The World Still Turns

Fanatics think that when they perceive an on-coming "doomsday" that they should have the right to pass laws to make everybody march to their beat. The "global warming" crowd feels they should dictate who gets to burn fossil fuel, by how much, and where. But the real world views that as fanatics imposing their wild-eyed craziness on the rest of the world. So the push by the fanatics to legislate morality (pass IPCC restrictions and quotas) has failed.

So how are we doing in the real world? Surprise! The real world is quickly moving toward renewable energy without the use of the Spanish Inquisition or the Iron Maiden of quotas and restrictions. Here is a bit from an article in the Los Angeles Times:

Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis and an impasse at the United Nations global warming talks.

Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using the latest data. Accelerating installations of solar- and wind-power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive with coal.

"The progress of renewables has been nothing short of remarkable," United Nations Environment Program Executive Secretary Achim Steiner said in an interview. "You have record investment in the midst of an economic and financial crisis."

The findings indicate the world is shifting toward consuming more renewable energy even without a global agreement on limiting greenhouse gases.

...

As well as renewables spending exceeding that on new fossil plants, last year also was the first time expenditure in developing countries, mainly China, exceeded that in the industrialized world, Sawyer said, predicting both trends will continue.

The New Energy Finance figures exclude investment that merely replaces existing plants, and its renewables tally excludes money spent on building large hydropower projects.

Wind operators are likely to install 43 gigawatts of generating capacity this year and 48 gigawatts next year, up from 36 gigawatts in 2010, GWEC estimates.

I know this disappoints the doomsters selling the snake oil of catastrophic "global warming". But in the real world, technology improves and people make choices that make their world a better place. You don't have to beat them with whips or force them into chains. The ideologues prefer to reduce people to mindless soulless automata who simply follow orders from the politically correct. But in the real world, people like the idea that they get to choose their future and that they get credit for making intelligent choices.

The US's Energy "Policy" is to Cut Off Its Oil Supply

Here is a bit from an article on the blog Watts Up With That? which points out the idiocy of the US energy "policy", i.e. cutting off its supply in order to "save the Earth"...

We told you ... how pointless and futile the McKibben driven 350.org protests about the XL pipeline were, because they did nothing to alter the fact that the oil would still be used, somewhere. See The Only Choice Is Where It Gets Burned

I mentioned in an essay Friday that:

Dr. Christy ended his essay with the title of this post saying “Don’t demonize energy, because without energy, life is brutal and short”….I thought those were good words to consider, especially since we have activist maniacs like weepy Bill McKibben out to demonize energy on a daily basis. McKibben and his followers, not possessing the intelligence to fully understand what they are doing, think “they won“.

Bottom line: that tar sands oil is going to be burned somewhere, in other countries willing to buy it. Stopping a pipeline has no effect on Canada’s export of the oil, only on American jobs, but McKibben and his 350.org is cluelessly ecstatic over this.

Looks like we were right, only one day later, Canada looks to sell the tar sands oil to China. From Energy Daily:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday that he was looking at exporting more oil to China after the United States delayed a decision on a controversial pipeline.

The conservative Canadian leader, taking part in a summit in Hawaii hosted by Obama said the pipeline decision had produced “extremely negative reactions” and that he discussed oil exports with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

“This does underscore the necessity of Canada making sure that we are able to access Asian markets for our energy products,” Harper told reporters. “I indicated that yesterday (Saturday) to President Hu of China.”

Full story at Energy Daily.

I'm a conservationist, but a sensible one. These fanatics who cut their own throat are ridiculous. (I should qualify: these Pied Pipers sell "enviro" to the poor suckers who will live with the consequences while the "leaders" are rich and can buy their way out of the disaster they create.)

In the real world, the US needs oil. If it doesn't get it from Canada, then Canada will sell it where its is wanted and then the US will be locked out and have to get the oil from less secure areas which means that 1970s long line-ups for gasoline will return. That isn't a policy. That is political suicide brought on by following idiots who don't understand real "environmentalism". A serious environmentalist realizes that energy is essential for a sound economy and would be working to conserve and develop new technology, not cut supply. Conserve is like cutting down on carbs to get in trim shape. Cutting supply is like being stranded on a very small desert island with no food. You starve.

It has always bugged me that these phony "enviro" nuts want to cut GDP. Their fanatical policy wouldn't hurt them because they are rich and can buy what they need, and even if the society crashed because of the idiot policy, they would simply use their money to move to an unaffected part of the world. These people are selling the same kind of "Kool-Aid" that 1960s "back to the land" people sold. The rich kids, when they got tired, went back to their rich parents, got money, got back into school, or had their parents line them up with a job in the family business. Meanwhile those fools in the bottom 90% that followed the Pied Pipers of the 1960s into "back to the land" ended up living hard lives in urban inner cities or were marooned in desperately poor rural areas. Their lives were ruined by the lies of the "back to the land" sirens.

The Missing US Energy Policy

I remember teaching high school social studies classes from materials stating that "the end of oil" was at hand. I had to tell them that they would have to give up the idea of owning cars and heating their homes.

Needless to say, that doom-and-gloom scenario never came true. Instead I discovered that my father in the 1930s had been told about "the end of oil" while he was in school. Oh, and over the last 20 or 30 years the idea of "peak oil" has been very popular.

Here is a bit from an article in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana puts America back into the same league as Saudia Arabia with oil reserves:

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century."

"President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy," he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into "green energy" sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas.

You'd expect an oilman to make the "drill, baby, drill" pitch. But since 2005 America truly has been in the midst of a revolution in oil and natural gas, which is the nation's fastest-growing manufacturing sector. No one is more responsible for that resurgence than Mr. Hamm. He was the original discoverer of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota that have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers.

How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. Mr. Hamm disagrees: "No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels."

