi.it). Upon approval of your application a registration form will be sent with room and payment details.

More information on the meeting, costs, and traveling to Italy can be found below the fold

On the evening of each day, beginning on the afternoon of the 26th, a loose schedule will be made for the following day of all those interested in presenting or hosting a discussion on certain topics. Participants can work out ideas and papers beforehand or give talks on the fly. Everyone is free to join sessions to their liking or make individual small group appointments if wanted to serve a discussion better. This way of hosting a discussion gives the opportunity to iterate and integrate as the meeting evolves. There will thus be no rigid program and no conference fee except for the lodging and board costs.

Location of the meeting

The meeting will take place at Libera Universita di Alcatraz (Alcatraz University) near Perugia, in Italy. It is a fantastically beautiful place in the Italian hills between Rome and Florence. Owned by Mr. Iacopo Fo, the son of the Nobel prize in literature Dario Fo, it is a structure built specifically to hold meetings; being self-contained with several meeting rooms providing the possibility to room and board about 50 people. They will host the meeting for free, provided that attendees pay the fees for room and board.

Subscription and payment of lodging

To maintain a creative meeting of the minds, as well as due to limitation of the venue, attendance will be limited to about 50 people. Costs of full board including food is 63 euro per day for a total of 189 euro for the three days and nights. We also ask a 10 euro fee to arrange a taxi service from Perugia train station to the meeting site at Alcatraz. Total costs are hence 199 euro. Subscriptions will be processed on a first come, first served basis. The final deadline for subscription is May 15th.

In order to book, please send a message to Rembrandt Koppelaar contact at peakoil.nl also in copy to Ugo Bardi (ugo.bardi at unifi.it). Upon approval of your application a registration form will be sent with room and payment details. An option to extend the stay in Italy is included in the registration form.

Route to Alcatraz University from Rome

To reach Libera Universita di Alcatraz from Rome one needs to travel by train to the city of Perugia which takes 2,5 to 3 hours at a cost of around 20 euro. From there, the only possible transportation is a taxi to Libera Universita di Alcatraz.

• From the Termini station in Rome take one of the trains in the direction of Ancona that either goes straight to Perugia or only until the station of Foligno.

• In case the train only goes until Foligno one needs to take a connecting train to Perugia in the direction of Terontola/Florence.

• At Peruga train station one needs to take a taxi to Libera Universita di Alcatraz at the street of Santa Christina 14 in Gubbio. The cost of the taxi journey is around 50 euro, so we advise participants to join up as to save on costs (as well as on fossil fuels).

As a service to participants we will facilitate joint taxi arrangements for a roundtrip on Friday 26 June and Monday 29 June to diminish costs as well as fossil fuel usage. More information on the journey including taxi groups and a train timetable for trains going from Rome to Perugia on 25/26 June and to Rome from Perugia for the return journey on 28/29 June will be sent to the participants.

Route to Alcatraz University from Florence

To reach Libera Universita di Alcatraz from Florence one needs to travel by train to the city of Perugia which takes 2 to 2,5 hours at a cost of around 13 euro. And from there take a taxi to Libera Universita di Alcatraz.

• From the train station Firenze S. M. Novella in Florence at most times there is a direct train to Perugia that leaves 13 minutes past the hour

• Otherwise one needs to take the same train and switch at the last station, Terontola-Cortona, to travel to Perugia.

• At Perugia train station one needs to take a taxi to Libera Universita di Alcatraz at the street of Santa Christina 14 in Gubbio. The cost of the taxi journey is around 50 euro, so we advice participants to join up as to save on costs (as well as on fossil fuels).

As a service to participants we will facilitate joint taxi arrangements for a roundtrip on Friday 26 June and Monday 26 June to reduce costs as well as fossil fuel usage. More information on the journey including taxi groups and a train timetable for trains going from Florence to Perugia on 25/26 June and to Rome from Florence for the return journey on 28/29 June will be sent to participants beforehand.

Additional information

Rembrandt Koppelaar (contact at peakoil.nl) and Ugo Bardi (ugo.bardi at unifi.it) will be glad to answer any queries.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/jZ3_pfpro4s/5344

Changes in the oil market and climate change are generally seen as separate phenomena. Although it is common knowledge that fossil fuels are the predominant source of CO2 emissions, the interplay between these emissions and fossil fuel scarcity is a topic that has scarcely been researched.

A new report from ASPO Netherlands provides a focused view of the interplay between these two themes. The report indicates that while the peaking of oil production would by itself have a favorable impact on carbon dioxide emission, this beneficial effect may be mostly offset by increased emissions from unconventional oil production. The report can be downloaded here (PDF, 2.4 MB, 56 pp) and a summary can be found below the fold.

Summary of oil production scenarios and their effect on CO2 emissions

To estimate the differences in CO2 emissions associated with conventional and unconventional oil, we prepared six different scenarios, based on three future forecasts of conventional oil production and two of development of unconventional oil resources. By combining the two, this gives six scenarios in all.The differences in the conventional oil production scenarios are due mainly to two factors: the interpretation of current reserve figure and the extent to which technological developments are expected to boost recoverable reserves from existing fields. This leads to the following three scenarios for the production of conventional oil:

1) In the Technology scenario, the worldwide decline in production from existing fields is assumed to stabilise within 15 years at 2.5% per year instead of the current 4.5% per year. The estimate of 4.5% is derived from a number of studies by Goldman Sachs, Cambridge Energy Research Associates and the International Energy Agency. The depletion rate of 2.5% per year means that 908 billion barrels can be produced from existing fields. The current production base will decrease from 81.8 million barrels per day to 38.2 million barrels per day in 2030. This declining production from existing fields will be augmented by new production from oil fields presently under development with a total reserve of 206 billion barrels. In this scenario current reserves (proven + probable) thus total 1,114 billion barrels. For yet to be found discoveries, an amount of 181 billion barrels is assumed, implying a total of 1,317 billion barrels of conventional oil yet to be produced. Production of conventional oil in this scenario will peak around 2016 at a level of 92 million barrels per day. In 2030 production will have declined to a level of 62 million barrels per day.

2) In the Business as usual scenario, the current rate of depletion of existing fields is assumed to remain at 4.5% per year. This means 632 billion barrels will be produced from current reserves and the current production base will decrease from 81.8 million barrels per day in 2006 to 27.1 million barrels per day in 2030. In addition to this declining production base for existing fuels, new production will come on stream from reserves currently under development, adding 206 billion barrels of new reserves. Current reserves (proven + probable) in this scenario are thus 838 billion barrels. This scenario also assumes discovery of 181 billion barrels of oil, increasing total recoverable reserves of conventional oil to 1,021 billion barrels. Production of conventional oil in this scenario will peak around 2015 at a production level of 89 million barrels per day. In 2030 production will have declined to 51 million barrels per day.

3) In the Rapid depletion scenario it is assumed that the current depletion rate of 4.5% per year will accelerate as OPEC reserves are less than previously thought. From current reserves 462 billion barrels of oil will be produced. The current production base will decrease from 81.8 million barrels per day in 2006 to 18.2 million barrels per day in 2030. In addition to this, production amounting to 206 billion barrels of oil from fields currently under development will come on stream. In this scenario current reserves (proven + probable) thus total 668 billion barrels. It is also assumed that 181 billion barrels are yet to be discovered, increasing total recoverable reserved to 860 billion barrels in this scenario. Production of conventional oil will then peak around 2010 at about 87 million barrels per day. In 2030 this will have decreased to 42 million barrels per day.

In addition to these scenarios for conventional oil, two scenarios for unconventional oil were added: Steady growth and Accelerated growth.

a) In Steady growth, the production growth in unconventional oil witnessed in recent years is assumed to continue. Production of tar sands, extra heavy oil, coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids is thus taken to increase from the current figure of 2.42 million barrels per day to 5.3 million in 2020 and 10.5 million in 2030. This scenario is based on current trends and industry plans. It assumes there will be no development of oil shale in the US because of environmental concerns and technological barriers. In addition, very little increase in production of coal-to-liquids is assumed relative to the potential available in the world’s major coal reserves, because of environmental concerns and the likelihood of large additional CO2 emissions

b) In the Accelerated growth scenario, production of unconventional oil rises to 11 million barrels per day in 2020 and 22 million barrels per day in 2030. In this scenario it is assumed that less attention is given to environmental concerns, because the need for access to liquid fuels is assumed to overrule these concerns. This means CTL production will be 3 times as large in 2030 as in the Steady growth scenario. Commercial oil shale production is also assumed to increase, reaching an output of 2 million barrels in 2030. Production of extra heavy oil will also grow more than in the Steady growth scenario.

Combining the three scenarios for conventional oil and two for unconventional oil yields the following peak production values:

Figure 1 - Combined conventional and unconventional oil production scenarios to 2030, Source: ASPO Netherlands.

1a) Technology + Steady growth: peak production in 2012 at a level of 96 million barrels

per day and a production decline of 2% to 3% per year to 72 million barrels per day in 2030.

2a) Business as usual + Steady growth: peak production in 2015 at a level of 90 million barrels

per day and a rapid production decline of 3% to 4% per year to 61 million barrels per day in 2030.

3a) Rapid depletion + Steady growth: peak production in 2010 at a level of 101 million barrels

per day and a rapid production decline of 4% to 5.5 % per year to 52 million barrels per day in 2030.

1b) Technology + Accelerated growth: peak production in 2018 at a level of 101 million barrels

per day and a slow production decline of 1% to 2% per year to 84 million barrels per day in 2030.

2b) Business as usual + Accelerated growth: peak production in 2018 at a level of 96 million barrels

per day and a normal production decline of 2% to 3% per year to 73 million barrels per day in 2030.

3b) Rapid decline + Accelerated growth: peak production in 2015 at a level of 92 million barrels

per day and a rapid production decline of 3% to 4% per year to 64 million barrels per day in 2030.

The scenarios show that despite the rapid development of unconventional oil, total oil production will still reach its peak during the coming decade. This is because there will not be enough new production capacity from either conventional or unconventional oil to compensate the depletion of current oil fields. The 208 billion barrels of reserves in fields which the industry is planning to develop during the next 10 years are not sufficient to compensate for the depletion of existing fields. Nor are the projected 181 billion barrels of newly discovered oil, which should lead to 16 million barrels per day in new production around 2020, sufficient. Even a lower depletion rate than the current average of 4.5% per year in fields that have not yet peaked will hardly postpone the peak, though the production level at which the peak is reached will be much higher.

Because of continuing depletion of conventional oil resources and the relatively slow rate at which unconventional oil can fill the gap by increased production, the production peak in world oil production will occur some time during the coming decade. The decline in production will be dampened by a marked increase in unconventional oil production, however. In the combinations of the conventional production scenarios and the Accelerated growth scenario for unconventional oil, production declines more slowly than in the combination with the Steady growth scenario.

The impact of the various scenarios on CO2 emissions was calculated using the carbon emission factors reported in table 1 below.

Table 1 - Carbon emission factors for the production and combustion of various types of liquids, Source: Farrel & Brandt (Paper link), (Excel file).

In the Rapid depletion + Steady growth scenario, emissions peak in 2010 at a level of 5.4 gigatonnes of carbon, decreasing to 3.3 gigatonnes around 2030. In the Technology + Accelerated growth scenario, in contrast, emissions peak in 2018 at a level of 6 gigatonnes of carbon, decreasing slightly to 5.4 gigatonnes in 2030. The difference in cumulative carbon emissions between these two extreme scenarios will amount to 25 gigatonnes less CO2 in the period 2007 to 2030.

Figure 2 - Emissions resulting from the conventional and unconventional oil production scenarios to 2030 in gigatonnes of carbon, Source: ASPO Netherlands.

Considering these data, an energy path that is increasingly reliant on unconventional oil is not a desirable one if one assumes that climate change is mainly driven by CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. This because there will be no decline in CO2 emissions in an Accelerated growth scenario versus current CO2 emission levels. Even in the Rapid depletion + Accelerated growth scenario, CO2 emissions from oil usage will be similar in 2030 to emissions in 2004, despite a decline in total world oil production from 84 million barrels per day now to 64 million in 2030. This kind of growth in unconventional oil seems inevitable, though, unless robust policies are implemented to substitute other energy sources for oil and for transportation fuels and, in the longer term, for chemical feedstocks, too. As conventional oil becomes scarcer and oil prices rise ever further, there will be growing pressure to produce these unconventional types of oil. It is therefore important that governments plan for a production peak and encourage alternatives that can offset the depletion of conventional oil in time.

Overall Report Conclusions

As more data become available, it is becoming increasingly clear that conventional oil production will peak some time during the coming decade. Peak production will impact significantly on CO2 emissions. Geological and technological barriers as well as constraints relating to the water and energy requirements of unconventional oil production will mean these other types of oil cannot take over conventional oil’s key role in the coming decades. All the scenarios we ran for the purpose of this study, including the Accelerated growth scenario in which unconventional oil production rises to 22 million barrels per day in 2030, point to a peak in oil production during the next decade.

One might expect that the peak in oil production would cause CO2 emissions from oil to decline, but the scenarios analysed in this report suggest this is not likely to be the case, even though total oil production is expected to be much lower.

