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The Second Wave of Mining

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Read Article: The Second Wave of Mining

The author with a group of Romani people (also known as gypsies) in front of a pile of scrap iron, collected for recycling. That pile has been there for more than a year. The recycling activity carried out by the Romani in Italy has been halted, in large part because the government forbade it and forced the recycling cooperatives to close down (governments don’t like things they can’t fully control). But, also, recycling stopped because of the collapse of market prices of scrap iron. This may be a symptom that the “second wave of mining”, recovering mineral resources from waste, is late in coming. Will it ever arrive?

Human civilization started when humans learned how to exploit those concentrated mineral sources that we call “ores”. After centuries of mining, most of these ores have been badly dented or even completely exhausted. The first wave of mining in human history will be over at some moment in the future. Will there be a second one in which we learn how to reuse the minerals that we have discarded?

The problem is felt everywhere and waste recycling is often presented as the miracle solution: it frees citizens from costs and bad smells, it saves the environment, it provides the economy with raw materials and people with jobs. But is it possible to “close the cycle of production” (the “cradle to cradle” (C2C) strategy)? If it were so, we would solve once for all the problem of depletion.

Unfortunately, recycling remains a cumbersome task that keeps going only by means of government subsidies and a set of laws that force citizens and companies to do it. Recycling is especially difficult if it is necessary to restore the initial quality of the materials being recycled. In practice, recycled materials that can compete in a free market are often of poor quality and suitable only for some specific processes. Recycled plastics, for instance, can be used only for some low price applications; such as fruit crates. Recycled steel contains plenty of contamination in the form of different metals and can be used only for some specific tasks.

Because of these problems, closing the cycle by recycling alone seems to be impossible. We simply don’t recycle enough. Common metals are recycled at an average of around 50% of the total produced (Papp 2005). Some cases are especially favorable, such as lead which is recycled at the level of 74%. But, even if we recycle something at 75% we are far from closing the cycle: even in that case, after ten cycles, we are left with less than 0.1% of the initial amount. Surely, we can devise better recycling strategies, but there are limits in terms of monetary costs and energy needed.

So, we can’t avoid to start thinking of recovering all that material that we have so foolishly thrown away when we thought that abundance would last forever. In large part, this material has ended up dispersed in the environment as dust or ashes. But a good fraction of it is buried in landfills. Can it be recovered?

A conference held in London in 2008 examined the feasibility of landfill mining. The results have not been very encouraging. Even when the prices of mineral commodities is high, as it was in 2008, recovery from landfills has at best a marginally positive economic return. With the collapse of commodity prices that took place in late 2008, the second conference on landfill mining, originally planned for October 2009, had to be canceled.

Landfill mining turns out to be a very different task in comparison to conventional mining. Ores are normally formed of homogeneous mineral species that contain just a few chemical species. A landfill, instead, contains a large number of metals mixed together at various scales – from the micro (incinerator ashes) to the macro (undifferentiated urban waste). In addition, the composition of a landfill varies with depth: people would throw away different kind of materials depending on the technology of the time, on how rich they were, and on how efficiently recycling was implemented. Typically, old layers of landfills are richer in metals than the more recent ones.

Even though landfills are often rich in metals, recovery is very difficult. Recovering single metals out of incineration ashes is pretty impossible (Shen and Fossberg 2003). Something better can be done when waste remains unprocessed. For instance, iron items can be extracted by means of magnets. Light density materials (e.g. aluminum cans) can be separated by methods based on friction and gravity. Usually, however, these processes remain too expensive to be usable in practice on existing landfills.

So, mining landfills remains a chimera, at least by industrial methods. It is not so in poor countries, where landfills often provide the means of survival for large numbers of people. It is not something to be happy about; often, these people are extremely poor and their way of living is dangerous and unhealthy. Nevertheless, they have found a way of mining landfills that works and they are performing a useful task for the whole community.