If he's right, that'll double America's proven oil reserves. "Bakken is almost twice as big as the oil reserve in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska," he continues. According to Department of Energy data, North Dakota is on pace to surpass California in oil production in the next few years. Mr. Hamm explains over lunch in Washington, D.C., that the more his company drills, the more oil it finds. Continental Resources has seen its "proved reserves" of oil and natural gas (mostly in North Dakota) skyrocket to 421 million barrels this summer from 118 million barrels in 2006.

"We expect our reserves and production to triple over the next five years." And for those who think this oil find is only making Mr. Hamm rich, he notes that today in America "there are 10 million royalty owners across the country" who receive payments for the oil drilled on their land. "The wealth is being widely shared."

The actual estimating of "reserves" is tricky. The lesson I learned is that governments don't estimate oil reserves. They rely on oil companies. And oil companies have no incentive to find oil for more than a 20 year window into the future, so they will always be predicting the "coming end of oil". Here's the Wikipedia estimate of oil reserves.

Another fundamental lesson to learn from the ridiculous history of decade after decade "end of oil" proclamations: modeling is hard. The conclusions follow very closely from your assumptions. The infamous Club of Rome made ridiculous assumption that "most of the exploitable oil has already been found" and that "energy use will rise exponentially". Both of these are wrong. The amount of reserves is a function of need and ingenuity. The use of energy is tied to technological innovation. Cars today normally get three times and could easily get five times the mileage of cars 50 years ago. As a society matures, infrastructure expenditures fall relative to other consumption, so energy use falls. Oil use has been declining for over a decade in the US. It isn't growing exponentially.

Oil and Technology Opening the Door to Energy Self-Sufficiency for the US

Here is a bit from a press release by the American Chemical Society:

New technology that combines production of electricity with capture of carbon dioxide could make billions of barrels of oil shale — now regarded as off-limits because of the huge amounts of carbon dioxide released in its production — available as an energy source. That’s the topic of the latest episode in the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) award-winning “Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions” podcast series.

Adam Brandt, Ph.D., notes in the podcast that almost 3 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in the world’s deposits of oil-shale, a dark-colored rock laden with petroleum-like material. Brandt and colleague Hiren Mulchandani are at Stanford University.

The United States has by far the world’s largest deposits in the Green River Formation, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The domestic oil shale resource could provide 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels. But concerns over the large amounts of greenhouse gases — mainly carbon dioxide — released by current methods prevent many companies from trying to extract oil from shale.

Brandt’s answer is EPICC — a self-fueled method that generates electricity, as well as the heat needed to produce that electricity from shale. The report, which appears in ACS’ journal Energy & Fuels, describes how EPICC could generate large amounts of electricity without releasing into the atmosphere carbon dioxide from burning the shale. That carbon would be captured and stored underground as part of the production process.

The new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from www.acs.org/globalchallenges.

The gloom & doom crowd is going to be seriously disappointed. It reminds me of those in the 15th century gnashing their teeth about the disappearance of old oak forest just as Britain was rising to be the world's sea power. Or those doom & gloomsters who have been rushing about for the last 50 years warning about "peak oil". It is always very popular to linearly extrapolate from the past and discover doom awaits us. But their requires a steadfast ignorance about human ingenuity and technological change. The doom & gloom crowd always ignore "the ultimate resource" as they weave their tales of resource shortages and the doom that awaits us.

How to Present "Facts" to Change Opinions

Here is a post from Geoffrey Styles on his Energy Outlook blog that looks at how environmental crazies are trying to pitch the downsizing of the Marcellus shale deposit in a way that would minimize it and allow them to successfully shut down the exploitation of this resource:

I see in The Hill that some critics of shale gas drilling are pointing to a revised estimate of the shale gas resources in the Marcellus formation as evidence that there's not enough gas to justify any risk from hydraulic fracturing. Earlier this week the US Geological Survey updated its previous estimate to 84 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas, a figure substantially less than the estimate of 410 TCF from the Department of Energy. Now, I'd have thought that even without doing the math on this, 84 TCF would still sound like a heck of a lot of gas, even if trillions have become the new billions in another context.

Perhaps cubic feet of gas don't convey quite the same degree of familiarity as barrels of oil, which most people can visualize, so it might be useful to think of this gas in its oil-equivalent terms. Using standard conversion factors, that 84 TCF in the Marcellus equates to roughly 14.5 billion barrels of oil. For comparison, that's half again as big as the original estimate of 9.6 billion barrels for the Prudhoe Bay field on the Alaskan North Slope. (FYI, Prudhoe Bay had produced a cumulative 11.5 billion barrels as of the end of 2007 and was still estimated to have a few billion barrels to go.) In that light, does anyone still want to argue that the Marcellus resource is inconsequential?

I could use the same argument for agriculture. Farmers only produce enough food to put about about 3000 calories of food per person on your plate. But who is going to miss 3000 calories? There is plenty of food. So let's shut down the farms! The only problem is that if you multiply 3000 calories by the whole population, that is a lot of food and sure enough people will miss it.

If you remove 14.5 billion barrels of oil, that is only 609 billion gallons of oil or roughly 2,000 gallons for every man, woman, and child in America. Who is going to miss that? Sure, shut it down so we can "save the environment"!

If production of the Marcellus field was a true danger, I would agree, shut it down! But it isn't. With proper regulation, production can be safely executed. But it requires a belief in government and a willingness to put regulators, rules, and inspectors in place to ensure safe production. You are no more likely to get "safe" production from fracking wells than you are to get "safe" banking from Wall Street where regulators ignore the slice-and-dice free-for-all of mortgage securitization and the liar's loans given by mortgage brokers, and the under the table payola and not-so-subtle threats used by Wall Street banks to get the ratings agency to find AAA gold in all those sub-prime and alt-A mortgages.