In the most favourable case this development of unconventional oil after the peak will lead to oil-related CO2 emissions declining only slightly and possibly even increasing somewhat. This is because the production of unconventional oil and refining it to a high-grade end product are associated with far higher CO2 emissions than in the case of conventional oil. Measured over the entire cycle from production to combustion, coal-to-liquids, oil shales and extra heavy oil score worst in this respect. In numerical terms the scenarios produce the following results: In 2007 production of unconventional oil was 2.4 million barrels per day. With steady growth of unconventional oil to 11 million barrels per day in 2030 and a peak in conventional oil between 2010 and 2017, CO2 emissions will decrease from 4.9 gigatonnes in 2006 to between 3.3 and 4.4 gigatonnes in 2030. The latter range depends on the exact timing and the steepness of the decline in conventional oil production. With accelerated growth of unconventional oil production to 22 million barrels per day in 2030, combined with the same production decline in conventional oil, CO2 emissions will hardly decline and will total 4.3 to 5.4 gigatonnes in 2030.

The energy path to unconventional oil is thus undesirable, as there will be no decline in CO2 emissions if there is vigorous growth of unconventional oil. Unless there is large-scale substitution of oil by other energy sources and energy carriers for transport and, in the longer term, for petrochemicals, such growth will be inevitable, however. As less and less conventional oil appears on the market, pressure to produce unconventional oil will grow. This will raise the price of a barrel of oil, making unconventional oil production ever more attractive in commercial terms. Governments have a major role to play in facilitating the transition away from unconventional oil, as present-day market structures are inherently skewed towards the use of oil, whether conventional or unconventional.

Governments that fail to plan for the decline in global oil production problem will be confronted with a major dilemma. On one hand, they can abandon climate policy to reduce CO2 emissions, so more oil can be made available to limit economic and social problems. Alternatively, such policy can be maintained, or even invigorated, with CO2 limits being applied to conventional and unconventional oil, leading to less oil becoming available on the market. It is therefore essential that governments anticipate the peak in conventional oil production. Alternatives need to be encouraged to compensate for production declines in conventional oil in both a timely and adequate manner.

The dynamics of this dilemma are not reflected in the IPCC scenarios, which make no fundamental distinction between readily exploitable conventional oil and harder to recover unconventional oil. IPCC production modelling assumes that decreases in the quality and energy content of reserves over time will not affect production. Technological barriers as well as external constraints on water and energy availability are not taken into account, even though these impose real limits on production. Actual CO2 emissions from oil production will therefore differ significantly from the projections of these scenarios. We also consider the underlying data in the production models, including those for coal, too optimistic. This is because these data assume a continuous productivity rise of 1% per year until 2100, with the whole of this productivity rise being allocated to the model’s starting point. In other words, the model implicitly assumes a 100% productivity rise in 2000, after which productivity remains constant. Apart from the fact that this immediate rise of 100% is unrealistic, it is also doubtful whether the historical productivity data on which this figure of 1% per year is based is a good model of the future, as the concentration and quality of reserves will decrease significantly over time. This will mean rising energy inputs for the same output, pushing costs up and implying that productivity improvements will not be realised.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/3H4Lm3Su09g/

Here’s an interesting article by Shyam Mehta, a contributor to Greentech Media. He argues that throughout 2008 we have built up a huge amount of PV supply – enough to produce about 14 GW of PV capacity. But it doesn’t look like we’re going to have nearly enough demand for all those gigawatts; only about 5 of them.



Thus, he does what any economist does and draws a supply and demand curve to figure out the price where they meet. If a company can sell PV at or below that price, says Mr. Mehta, it will survive the shakeout. If not… it can either try to get bought out or close up shop.



So who is going to survive? Who can produce cells cheap enough for 2009’s predicted demand?

• Those who produce Cadmium-Tellenium cells, like First Solar. CdTe delivers good efficiency and low costs.


• Those who make monocrystalline cells, like Sunpower and Sanyo. Monocrystalline is expensive to make, but achieves high efficiencies.

Who is not going to survive?

• Those who are making multicrystalline silicon cells on medium/small scale. There are better technologies out there, and if you can’t make it really cheap through economies of scale, no one is going to buy it.

Who’s in between?

• Those who make multicrystalline and amorphous silicon cells on a large scale. Actually, Mr. Mehta says that some of the large European companies that make this technology are secure enough to go in the first category. But for most of these companies, their fate is uncertain. If demand proves to be a little higher than expected, they can breathe a sigh of relief. If demand sags behind, though, they won’t be able to compete, especially with Asian competitors who can spend less on labor and can scale up tremendously.

The take away message here is that it’s not just about how many factories are coming online or how much capacity we have. t’s about finding the right price, which – in this environment of a roller coaster economy, bailouts, and ever changing policies – is essentially a guessing game.



Via Greentech Media

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/05/te-bottom.ht

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/AFLZ_DIPZYs/

It’s a good time to be Tata Motors. Tata has recently come out with the Tata Nano, a compact city car that seats 4 and costs about $2,000 for the basic version and a $3,300 for the higher end Nano LX. About 230,000 customers have placed orders.



This is, of course, more than Tata can produce at the moment. They can build about 100,000 cars this year, and will use a lottery system to decide which lucky customers will actually walk away with a car.



Is the Tata Nano clean? Not especially. Although there is speculation that Tata might one day come out with an electric version, the current Nano runs on gasoline. It’s a small car, but its footprint will be measured in the hundreds of thousands.



Obviously, the growing middle class in India and China provides an unprecedentedly huge market for no-frills, ultra cheap cars. The question is – what kind of gasoline-free car will work for the Indian market? China’s BYD is already selling cheap electric cars. But would those work in India? Is the infrastructure in place?



Electric cars in India might not work yet, but biodiesel probably would. India is rich in biomass, and the biofuel technology doesn’t require the same kind of overarching infrastructure that electric cars will need. According to a rumor on WheelsUnplugged, a diesel Nano might actually be in the works; if it gets the same kind of customer response as the current version, you can bet that a lot of people will start producing and selling biodiesel to make it run.



Via Green, Inc

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/qxpwnwftrSs/

Last week, we told you about the London Police Department adding electric and alternative-fuel vehicles to their fleet, and now another major city is looking to boost the efficiency of their police force. The NYPD announced last week that they were deploying 40 Nissan Altima Hybrids as part of their patrol fleet. The police department already uses hybrids and electric scooters in its parking enforcement fleet, but the Altimas will be the first used in active patrol.

The Altima hybrid gets 35 mpg, double the fuel efficiency of the patrol fleet's standard car, the Chevy Impala, which gets 17 mpg, and only costs about $1,500 more per vehicle. The hybrids are being deployed on the routes where their benefit would be greatest - large coverage areas and smaller precincts that involves lots of stop and go traffic.

The police department plans to deploy a total of 100 hybrids this year as part of the PlaNYC program that aims to slash the city government's carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2017.

via NYC.gov

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I'd like to try to clear some of the confusion that surrounds the economics of wind power, as it is often fed and used by the opponents of wind to dismiss it. As I noted recently, even the basic economics of energy markets are often wilfully misunderstood by commentators, so it's worth going in more detail through concepts like levelised cost and marginal cost, and identify how different electricity producers have different impacts on electricity (market) prices (which may or may not be reflected in retail prices) and have different externalities. Value for society of a generation source may also include other items that are harder to acount in purely monetary terms (and/or whose very value may be disputed), such as the long term risk of depletion of the fuel, or energy security issues, such as dependency on unstable and/or unfriendly foreign countries or vulnerable infrastructure.

Depending on which concept you favor, your preferred energy policies will be rather different. Follow me below the fold for a tour.

The usual disclosure: my job is to finance, among other energy projects, wind farms. My earlier articles on wind power can all be found here

Costs

The cost of wind is, simply enough, what you actually need to spend to generate the electricity. The graph below shows how these costs have changed over the past decade: a long, slow decline as technology improved, followed, over the past 3 years, by an increase as the cost of commodities (in the case of wind, mainly steel) increased, and as strong demand for turbines allowed the manufacturers (or their subcontractors) to push up their prices:

Source: Economics of wind (pdf) by the European Wind Energy Association

The most recent Energy Outlook by the International Energy Agency suggests that wind power currently costs €60/$80 per MWh, which makes it, today, pretty close to what the traditional generation sources (nuclear, coal, gas) cost:

Source: World Energy Outlook 2008 (available on order only)

In the case of wind, it is important to note that most of the costs are upfront, i.e. you need to spend money to manufacture and then install the wind turbines (and build the transmission line to connect to the grid, if necessary), but once this is done, there are very few other actual costs: some maintenance and some spare parts now and then.

This means that the levelised cost of wind (ie, the average cost over the long run, when initial investment costs are spread out over the useful life of the wind turbines) is going to be highly dependent on the discount rate, i.e. the hypotheses used to spread the initial cost of investment over each MWh of production over the useful life of the wind turbine, both in terms of duration, and the rate used. The graph below shows the sensitivity of the cost of wind depending on the discount rate used (over 20 years):
Source: Economics of wind (pdf) by the European Wind Energy Association

The discount rate is the cost of capital applied to the project, it will depend on whether you can find debt (whose price can depend on your credit rating) or need to provide equity (which is usually more expensive); altogether this means that most of the revenue generated by a wind farm at any point during its lifespan will go to repay the initial investment rather than to actual short term production costs; moving the discount rate from 5% to 10% increases levelised costs by approximately 40% (whereas for a gas project, it would typically be less than 20%).

Source: the Economist, 2005
Note: this reflects price for gas at 3-4$/MBTU

As a consequence, the marginal cost of wind is essentially zero, i.e., at a given point in time, it costs you nothing to produce an extra MWh (all you need is more wind). In contrast, the marginal cost of a gas-fired plant is going to be significant, as each new kWh requires some fuel input: that marginal cost is very closely related to the price of the supply of the volume of gas needed to produce that additional MWh.

The cost structure of wind and gas-fired power plants are completely different, as the graph to the right (from the Economist) shows: one includes mostly finance costs, the other mostly fuel costs (with nuclear closer to the economics of wind, and coal closer to the economics of gas).

It is worth emphasizing that "letting the markets decide" is NOT a technology-neutral choice when it comes to investment in power generation: public funding (such as can be available to State-owned or municipal utilities) is cheaper than commercial fund of investment: given that different technologies have different sensitivities to the discount rate, preferring "market" solutions will inevitably favor fuel-burning technologies, whereas public investment would tilt more towards capital-intensive technologies like wind and nuclear.

This also means that, once the investment is made, the cost of wind is essentially fixed, while that of gas-fired electricity is going to be very variable, depending on the cost of the fuel. The good news for wind is that its cost is extremely predictable; the bad news is that it's not flexible at all, and cannot adjust to electricity price variations.

Or, more precisely, wind producers take the risk that prices may be lower than their fixed cost at any given time. Given that, as a zero-marginal cost producer, the marginal cash flow is always better when producing than not, wind is fundamentally a "price-taker," i.e., the decision to produce will not depend on the price; however, the ability to repay the initial debt will depend on the level of the price, and if prices are too low for too long, the wind farm may go bankrupt. Meanwhile, gas producers take a risk, at any time, on the relative position, of the prices of gas and of electricity (what the industry calls the "spark spread"). This is a short term risk: gas-fired plants have the technical ability to choose to not produce (subject to relatively minor technical constraints) at any given time, they can thus avoid any cash flow losses, and the very fact that they shut down will influence both the gas price (by lowering demand) and the electricity price (by reducing supply). In fact, as we'll see in a minute, electricity prices are directly driven, most of the time, by gas prices, and thus gas-fired plants are "price-makers" and thus their costs are what drive electricity prices.

This suggests, once again, that selecting market mechanisms to set electricity prices (rather than regulating them) is, again, not technology neutral: here as well, deregulated markets are structurally more favorable to fossil fuel-based generation sources than publicly regulated price environments.

At this point, the conclusions on the cost of wind power (ignoring externalities, including network issues, which I discuss below) are that they don't seem to be that different from those of traditional power sources (nukes, gas, coal), but that they have a very different relationship to prices.

So let's talk about prices.

Prices

There are two aspects here: the price received by wind producers, and the price paid by buyers, which may be different.

The price of wind energy is what wind energy producers get for their production. It may, or may not, be related to the cost of the generation, but you'd expect the price to be higher than the cost, otherwise investment would not happen. But the question is, of course, whether the price needs to be higher all the time, or just on average, and if so, for what duration.

Given, as we've seen before, that wind has fixed prices, all a wind producer requires is a price which is slightly above what its long term costs are. That makes investment in wind profitable and actually rather safe (which means that a fairly low return on capital is required). The problem, as we've seen, is that wind is a price-taker and, unless producers are able to find long term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with electricity consumers at such prices, it is subject to the vagaries of market prices. And when your main burden is to repay your debt, and you don't have enough cash for too long (because prices are below your cost for that period), you go under right away, even though you can generate a lot of cash (remember that wind is a zero-marginal cost producer and can generate income whatever the market price is) - which means that a bankrupt wind farm will always be a good business to take over; it's just that it may not be a good business to invest in if prices are too volatile...

And thus it is not that surprising that the most effective system to support the development of wind power has been so called feed-in tariffs whereby the wind producers get a guaranteed, fixed price over a long duration (typically 15 to 20 years) at a level set high enough to cover costs. The fixed price is paid by the utility that's responsible for electricity distribution in the region where the wind farm is located, and it is allowed by the regulator to pass on the cost of that tariif (ie the difference between the fixed rate and the wholesale market price) to ratepayers. It's simple to design, it's effective and, as we'll see, it's actually also the cheapest way to promote wind. Other mechanisms include quotas which can be traded (that's what green certificates or renewable portfolio standards amount to) or direct subsidies, usually via tax mechanisms. Apart from tax benefits, which are borne by taxpayers, all other schemes impose a cost surcharge on electricity consumers (although, as we'll see below, in the case of feed-in tariffs, that surcharge may not exist in reality, as we'll see below).