These considerations have led to revisit the concept of waste recycling performed by individuals or by cooperatives: a concept that is called participatory sustainable waste management. The idea is that of a different paradigm in mining: not the heavily mechanized method that are typical of the mining industry, but low cost methods based, mainly, on the work of human beings. If this work is performed with appropriate precautions for the health of the workers, and if they are paid enough, then it is a win-win strategy: it recovers precious materials for society and it provides a way of living to people who, otherwise, would have none. In the figure, here, you can see Jutta Gutberlet, of the University of Victoria, Canada, working with the catadores of a landfill of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

So, perhaps, the second way of mining is coming, after all. But it will be nothing like the first. Whereas, once, finding a rich ore was a good way of making a lot of money, not many people are going to strike it rich by mining landfills. It will be hard work and little pay, yet, it may be a way to face our uncertain future.

News of last week is that the Romani succeeded in selling the pile of scrap iron that you see in the picture at the beginning of this text. They made 450 Euros out of it. Not a way of becoming rich for them but, at least, that iron is back in the industrial cycle.

________________________________________________

I would like to thank Jutta Guttberlet for having introduced me to the concept of participatory sustainable waste management and to the world of the Brazilian “catadores”. You can find a description of Jutta’s work at her site at the university of Victoria, Canada. I would also like to thank all the members of the Romani community of Sesto Fiorentino, Italy, in particular Mr. and Mrs. Zoran and Yelena Jankovich, for their kindness and hospitality.

References

Papp, J.F. 2005 “Recycling Metals”, United States Geological report http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/recycmyb05.pdf

Shen, H. Fossberg, E. 2003 “An overview of recovery of metals from slags” Waste Management Volume 23, Issue 10,Pages 933-949

On ore depletion, see also:

“The Universal mining machine”, by Ugo Bardi, The Oil Drum, January 2008, www.theoildrum.com/pdf/theoildrum_3451.pdf

“Minerals scarcity: a call for managed austerity and the elements of hope”, A. Diederen, The Oil Drum, March 2009, www.theoildrum.com/pdf/theoildrum_5239.pdf

On participatory sustainable waste management, see the PSWM site at http://pswm.uvic.ca/en/welcome/index.html

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Drumbeat: September 28, 2009

Monday, September 28th, 2009


The 1.258 trillion-barrel question

The Earth contains a finite amount of oil. Burned to power our vehicles, heat our homes and light our cities, this fuel is a nonrenewable resource. So when Peter Maass, author of “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil,” asked experts how much oil remains, it was not an innocuous question. The answer could spur or doom research into alternative energy sources, even sustain or overthrow governments.

Oil barons around the world, though, confidently reassured Maass. As of this year, they insist, the world’s reserves of crude amount to 1.258 trillion barrels.

Energy Economics and Some Energy Myths for the 21st Century

Taking oil as a case in point, it might be true that the most imaginative myths in circulation today are those being generated by OPEC. Having come to appreciate the supreme importance of oil – and how it functions as a benchmark for the world’s energy systems – that organization has informed the oil importing countries that if the oil price goes up and stays up, then they will invest in more production capacity, and also raise their output of oil.

That sounds good – in fact it probably sounds like something you heard in an introductory economics lecture, or read in your favourite textbook or newspaper – only it is completely untrue. It is a distinguished myth, and unfortunately a myth that is believed by many drowsy academics and their students, and probably more than a few influential but not very brainy decision makers. Instead, although there might be exceptions, the aggregate of OPEC producers is not going to invest in additional capacity, and they are definitely not going to produce or try to produce much more oil. Why should they? Would you if you were in their place?


Systemic Collapse: The Basics

Systemic collapse, societal collapse, the coming dark age, the great transformation, the coming crash, the post-industrial age, the long emergency, socioeconomic collapse, the die-off, the tribulation, the coming anarchy, perhaps even resource wars (to the extent that this is not an oxymoron, since wars themselves require resources) ― there are many names, and they do not all correspond to exactly the same thing, but there is a widespread belief that something immense and ominous is happening. Unlike those of the Aquarian Age, the heralds of this new era often have impressive academic credentials: they include scientists, engineers, and historians. The serious beginnings of the concept can be found in Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Population, Resources, Environment (1970); Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (1972); and William R. Catton, Jr., Overshoot (1980). What all the overlapping theories have in common can be seen in the titles of those three books.