I put the environmental nuts in the same camp as the right wing nuts. They are extremists. They aren't open to reason. They have their "cause" and they see the world through their prejudices and are not open to argument or to be influenced by facts. Sadly, the world is overpopulated with fanatics these days. I want desperately to go back to the simpler days when people were decent to each other, willing to live-and-let-live, and were open to simple democracy to come to agreements to run a civil society.

The Energy Crisis and New Technology

The Washington's Blog has a nice post that identifies several new technologies that might significantly change the energy outlook. The post is entitled "Are We On the Verge of an Energy Breakthrough?".

The items identified look solid. The only one I would quibble with is the e-cat reactor, aka "the Rossi reactor". As documented by Steven Krivit on his LENR blog, there are just too many "ethical issues" with the inventor Andrea Rossi. This guy has defrauded others with previous schemes to sell "inventions" and "technologies".

The Washington's Post post seems solid with a video of Nobel prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson saying positive things about the e-cat. But Rossi has scammed too many times in the past to be trusted here. Despite positive articles in NyTeknik, especially one one where a team of Swedish physicsts observed a six hour test and came away assrting that the demo truly demonstrates some "nuclear power generation", I am skeptical. Once a person has defrauded, you can't trust them again. Rossi is a con artist, a fraudster. He can't be trusted.

But the article in Washington's Blog identifies a number of new technologies. Most of these will prove out and become candidates for commercialization. So I think we can feel good about our energy future. I believe we are on the cusp of a revolution in how we obtain energy.

Alternate Energy Source for Jet Fuel

I found this bit of a post by Geoffrey Styles at the Energy Outlook blog to be interesting:

The government of Ontario Province just awarded Rentech, Inc., a company with long expertise in gasification and fuel synthesis, a 1.3 million ton-per-year supply of forest waste and other biomass from Canada's Crown Forests, specifically for the production of renewable jet fuel. The proposed facility would produce around 22 million gallons per year of biojet, along with another 11 million gallons of non-jet products. That equates to roughly 1% of Canada's current jet fuel consumption. Canada might have enough forest biomass available to produce a sizable fraction of its jet fuel needs from such sources, but other countries don't, so it's fortunate that alternative jet fuel can be made through so many different pathways.

The doomsday crowd wants to mandate all kinds of crazy things to "fix" what they see as impending doom with "global warming". I don't expect the earth to burn to a crisp because (a) I think the danger is far over hyped and (b) I believe that man's innovative technology will "save" us far before we start to smoke and burst into flames from runaway global warming.

I do believe that we have exploited all the cheap oil reserves and as the price of oil rises inexorably over the next century, alternatives will keep heaving into view and I expect a lot of them will be "green". So I think any "global warming" will be like the doomsday scenario that England faced in the 17th century of a doomsday of "no more trees to support the building of the fleet". England discovered lots of trees in North America, then it decided to build it ships from steel. So the ever-feared "end of times" scenario of no trees left to build a ship passed quietly without the apprehended disaster raising its head.

The Latest Entrant into the Renewable Energy Armory

Would you believe that petroleum and natural gas are now thought to be "renewable energy sources"? Here's a bit from a post on Geoffrey Styles' Energy Outlook blog:

However, there's another, more controversial theory of the origins of at least some oil and gas, suggesting that they were formed by chemical or biological activity much deeper in the earth, and then migrated long distances before being trapped. If correct, that would mean that not only aren't these fuels truly fossils--and thus essentially static and finite--but that they might actually be continuously regenerated by natural processes in much shorter time spans. A number of academics appear to hold this view, and it was a common theory of petroleum origin among Soviet scientists. Much of this is explored in a lengthy white paper on the Deep Carbon Observatory site, including the shortcomings of current analytical techniques in determining definitively whether a given sample of methane originated from organic material in sedimentary rock or from some other source.

Finding gas or oil in deposits much deeper than those we already know about, or in places that aren't consistent with our present understanding of petroleum geology, would represent an even bigger potential energy revolution than the one begun by the recent development of the means of unlocking shale gas resources. It would also shift our perspective on the nature and required speed of the energy transition on which we've embarked. If oil and gas weren't finite--at least in human terms--it might alter the urgency of deploying some of the alternative energy technologies now in our repertoire. At the same time, it would have enormous implications for climate change, by greatly increasing the ultimate quantity of carbon we could eventually emit to the atmosphere.

I enjoy stories like this because they show that all the "sure thing" thinking that most people have never acknowledges how little we really know and how much science can revolutionize our thinking.

Oil's Future

Here are some bits from a WSJ interview with the CEO of Chevron:

The Chevron CEO is a rare breed these days: an unapologetic oil man. For decades—going back to Jimmy Carter—politicians have been peddling an America free of fossil fuels. Mr. Obama has taken that to an unprecedented level, closing off more acreage to drilling, pouring money into green energy, pushing new oil company taxes, instituting anticarbon regulations. America is going backward on affordable energy, even as oil hits $110 a barrel.

Enter the tall, bespectacled Mr. Watson, who a little more than a year ago stepped into the shoes of longtime CEO David O'Reilly. An economist by training, soft-spoken by nature, the 53-year-old Mr. Watson is hardly some swaggering wildcatter. Yet in a year of speeches, he has emerged as one of the industry's foremost energy realists. No "Beyond Petroleum" (BP) for him. On energy, he says, America "has a lot to learn."

Starting with the argument—so popular among greens and Democrats—that we are running out of oil. "Peak oil"—the theory that global oil production will soon hit maximum levels and begin to decline—is a favorite among this crowd, and it is one basis for their call for more biofuels and solar power. Mr. Watson doesn't dismiss the idea but explains why it remains largely irrelevant.