But there's an even trickier aspect to wind and electricity prices: in market environments, marginal cost rules, i.e. the price for electricity is determined, most of the time, by the most expensive producers needed at that time to fulfill demand. Demand is, apart from some industrial use, not price sensitive in the very short term, and is almost fixed (people switching lights and A/C on, etc...), so supply has to adapt, and the price of the last producers that needs to be switched on will determine the price for everybody else.

Source: Economics of wind (pdf) by the European Wind Energy Association

If you look at the above graph, you see a typical 'dispatch curve', i.e. the line representing generation capacity, ranked by price. Hydro is usually the cheapest (on the left), followed by nuclear and/or coal, and then you have gas-fired plants and CHP (combined heat and power) plants, followed to the far right by peaker plants, usually gas- or oil-fired.

You take you demand curve (the quasi vertical lines you can see on the right graph), and the intersection of the two gives you the price. As is logical, night time demand is lower and requires a lower price than normal daytime prices, and even less than peak demand which requires expensive power generators to be switched on.

The righthand graph shows what happens when wind comes into the picture: as a very low marginal price generator, it is added to the dispatch curve on the left, and pushes out all other generators, to the extent is available at that time. By injecting "cheap" power into the system, it lowers prices. The impact on prices is pretty low at night, but can become significant during the day, and very high at peak times (subject, once again, to actual availability of wind at that time).

Source: Economics of wind (pdf) by the European Wind Energy Association

As the graph above suggests, the impact on price of significant wind injections is high throughout the day, and highest at times of high demand. When there's a lot of wind, you end up with prices that get flattened at the price of base load, i.e. the marginal cost of nukes or coal, and wind no longer has any influence on price.

But the consequence of this is that the more wind you have into the system, the lower the price for electricity. With gas, it's the opposite: the more gas you need, the higher the price will be (in the short term, because you need more expensive plants to be turned on; in the long run because you push the demand for gas up, and thus the price of gas, and thus of gas-burning plants, up).

In fact, if you get to a significant share of wind in a system that uses market prices, you get to a point where wind drives prices down to levels where wind power loses money all the time! (That may sound impossible, but it does happen because the difference between the low marginal cost and the higher long term cost is so big).

There are two lessons here:

• wind power has a strongly positive effect for consumers, by driving prices down for them during the day.


• it is difficult for wind power generators to make money under market mechanisms unless wind penetration remains very low; this means that if wind is seen as a desirable, ways need to be found to ensure that the revenues that wind generators actually get for electricity are not driven by the market prices that they make possible.

That's actually the point of feed-in tariffs, which provide stable, predictable revenue to wind producers, and ensure that their maximum production is injected into the system at all times, which influences market prices by making supply of more expensive producers unnecessary. And these tariffs make sense for consumers. The higher fixed price is added to the bill for the buyers of electricity, but as that bill is lower than it would have otherwise been, the actual cost is much lower than it appears. As I've noted in earlier diaries, studies in Germany, Denmark and Spain prove that the net cost of feed-in tariffs in these countries is actually negative, i.e. a apparent fixed cost imposed on consumers ends up reducing their bills!

Assessment of the impact of renewable electricity generation on the German electricity sector (pdf)


Mario Ragwitz, Frank Sensfuss, Fraunhofer Institute, presentation to EWEC 2008

The table above indicates that renewable energy (mostly wind, plus some solar) injections into the German electricity system caused, on average over the year, prices to be reduced by about 8 euros/MWh - about 15%. That translated into savings of 5 billion euros over the year for electricity buyers (utilities and other wholesale consumers), or 95 EUR/MWh of renewable energy injected. With a feed-in tariff of, on average, 103 EUR/MWh (which includes the high price for solar; wind tariffs are around 85EUR/MWh), the net cost of renewables is thus under 10 EUR/MWh, to be compared to a average wholesale price of 40-50 EUR/MWh. Thanks to the feed-in tariff, a wind MWH costs one fifth of a coal MWh!

In other words, by guaranteeing a high price to wind generators, you ensure that they are around to bring prices down. And that trick can only work with low marginal cost producers, thus not with any fuel-based generator, which would need to pay for its fuel in any case, and might end up requiring a higher price than the guaranteed level to break even, if fuel prices increased (as they would if such a scheme came up and encouraged investment in such plants) .

So we get an glimpse of the fact that there is value in wind power for consumers which is not reflected directly through electricity prices, and is only remotely related to the actual cost of wind.

Value / externalities

Which brings us to our last point, the "value" of wind power, which has to include the other impacts of wind onto the system that are not captured by monetary mechanisms. This is also what economists call externalities, i.e. the impact of economic behavior or decisions which are not reflected in the costs or prices of the economic entity taking the decision. Pollution is a typical externality, but so is the impact on the grid of bringing in a new producer.

Regulation is meant to put a price on these items, in order to reflect the "true cost" of a given economic action, i.e. in this case a decision to invest in a wind farm or a gas-fired plant or otherwise. Amongst the externalities we need to discuss here are the intermittency of wind, carbon emissions (which, in this case, is an existing, improperly priced, externality of existing technologies which wind can help to avoid), and security of supply.

Intermittency and balancing costs


A traditional argument against wind (its availability is variable, and cannot be counted upon to fulfill demand), which people may be surprised to find listed here as an externality - but that's what it is. In a market, you are not obliged to sell; the fact that the electricity grid requires demand to be provided at all times is a separate service, which is not the same thing as supplying electricity - it's continuity of supply. But while wind is criticized for its intermittency, I never hear coal or nuclear blasted because the reserve requirements of the system need to be sized to be at least as big as the largest plant around, should that plant (which is inevitably a multi-GW coal or nuclear plant) happen to drop off. The market for MWh and the market for "spare MWh on short notice" are quite different animals, and the Germans actually treat them separately:

From wikipedia

The Germans distinguish between permanent base load (i.e. the minimum consumption of any time, which effectively requires permanent generation, "Grundlast" in the graph above), semi-base load (or the predictable portion of the daily demand curve, "Mittellast" in the graph above), and peak/unpredictable demand (i.e. the short term variations of supply availability and demand - "Spitzenlast" in the graph above). Wind is now predictable with increasing accuracy with a few hours advance, and can, for the most part, be part of semi-base load; i.e., low winds can be treated just like a traditional plant being on maintenance: reduced, but expected, availability of a given asset.

(for contrasting views on this topic, you can read these two articles: Wind is reliable and Critique of wind integration into the grid on Claverton).

The reality here is that the service "reliability of supply" is well-understood, and the technical requirements (having stand-by capacity for the potentially required volumes) are well-known, there is plenty of experience on how to provide them ("spinning reserves", i.e. gas-fired plants available to be fired up, or interruptible supply contracts with some industrial users who accept to be switched off at short notice) and experience and the relevant regulations have made it possible to put a price on that service.

Source: Economics of wind (pdf) by the European Wind Energy Association

In the case of wind, the cost of the service (which a wind producer needs to pay to the grid operator in order to be able to provide its service, which is the same of kWh) is estimated at 2-4 EUR/MWh, i.e. 5% or less of the cost of wind. And, given that the relevant regulations exist, that externality can be easily internalised - and in that case, added to the cost of producing windpower - or deducted from the price wind generators can get for selling their "naked" MWh.

Carbon emissions


The second externality to mention is carbon emissions. In that case, it is not an externality caused by wind generation, it is an externality which is created by existing power generators, which is not properly accounted for yet today, but which wind generation avoids. In other words, there is a benefit for society to replace fossil fuel-burning generation by wind, but it is not priced in yet (or, in other words, the indirect cost of coal-burning is paid by the inhabitants of low-lying islands rather than by the consumers of that electricity).

Attempts to price carbon emissions are moving forward, with the European ETS (emissions trading system) and the expected "cap-and-trade" mechanism in the USA; these require carbon-spewing generators to pay for that privilege and materialize a new cost for them, which will be added to their cost of generating electricity (but not to that of wind, as it emits no carbon dioxide in the process).

Source: Economics of wind (pdf) by the European Wind Energy Association

The grey area in the bars above is the added cost of producing electricity from coal or gas, for two different prices of carbon (note that the bottom graph also changes the cost of fuel, which increases the other component of cost for coal and gas). It has a significant impact on the net cost of production for these sources, and on the respective competitively of competing technologies. Note that the graph above includes the grid-related costs for wind discussed above, in dark blue.

It is no less legitimate to include the cost of carbon as it is to include the cost of stand-by capacity in the calculation of the cost of electricity. If we consider the power grid as a fully integrated system, then there is very little reason to include some externalities and not others - other, that is, than force of habit and lobbying by the incumbents who designed the rules around their exiting generation mix.

Security of supply


A power plant is an investment that can last 25 to 50 years (or even more, in the case of dams). Once built, it will create patterns of behavior that will similarly last for a very long time. A gas-fired plant will require supply of gas for 25 years or more (and the corresponding infrastructure, and attached services, employees ... and lobbyists). Given worries about resource depletion (usually downplayed) and about the unreliability of some suppliers (hysterically exaggerated, cf the "New Cold War" hype about Putin's Russia), it is not unreasonable to suggest that security of supply has a cost.

This may be reflected in long term supply arrangements with firm commitments by gas-producing countries to deliver agreed volumes of gas over many years - but, given all the Russia-angst we hear, this does not seem to be enough (most supplies from Russia are under long term contracts). Wind, which requires no fuel, and thus no imports, neatly avoids that problem, but how can that be valued in economic terms? That question has no satisfactory reply today, but it is clear that the value is more than nil.

Another aspect of this is that "security of supply" is usually understood to mean "at reasonable prices." Fuel-fired power plants will need to buy gas or coal in 10, 15 or 20 years time and it is impossible today to hedge the corresponding price risk. Given prevalent pricing mechanisms, individual plants may not care so much (they will pass on fuel price increases to consumers), but consumers may not be so happy with the result. Again, here, wind, with its fixed price over many years, provides a very valuable alternative: a guarantee that its costs will not increase over time. Markets should theoretically be able to value this, but futures markets are not very liquid for durations beyond 5 years, and thus, in practice, they don't do it. This is where governments can step in, to provide a value today to the long term option embedded in wind (i.e. a "call" at a low price). This is what feed-in tariffs do, fundamentally, by setting a fixed price for wind production which is high enough for producers to be happy with their investment today, and low enough to provide a hedge against cost increases elsewhere in the system (and indeed, last year, when oil and gas prices were very high, feed-in tariffs in several countries ended up being below the prevailing wholesale price: the subsidy went the other way round...).

Note that the regulatory framework will decide who gets access to that value: if wind is sold at a fixed price, it is the buyer of that power that will benefit from the then-cheap supply (and that may be a private buyer under a PPA, or the grid operator; depending on regulatory mechanics, that benefit may be kept by that entity, or have to be reflected into retail tariffs for end consumers). If wind producers get support in the form of tax credits or "green certificates", it is wind producers that will capture the windfall of high power prices. So the question is not just how to make that value appear, but also how to share it. Both are political questions to which there are no obvious answers.

:: ::

So wind power has value as a low-emissions, home-grown, fixed cost supplier. It also tends to create significant numbers of largely non-offshoreable jobs, which may be an argument in today's context. It also has, in a market pricing mechanism, the effect of lowering prices for consumers thanks to its zero-marginal cost. Its drawbacks, i.e. mainly intermittency, can be priced and taken into account by the system. (Birds/bat are not a serious issue, despite the hype; esthetics are a very subjective issue which can usually be sidestepped by avoiding certain locations - the US is big enough, and Europe has the North Sea)

Altogether, wind seems to be an excellent deal for consumers - and an obvious pain (in terms of both lower volumes, and lower prices) for competing sources of power, except maybe those specialising in on-demand capacity.

In other words: sticking with mostly coal or nuclear is a political choice, not an economic one.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/acrim-vs-pmo

Two recent papers (Lockwood & Frolich, 2008 - 'LF08′; Scafetta & Willson, 2009 - 'SW09′) compare the analysis of total solar irradiance (TSI) and the way the TSI measurements are combined to form a long series consisting of data from several satellite missions. The two papers come to completely opposite conclusions regarding the long term trend. So which one (if either) is right, then? And does it really matter?

This issue is a very familiar one when it comes to long-time series from satellite data. Each individual satellite only lasts a few years, and so a 30 year time series needs to be stitched together from a series of satellites. Each of those instruments might have a different calibration, and may have non-climatic drifts associated with instrument degradation, or orbital effects. Thus it can often be the case that there is a degree of ambiguity in putting together the series. This issue is at least part of the difference between the RSS and UAH tropospheric temperature trends, and in the CERES/ERBE analyses discussed recently.

The differences between PMOD and ACRIM have already been discussed by the SkepticalScientist and Tamino, so here is just an update in the light of the two recent papers. The important issue here is the so-called 'ACRIM-gap', the time between the ACRIM-I instrument ceased and when the ACRIM-II observations started (mid-1989 to late 1991), and how the data from these two instruments are combined using other overlapping observations. Note that the 'ACRIM' name for the Willson et al time-series simply implies that it was put together by some people on the ACRIM science team, not that they use different satellite data.