Kunstler: The Season of the Witch

Most curious, though, was when the interviewer, Jim Puplava, probed Dent about his views on Peak Oil. Dent said he didn’t believe in it; that when he was in college in the 1970s (remember the OPEC oil embargo of ‘73), he learned to disregard any suggestions that we are “running out of oil.” He stated this, by the way, as a simple assertion, without any further explanation, and Puplava didn’t belabor him with arguments. But it was a weird moment. Of course, it hardly need be said that Peak Oil story has never been about “running out of oil” per se, but rather about declining flows, geopolitical management of flows, and the effects of depletion on industrial economies — in particular the effect on regular, expected, cyclical “growth” of the type that financial markets utterly depend on to power the trade in investment paper.


Saudi Says Oil Helps All Energy Types

As I wrote a few weeks ago, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, subscribes to the “Goldilocks” view of the current market — in which prices are neither too high for consumers, nor too low for producers, but are just right for all.

The world needs oil prices to be around a barrel to ensure that all investors — whether they produce tar sands or alternative fuels — can invest profitably to boost supplies, according to Mr. Naimi, who spoke to the Nightly Business Report on PBS on Friday evening.


As Oil Enriches Australia, Spill Is Seen as a Warning

SYDNEY, Australia — Visitors hoping to peek at Australia’s exotic marine life usually head straight for the Great Barrier Reef. But conservationists say that an equally remarkable, but lesser known, marine environment is under threat from the booming oil and gas exploration taking place among the reefs and atolls off Australia’s northwest coast.


Dutch gas storage project partners seek exit – sources

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch oil and gas company Dyas and Canada’s largest energy firm PetroCanada are looking to sell their stakes in one of Europe’s largest gas storage projects, three people familiar with the matter said. The two companies want to exit the scheme, located in Bergemeer north of Amsterdam, because of disagreements with partner Abu Dhabi National Energy Company over how to take the project forward, one banking source said.


Gazprom unlikely to review gas deals

Russian energy giant Gazprom said today it was unlikely for it to review contracts on gas deliveries with European companies after a Russian newspaper report.


Kenya: Country Turns to Venezuela for Cheap Oil

Nairobi — Kenya and Venezuela have signed an agreement setting the stage for cooperation in oil exploitation and supply.

The agreement also calls for exchange of technical expertise on energy matters including exploitation of the renewable sources of energy.


Venezuela May Extend Cheap Oil Program to Kenya Under Accord

(Bloomberg) — Venezuela may supply Kenya with low cost oil under an agreement, as the South American country extends oil aid beyond the Americas.

Venezuela may supply “affordable oil to Kenya from partners close to East Africa” and will provide technical assistance as Kenya seeks to produce oil, according to a statement sent today by the office of Kenya Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka.


Venezuela says no plans yet on exploring uranium

PORLAMAR, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela has yet to develop a plan to explore or exploit its uranium deposits despite comments by a government official saying it was working with Iran to locate them, Venezuela’s energy minister told Reuters.

On Friday, Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz said Iran and Venezuela were working together to find uranium, and preliminary tests showed the South American country holds large deposits.


China’s Oil Needs Affect Its Iran Ties

BEIJING — China’s dependence on Iranian oil could deter it from backing tougher sanctions on Iran, though Beijing supports containing nuclear proliferation as part of a broader push to raise its international diplomatic stance.

China’s trade with the U.S., at 0 billion in the first seven months of this year, dwarfs its billion trade with Iran over the same period. But China is the world’s second-biggest oil consumer after the U.S., and the Persian Gulf country is one of Beijing’s biggest suppliers. Chinese imports of Iranian crude grew to 13 million metric tons in the first half, about 15% of China’s total, and up 22% from a year earlier, according to government data.


China Becomes World’s Biggest Energy Producer

China has become world’s largest energy producer thanks to its expanding capacity to supply energy in the six decades since the foundation of the People’s Republic, it said Friday. At a press conference by the State Council Information Office on Friday, Zhang Guobao, deputy chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission and director of the National Energy Administration, said China produced 110 times more energy in 2008 than in 1949, with a self-sufficiency rate of over 90 percent guaranteeing energy security.