In theory, he says, "we've been running out of oil and gas for a long time," yet technology creates new opportunities. Mr. Watson cites a Chevron field long in decline down the road in Bakersfield—to the point that for every 100 barrels of oil "in place," the company was extracting only 10 or 20. But thanks to a new technology called steam flooding, Chevron is now getting 70 to 80 barrels. "Price creates incentive, and energy will be developed if there's demand for it at the price you can develop it," Mr. Watson says. In that sense, "oil and gas are plentiful."

Don't believe it? Over the past 30 years, even as "peak oil" was a trendy theme, the world's proven reserves of oil and natural gas increased 130%, to 2.5 trillion barrels.

Or consider America's latest energy innovation: hydrofracking for abundant and cheap natural gas. This advance, says Mr. Watson, took even the industry "by surprise"—as evidenced by the many U.S. ports to import liquid natural gas that are now "sitting idle." Chevron last year paid $3.2 billion to buy natural-gas producer Atlas Energy as its foray into this new market.

Mr. Watson has little time for the Beltway fiction that America will soon be able to do without, or nearly without, fossil fuels. Yes, "we need all forms of energy." But the world consumes 250 million barrels of energy equivalent today, only a "tiny fraction of which" is wind and solar—and even those "are not affordable at scale," he says.

As for biofuels, "we would need to consume land the size of states" to hit the country's current ethanol targets. Chevron is investigating biofuels, but Mr. Watson says the "economics aren't there" yet. Unlike many CEOs, Mr. Watson insists on products that can prosper without federal subsidies, which he believes are costly and lacking in transparency when "consumer pockets are tight, government pockets are tight."

Bottom line: "We're going to need oil and gas and coal for a long time if America wants to keep the lights on."

...

But what about the BP Gulf spill? Mr. Watson blames the "cultural aspects and behavioral aspects" of the particular drilling rig that exploded. He roundly disagrees with the finding of Mr. Obama's spill commission that the "root causes" of the spill were "systemic" to the industry.

"There is no evidence to support that. I don't know how that conclusion was reached. I know the industry has drilled 14,000 deep water wells without having this sort of problem." As for the moratorium, "I can understand taking a pause. I can't understand shutting down a whole industry for a better part of a year."

Chevron has three deep water rigs in the Gulf, so the ban cost it millions of dollars in idle rigs and lost jobs. For the country, says Mr. Watson, it means "less oil." Offshore drilling takes years of lead time. Mr. Watson cites Chevron's Gulf "Tahiti" project, which started producing about 18 months ago. It has taken "the better part of a decade to do the seismic work, drill the exploratory wells, evaluate those wells, drill other development wells, to delineate it, to build the facilities and to place the oil wells online," he explains.

The endless moratorium has already meant that "if you go out to the middle of the decade, there are already 200,000 to 300,000 barrels a day of oil that aren't going to be produced that year. . . . That won't be retrieved." And the lost production number is getting larger, since the new Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management is still dallying on permits—and those primarily for backlogged projects, not new leases.

Democrats are now arguing, as Mr. Obama did in his speech, that the oil industry already "holds tens of millions of acres of leases where it's not producing a drop." Some are advocating "use it or lose it," calling for the government to strip oil companies of their leases if they don't immediately start producing.

Mr. Watson explains why this is bogus. Only one-third of Chevron's offshore leases are classified as "producing" oil and gas today. The other two-thirds either are "unsuccessful" (they don't hold viable oil or gas) or "are in varying stages of development—seismic work, drilling wells, constructing facilities." Mr. Watson says companies would be crazy to sit on productive lands, since leases require costly bonus payments and annual rental payments to the government.

If Washington institutes Mr. Obama's "use it or lose it" policy, Mr. Watson says, it will mean less U.S. oil production. And how does this help Mr. Obama with his goal of reducing imported oil?

As for soaring oil prices, Mr. Watson blames growing demand, tighter supply, Mideast uncertainty and inflation. He doesn't predict future price trends, though during a recent analyst call he warned that the drilling moratorium would only make them higher. Lost production in the Gulf is "going to represent a sizable chunk of the spare capacity that the industry expects to see. And that will impact prices, and that will retard economic growth."

The economy is also why Mr. Watson won't pay the usual energy CEO lip service to new carbon regulations. The cap-and-trade bill the House passed in 2009 was "poorly conceived and it collapsed under its own weight for good reason," he notes.

The EPA move to regulate carbon is no better: "It's not why the Clean Air Act was put in place, and it doesn't seem to be the right way to attack concerns about greenhouse gas emissions," he says. The EPA is "placing huge new regulatory burdens on industries that are import sensitive." The regulations will place burdens on refineries, putting "their competitiveness at risk, and ultimately we'll produce less gasoline here and end up importing it from refineries that are less energy efficient overseas."

There is more material in the WSJ article. Go read the whole thing.

I got a chuckle out of my father who during the 1970s "oil shortage" told me that when he was a kid in the 1920s the schools taught him that America would "soon run out of oil". It will. But not in my lifetime and probably not during the 21st century. Definitely by the early 22nd century oil will be mostly gone, but there will still be lots of coal and lots of methane clathrate waiting to be "produced" and used as an energy source. The CEO of Chevron said there was 2.5 trillion of known oil reserves. I think he is undercounting. Canada alone has over 1 trillion barrels of oil sands. The far north of Canada has not been explored and the Russians are getting very nationalistic and aggressive in the Arctic ocean because there will probably be several trillion barrels of oil there waiting to be produced.

Since I think the "dangers" of global warming are based on bad models that over-estimate the greenhouse effect of CO2 and under-estimate the other feedback loops in dynamic weather, I'm not as concerned as most with the exploitation of all this oil. But it if does prove to be a problem, within a decade a crash program could shift 80% of energy over to nuclear reactors with all personal transportation shifted to electricity and not fossil fuel (saving the fossil fuel for long haul transportation).