The focus on these papers is what the 'ACRIM gap' implies for TSI levels during the solar minimum at solar cycles 21 and 22. Whereas PMOD suggests that the TSI levels during these minima are similar, ACRIM suggests that the TSI level is higher during the minimum of cycle 22. SW08 even claim that there has been a positive 'minima trend'.

LF08 conclude that the PMOD is more realistic, since the change in the TSI levels during the solar minima, suggested by ACRIM, is inconsistent with the known relationship between TSI and galactic cosmic rays (GCR). It is well-known that the GCR flux is generally low when the level of solar activity is high, because the solar magnetic fields are more extensive and these shield the solar system against GCR (charged particles). However the two effects don't always go in lockstep, so this is suggestive rather than conclusive.

It is also clear from the instrumental data that the TSI tends to increase with the solar activity level - at least over the solar cycle. LF08 argue that if the ACRIM 'minimum trend' is correct, this will mean that past reconstruction of TSI based on e.g. sunspots are incorrect, and a lot of studies on the past climate variations would be wrong. This does not mean that the ACRIM data are useless, but that there are uncertainties regarding the relationship TSI-levels, solar activity for different time scales.

I found insufficient detailed description in SW09 of the methodology used in their analysis to be able to judge the real merit of their work. The paper provides a link to auxiliary material that does not work. However, the figures in the paper don't really convince when I don't know how they were made.

Furthermore, I found the SW09 a bit confusing, as it gives the impression that the PMOD composite relies on ERBS/ERBE data during the ACRIM-gap (“The PMOD team uses the sparse ERBS/ERBE data base to 'bridge' the ACRIM gap, conforming the higher cadence Nimbus 7/ERB to it by making adjustments due to …”). However the information in LF08 says PMOD used HF from Nimbus 7 (ERB).

The PMOD analysis involves an adjustment to correct for a glitch in the ERB data (orientation changes and/or switching off), but SW09 claims - without providing convincing arguments - that this correction cannot be justified.

The ACRIM composite does not account for a jump in the 'ACRIM-gap' due to instrumental changes. SW09 show a comparison between different analyses and Krivova et al. (2007) modeled TSI, but later acknowledge that the latter modeled TSI disagrees with measurements on decadal time scales. Furthermore, when the TSI is not adjusted over the 'ACRIM-gap', there is the apparent inconsistency between TSI and GCR.

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Distillate glut may cut U.S. refinery summer runs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. refiners may curb summer activity for the first time in at least 20 years to combat brimming inventories of key transportation and industrial fuels, like diesel and jet fuel, as a slow economy hurts demand.

A glut in these petroleum products, known as distillates, is expected to pressure prices and prompt refiners to cut runs, which could mean foregoing a bump in output and revenue that usually results from operating units near full blast in May through August.

Mexico finding, expanding deep Gulf oil, gas - exec

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Mexico is having success finding oil and gas in the deep Gulf of Mexico and is ramping up rapidly to expand production, a Pemex executive said Wednesday.

Drilling activity will increase from two wells currently to as many as 10 wells in 2011, and five rigs will be working in deep Mexican waters of the Gulf by 2012, Pemex PEMX.UL exploration and production director Carlos Morales Gil told an Offshore Technology Conference breakfast meeting.

Chesapeake loses conviction buy spot

Goldman Sachs removed Chesapeake Energy from its Americas conviction buy list, citing the company's underperformance in comparison to other exploration and production, and coal stocks under its coverage.

However, the brokerage maintained a "buy" rating on the natural gas company, and said asset sale news and lower spending in the next three to six months could allow Chesapeake shares to recover.

PetroChina says it needs $22 bln in financing for 2009

HONG KONG (Reuters) - PetroChina, the world's second-most valuable oil and gas producer after Exxon Mobil, on Wednesday said it would need 150 billion yuan ($21.99 billion) to finance its operations and investment activities in 2009.

PetroChina, Asia's top oil and gas producer, said it expected to pay 84.2 billion yuan in taxes for its refined products in 2009, up 71 billion yuan from the year before, according to documents from its shareholders meeting filed to the Shanghai stock exchange.

Tallying the toll of transportation privatization

Call it a tale of two airports.

In Missouri, a plan to open the nation’s first privately developed and operated commercial airport will come to fruition when the built-from-scratch Branson Airport opens on May 11.

In Illinois, a plan to lease Chicago’s Midway Airport that was seen as a model for privatization has collapsed in the face of the global credit crunch.

Two airports, two unique approaches and two completely different outcomes. Yet each in its own way may offer insights on how the U.S. funds, builds and manages its transportation infrastructure for years to come.

No Fix for Public Transit

This was the choice faced by New York lawmakers. There were two plans on the table to rescue about eight million public transit riders in the New York City area who, unless something is done quickly, will have to pay much higher fares for sharply curtailed service.

One plan would have taken the long-range approach, shoring up the subway, bus and rail systems to hold down fares and maintain decent service for years to come. The other would be a quick political fix that holds down fare increases for the moment and puts off the hard decisions until later.

It should not come as a surprise to hear that far too many of Albany’s politicians would rather go with the cheap political fix.

Resource scarcity: what does it mean for business?

A new report, launched by Lloyd’s and the International Institute of Strategic Studies last week, advised businesses to assess their vulnerability to the increasing scarcity of resources such as fresh water, food and energy triggered by global warming.

In this, the second of two features marking the launch of the report, we explore what others are saying on resource scarcity—and what it means for business.

Nate Silver: The End of Car Culture

We are driving a lot less in this country, even less than one would have expected in a bad economy with fluctuating gas prices. The graph above charts 1) actual miles driven per capita in America during each January for the last thirty years and 2) how many miles per capita we could have been expected to drive based on my model, which accounts for changes in population, gas prices, unemployment rates, and other factors. The downward trend last year was stark. Indeed, Americans have rarely cut back on their driving so consistently for so long.

This is surely one of the signs of the apocalypse: Americans aren't driving as much as they used to.

Ford Spending $550 Million To Convert Truck Factory To Build Electric, Small Cars

Ford (F) says it will spend $550 million to convert a manufacturing facility to build small and electric cars. The current facility is set up for trucks.

Review: 'Tar Sands' by Andrew Nikiforuk

If you’ve been following energy news with a discerning eye, then you already know better than to buy into all the hype about the Canadian tar sands. Far from being a panacea for declining supplies of conventional oil, the sands could never contribute more than a proverbial drop in the bucket to daily world oil production. And even achieving this modest rate of production would require such staggering quantities of water, natural gas and boreal forestland as to leave Alberta resembling “a third-rate golf course in the Sudan” before the bulk of the sands’ 175 billion barrels had ever been produced.

The Sudanese-golf-course quote comes from Andrew Nikiforuk’s new book Tar Sands, a powerful, eloquent litany of horrors associated with North America’s frenzied dash toward tar sands bitumen as its next fuel of choice. An investigative journalist of formidable caliber, Nikiforuk illustrates how the tar sands’ woeful inability to sustain our cheap-oil-addicted lifestyle is only one in a long list of reasons why their unchecked exploitation must be stopped immediately.

Russia exports 21.5 bln cu m of gas, 55 mln tons of oil in 1Q09

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - Russia exported 21.5 billion cubic meters of gas worth $7 billion, and over 55 million metric tons of oil to the tune of $16.5 billion in the first quarter of 2009, the Federal Customs Service said on Wednesday.

Gas exports to non-CIS countries plummeted by 61% in January-March 2009 to 18.6 billion cubic meters year-on-year, while gas exports to former Soviet republics totaled 2.9 bln cu m, down 49.8% against the first three months of 2008.

Transocean profits dip

Transocean reported a drop in quarterly profit today as the world's largest offshore drilling contractor was pinched by weaker industry activity with oil and gas prices half that of a year before.

OTC: Aramco pursues 70% oil recovery rate

HOUSTON -- Saudi Aramco wants to improve its oil recovery rate to 70% from 50% over the next 20 years by focusing on enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques and other new technologies, said Amin H. Nasser, Aramco senior vice-president, exploration and production.

Nasser told delegates May 4 at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston that the company wants to expand its resources from 742 billion bbl to 900 billion bbl to address the world's future energy needs. "In the most optimistic scenario, world oil demand is placed at 125 million b/d and this would require 15-40 million b/d of additional capacity and compensation for declining fields."

Saudi oil output will stay at 8 mln bpd - spokesman

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian oil output is now 8 million barrels per day and there are no immediate expectations of a cut, a spokesman for Aramco's senior vice president of exploration and production said Tuesday.

Saudi oil capacity at 12.5 mln bpd by June 30 - exec

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia will meet an end-of-June target for raising its oil output capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day (bpd), a Saudi Aramcoexecutive said Tuesday.

Amin Nasser, Saudi Aramco's senior vice president for exploration and production, made the prediction to Reuters on the sidelines of the Offshore Technology Conference.

Saudi aims to double spot jet fuel supply

DUBAI/SINGAPORE: Saudi Arabia will double its monthly spot aviation fuel supply available for exports starting in May due to lower domestic consumption, industry sources said yesterday.

The world’s top oil exporter which typically sells around 550,000 barrels of spot aviation fuel monthly, was likely to boost supply for spot sales to 1.1 million barrels monthly starting in May, traders said.

Venezuela May Pass Law to Seize Oil Services Cos

Venezuelan lawmakers are ready to support a law that would allow President Hugo Chavez to seize the assets of all oil-services companies, giving the state greater control over the industry.

Members of Venezuela's National Assembly may approve in a first reading the law proposal Tuesday that would declare of "public interest" all goods and services related to primary hydrocarbon activities, a needed step before expropriation.

Foreign Oil Majors Drilling in Brazil Despite Oil Prices

Foreign oil companies continue prospecting for crude at Brazilian concessions, including the key BM-S-22 block in the Santos Basin, despite a steep decline in oil prices and daunting costs.

A series of high-profile oil discoveries in the past few years has made Brazil one of the world's most exciting oil frontiers. Last week, state-run energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), or Petrobras, pumped the first crude from a Santos Basin sub-salt well at the Tupi field.

Total Profit Declines 35% on Lower Crude Prices

(Bloomberg) -- Total SA, Europe’s third-largest oil producer, said first-quarter earnings declined 35 percent as the global recession eroded energy demand, causing crude prices to drop and production to fall.

Profit excluding changes in inventories and the value of a stake in Sanofi-Aventis SA fell to 2.1 billion euros ($2.79 billion) from 3.25 billion euros a year earlier, the Paris-based company said today in a statement. That beat the 2 billion-euro median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Net income dropped 36 percent to 2.3 billion euros.

Why Are There So Many More Energy Experts than Energy Billionaires?

There are many energy experts. They make a lot of predictions. If only half of those predictions were correct, these experts would be among the richest people in the world. All they need do is act on their advice. Why, then, are there so many energy experts and so few energy billionaires?

The simple and correct response is that most energy experts are wrong most of the time on most topics. Their forecasting record is far worse than that of weather forecasters. The very few experts who get the trends and inflexion points right at least half the time don’t talk about their predictions: they act on them by betting risk capital and building organizational capability and by so doing, become billionaires. As the axiom has it, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” The vast majority of energy experts teach because they cannot do.

Shell call to avoid energy crunch

A TAX on carbon emissions would address the failure of the market to reflect the full economic cost of energy use, Shell Australia chairman Russell Caplan said yesterday.

In a speech to the Netherlands and American Chambers of Commerce in Melbourne, Mr Caplan said he supported the government's proposed carbon emissions trading scheme as an example of leadership in setting clear rules for markets to operate.

Russian Deputy PM Warns of Coming Energy Crisis

Eastern Europe could face a new energy crisis in the coming winter, facing shortages of gas and oil, according to Russian Deputy Prime-Minister Igor Sechin. Sechin, who came forward with the warning at a meeting with European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs Monday, said the problem lay with Ukraine.

Shortages may come about if the Russian neighbor does not stock-up on enough natural gas, Sechin said, warning that Ukrainian gas infrastructure may not be sufficient in any case.

Kenya: Deathly nightmare for fuel tankers

"I recall driving peacefully at night in the company of my turn boy. Then all of a sudden there was a maddening flash from the opposite direction and I rammed into an oncoming canter truck head on," he recalls.

He then remembers being cruelly dragged out of his damaged lorry and being hurled to the ground.

"At first I expected they would take me to hospital. Then they started raining blows on me. They frisked my pockets and took all the valuables," Ibrahim painfully recalls shaking his head in anger.

The six gangsters, who were armed with crude weapons, then started emptying the 40,000 litres of oil in his tanker.

"They abandoned the mission after realising I was ferrying factory oil, also know as black oil. This has limited use and has no ready market. They, however, stole all the wheels and spanners," he adds.

Nepal: Consequence of Rolling Blackouts

As we know, the country is facing one of the worst rolling blackouts problems ever. The time on rolling blackouts had gone up to 16 hours a day, severely crippling the normal and daily economic activitivities of the people. According to the recent NEA (Nepal Electricity Authority) report for load shedding improvement, there is a generating capacity deficit of about 41%, which means the system peak load is about 300 MW higher than the firm generating capacity in the dry season. Due to this, the government has declared a state of emergency to deal with such severe energy crisis. The poor water levels in the reservoirs of several hydropower plants are blamed for this consequence. Hence, if there are no immediate measures taken by the government, the situation will further deteriorate. Even though NEA claims that there will be a surplus power after 5 years, there is a very little validity to the statement and it looks like the problem will continue easily for next 10 years, if not more.