China official warns on “too fast” nuclear plans

QINGDAO, China (Reuters) – China may have to put the brakes on the construction of nuclear power plants to ensure the plants are safe, the country’s top energy planning official told reporters on Sunday.

Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, warned of signs of “improper” and “too fast” development of nuclear power in some regions.


China’s Wind Farms Come With a Catch: Coal Plants

SHANGHAI—China’s ambition to create “green cities” powered by huge wind farms comes with a dirty little secret: Dozens of new coal-fired power plants need to be installed as well.

Part of the reason is that wind power depends on, well, the wind. To safeguard against blackouts when conditions are too calm, officials have turned to coal-fired power as a backup.


Interview with Sadad al Husseini—“The Facts Are There”

Sadad: I’ve been tracking the number of projects, globally, for a long time both in the Middle East and elsewhere—Russia, Brazil, west coast of Africa, and others. A lot of this information is in the public domain, so there is no mystery there. The International Energy Agency recently reported on the same numbers. The bottom line is that there are not enough projects. There is not enough new capacity coming on line, within say the next five to six years, to make up for global declines. And that’s assuming a very moderate level of declines—6% to 6.5% for non-OPEC, perhaps a 3.5% to 4% decline rate for OPEC.

Even at these modest decline rates, we are basically going to see a shortage of capacity within two to three years. We’re being lulled by this current excess capacity, which has more to do with lower demand than anything to do with supply. So we do have a problem in the near term. In the longer term it’s even worse because in the longer term the lead time to discover, develop and put on line production runs into 10 years. And there isn’t enough being done in the long term as well. So it’s both a short and a long-term problem.


Heinberg: Is the Global Oil Tank Half-Full, Is It Half-Empty…or Are We Running on Fumes?

Let me summarize: the industry needs oil prices that are both stable and near economy-killing levels in order to justify investments necessary to possibly replace depleting reserves and overcome declining production in existing oilfields (I say “possibly” because we have insufficient evidence as yet to conclusively show that new discoveries enabled by expensive new exploration and production technologies can offset declines in the world’s aging giant oilfields).

Should this picture lead the viewer to come away with reassured thoughts of “No worries, happy motoring?” Or does this look more like a portrait of peak oil?


Crude Oil Falls Below as Dollar Strengthens, Equities Slide

(Bloomberg) — Crude oil slipped below a barrel as a stronger dollar reduced the appeal of commodities and declines in equities raised concern a recovery in fuel demand may stall.

Crude slumped more than 8 percent last week, the biggest weekly drop since the week ending July 10, as U.S. stockpiles unexpectedly rose. Oil fell today as the dollar gained, limiting the commodity’s appeal to investors as an inflation hedge. Stock markets in Europe and Asia traded lower.


Price of gas down 7 cents in the last two weeks

CAMARILLO, Calif. – The average price of regular gasoline in the United States has dropped nearly seven cents over a two-week period to .52.

That’s according to the national Lundberg Survey of fuel prices released Sunday.


Heating Oil Prices Cool Down as Winter Approaches

Homeowners who heat with oil were feeling sticker shock just over a year ago as prices soared close to a gallon, but they’re breathing easier now.

Heating oil prices are barely half what they were in summer 2008 — and while prices might go up and even exceed last winter’s, nothing indicates any severe spike this winter.

Those who heat with natural gas and propane can expect dramatic drops, while electric heat is projected to cost slightly less.


Natural Gas Feint Means Prices Poised to Plummet 19% on Storage

(Bloomberg) — The steepest rally in natural gas prices since 2006 is coming to an end as the 400 salt caverns, depleted oil fields and aquifers used to store the fuel in the U.S. reach capacity for the first time.

Stockpiles may surpass the record of 3.545 trillion cubic feet by as much as 350 billion cubic feet this fall, Energy Department estimates show. Gulf South Pipeline Co. says its fields in Louisiana and Mississippi are so full that customers will have to pay penalties for exceeding their limits. With no place to go, producers will be forced to dump excess fuel on the market.


Europe, Gazprom in talks on reduced gas supply-paper

MOSCOW (Reuters) – European consumers of Russian gas, including Germany, Italy and Turkey, plan this year to take up to .8 billion less gas than stipulated in take-or-pay contracts with Gazprom, a Russian newspaper reported.