I'm a pessimistic optimist. I think technology holds lots of promise. But I'm realistic enough to know that humans will mostly try to dodge the tough choices as long and hard as possible and create all kinds of crises before the every "solve" the energy crisis or get on top of "global warming". It is like democracy. Democracy is well understood to be the worst possible form of government, except that all the other choices are in fact far worse. Humanity will muddle through. That's my pessimistic optimism speaking.

Unintended Consequences of Renewable Energy

Those who rant for simplistic solutions often overlook "unintended consequences" of their choices. Here's a bit from a newspaper article from the Seattle Times noting a conflict between wind generated power and hydropower from large dams in the state of Washington. I'be bolded the key bit:

Pacific Northwest wind-power producers are battling a proposal that could force them to periodically shut down their plants in the months ahead, potentially costing them millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) officials say that limiting wind production could be required to free up space in the regional transmission system to handle hydropower generated from the melt-off of a huge mountain snowpack this year.

...

The dispute reflects major strains on the regional power system, which has been reshaped by a dramatic expansion of wind power in Washington and Oregon. Most of that power is exported to California and other markets outside the Northwest.

Wind-power producers say the BPA should compensate them financially for any prolonged shutdowns ordered by the agency. Their ranks include Puget Sound Energy, which has built wind farms in Washington.

BPA officials say the shutdowns will only happen as a last resort and that wind producers should not receive compensation.

Such payments would raise operating costs and could push up rates for the BPA's major customers — Northwest public utilities, including Seattle City Light, which have endorsed the agency plan.

"We think that is not a fair transfer of costs and puts too much of a burden on public-utility ratepayers," said Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman.

During the past decade, wind power has attracted billions of dollars of investment, driven in part by tax incentives and state requirements that utilities buy renewable energy other than hydro power.

When the winds are fierce, the Northwest farms are capable of producing up to 3,500 megawatts of power. That's more than triple the energy of the Northwest's sole nuclear-power plant.

Total wind-power capacity could double by 2015.

The BPA manages the regional power-supply system by balancing, minute by minute, the flow of electricity surging through the system with demand.

As the wind industry expands, the BPA has found it more difficult to transmit all that power and still meet other responsibilities, which include selling hydro power outside the region and spilling water over dams to aid the passage of migrating salmon.

Last June, the BPA balancing effort turned into a high-wire act as a late snow melt unleashed a gusher of water down the Columbia River at the same time that winds whipped up the power turbines.

BPA officials said that they couldn't divert all the water around the hydroelectric turbines without putting too much dissolved gas into the river and placing salmon at risk. So they ended up running more water through the dam turbines and giving away their surplus power to utilities all over the West.

That spurred the agency to develop a new proposal to periodically shut down wind-power farms to help balance loads. The plan was embraced by public utilities across the region.

The idea that variable power sources like solar and wind generated electricity can be simply "mandated" politically with no consequences is foolish. Voters who act on "good feelings" and without "hard thinking" create problems that they are completely unaware of. Sad.

Hostility to Wind Power

I'm OK with wind power. But here is a report commissioned by the Scottish John Muir Trust, a conservation society that apparently is hostile to wind farms, looking at some issues with wind power:

The following five statements are common assertions made by both the wind industry and Government representatives and agencies. This Report examines those assertions.

1. “Wind turbines will generate on average 30% of their rated capacity over a year.”


2. “The wind is always blowing somewhere.”


3. “Periods of widespread low wind are infrequent.”


4. “The probability of very low wind output coinciding with peak electricity demand is slight.”


5. “Pumped storage hydro can fill the generation gap during prolonged low wind periods.”

This analysis uses publicly available data for a 26 month period between November 2008 and December 2010 and the facts in respect of the above assertions are:

1. Average output from wind was 27.18% of metered capacity in 2009, 21.14% in 2010, and 24.08%
   between November 2008 and December 2010 inclusive.


2. There were 124 separate occasions from November 2008 till December 2010 when total generation from the windfarms metered by National Grid was less than 20MW. (Average capacity over the period was in excess of 1600MW).


3. The average frequency and duration of a low wind event of 20MW or less between November 2008 and December 2010 was once every 6.38 days for a period of 4.93 hours.


4. At each of the four highest peak demands of 2010 wind output was low being respectively 4.72%, 5.51%, 2.59% and 2.51% of capacity at peak demand.


5. The entire pumped storage hydro capacity in the UK can provide up to 2788MW for only 5 hours then it drops to 1060MW, and finally runs out of water after 22 hours.

...

During the study period, wind generation was:

• below 20% of capacity more than half the time.


• below 10% of capacity over one third of the time.


• below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve.


• below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month.

The discovery that for one third of the time wind output was less than 10% of capacity, and often significantly less than 10%, was an unexpected result of the analysis.

That is not very encouraging. I can report from personal experience that traveling on I-10 going through the San Gorgonia pass between Los Angeles and Palm Springs is quite a large number of wind farms and a disconcertingly large number of the windmills are "out of commission" at any given time. It has always puzzled me. I would think it is expensive to build these farms and to run them at a low utlization rate doesn't strike me as economically sensible.

Update 2011apr13: Here's a video of Tehachapi Pass which is north of the San Gorgonio pass I talk about above. But the video shows a similar condition: lots of idle windmills...



Here's a video of San Gorgonio pass:

Energy Production & Consumption in the US

Here's an interesting graphic from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab:

Click to Enlarge

Notice how tiny, tiny, tiny is the contribution from wind, solar, and geothermal. For all that breast beating about "renewable" energy, it is almost invisible.