ERITREA: Reaping the wind

ASSAB, 5 May 2009 (IRIN) - The old fisherman leaned heavily on his walking stick and sighed. For the first time in 50 years, the sea, the winds and the weather in Edi village, in the Southern Red Sea Region of Eritrea – his trusted allies in making a living - are baffling him.

"It is getting hotter and hotter every year; the hot period is starting later now and we have to go deeper and deeper into the sea to find fish," he told IRIN. "The sea is everything to us – we do not understand what is happening."

Energy bill to include plan offering cash for gas guzzlers

President Obama and key House Democrats agreed Tuesday to include a "cash for clunkers" program in the major energy bill being written in Congress, but they ended a White House meeting without reaching agreement on thornier issues -- including how to reduce the economic impact of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

The "clunkers" program would offer federal payments to consumers who scrapped older gas-guzzling vehicles and bought new, more environmentally friendly ones to replace them. Similar programs have enjoyed some success in Europe.

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), a longtime champion of the auto industry, said the plan would "result in hundreds of thousands of new vehicles being purchased across the country."

Oil rises above $54 on economic recovery optimism

Oil prices remained above $54 a barrel Wednesday as comments by the U.S. central bank chief stoked investor optimism that economic growth and crude demand may pick up by the end of the year.

A report showing a fall in U.S. stocks of oil and gasoline also helped sustain prices.

East Timor Says It Won’t Approve Woodside LNG Plan

(Bloomberg) -- The East Timor government said it doesn’t intend to approve plans that Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-largest oil and gas producer, has said it will put forward to develop the Sunrise field in the Timor Sea.

Progress on the natural gas project has stalled, the Pacific nation said in an e-mailed statement today. Woodside’s partners in the venture include Royal Dutch Shell Plc and ConocoPhillips.

Chevron Announces First Oil from Tahiti Field in Gulf of Mexico

SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chevron Corporation has announced that it has started crude oil production from its Tahiti Field, the deepest producing field in the Gulf of Mexico. First oil from Tahiti was achieved on May 5, 2009. Daily production is expected to ramp up to approximately 125,000 barrels of crude oil and 70 million cubic feet of natural gas before the end of the year.

Eni Resumes Normal Exports of Nigeria’s Brass Crude

(Bloomberg) -- Eni SpA, Italy’s biggest energy company, resumed normal deliveries of Nigeria’s Brass River crude oil after night-time loading was suspended in April because of security concerns.

Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. yesterday told exporters of Brass River crude that Eni, operator of the local terminal, had revoked its declaration of “force majeure” on shipments, according to three people familiar with the announcement who declined to be identified because of company policy.

Canada racing Alaska on gas pipe

The race to finish the Northwest Territories’ Mackenzie gas pipeline before Alaska is heating up.

The territorial government says it is trying to streamline the regulatory process by ensuring requirements are in place by the end of this year to ensure industry is not mired by bureaucratic red tape.

Heritage Oil Has ‘Major’ Find at Miran West in Iraq

(Bloomberg) -- Heritage Oil Ltd., a U.K.-based explorer, said it has made a “major” oil discovery in the Miran West structure of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, driving the stock to the highest since it began trading.

The estimated oil-in-place at Miran West is between 2.3 billion and 4.2 billion barrels, St. Helier, Jersey-based Heritage said in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service. The recovery factor is likely to be between 50 percent and 70 percent due to the fractured nature of the reservoirs.

Shell to sell most French fuel stations

PARIS (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell plans to sell 70 percent of its French fuel stations and cut by a third its 1,200 person work force in France, French newspaper Les Echos reported in its Wednesday edition.

The Anglo-Dutch oil major will divest 240 out of the 340 stations it owns in France, Les Echos said in an advance copy of its front page received by Reuters late on Tuesday.

Canadian pleads guilty in "Toronto 18" bomb plot

TORONTO – A Canadian man has pleaded guilty to his role in an alleged plan to bomb nuclear power plants and a building housing Canada's spy service.

Cnooc Parent, Datong Plan $4.4 Billion Coal-to-Gas Project

(Bloomberg) -- China National Offshore Oil Corp., the country’s biggest offshore petroleum explorer, and Datong Coal Mine Group Co. plan to invest 30 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) in a plant that will turn coal into gas and electricity.

China National Offshore’s New Energy subsidiary, Datong Coal and the city government of Datong agreed on the joint project in the northern province of Shanxi at the end of last month, the parent of Hong Kong-listed Cnooc Ltd. said in a May 4 statement on its Web site.

Cuomo sends letter to Chevron seeking assurances over liability in $27B Ecuadorean lawsuit

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has sent a letter to the Chevron Corp., questioning whether executives have been upfront with shareholders about the company's potential liability for decades of pollution in the jungles of Ecuador.

For years, the nation's second-largest oil company has been fighting a lawsuit filed on behalf of tens of thousands of residents of the Amazon rain forest over environmental damage and alleged cancer deaths they blame on oil spills and water contamination.

Australia seeks $18 m over toxic oil spill

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia will seek more than 18 million US dollars in compensation from a Hong Kong-based shipping company over a massive toxic oil spill during a wild storm, officials said.

We have the energy for a green future

For the best part of a decade, Britain has had no energy policy to speak of. As a result, we are grossly unprepared for the decade ahead, during which much of Britain's current electricity-generating capacity is due to be closed down and we will move from being a net exporter of oil and gas to importing 80% of our supplies from overseas. All this while we face stringent binding targets for renewable energy and the reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions.

Archer Daniels Midland 3Q profit tumbles

ST. LOUIS – Archer Daniels Midland Co., a major corn and soybean processor and ethanol maker, said Tuesday its fiscal third-quarter profit tumbled an unexpectedly sharp 98 percent due to a drop in sales along with an unexpected tax payment and a loss on equity investments.

New energy for alternative power projects

CTED Senior Policy Analyst Mark Anderson said the funds are meant for three things: renewable energy production and research, weatherization for low-income households and energy efficiency projects on public lands and structures.

Anderson said CTED wants to devote much of the money to long-term renewable energy programs, with only a portion going to one-time projects in low-income weatherization and similar efforts.

Administration addressing ethanol, climate change

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration renewed its commitment Tuesday to speed up investments in ethanol and other biofuels while seeking to deflect some environmentalists' claims that huge increases in corn ethanol use will hinder the fight against global warming.

U.S. raises the bar for ethanol producers

OTTAWA and TORONTO — The corn-based ethanol industry will have to substantially reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases in order to play a leading role in the U.S. drive to boost the use of renewable transportation fuels.

In releasing new regulations yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said much corn-based ethanol is worse than gasoline - at least in the short term - in producing greenhouse gas emissions when agricultural practices are factored in.

Celebs use star power to spotlight environmental issues

Celebrities "have a bigger megaphone than we would ever have or ever be able to buy," said Julia Bovey, spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which counts DiCaprio, Redford and James Taylor among its trustees. "When we have celebrities getting attention for their work talk about what we do and why it matters, we're able to reach hundreds of thousands, or even millions."

Stars can even sway lawmakers to hold a hearing on an issue that may have otherwise never occurred, Bovey said. And stars say they hear stories through their travels that they can then relay to policymakers.

Global Warming Threatens Tibet Railway

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's controversial railway to
the remote and restless mountainous region of Tibet could be
threatened by global warming, which may melt the permafrost on
which the tracks are built, state media said on Wednesday.

Mercury Levels In Arctic Seals May Be Linked To Global Warming

ScienceDaily — Researchers in Canada are reporting for the first time that high mercury levels in certain Arctic seals appear to be linked to vanishing sea ice caused by global warming. Their study provides new insight into the impact of climate change on Arctic marine life.

Population and Climate Change Solutions

Positive initiatives to slow global population growth -- such as empowering women and girls -- can play a significant role in addressing rising pollution levels worldwide, says population and climate change expert Kathleen Mogelgaard.

"Slower population growth would have significant benefits in addressing climate change," writes Mogelgaard, senior program manager for population and climate change at the research institute Population Action International. These include a reduction in fossil fuel-related emissions and reduced stress on forests and other natural resources that absorb carbon dioxide. And we already know of positive interventions to bring down birth rates around the world, continues Mogelgaard: "expanding education, especially for the world's girls; enhancing economic opportunities for women; and providing access to voluntary reproductive health and family planning services, so that women and men can freely decide the number and timing of their children."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/zNQPL4NFyiw/

Yesterday, scientists at the University of Warwick in England unveiled a race car that runs on chocolate, or at least the waste from a chocolate factory. The car, built to Formula 3 specifications, is even more distinct because it's also built using biodegradable materials.

The steering wheel, seat and car body are all made from plant fibers from carrots, flax, soybean and various root vegetables. The engine runs on a mixture of vegetable oil and chocolate waste. The makers claim that it's the fastest biofuel car to also be made out of sustainable materials and I'm claiming that it will be the first car whose description makes people hungry. It's built to reach a top speed of 145 mph and drivers will take it out for a full-speed test run in a few weeks to verify its performance.

The makers are calling it the "WorldFirst Formula 3 Race Car" and are taking it on a tour of several races where it will be on display, including the European Grand Prix andBritain's Goodwood Festival of Speed.

via Physorg

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/gcEUmTUJQEs/5325

The gas situation in a number of places world-wide isn't looking good.  Britain especially has storm clouds looming; as production from the North Sea declines and imports fail to make up the difference, something has to give.  The island cannot switch back to heating homes with coal; that door was closed some time ago.  Cutting industry or commerce can easily make problems worse.  If electric power generation loses, everything else collapses.  This leaves home heating, but if people get too cold or damp, many will get sick and quite a few will die.

Spot the logical error in that last sentence?

I'll repeat it for those who missed it:  "This leaves home heating, but if people get too cold or damp, many will get sick and quite a few will die."

People need to be kept warm and dry.  Heating homes is the favored method in the West, but it's only one way to accomplish this.  And having broken through that particular mental box, it's time to explore outside it just a bit.

Lessons from elsewhere

Other cultures have invented many ways of dealing with cold.  The Inuit in particular
mastered the art of living with dwellings that stayed around freezing at most.  Their innovations were primarily in their clothing, which we can do just as well if we try.  Polypropylene fleece, Thinsulate and other materials are up to the job of keeping people warm
in extreme conditions outdoors, let alone houses heated to a lesser degree than we are currently used to.  But I'm not going to suggest that we accept igloo-like conditions in the winter; we can do much better than that.

The Japanese kotatsu is another example.  Dating to Imperial Japan, it warms a small area beneath a table and people sit with their legs under the quilted covering.  Originally heated by a small hibachi burning charcoal, the modern version uses electric heat.  The kotatsu minimizes energy requirements by reducing the area for heat loss; even if the quilt doesn't have a particularly high R-value compared to 6 inches of fiberglass, the area is small enough that little heat is required to keep the people warm while they're sitting still.  I gather that heavy robes suffice while moving around and being active.

Kotatsu probably aren't a solution for western societies; people who aren't used to sitting cross-legged on futons will likely not adapt to them well, especially not if they are old and arthritic.  Further, a Western dwelling which is already somewhat insulated and in a wetter winter climate needs more than just heat; it needs reduced humidity, to keep the water vapor produced by occupants and activities from leading to condensation and mold.  What could we do about this?

Lessons from our own past

In days past, homes were heated much less than we are used to.  Upper floors had low ceilings to keep heat close to the people, and winter bedding was much warmer.  People were often less comfortable, but they got by.

Another invention that's fallen by the wayside is the canopy bed.  A canopy over the bed helps hold in body heat above the covers, helping to keep the exposed parts of the head warmer as well.  Humidity and the need for fresh air limit how well heat can be held, but every bit helps.

What can we do with modern technology?

Suppose that there was broad knowledge, from the grassroots to the top of political leadership, that a natural-gas crisis was not yet here, but coming soon.  To keep the economy and electrical grid running, priority would have to be given to those uses.  Much of the difference would have to come from home heating.  What could be done about it?

Suppose that a 2-bedroom condominium requires 7 GJ of gas per month to heat to 68 F (20 C), but only 3.5 GJ/month to heat to 50 F (10 C).  This is sufficient to keep the pipes thawed.  The remaining 3.5 GJ/month is 1350 watts of energy, 24/7!  What could we do with a fraction of that?

First:  remember the past.  Some advances, like cogenerating furnaces, would take many years to retrofit widely.  But how about canopy beds?  Heck, how about plain old sweaters?  Fingerless gloves?  These responses range from inexpensive to close to free.

Second:  deal with people, not dwellings.  Instead of heating a whole house, heat one room.  Instead of heating an entire room, just heat the people.  If humidity is a problem, dehumidify (and recover the latent heat) but don't add extra heat.

Third:  pick appropriate technologies.  Kotatsu are bound to run into acceptance problems.  But how about electric clothing?  Widely used by motorcyclists and snowmobilers today, electrically-heated pants and vests can keep people warm even under very severe conditions.  Fifty watts is a substantial amount of power for electric clothes, particularly if used indoors.  Modern solid-state sensors and electronic controls can provide great flexibility and comfort at very reasonable cost in mass production.  Even lower-tech:  update the old canopy bed with aluminized Mylar "space blankets" to make it more effective.