Consumers plan talks with Gazprom to avoid payment after a sharp drop in gas demand this year and are citing Russia’s lenience with Ukraine as a precedent, business daily Kommersant reported on its front page on Monday.


Gasoline Faces Risk of ‘Meltdown’, PVM Says: Technical Analysis

(Bloomberg) — Gasoline prices face a potential “meltdown” should futures close below a pivotal correction point at .5823 a gallon in New York, according to technical analysis by PVM Oil Associates Ltd.

Gasoline “has very much led the way lower with early negative signals,” PVM said in a report today. On Sept. 25, the fuel “entered a danger zone” after dropping below .6053, a significant threshold during its advance this year, according to the broker. The next level of support is .5823.


Aramco looks to develop Brazil’s offshore oil

A senior official from Brazil has said that state-owned hydrocarbons giant Saudi Aramco is among the companies interested in helping the South American country to develop its pre-salt oil reserves.


India May Attract Billion in Oil, Gas Exploration Round

(Bloomberg) — India may attract as much as billion in work commitments in the country’s largest auction of oil and gas areas as explorers such as BP Plc, BG Group Plc and Santos Ltd. seek new deposits, a government official said.


Kuwait’s crude oil exports to China plummets 35.8pc in August

Crude oil exports from Kuwait to China fell by 35.8 percent in August to 122,000 barrels per day (bpd) compared to the same period in 2008, reported the nation’s government news agency KUNA on Monday, citing official data released by the Chinese government.


Russia to raise oil export duty to 0.7 per ton from October 1

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) – Russia will raise oil export duty on its benchmark Urals blend from 8.6 per metric ton to 0.7 per metric ton from October 1, following trends on global oil markets, the government said on Monday.


Aramco offers 6th fuel oil lot in firm market

Saudi Aramco has offered a sixth-straight cargo of fuel oil within the past three weeks, in the face of the tight Middle East and East Asian markets and following outages at its refineries, traders said on Monday.


NY Moves Closer to Natural Gas Drilling Upstate

NEW YORK, NY September 28, 2009 —New York State will move a step closer this week to opening up the Catskills and the Southern Tier to natural gas drilling, as a key environmental assessment is made public.


Nigeria: MAN Challenges FG On Refineries

Lagos — As clock ticks towards the December 2009 deadline promise to provide the nation 6,000mw electricity power supply, the Federal Government has been urged to make the country’s refineries work to reduce heavy dependence on importation of petroleum products, in particular, Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) and Automated Gas Oil (AGO).


Winter gas shortage looms large for Iran

Iran will be short of around 200 million cubic metres per day of gas this winter due to rapid growth in demand, a daily newspaper reported Iran’s oil minister as saying.

Iran has bought its first diesel cargoes for six months in September to supplement gas it is burning in power plants.

The country sits on the world’s second-largest gas reserves but has failed to develop them fast enough to meet domestic demand.


Iran fires off long-range missiles in latest test

(CNN) — Iran test fired two types of long-range missiles on Monday, including the two-stage Sajil, state-run Press TV reported.


U.S. Is Seeking a Range of Sanctions Against Iran

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is scrambling to assemble a package of harsher economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program that could include a cutoff of investments to the country’s oil-and-gas industry and restrictions on many more Iranian banks than those currently blacklisted, senior administration officials said Sunday.


Fisking Scientific American on Peak Oil

I have now read the Scientific American article. It is perhaps one of the more, if not the most insidious of the recent media pieces on peak oil, in that it leverages the truth about technological advances in oil exploration and extraction to create a falsehood: that these technological advances increase aggregate flows in world supply. It was bad enough that the NYT piece invoked Kashagan as an example–a howler of an example really–because of course Kashagan was discovered in 2000 and not a drop of oil will flow until 2014 (at huge expense and after many western oil cos have abandoned the project after huge losses). That the NYT would invoke Kashagan as an example of recent discoveries is almost absurdist.


Do you want to know why Iran has a nuclear program?

It’s called peak oil, and it has global consequences.


Buy local, think global — with oil subsidies?