When I look at the graphic, the one thing that jumps out at me is the block titled "Rejected Energy". This is waste. It is a rich field to invest in to reduce and make current energy more useful. Big rewards. So why all the hullabaloo over wind, solar, and geothermal when there is this rich field to mine?

Israel: The New Saudi Arabia of Fossil Fuel?

Here's a surprising story that will change power relations in the Middle East. From an article in the Jerusalem Post:

How Israel could revolutionize the global energy sector

By DORE GOLD
03/11/2011 17:04

New data suggests Israel may not only have much larger gas resources than believed, but also the 3rd largest deposit of oil shale in the world.

... The implications for Israel of the West’s growing dependence on Middle Eastern oil are troubling, for obvious reasons. Yet there are two new developments in our energy sector that could well offset these trends and eventually alter our standing in the world, especially with respect to Europe.

First, the gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean, which began to produce commercial quantities of natural gas in 2004, are generally well-known. The Tamar field, which should begin production in 2013, is expected to supply all of Israel’s domestic requirements for at least 20 years. The Economist suggested in November 2010 that the recently discovered Leviathan field, which has twice the gas of Tamar, could be completely devoted to exports.

All the undersea gas fields together have about 25 trillion cubic feet of gas, but the potential for further discoveries is considerably greater, given that the US Geological Survey estimates that there are 122 trillion cubic feet of gas in the whole Levant Basin, most of which is within Israel’s jurisdiction.

After the Leviathan discovery these numbers could go up further. Perhaps for that reason, Greece has been talking to Israel about creating a transportation hub for distributing gas throughout Europe from the Eastern Mediterranean that will come from undersea pipelines.

What is less well-known, but even more dramatic, is the work being done on this country’s oil shale. The British-based World Energy Council reported in November 2010 that Israel had oil shale from which it is possible to extract the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil. Yet these numbers are currently undergoing a major revision internationally.

A new assessment was released late last year by Dr. Yuval Bartov, chief geologist for Israel Energy Initiatives, at the yearly symposium of the prestigious Colorado School of Mines. He presented data that our oil shale reserves are actually the equivalent of 250 billion barrels (that compares with 260 billion barrels in the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia). ...

There is more, go read the whole article.

I love surprises! Life is always blindsiding you. Anybody who thinks they can linearly extrapolate the present into the future has his head in the sand.

I always enjoy thinking about the fact that for over 80 years experts have been warning that there is less than 20 years supply of fossil fuel. The favourite theory is "peak oil". A theory first propounded in 1956 to warn people to prepare for the coming "end of oil".

I remember teaching a social studies class in the mid-1970s using material telling those kids that they needed to accept that cars would not be in the future. There just wouldn't be the oil there to allow them the luxury of driving.

But if you look at this Wikipedia page you can see that the major producing areas all have "proven reserves" big enough to supply oil at current rates for more than 50 years.

Notice how that page lists the biggest reserve as a puny 267 billion barrels of oil. But if you look at this page from the Government of Alberta Canada, you can see that just this tar sands of Alberta makes Saudia Arabia look like a piker:

Alberta’s oil sands underlie 140,200 square kilometres (km2) (54,132 square miles) of land in the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River areas in northern Alberta. Together these oil sands areas contain an estimated 1.8 trillion barrels (initial volume in place) of crude bitumen. About 10% of this volume (169.9 billion barrels) is recoverable using current technology and is considered to be a proven reserve.

Other information on Alberta oil sands can be found here.

I think everybody should welcome Israel to the oil barons of today! Lots of energy for many, many years.

Cringely on Your Nuclear Future

I notice that Canada's biggest uranium producer, Cameco, just lost 15% on the stock market. That is probably premature. I think nuclear reactors are still front and centre in everybody's energy future. The "renewables" will not be able to supply more than a quarter of a typical nation's energy needs in the next 30 to 50 years.

Here's the key bit from Robert X. Cringely's second (and last) post on the Japanese nuclear tragedy:

These Japanese nuclear accidents come down to the simple fact that nobody back in the 1960s designed nuclear plants to run for 40 years then go through an 8.9 earthquake. Nor are today’s nuclear plants probably designed to that standard, which means Japan is facing what will by necessity be a significantly different nuclear future.

We’ll see rolling blackouts for months, maybe years, in Japan and the new nuclear plants that replace those old nuclear plants will be vastly different, too. If I were to predict a clear winner in Japan’s new nuclear future it would be Toshiba with its innovative 4S (Super Safe Small and Simple) reactors.

Japan needs increased generating capacity fast. They would like to replace nuclear with nuclear. But the new plants also have to show they can survive an 8.9 earthquake and reduce the number of critical failure points. Toshiba’s 4S reactors, which have been around for several years now, though not yet commercially successful, do all that quite easily.

4S reactor cores are like nuclear building blocks, built on a factory production line and transported by truck to be installed 30 meters under the ground. Each 4S puts out 10 megawatts of electricity or enough for 2000 Japanese homes. Following this path means the lost 1000 megawatt reactors will need 100 4S’s each to replace them or a total of 1200 4S reactors. 4S’s are fueled at the factory, put in place to run for 20 years then returned to the factory for refueling. They are sodium-cooled and pretty darned impossible to melt down. If the cooling system is compromised they automatically shut down and just sit there in a block of sodium.

The biggest problem facing the 4S has been regulatory approvals, which would normally take in aggregate 100 times as long (and cost 100 times as much) if done the same way as a larger nuclear plant. That’s where this earthquake will probably change everything, at least in Japan, where the process will be streamlined almost to nothing with a 4S soon stashed under every power substation giving Japan a smart grid in the process.