Fourth:  address the problems specifically.  If the problem is cold bedrooms, maybe one solution is dropped ceilings with blown-in insulation and vapor barriers.  If the problem is condensation on the bedroom windows because of the occupants breathing, maybe the solution is a canopy bed with a dehumidifier under it.  Some heat from the condenser coil is required to keep the exhaust above its dew point, but the recovered latent heat could pre-heat air going under the canopy.  A 10 pint/day dehumidifier could probably be run on less than 80 watts, using less than 1 kWh/day for the time it's actually in use.

Fifth:  make systems failure-tolerant.  For example, electric clothing that runs on 12 volts can be powered by the lighter jack in the car, a small transformer from the wall, or an emergency battery for power failures; people with electric clothing and a battery might be in better shape during power failures than people with central heat.  This is not difficult or expensive to do, it just takes forethought.  Failure tolerance makes problems escalate and cascade much more slowly, if at all.

How much would this cost?  Probably not too much.  A decent set of electric pants and vest appears to be $200-$300.  Sweaters are much cheaper, and gloves can be had for under $10; right now I am experimenting with a pair of cutoff gardening gloves which I got for under two bucks.  I'm typing this paragraph while wearing them..  Adding canopies to beds and building custom dehumidifiers to work with them (or dehumidifier armoires to dry outdoor clothing like coats and umbrellas) would cost more and require some new design, but 50 pint/day dehumidifiers are selling today for under $200.  These measures could probably pay for themselves with the savings in fuel alone in a couple of heating seasons even at today's US prices.  Would they be affordable in a nation in the grips of a natural-gas crisis?  More to the point, could people afford not to use them?  The ultimate "fix" is to retrofit everything to Passivhaus standards, but measures such as these would be a stopgap while the more expensive and time-consuming solutions proceeded as resources permitted.

What could we save?  If half of all heating fuel is saved at a power expense of 50 watts per occupant, the hypothetical condominium with 4 occupants would save roughly 43% of its heating energy.  If the electricity for the clothing and other equipment came from cogenerators, the savings would be approximately that much; if the electricity came from generating stations, it would be somewhat less.  But any improvement in a crisis would help matters.

Conclusion

While there are natural-gas crises looming around the globe, the problems do not appear insurmountable.  Our ancestors lived without amenities like central heat, and didn't have the materials or manufacturing capabilities we have today.  Taking a few hints from the past to shape our own response, we can probably use cheap countermeasures to get through tight spells while we come up with something that works for the longer term.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/hgiP6yrkAbs/

A new report from Pike Research, a firm that analyzes global clean technology trends, states that the e-waste problem will continue and grow through 2015, but that the tide will turn in 2016 as recycling efforts finally catch up to the amount of electronics being manufactured.

The report foresees e-waste peaking at about 73 million metric tons. More aggressive e-recycling campaigns from companies, government regulation and consumer awareness will all play a part in causing that volume to decline after 2015. The report names Cisco, Dell, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Research in Motion, Sprint Nextel and Vodafone as companies that are leading the way with recycling efforts.

The firm notes that government regulation will be critical in ultimately decreasing the amount of e-waste that ends up in landfills. As it is now, consumers have very little incentive to recycle their old electronics; it's too easy to just throw them away. But government programs that regulate how electronics can be disposed ofwill cause consumers to change their behavior.



An executive summary of the report is available for free download. Companies or other interested parties can request the full report for a fee.

via CNET

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/xKheuBCYX2k/

Back in February, it was announced that Best Buy will start carrying the Brammo Enertia motorcycle at some of its West Coast locations this month. Now, it seems, the box store will not only be carrying the electric motorcycle, but a whole range of personal electric vehicles in the near future.

According to the BNET Auto Blog, Best Buy has confirmed this new business venture.

"We can confirm that Best Buy will be piloting electric-powered personal transportation products at some of its stores on the West Coast later this spring. The selection will include Brammo."

The Brammo Enertia is made of carbon-fiber, has a top speed of 50 mph and has a 45-mile range on a full charge. It costs $12,000, but is eligible for a 10 percent federal tax credit. Best Buy will treat the Enertia like any other consumer electronic sold by the store. The Geek Squad will perform repairs and maintenance,and electronic upgrades like on-board cameras that link to the internet will likely be available.

We'll be anxiously waiting to hear more details on this story, particularly the exact vehicles that Best Buy is looking to carry.



via Autoblog Green

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/Y6R7XjuRDaw/

Apple is making recycling electronics easy for schools by offering to recycle old computers for free, but like any great offer, it's limited.

Any K-12 or higher education institutions are eligible to recycle old Macs, PCs and peripherals (keyboards, mice, printers, etc.) from any manufacturer, with no purchase required. The limits are these: a school must have at least 25 pieces of recyclables to participate, they must register by July 31 and pick-up must occur by August 31 and all equipment must be packaged according to the instructions.

Regardless of all the details, this is a great, if temporary, offer from Apple. If you or anyone you know works for a school that would be eligible, please pass on the registration information here. Until electronics companies institute permanent, free recycling for all their products, we'll have to take advantage of opportunities like these while we can.

via Treehugger

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/the-tragedy-

Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do. The problem is made more complicated because some groups of fishermen are much more efficient than the others. The top 5 catchers, catch 20% of the fish, and the top 20 catch almost 75% of the fish. Meanwhile the least efficient 50 catch only 10% of the fish and barely subsist. Clearly, fairness demands that the top catchers lead the way in moving towards a more sustainable future.

The top 5 do start discussing how to manage the transition. They realise that the continued growth in catches - driven by improved technology and increasing effort - is not sustainable, and make a plan to reduce their catch by 80% over a number of years. But there is opposition - manufacturers of fishing boats, tackle and fish processing plants are worried that this would imply less sales for them in the short term. Strangely, they don't seem worried that a complete collapse of the fishery would mean no sales at all - preferring to think that the science can't possibly be correct and that everything will be fine. These manufacturers set up a number of organisations to advocate against any decreases in catch sizes - with catchy names like the Fisherfolk for Sound Science, and Friends of Fish. They then hire people who own an Excel spreadsheet program do "science" for them - and why not? They live after all in a free society.

After spending much energy and money on trying to undermine the science - with claims that the pond is much deeper than it looks, that the fish are just hiding, that the records of fish catches were contaminated by being done near a supermarket - the continued declining stocks and smaller and smaller fish make it harder and harder to sound convincing. So, in a switch of tactics so fast it would impress Najinsky, the manufacturers lobby suddenly decides to accept all that science and declares that the 'fish are hiding' crowd are just fringe elements. No, they said, we want to help with this transition, but …. we need to be sure that the plans will make sense. So they ask their spreadsheet-wielding "advocacy scientists" to calculate exactly what would happen if the top 5 (and only the top 5) did cut their catches by 80%, but meanwhile everyone else kept increasing their catch at the current (unsustainable rate). Well, the answers were shocking - the total catch would be initially still be 84% of what it is now and would soon catch up with current levels. In fact, the exact same techniques that were used to project the fishery collapse imply that this would only delay the collapse by a few years! and what would be the point of that?

The fact that the other top fishermen are discussing very similar cuts and that the fisherfolk council was trying to coordinate these actions to minimise the problems that might emerge, are of course ignored and the cry goes out that nothing can be done. In reality of course, the correct lesson to draw is that everything must be done.

In case you think that no-one would be so stupid as to think this kind of analysis has any validity, I would ask that you look up the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery. It is indeed a tragedy.

And the connection to climate? Here.

I'll finish with a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, one the founders of the original conservative movement:

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."

See here for a much better picture of what coordinated action could achieve.

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The Wall Street Journal offered an intriguing challenge to four top architectural firms -- Mouzon Design House, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, Cook + Fox, and William McDonough + Parnters -- design the green house of the future. The teams cooked up some intriguing designs full of eye-catching concept art and all the right hot topics -- solar power, heat pumps, carbon nanotubes and more.

So why are some environmentalists complaining about the competition and the concept of a "green suburbia"?

Roger Lewis of the Washington Post offers an intelligent and considered rebuttal to the WSJ piece, writing, "Focusing on hypothetical designs of free-standing houses can even be a distraction. It can mask a more serious aspect of the challenge: the diminished sustainability of low-density, residential subdivisions in suburbia where most free-standing houses of the future are likely to be situated."

He states, "No matter how green individual homes are, suburban sprawl is intrinsically anti-green. It generates infrastructure inefficiency; car dependency and rising fossil fuel demand; carbon-emitting, time-wasting road congestion; and, despite availability of inexpensive land at ever-greater distances from jobs, escalating development, construction and public service costs."

The article provides an intriguing reminder that green architecture isn't always as green as it seems. And cities, often associated with pollution, are potentially the greenest societal direction of them all.

Here at Ecogeek we often cover green architecture and building technology, both in the city setting and in suburbia. As there will always be some people who yearn for suburban or rural settings, both design approaches have merit. However, when it comes to the greater good, or greater green perhaps, cities arguably present the most environmentally friendly, lowest impact, living opportunity.

From electric vehicles to urban agriculture, the city has arguably the greater potential for green communities, with minimum land use, greatest energy efficiency, and lowest environmental impact. And with the U.S. population's exodus from cities to surburbia reversing for the first time in five decades, the timing is ideal for green city architecture. So let's move the focus onto greening cities, but let's not blindly throw out suburban efforts wholesale, either.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/K0dEfxKOerw/

Earlier this week, New York Governor David Paterson ordered all state agencies to stop buying and using bottled water and instead make water fountains and tap water dispensers available for employees, if they aren't already.

Large, cooler-sized water bottle are to be phased out as well as the single-serving bottles. Paterson cited economic and environmental reasons for enforcing the switch, saying that taxpayers pay for clean drinking water and it should be used and that bottled water is wasteful and requires large amounts of energy to transport.

State agencies will be monitored to make sure they are complying with the new rule.

The New York State government follows the San Francisco city government, New York City Council and other jurisdictions in prohibiting bottled water. With environmental and economic concerns weighing on most city and state governments, it's likely many more areas will require the switch to tap water.

via New York Times

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/456kSALjfrM/

If Elon Musk is right, we might one day fly in electric planes. That day is probably far off, but there are still things that the airline industry can do to cut their fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emission (2% of the nation’s total). And a lot of those things are easy, low hanging fruit.



Naverus is a company founded by former Alaska Airline pilots. Naverus specializes in navigation technology that helps makes flights more direct. This makes flights better for us passengers, but it also burns less fuel. Their navigation method, called RNP (Required Navigation Performance) also helps minimize the time a plane spends waiting to take off or land.



How much difference do these methods make? Test flights using them were conducted in both Texas and Australia, and they managed to save, respectively, 8% and 18% of the fuel normally required for the trips.



It seems that those results are good enough for the Obama administration. The government is pledging $865 million to the Department of Transportation to incorporate these methods into our existing air traffic control infrastructure.



Via Greentech Media

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/N5K4KbVqj50/5380

David MacKay: Yes, we can solve the energy crisis

We have an addiction to fossil fuels, and it’s not sustainable. The developed world gets 80% of its energy from fossil fuels – Britain gets 90%. This is unsustainable for three reasons.

First, easily accessible fossil fuels will run out, so we will eventually have to get our energy from elsewhere.

Second, burning fossil fuels is having a measurable, and very probably dangerous, effect on the climate.

Third, even if we don’t care about climate change, a sharp reduction in Britain’s fossil-fuel consumption would seem a wise move if we care about security of supply. Continued rapid use of the North Sea oil and gas reserves will otherwise soon force Britain to depend on imports from untrustworthy foreigners. (I hope you can hear my tongue in my cheek.)

DAVID MACKAY: How 125 light bulbs can end the energy crisis

The public debate about our energy crisis will be a waste of time - unless we start using numbers we all understand.

China builds coal stockpile bases

CHINA, the world's largest coal producer and consumer, plans to build stockpiles of the fuel in the eastern province of Shandong to ensure supplies and help stabilise prices, the nation's top economic planner says.

The province would complete the construction of four to six coal stockpile bases within the next three to five years, the National Development and Reform Commission said.

The bases would each have a capacity to store more than 20 million tonnes of coal.

Shell Site in Western Ireland Attacked; Seven Men Charged

(Bloomberg) -- Irish police charged seven men after a protest late yesterday against a Royal Dutch Shell Plc gas pipeline in western Ireland.

Kuwait's oil revenue up 44 pct in 2008

DUBAI (Reuters) - Kuwait's oil revenue surged 44 percent in 2008 to 22.67 billion dinars ($77.74 billion) as energy prices soared, accounting for 94 percent of the OPEC producer's total state revenue, central bank data showed.

Kuwait's oil revenue rose from 15.75 billion dinars in 2007 after crude prices rallied to a peak of almost $150 a barrel last July, according to data posted on the central bank's website in a quarterly bulletin. (www.cbk.gov.kw)

Iraqi govt OKs Kurds crude oil export

AFP - BAGHDAD: An Iraqi oil official says Iraq's central government has approved Kurdish plans to start exporting crude oil next month.
Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told The Associated Press on Sunday that the oil would be marketed by the government-owned State Oil Marketing Organization and shipped through a pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

U.S. Drops Research Into Fuel Cells for Cars

WASHINGTON — Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, once hailed by President George W. Bush as a pollution-free solution for reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years, the energy secretary said Thursday, and the government will cut off funds for the vehicles’ development.