Back to the subsidy issue: With or without that subsidy, Americans would have demanded more oil than we could have produced. Without the subsidy, more of the production meeting that demand would likely have been outside the U.S. in regions where environmental standards are much lower. So — is the subsidy a net benefit for the environment?


The Age of Wisdom?

The need to address climate change is going to transform entire industries, our infrastructure, and our lifestyles. But will this transformation be driven by wise policy, oil depletion, or a real climate crisis? Will it be a benign process that creates new jobs and technologies and leaves our societal structures intact, or will it cause violent economic and social disruption that threatens the fabric of democratic societies?


San Francisco holds hearings on Peak Oil and the consequnces affecting Qulity of Life

I attended some of the first meetings linked to Peak Oil in San Francisco and the consequences facing humanity all over the world. While, San Francisco has been on the fore front of such issues – other Nations like England, Germany, Denmark too have vetted such pertinent issues and come out with many practical solutions. Abuse of the world’s natural resources stems from GREED and lack of Spirituality. The First Nations and the First People had it right for thousands of years. Contemporary society has just woken up and is trying to figure out how to resolve waste and especially the consumption of vast resources of petroleum – gradually running out.


Sustainable farm practices needed

AMES, Iowa — Less than 1 percent of Americans are full-time farmers and the average age of those individuals is around 57, said Richard Heinberg, a leading expert in sustainability education.

“We don’t even know who’s going to be growing our food in 20 years,” Heinberg said.


Sustainable Farming – Finding a New Way to Farm

How food arrives at the supermarket or the local restaurant is largely a mystery to most consumers. It is taken for granted that upon arrival at the supermarket, everything on your list will be on a shelf somewhere in the 20 or so aisled store. But the constant supply of beef, chicken, pork, and farm raised fish to market has a direct effect on our planet and our health. The amount of resources necessary for just one hamburger (6 gallons of water) is simply staggering. Here is a little information to help you ponder your diet, your health, and the health of the planet.


The Spirit Thrives at Perma Detroit

Caring for mother earth goes beyond recycling garbage and replacing carpet with bamboo flooring. On the east-side of Detroit and in midtown Detroit, there are magickal gardens growing and uplifting the spirits of the people who tend to them and benefit from their harvest. Fueled by the will of the spirit, sweat and bold determination, Perma Detroit has magickally transformed urban decay into natural beauty. And that’s the gospel truth. I spoke with Perma Detroit about the power behind this wondrous transformation.


Saving the World, Without U.S. Consumers

Victorian consumers invested in their possessions, and treated them as heirlooms to be handed down through the generations. Think of your great-grandmother’s china cabinet full of cut glass. She loved it, treasured it, and hoped that you and your children would, too.

The Victorian “treasure chest” idea gradually began to disappear in the late 20th century with the birth of a “throwaway” culture. As retailers competed primarily on price, newer generations of consumers began to see their purchases as being temporary. A new family in 1870, 1925, and 1955 scrimped to furnish their home or apartment, investing in things they would keep for a lifetime. In contrast, today’s newlyweds shop at IKEA for starter furniture, expecting to upgrade again and again through life, exacting a price on the environment.


Farmers Become Guardians of Ethanol Plant

A group of farmer-owned ethanol plants in Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska have teamed up become the guardians of a former VeraSun facility in Janesville, Minn.


Pakistan plans biodiesel project to reduce imports

ISLAMABAD: To overcome the shortage of petroleum products and reduce its import bill, the government of Pakistan plans to present a pilot project “Jatropha Plantation and Production of Biodiesel” with an estimated cost of .6m, official sources said here yesterday.


Palm Oil Drops the Most Since June, Tracking Crude Oil Losses

(Bloomberg) — Palm oil tumbled the most in more than three months after a leading industry buyer said prices must slump 13 percent from current levels to stoke demand for food and fuel applications and as crude oil fell.


China’s Threat Revives Race for Rare Minerals

HONG KONG — A Chinese threat to halt exports of rare minerals — vital for high-performance electric motors in wind turbines, hybrid cars and missiles — appears to have backfired.

With control of more than 99 percent of the world’s production of these minerals, China could try to use a ban to force other countries to buy the crucial motors for these high-tech end products, instead of just the minerals, directly from China.