By definition the future surprises us. We can't know in detail what will happen. But the tsunami was one of the "unknown knowns" that engineers had to design for. The problem was that without relevant experience, cost pressures overtook prudence and reactor designs didn't include enough safety. This can be corrected. Sadly most people think in terms of black or what. This nuclear failure means that most people will say "no!" to nuclear. But the real world is in shades of gray. Even "safe" energy kills. All designs must include trade-offs. What this disaster teaches us is that nuclear reactors need a better safety design for natural catastrophes like 9.0 earthquakes and tsunamis.

Where's the Friendly Energy?

From an National Geographic article entitled "Shining Light on the Cost of Solar Energy":

Capturing that power, and putting it to work in the form of electricity, is relatively expensive.

It’s true that the cost of solar electricity has declined over the past ten years. Along the way, the popularity of solar electricity has risen. A decade ago, fewer than 25,000 solar cells and modules were shipped in the United States every year. In 2008, that number had skyrocketed to more than 500,000. But that is still a drop in the bucket. Only about one-tenth of 1 percent of the energy consumed in the United States came from solar sources in 2008.

...

The U.S. DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that it’s the most expensive form of electricity among current technologies for new electricity generation, about $396 per megawatthour for PV. That’s more than double EIA’s estimate of the total system levelized cost of wind, and almost four times the cost of conventional coal.

And that analysis looks at large-scale solar, the kind usually owned by utility companies. Small installations on home rooftops are even more expensive, because they don’t take advantage of buying—or installing—in bulk. To be fair, over 20 years, a homeowner will earn back between 76 percent and 109 percent of the system’s cost in the form of lower electricity bills, because the fuel that powers solar energy is free, according to a 2009 report on financing solar installations in the residential sector by the U.S. DOE National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

...

Thanks to the rising cost of coal and natural gas—as well as the short-term cost benefits of cadmium telluride, and falling costs of silicon and other solar options—the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that solar energy could reach nationwide grid parity by 2017. That’s without any subsidies and with only small, incremental improvements on current technology.

But Seth Darling at Argonne says the United States won’t be likely to see hundreds of gigawatts of solar running at grid parity until 2025, at the earliest.

Go read the original article to get the embedded links.

The article doesn't address one big problem with solar (and wind): the fact that this is an intermittent power source not in sync with power demand. That means you need to build a power storage infrastructure and distribution system to even out the disparity between power creation and power demand. That adds to cost and since power is lost in these intermediate steps, it effectively raises the cost of solar (and wind) generated power.

I've got nothing against solar (and wind) power. But you have to be realistic. The Germans subsidized a huge installation of solar power and they will be paying ridiculous power bills for over a generation to make up for their ideology-driven "green" agenda.

Seeing the Future

Here are some bits from a post by Robert X. Cringely on his blog. This identifies a technology which he sees making a big difference in the near future. I agree:

Solarmer is effectively a Chinese company operating in America. Located in Baldwin Park, CA, Solarmer’s management is entirely from Taiwan, though many U. S. nationals are employed at the company. Solarmer is well funded, has been operating for several years now, and is moving relentlessly toward the goal of creating very large plastic solar cells that are 10 percent efficient, have a 10-year service life, and can be manufactured for $0.50 per watt or less.

Crystalline solar cells last for 25 years or more, but plastic or polymer solar cells have traditionally operated for only 2-3 years. Through the use of special UV-resistant coatings, Solarmer is attacking this longevity issue, though since the cost of plastic cells is so much less than silicon, 10 years is good enough.

Solarmer is steadily pushing cell efficiency, too, with their current world record in excess of eight percent efficient. Their goal is 10 percent and I believe they will make it.

Solarmer’s target of $0.50 per watt is based on low material cost and especially on low cost of production. The capital cost for producing Solarmer plastic cells is almost nothing as you’ll read below.

...

Solarmer says it intends to license its technology to commercial printers. The difference between printing Parade magazine for your Sunday paper or printing hundreds of thousands of plastic solar cells per day is the addition of an extra drying stage at the output end of the web printer.

That’s why Solarmer quietly works-away, relentlessly pushing its technology to produce a little more power for a lot less cost. Once the specs are where the company wants them to be, their process will be released to a magazine publishing industry that has been slowly dying, killed by a combination of economic recession and Internet publishing. Hundreds of web printers originally costing tens of millions each will be repurposed for inexpensive energy production at that target $0.50 per watt — not just grid-parity but a quarter the cost of power from coal.

Flexible plastic solar cells will go everywhere the sun shines, produced in long rolls, covering roofs and even windows (the cells can be made transparent). Efficiencies are lower, sure, but so will be the cost. Any structure can produce at least some of its own energy. And though the plastic cells will have only a 10-year life, that’s longer than a paint job lasts in Charleston.

It’s a strategy of ubiquitous good-enough solar power that I find very compelling as part of our energy future.

I believe that I have glimpsed the future and Solarmer looks like a nice big chunk of it.

A New Energy Future?

Here's a bit from a post by Robert X. Cringely that is very optimistic about solar energy:

My work on this past summer’s Startup Tour introduced me to a number of energy startups with technologies that will actually make a difference in this age-old pattern of supply and demand. Because for the first time the supplies that are being created are renewable — they generally won’t be depleted. There is no new well involved to come online then peak and then die. There is just slow and steady energy production growth for 25 years or so from the same facility to which is added over time another and another and another machine.

We have one solar startup that is moving slowly and inexorably toward a target of making electricity from sunlight for $0.50 per watt. They are about three years from reaching their goal, at which point they will bring online a manufacturing capacity greater than the world has ever seen — all without spending a cent to develop that capacity (cue spooky music).

Electricity from coal usually costs $2.00 per watt to produce, so $0.50 per watt is amazing. What if this is hype and they are off by a factor of 10? Electricity at $5.00 per watt is still competitive with everything except coal and hydro. It’s still amazing.