Cogeneration: This Ain't Your Daddy's Energy Plan

Producing both electricity and heating from the same source is much more efficient than the energy production system we have now, but there are some problems in large-scale implementation. Although some countries, such as the Netherlands, have large centralized cogeneration plants, it is hard and inefficient to distribute the heat energy, and efficiency is lost in the transmission of electricity as well. On a smaller scale, several universities, including New York University, are considering using cogeneration to produce their heat and electricity and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has implemented a 10-year, 40 million dollar initiative to do just that. The largest potential for cogeneration, however, is in micro cogeneration, where small, highly efficient units produce both electricity and heat for individual buildings or complexes. If used with something called an absorption chiller, the heat energy can even be used to produce cold water for air conditioning in the summer.

Nuclear weapons and ’fourth generation’ reactors

In short, IFRs could produce lots of greenhouse-friendly energy and while they’re at it they can “eat” nuclear waste and fissile materials that might otherwise find their way into nuclear weapons.

Too good to be true? Sadly, yes.

Shift to Saving May Be Downturn’s Lasting Impact

The economic downturn is forcing a return to a culture of thrift that many economists say could last well beyond the inevitable recovery.

This is not because Americans have suddenly become more financially virtuous or have learned the error of their free-spending ways. Instead, these experts say, Americans may have no choice but to continue pinching pennies.

Weather adds to farmers' financial uncertainty

"Without moisture this wheat is going to continue to die," he said.

Add in the high costs of planting last fall -- the spike in oil prices drove up the price of petroleum-based fertilizers, fuel and chemicals -- and the chances of making a profit this year look bleak.

"Four or five years ago, we were buying $350 to $400 a ton fertilizer. This wheat crop here, when we fertilized last August or September, fertilizer was $1,100," Sellard says.

"Even if we had a decent crop, even if we cut it decently, this wheat crop will be in the red."

Saudi, UAE, Kuwait economies to shrink says IMF

The International Monetary Fund slashed its 2009 economic growth forecast for the Gulf region by more than half to 1.3 percent as the three largest oil-exporting economies, including Saudi Arabia, shrink in a global slowdown.

The IMF, which said in February Gulf states were set to grow 3.5 percent this year, warned on Sunday of downside risks from sustained low oil prices and any further deterioration in bank balance sheets due to exposure to weakening real estate markets.

Kuwait, China sign energy and other agreements

China and Kuwait signed agreements on oil and gas and the environment Sunday, as Beijing pushes to deepen ties to resource-rich countries to feed its energy-hungry economy.

Oman oil output rises 6.1% in Q1 2009

Oman's oil output in the first quarter of 2009 rose 6.1 percent on the year to 786,700 barrels per day (bpd), official data published on Sunday showed.

Iraqi Kurdish region says it expects "historic" oil windfall

Arbil, Iraq - The government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq announced on Sunday that it expected a 'historic' windfall from oil exports from the region, despite a dispute with Baghdad over the exports.

The regional government's Ministry of Natural Resources on Sunday said the Kurdish region would export roughly 100,000 barrels of crude oil a day in the next month from two oil fields, days after an official from the Oil Ministry in Baghdad denied there had been an agreement on exports.

Gas pipe fire lights up Moscow

The fire is Moscow’s worst for at least 20 years. There are conflicting reports of injuries: some said five people were hurt, but there has been no confirmation from city authorities. Nearby homes were evacuated as firefighters tried to stop the blaze spreading. Phone lines in the area were cut as underground cables melted.

Similar fires have been seen recently in other parts of the former Soviet Union. They are usually blamed on technical problems in ageing equipment which has suffered years of under-investment

Peak oil fails to register with Gordon Campbell and Carole James

The two main provincial political parties, the B.C. Liberals and the B.C. NDP, don't like talking about peak oil. They both seem to think it's good public policy to build a new multibillion-dollar bridge across the Fraser River.

Today, I've been reading Jeff Rubin's startling new book, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and The End of Globalization (Random House Canada, $29.95). And I've got to say, it's pretty depressing to think that the two people with a shot at becoming premier both seem completely oblivious about international oil markets.

It's Not All Or Nothing In The Oil Versus Alternatives Debate

We should step away from the all-or-nothing debate on fossil fuels vs. renewables, they said, stop demonizing any of our potential energy sources, and get serious about addressing our energy problem before it’s too late. As the head of the API said, “The energy issue will intensify until cooler heads prevail,” and the debate desperately needs to be depoliticized.

But in the next breath, apparently unaware of the obvious contradiction in it, I saw those same executives complain bitterly about the policymakers who stand in the way of their progress. I heard them discount the potential of wind and solar to meet our energy needs, while trumpeting the much smaller footprint of modern oil and gas production. I heard overblown claims about how technology will continually increase reserves, and how offshore drilling in America could solve our problems if only they were allowed to do it.

White Energy files for bankruptcy protection

(Reuters) - Ethanol producer White Energy Inc filed for Chapter 11 protection in a Delaware bankruptcy court on Thursday, citing adverse market conditions, court documents showed.

In court filings, the company said that while cost of raw materials to produce ethanol were high, excess supply of ethanol in the market has kept ethanol prices low, resulting in "minimal or non-existent profit margins."

When Wilmington had windmills

A good rule of thumb would be, where there were cows, there would probably be a windmill to pump the water. Cows use a lot of water. Capt. Larz Neilson wrote that he remembered a windmill at Tom Daly’s dairy farm on Andover Street, known as Knollwood Farm.

Windmills began to go out of use in the early 1900’s, when people changed over to gasoline pump engines. In 1911, Reading Municipal Light Dept. wired the town, and many people got electric pumps. In 1928, Wilmington installed a town water system making windmill pumps obsolete.

Tree-Killing Hurricanes Could Contribute To Global Warming

ScienceDaily — A first-of-its kind, long-term study of hurricane impact on U.S. trees shows that hurricane damage can diminish a forest’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming, from the atmosphere. Tulane University researchers from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology examined the impact of tropical cyclones on U.S. forests from 1851–2000 and found that changes in hurricane frequency might contribute to global warming.

Cleanup funding benefits energy giants

Reporting from Sacramento -- Some of the country's wealthiest oil companies and gas station chains have collected hundreds of millions of dollars from a cleanup fund conceived to help smaller, financially struggling entities.

Environmentalists and former lawmakers who pushed to establish the fund, which motorists pay into whenever they buy gasoline in California, say they never intended it for large energy companies with the means to repair environmental damage from their own operations. Yet big firms have taken $490 million from the fund since it was created in 1989.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/XPLImeD4_XE/5379

Below the fold is a copy of the free game Oiligarchy, for some Mother's Day afternoon fun. It is a strategy game, simulating what oil companies do and the obstacles they face. It can also be found at this link.


Play Games at AddictingGames

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/PKd5zezHOcw/5365

This is a guest post from Robin Lovelace (lovelacerobin@yahoo.com), a graduate student at the University of York, UK. As part of his Environmental Science and Management MSc Robin was asked to pick a policy area and discuss how it could adapt to climate change. Due in part to the Oil Drum, he decided to include peak oil in the discussion, with a reluctant ‘OK’ from Professor Mike Ashmore. Robin is a qualified bicycle mechanic, writing part-time for Interclimate, starting an interdisciplinary PhD in energy research next year and wants to save the world.

Writing about transport and climate change in the UK I soon realized that climate change cannot be viewed in

isolation from other phenomena such as peak oil. I also realized that adaptation should not be seen narrowly as

coping with new atmospheric conditions. We need to build adaptive

capacity in general to deal with a range of pressures (Holling et al. 2002), including peak oil and climate

change.

While the central findings relate to local, regional and national policy in the UK, I believe they apply across

the industrial world. On the individual level, it shows that we need to integrate our transport choices with

the rest of our lives: health, happiness and living near one’s place. In a globalised capitalist economy, some find themselves pushed around the world by market

forces. It is now time to follow the advice of a wise man: "Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take

responsibility from there." Gary Snyder.

Central findings

• 
  Transport policy needs to be integrated into other policy areas, especially energy security, public health and
  
  community links if it is to adapt to climate change.
  


• 
  Physical and technological limits to change must be considered before creating transport policy to adapt to
  
  climate change.
  


• 
  The UK’s existing transport system is vulnerable to climate change and peak oil. Considering only climate
  
  change may result in ineffective policy.
  


• 
  Physical risks threaten the transport infrastructure of the UK. New light railways, walkways and bicycle paths
  
  should be located above flood plains.
  


• 
  Economic risks can be overcome by a move towards non-motorized transport.
  


• 
  Social risks include the possibility that people are unwilling to adapt. Plans must be made now to allow a
  
  smooth transition away from the car.
  


• 
  Climate change offers a unique opportunity to improve the UK’s transport policy.
  


• 
  The central message is that transport policy must focus on simple technologies that are proven to work on a
  
  large scale today.
  

Introduction

There is an ongoing political furore over the future of the UK’s transport policy. Debates rage over the third

runway at Heathrow, EU vehicle emission targets, and recently (March, 2009), a plan to subsidise car disposal.

Relatively little has been said about the transportation sector and adaptation to climate change. Government literature

on the subject is totally inadequate. This essay was written primarily to move the debate forward. I hope that

the information below leads people to reconsider the sustainability of their own means of transport. By

sustainability, I mean “the capacity to create, test and maintain adaptive capacity” (Holling et al., 2002).

This essay aims to show how the UK’s transportation system can adapt to climate

change.

For too long climate change has been viewed in isolation from parallel phenomena that may be equally important

to human wellbeing.

For example, analyses that ignore resource depletion may recommend resource-intensive solutions to climate

change, such as personal flying machines. In

the light of 21st century resource depletion, such recommendations would not only be misguided, they would be

dangerous.

A comprehensive
review of
the policies available has been done by the UK
Energy Research Council (March, 2009),
neatly described on the The Guardian newspaper.
The report concludes that behavioural change is likely to be the most
desirable option in the short term.

A reality check

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot

be fooled.” Richard Feynman

Consideration of physical and technological limits focusses attention on the more realistic options available.

The current transportation system has become dominated by the personal automobile (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Percentage of passenger miles travelled by car, bus and rail between 1953

and 1993 (DfT, 1995). Click to enlarge

Not only do cars transport UK citizens over a larger distance than any other form of transport

4x10¹¹ passenger kilometres, or 88% of the total. The transport infrastructure of every city, town

and village is designed around the car. Car ownership is 38% in the UK, compared with 1% in China, and 48% in

the USA. The car dominates motorized transport (Figure 2). Obesity, caused partly by car dependence, could

cost the UK £45 billion per year by 2050. Adaptive capacity depends on the nation’s baseline health levels and

community interconnection (Holling et al. 2002). Therefore car dependence can be seen as an important barrier

to adaptation.

Britons fly more frequently than almost any other citizens on Earth, which acts against the build-up of

community links and may increase social isolation (Gössling, 2002). Community links make a country resilient to

any stressor, including climate change.

Figure 2: Distances travelled by car, bus, rail, tram, foot and by bicycle per capita

in a selection of EU member states (CFIT, 2007). Figure 2a is restricted to motorized transport. Figure 2b and

2c are restricted to walking and cycling respectively. Click to enlarge.

Physical limits cannot possibly be broken. It is important to consider physical limits to avoid wasting

resources on projects that are destined to fail.

Resource constraints, especially peak oil, will be the most important set of physical limitations imposed on

the UK’s transportation sector. With this in mind, the increasing share of the UK’s energy budget consumed by

transport is especially worrying (Figure 3).

The current transportation system has become dominated by the personal automobile (Figure 1).

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/pl34OEPcofg/

It's starting to seem a lot like all of those wonderful images of the future hydrogen economy were foolish fantasy. A foolish fantasy that Honda, GM and the U.S. government sank billions of dollars into.

The Obama Administration just cut funding for hydrogen car projects, preferring to focus on more near-term energy saving measures. This was one of Bush's only green-tech programs, a $1.2 B project to fund hydrogen car infrastructure and technology. And it didn't get us measurably closer to a viable hydrogen vehicle.

Let's break this down a bit, because while it might look like bad news, it might also just be an idea who's time has come. What are the big problems with hydrogen?

1. There's currently no cheap way produce the fuel.


2. There's no good, cheap way to transport it.


3. Gas stations would have to be completely overhauled with new expensive infrastructure


4. Hydrogen-powered cars remain an order of magnitude more expensive than gasoline cars

I've actually stopped encountering hydrogen car enthusiasts. The new excitement is all around various kinds of electric vehicles, and with good reason. They're already cheaper than hydrogen cars, there is more infrastructure in place, and battery technology is advancing more rapidly than fuel cell technology.

I've repeatedly asked executives at major car companies if they're disappointed in their hydrogen vehicle programs, but of course they say no. Their actions, on the other hand, say differently. Permanent R&D shifts are going on from hydrogen and fuel cells to advanced battery research.

Was the whole hydrogen thing just an expensive detour?

I'm interested what you all think? Is there a future in the hydrogen economy? Where should the hydrogen come from? Why did we rely so heavily on that dream throughout the 90's? Are we fooling ourselves again with the excitement surrounding electric vehicles (particularly EV programs that require lots of new infrastructure)?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/-2aUAtcles8/5385

Peak oil, not speculation

After many years of solid growth, oil production plateaued in October 2004. Regardless of the price level, the oil supply simply stopped responding, and from then on, the world had to make do with broadly flat supplies. Ordinarily, the expansion of the world's economy would be accompanied by increased energy consumption and an inelastic oil supply might have been expected to hinder economic development. It didn't. In the four years to mid-2008, the world economy expanded by 18 percent. The global economy boomed, even without new oil.