But other governments and businesses reacted quickly as word of the proposed ban spread late this summer.

The Chinese threat has touched off a frenzied international effort to develop alternative mines, much as the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo’s repeated increases in oil prices prompted a global hunt for oil reserves.


Garbage economics

You might not think of the dump as a leading economic indicator, but garbage men are some of the first to know when there’s a downturn.

Because when people buy less stuff, they throw out less packaging.

…So far, the reduced volume hasn’t forced Xcel to idle any plants, Kuhn said. Instead, they are running below capacity. Because the French Island plant also burns waste wood chips, it can switch fuels if it runs out of trash.


Enter the Recession’s Waiting Room

Few of the employees of Katana Summit, a wind-tower manufacturer, saw it coming. On that day in early August, and in another round of cuts a few weeks later, about half of the plant’s 195-person payroll was eliminated, a shock that came with one notable consolation: the executives said they hoped to hire everyone back soon.

They seemed to mean it, too. As Kevin Strudthoff, the chief executive, explained that day, this was a “temporary layoff,” but there was a limit to what Katana could promise. The company, privately held, said it landed a multimillion-dollar deal last year to provide 225 wind towers to a turbine maker that it declined to identify. But when the credit crisis hit, wind-farm developers found it all but impossible to raise money, killing demand for wind towers.


E.ON, RWE Rise as Merkel Win May Extend Nuclear Life

(Bloomberg) — E.ON AG and RWE AG, Germany’s biggest utilities, jumped the most in a month in Frankfurt trading on speculation Chancellor Angela Merkel’s favored coalition government will scrap a nuclear phase-out law.


U.A.E. May Pick Nuclear Plant Contractor by Year End

(Bloomberg) — The United Arab Emirates may award the contracts by year end to build nuclear power plants in the country, according to an official at Areva SA.

The selection of contractors for the billion project to build two reactors by 2017, scheduled this month, has been delayed, Bertrand Castanet, Areva’s corporate vice president for business development, said today at a workshop in Doha. A decision may be made in this year’s “final quarter.”


Solar Power, Without All Those Panels

THE main way for homes to harness solar power today is through bulky panels added to the rooftop or mounted on the ground.

But companies are now offering alternatives to these fixed installations, in the less conspicuous form of shingles, tiles and other building materials that have photovoltaic cells sealed within them.


Greens criticise home insulation scheme

A high-profile Scottish Government home insulation scheme was “set up to fail”, the Green party said today.

The accusation was made after ministers revealed it will take 66 years to bring Scottish homes up to standard – compared with 10 under rival Green proposals.


Google Earth climate change 3D map unveiled

Google is using its Google Earth mapping tool to simulate on a 3D map of the world the predicted effects of climate change until the year 2100.

Using data provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the search giant created new layers for Google Earth showing the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century.


Climate change: A history of fear

Scientists and journalists have been warning us of impending climate disasters for more than 100 years. Many of today’s global warming believers probably don’t even realize their claims are not original.In the 1930s the media was in a global warming fervor over shrinking Arctic ice.

This global warming movement came on the heels of the great global cooling scare of the 1900s. During that movement, the Las Angeles Times warned the entire human race that it “will have to fight for its existence against cold.”


Nepal feels heat of climate change

KATHMANDU (Xinhua) — The golden apples it once produced were famed in Nepal and across the border area in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China for their luscious taste.

But now, the northern district of Mustang, some 195 km west of Nepali capital Kathmandu, lying in the lap of the Himalayan ranges, is feeling the heat of global warming and the ensuing climate change.


James Hansen, In His Own Words

Dr. James Hansen–scientist, father, grandfather, and activist–is often called the “grandfather of climate change science,” although he eschews the moniker. In the 1970s and 80s, his advanced climate modeling and impassioned pleas for action brought the issue of global warming to the forefront, but since then too little has been done to slow our emissions. Hansen recently sat down with the Earth Island Institute for a taped interview to discuss his legacy and the prospects for a climate bill this year.


Ships, Planes Should Cut Emissions Up to 20%, EU’s Dimas Says

(Bloomberg) — The European Union may propose that the shipping and airline industries reduce emissions by as much as 20 percent over the next decade as part of any new United Nations accord to fight global warming.