I love the positive feeling that Cringely exudes. I sure hope he's right. He sure sounds like this is the real deal:

That low price per watt scares the crap out of BP and will change the geopolitical balance in the world within a decade, making the Middle East maybe a little less important.

Passing the Baton

In an article by Michael T. Klare about China in TomDispatch.com the passing of an interesting milestone is noted.

On July 20th, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, told the Wall Street Journal that China had overtaken the United States to become the world’s number one energy consumer. One can read this development in many ways: as evidence of China’s continuing industrial prowess, of the lingering recession in the United States, of the growing popularity of automobiles in China, even of America’s superior energy efficiency as compared to that of China. All of these observations are valid, but all miss the main point: by becoming the world’s leading energy consumer, China will also become an ever more dominant international actor and so set the pace in shaping our global future.

In the introduction to that article, a slightly different significant event is marked:

For a whopping $60 billion -- yes, Virginia, that is “billion” -- the Saudis, according to Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service, have agreed to buy 84 F-15s and 175 helicopters as part of the largest arms deal in U.S. history. In addition, the sale, soon to be presented to Congress for approval by the White House, could end up involving a supplemental $30 billion deal “to upgrade the Saudi kingdom’s naval forces and yet another for new missile-defense systems.” (You didn’t even know that Saudi Arabia had a navy, did you?) This, Lobe writes, will “by itself exceed the value of all conventional arms transfer agreements signed worldwide by developing and developed countries alike in 2009 -- $57.5 billion.” And there’s even an added bonus for U.S. arms makers. Though this sale is theoretically aimed at Iran, the Saudi military, for all its weaponry, has shown little urge to fight, or to fight effectively. This will, however, surely mean billions more in compensatory U.S. weaponry flowing to Israel.

As regards "reputation", I would rather be known as a leader energy producer than as a major arms seller. But the US has decided to specialize in weaponry and destruction rather than in energy and construction. Odd choice.

The article points out a simple calculation of world political strategy:

According to the most recent projections from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), Chinese energy consumption will grow by 133% between 2007 and 2035 -- from, that is, 78 to 182 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs). Think about it this way: the 104 quadrillion BTUs that China will somehow have to add to its energy supply over the next quarter-century equals the total energy consumption of Europe and the Middle East in 2007. Finding and funneling so much oil, natural gas, and other fuels to China is undoubtedly going to be the single greatest economic and industrial challenge facing Beijing -- and in that challenge lays the possibility of real friction and conflict.

The handwriting is already on the wall for a strategic battle over petroleum:

As recently as 1995, China only consumed about 3.4 million barrels of oil per day -- one-fifth the amount used by the United States, the world’s top consumer, and two-thirds of the amount burned by Japan, then number two. Since China pumped 2.9 million barrels per day from its domestic fields that year, its import burden was a mere 500,000 barrels per day at a time when the U.S. imported 9.4 million barrels and Japan 5.3 million barrels.

By 2009, China was in the number-two spot at 8.6 million barrels per day, which still fell far below America’s 18.7 million barrels. At 3.8 million barrels per day, however, domestic production wasn’t keeping pace -- the very problem the U.S. had faced in the Cold War era. China was already importing 4.8 million barrels per day, far more than Japan (which had actually reduced its reliance on oil) and nearly half as much as the United States. In the decades to come, these numbers are guaranteed only to get worse.

According to the DoE, China will overtake the U.S. as the world’s leading oil importer, at an estimated 10.6 million barrels per day, sometime around 2030. (Some experts believe this shift could occur far sooner.)

...

Especially striking has been the way Beijing has sought to undercut U.S. influence in Saudi Arabia and with other crucial Persian Gulf oil producers. In 2009, China imported more Saudi oil than the U.S. for the first time, a geopolitical shift of great significance, given the history of U.S.-Saudi relations. Although not competing with Washington when it comes to military aid, Beijing has been dispatching its top leaders to woo Riyadh, promising to support Saudi aspirations without employing the human rights or pro-democracy rhetoric usually associated with American foreign policy.

Good News on the Green Energy Front

This sounds like a scientific breakthrough from Daniel G. Nocera's lab at MIT that creates a truly workable system for green energy. From a MIT news release:

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

For more detail, read the rest of the news release.

Here is this same information regurgitated as a science "news article".

Here's the company that has been spun off to commercialize this new technology: Sun Catalytix.

Alternate Energy

With all the talk of alternate energy development and government programs, it seems that new energy sources will soon sweep all that old "dirty" energy off the scene and we will live in a bright and dazzling and very clean energy future.

But here's the reality. From Wikipedia's page on "world energy sources and consumption", here is the current breakdown of sources of energy used:


Those itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bits on the upper right get exploded, so they do look like they are something important. But this table from the same Wikipedia page makes it pretty clear they aren't very significant:

Fuel type	Average power in TW
	1980	2004	2006
Oil	4.38	5.58	5.74
Gas	1.80	3.45	3.61
Coal	2.34	3.87	4.27
Hydroelectric	0.60	0.93	1.00
Nuclear Power	0.25	0.91	0.93
Geothermal, wind, solar energy, wood	0.02	0.13	0.16
Total	9.48	15.0	15.8

I think the moral of the story is that alternate energy will take a generation or two before it plays any significant role in the energy supply of the world.

Meanwhile, I get quite bothered by the pandering of governments to pressure from fanatical environmentalists. The idea of paying farmers to turn crops that should be feeding people into energy so that yuppies can drive around with the consciences assuaged while the poor go hungry (and even starve during years of crop failure). It is mindless.

I don't mind money spent on generating usable energy from anaerobic digestion or algae fuel. These don't compete with food crops.

Solar and wind power are fine by me, but you first have to solve the problem of energy storage. That is a really tough nut to crack and environmentalists overlook it.

Here's an interesting post by Thomas Fuller on the current energy use situation from the Watts Up With That? web site.