However, this came at a price. In the absence of oil supply growth, demand accommodation was required. This was achieved by secular prices rises averaging 25 percent per annum from 2003 to the end of 2007. In other words, the price of oil went up, and this constrained consumption by causing the marginal consumer to drop out of the market. This proved a workable solution for a time, but the global economy could not sustain 25 percent annual price increases indefinitely, and by the second half 2007, the situation was becoming critical. Consumption was being maintained by continuing draws on inventories averaging 1.4 mbpd, and virtually every producer, with the possible exception of the Saudis, was running flat out. By early 2008, even the Saudis were throwing the kitchen sink at the market - all to no avail. On paper, it looked like a peak oil nightmare.

Hard times ahead: a discussion on the post-oil world

It would be interesting to see the readership poll results concerning where we think this country will be 15 to 20 years from now. Perhaps it should include some reference to where we stand with regard to the rest of the world. As you know, just a few of the factors that would influence our view of the future would involve the results of peak-oil, climate change, national debt, inflation, loss of manufacturing, increasing population, state fascism, a broken educational system, an unjust medical system, etc. I can only speculate upon your perspective but, my research does not present a very pretty picture. Chris Martenson says it so clearly with his catch phrase, “The next twenty years will be completely unlike the last twenty years.”

Ensco to cancel contract with Venezuela

Ensco International, which had one of its drilling rigs seized by Venezuela in January, said it plans to cancel that contract unless it is paid or an agreement is reached by 30 May.

Venezuela to take over 39 oil industry contractors

Venezuela's state oil company will take over 39 oil contractors with the backing of a new law, the government said Monday.

Nigeria struggles to meet Opec quota

Persisting unrest and violence in Nigeria's Niger Delta is preventing the African oil producer from meeting its Opec output quota, a senior Nigerian oil ministry official said today.

Natural Gas Is The Mania De Jour

Many are wondering what the heck is going on in the natural gas (NG) market, because if it’s suppose to be such an essential commodity, why does the price keep crashing, especially with stability found in the larger equity complex? To answer this question properly, we must first set the stage with the appropriate background understandings, where because of the extremes in pricing we are seeing here, previous efforts in this regard now appear insufficient. In the first place, in order to fully understand what is occurring here, one must realize that the NG market is now showing all the signs of an extreme manic blow-off, only instead of an upside exhaustion, we are witnessing a ‘selling panic’. In this regard then, the important thing to realize is extremes in speculation and emotion are now in control of this market, not the fundamentals, making it the ‘mania de jour’.

Activists See Economy Trumping Climate In Obama Auto Task Force

Economic concerns appear to be trumping environmental priorities in the Obama administration’s efforts to revive the U.S. auto industry, environmentalists say, pointing to perceived disagreements on the White House auto industry task force over how strongly to push initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing fuel efficiency standards.

Specifically, they say environmental officials on the cabinet-level panel -- including White House climate and energy policy “czar” Carol Browner and EPA Senior Climate Policy Counsel Lisa Heinzerling—appear to have had their recommendations overruled by Treasury and economic officials on the task force, which includes Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers. Browner and Heinzerling were expected to be strong voices within the task force for reducing the auto industry’s emissions.

BP brings 'green era' to a close

Environmental groups have accused BP of dropping its pledge to be green and replacing it with a commitment to be "responsible".

The oil giant was widely recognised as the first oil company to both acknowledge and tackle climate change.

Also, its in-house carbon trading scheme - built with a little help from an unlikely ally, the US-based Environmental Defense Fund - was among the first of its kind.

However, a change of chief executive has led to an apparent change of policy.

Coal Supply May Be Vastly Overestimated

Forget peak oil -- a series of new estimates of the world's coal supply suggests reserves may be vastly overestimated, and if the planet isn't running on a majority of alternative energies within the next few decades, we could be facing an unprecedented global energy crisis.

On the flip side, a dwindling supply of coal could also throw the breaks on global warming, some argue.

New Danish research shows how oil gets stuck underground

It is a mystery to many people why the world is running out of oil when most of the world's oilfields have only been half emptied. However some of the oil that has been located is trapped as droplets of oil in small cavities in the surrounding rock or is stuck to the walls of the underground cavity and cannot be accessed by the techniques currently used in the oil industry.

Now, new Danish research may have come up with an explanation as to where and how North Sea oil clings to underground rocks. This explanation could turn out to be the first step on the way to developing improved oil production techniques with the intent of increasing oil production from Danish oil fields.

OPEC faces uphill struggle to get $75 a barrel

LONDON (Reuters) - The OPEC members most dependent on costly oil face a long struggle as some demand has gone for good and a target of around $75 a barrel is a distant dream, the executive director of the Centre for Global Energy Studies said.

Fadhil Chalabi, who was previously a senior official in the Iraqi oil ministry and in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said last year's record prices of nearly $150 meant consumer countries were changing their habits.

Pride, Chevron agrees to terminate rig contract

(Reuters) - Pride International Inc said it agreed with Chevron Corp to terminate the remaining contract term of a rig in West Africa, after an inspection revealed "unacceptable" levels of corrosion.

'Iran needs foreign cash injection'

Iran will need foreign capital if it is to meet its plans to invest up to $30 billion a year in its oil sector, a senior oil official was quoted as saying.

"The available information indicates that the use of internal resources does not meet investment needs," the daily Resalat quoted Seiffolah Jashnsaz, managing director of state-run National Iranian Oil Company, as saying at a conference. "We must seek foreign investments."

Ghana: On the Cusp of an Oil Boom

Accra — Attempts to produce commercial quantities of oil in Ghana date from the late 19th Century, and at regular intervals between that time and the present the West African country has had its hopes dashed by enthusiastic announcements of commercial oil finds that have later turned out to be premature.

Nigeria: Refineries Can't Meet Domestic Demand - DPR

Kaduna — Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has stated that even if all the refineries in the country operate at their optimal level of 18 million litres per day, the country would still have to depend on importation of fuel as Nigeria's domestic demand as at today stands at about 31 million litres.

Lovins: "New" Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story

Reprocessing of any kind makes waste management more difficult and complex, increases the volume and diversity of waste streams, increases by several- to manyfold the cost of nuclear fueling, and separates bomb-usable material that can’t be adequately measured or protected. Mainly for this last reason, all Presidents since Gerald Ford in 1976 (except G.W. Bush in 2006– 08) discouraged it. An IFR/pyroprocessing system would give any country immediate access to over a thousand bombs’ worth of plutonium to fuel it, facilities to recover that plutonium, and experts to separate and fabricate it into bomb cores—hardly a path to a safer world.

Safety threat to planned nuclear power stations

Britain's plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations have been thrown into jeopardy by startling official safety fears. The nuclear regulatory body in Finland, where the first of the reactors is being built, has taken the extraordinary step of threatening to halt its construction because it has not been satisfied that key safety systems will work.

The Future of the American Dream

As Franklin Roosevelt understood, Americans will postpone immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices--if they must--so long as they are convinced the future can be better than the past. But we face a far more difficult problem at our moment in history. What do you promise people who have been told they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? How do you tell them "the good times," as we have known them, are not coming back? Americans need a new vision that helps them deal with reality, a promising story of the future that helps them let go of the past.

Flush with Camaro orders, GM workers on OT

In a rare bright spot amid a darkening automotive landscape, workers at the General Motors' Oshawa operation are being asked to work additional shifts to meet "huge" demand for the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro.

Honda Insight first hybrid to rank top in Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co said on Monday its new Insight model became the first hybrid to be crowned Japan's best-selling car last month.

The Insight went on sale in Japan in early February as Honda's first real attempt to challenge Toyota Motor Corp's dominance in the gasoline-electric hybrid segment.

The Vulnerability of Energy Infrastructure to Environmental Change

? Much energy infrastructure lies in areas that are predicted to become increasingly physically unstable owing to changes in the environment.

? Already there have been environment-related disruptions to hydroelectric installations, offshore oil and gas production, pipelines, electrical transmission and nuclear power generation.

? As a result of scheduled decommissioning, revised environmental standards, stimulus spending and new development, there is likely to be substantial investment in new energy infrastructure.

? It is critical that new and existing infrastructure be designed or retrofitted for changing environmental conditions.

? It is no longer sufficient only to assess our impact on the environment; now we must also assess the impact of a changing environment on us.

Mining the moon, they hope

If we can mine natural resources underground or underwater, then why not in outer space?

That is the kind of thinking that will rule this week as some of Canada's top engineers gather in Toronto for the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum's (CIM) annual conference. One of its ongoing mandates is to make sure Canada keeps its historical leg-up in mining technology and innovation.

Thrifty wartime habits return

Sir Winston Churchill famously urged the UK to both eat and dig for victory to help cope with the shortages brought on by the war against the Nazis.

Now it would seem Second World War austerity is very much back in vogue to combat a newer but equally unforgiving enemy - the global recession.

When the oil gives out (new book excerpt)

One way to evaluate the prospects of Eldertown might be to start from the viewpoint of one of the more apocalyptic environmental groups. The peak oil movement focuses tightly on the issue of energy, the Achilles heel of industrial society. Convinced that global oil production will soon peak — or perhaps already has — the peak oilers predict a horrendous cascade of disasters in our near future. Cars, lacking fuel, will vanish from our lives. Suburbs dependent on commuting will have to be abandoned. Big-box stores will be empty as both the goods and money for consumption disappear. Big homes, too expensive to heat or cool, will stand untenanted. At the extreme, this is of course an unlivable world. But short of that, if one looks at the lifestyle such radical changes demand, are we not dealing with choices that elders are far more apt to make than a younger population? Smaller homes or condos in more densely populated centers. Less driving or no driving at all in private cars. Lower consumption. To be sure, environmentalists, who have never given any attention to aging, are apt to feel none of this will happen soon enough, but surely it is of some importance that one is working with rather than against a powerful demographic trend.

Elon Musk: Once The Electric Charge Dies, The Volt Is Like A Lawnmower

Here's a video from early April of Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, explaining why he isn't doing plug-in hybrids (via Gas 2.0.) He hedges in a weak preamble saying he's not trashing the Chevy Volt, and he hopes it successful. Then he proceeds to trash it.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoildrum/~3/W1MpXUSRf90/5369

This post is the first in a series of posts looking at the policies in the field of energy proposed by the main political parties/blocks running for the 2009-2014 term at the European Parliament. This series will look into the guidelines on Energy Policy that each party is proposing to euro-citizens, based on the information made available on-line, found in home-pages, electronic leaflets or booklets.

Starting this series is the EPP-ED, the Christian-Democrat block that has held the largest number of seats at Strasbourg since the Assembly's first day.

An audio version of this log entry can be downloaded here.

EPP-ED is a coalition of regional Conservative or Christian-Democrats parties plus a few scattered Liberal parties. Most of these parties have rotated power at the state level and can be seen as the largest molders of what the European Union is today. With the largest electoral base, both at state- and at union-level, the party is also home to the ideas behind most of the policies and legislation put in place by the Commission and the Parliament.

The present Commission was shaped by the EPP-ED, largely influencing the choice of names for Commissioner positions. Commission President, José Manuel Durão Barroso, although a Liberal, is a member of EPP-ED through his home state party – PPD/PSD – a Liberal party that has the largest militant base in Portugal.

The party's home-page is pleasant looking and well organized; although more focused in showing the work already made or in development by the parliamentary group. There's also an entire webpage solely dedicated to this year's election, a good place to learn more about the party's stance and proposed programmes in other fields besides energy.

It didn't take much time to find a booklet presenting the party's political guidelines for the 2009-2014 term. This booklet is very good, presenting not only the political programme but also a summation of the party's ideology and its place at the present geo-political landscape. After messages from the group's parliamentary leaders, there is a section that explains the values at the core of the party's ideology, which reads as follows:

The European Union needs to update, reassert and modernise its values: freedom, democracy equality, the rule of law, along with respect for human rights, including those of minority groups. These values are common to all Member States, in a society characterised by pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between men and women.

The essential pillars of our political activity must be to safeguard family values – particularly in response to challenging demographic trends and a falling birth rate – and to defend freedom of education. After all, the family is the basic unit that enables people to overcome crises, help each other, and prepare for the future. Our policy must be to strengthen families, ensure inter-generational solidarity and the passing on of values and heritage. The EPP-ED Group supports the laicism of the State, where this is a positive secularism that protects freedom of religion in a spirit of cooperation based on dialogue, mutual respect and reciprocal independence.

Economic rights are not secondary rights. They must be forcefully reasserted. Our Group believes that freedom of education, research, enterprise and competition are individual rights and the basis of a healthy and prosperous economy. There can be no justification for infringing these rights, which must, on the contrary, be further enhanced.

The value of effort, work, ownership and saving is insufficiently upheld. The current reforms aimed at reducing the burden on those wishing to work, save and invest must be continued.

A full page of this booklet is dedicated to Energy Policy. The header for this page is

Developing a coherent energy policy in the context of measures to combat climate change and sustainable development.

The party's vision is summarized in a single paragraph:

The EPP-ED Group supports the establishment of a diversified energy mix, promoting higher energy efficiency in all activity sectors, the completion of the internal energy market and the development of a coherent foreign energy policy.

And after it four strategic lines are laid down:

Towards a zero or low-CO2 emitting energy mix

The EPP-ED calls for:

• more investment in R&D for clean technologies such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and methanol energy, biofuels, biogas and biomass, which will allow us to rely on indigenous sources of energy in a sustainable way;