Ships would have to cut pollution blamed for climate change by a fifth in 2020 compared with 2005 and airlines would need to trim discharges by 10 percent over the period under a proposal for the UN being prepared by EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.


E.U. Alone and Lonely on Carbon

BRUSSELS — Carbon trading put the European Union in the environmental vanguard.

Since 2005, the trade bloc has operated the world’s only continentwide system that puts a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and that requires major polluters to hold tradable allowances.

But the system has also been the most “costly climate policy program in the world,” according to Jürgen R. Thumann, the president of BusinessEurope, a powerful confederation of industry and employer groups.


Climate Envoys Meet Anew as Time ‘Has Almost Run Out’

Bloomberg) — Climate envoys met today in Bangkok with a new sense of urgency, saying negotiators are racing against a December deadline to devise a global deal.

“Time is not just pressing, it has almost run out,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. “But in two weeks, real progress can be made toward the goals that world leaders have set for the negotiations, to break deadlocks, and to cooperate toward concrete progress.”


Met Office: catastrophic climate change could happen with 50 years

An average global temperature rise of 7.2F (4C), considered a dangerous tipping point, could happen by 2060, causing droughts around the world, sea level rises and the collapse of important ecosystems, it warns.

The Arctic could see an increase in temperatures of 28.8F (16C), while parts of sub Saharan Africa and North America would be devastated by an increase in temperature of up to 18F (10C).


Is 350 the New 450 When It Comes to Capping Carbon Emissions?

When it comes to fighting climate change, pick a number — any number.

Nearly 200 countries have signed a U.N. treaty pledging to avoid “dangerous” climate change. But lately, it seems, “dangerous” is lost in translation. Fifteen years since that agreement took effect, scientists and governments are still grappling with what carrying out its promise means.


World consumption plunges planet into ‘ecological debt’, says leading thinktank

Rich consumers are still voraciously gobbling up the world’s resources, despite the worst recession in a generation, with their appetite pushing the planet into “ecological debt” from today , according to a report by think-tank the new economics foundation.


What’s Wrong With the National Parks?

Natural resources are meant to be used; in fact, every generation has left future generations with more resources than existed when that generation arrived on the planet. Today we have more coal, minerals, and oil and gas, for example, than were predicted would exist a few short years ago. Months ago, many predicted peak oil and a future of declining supplies.

But today we celebrate the discovery of a vast deposit of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and a huge natural gas find in Pennsylvania and New York. Given what we have accomplished in the natural resources field in past decades, who knows what the future holds. In the meantime, we must use what has been provided for us.

As the business columnist Warren Brookes once remarked, “The learning curve is green.” Thus, it is not government but the free market that yields better and wiser use of the resources available to us.


High tech may pinpoint Antarctica sea rise risks

Studies indicate that in the Eemian about 125,000 years ago, for instance, temperatures were slightly higher than now, hippopotamuses bathed in the Rhine — and seas were 4 metres higher.

“We need to know where the extra four metres came from,” said David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), adding that one possibility was that West Antarctica’s ice had collapsed.

Read Article: Drumbeat: September 28, 2009

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Permeability and Initial Oil Production

Monday, September 28th, 2009

This is part of Heading Out’s Sunday tech talk series.

We got oil! We have put together the drill, mounted it on the derrick, circulated mud and drilled a well and used casing to line it, and a Christmas Tree to control it, and we found a layer of rock with the right porosity, and it has oil in it. Hell-lo, Beverly Hills!

Ah, but hold on a moment gentle folk, aren’t we forgetting that to get the oil out of the ground, it first has to get to the well. The basics of this aren’t particularly complex, but within this topic of oil well production lies a scientific reason that production goes down in an oil field as the field gets older.

I’m going to begin by making a slight correction. Last time while I talked about sandstones and carbonates, I did not explain the second group very well. And because the structure of a carbonate field is often quite different from one that occurs in sandstone, I am going to put the more generic post on production from carbonates off another week. Save only to say that the carbonates are usually limestones (including chalks) and dolomite, and that because these are very fine grained rocks, but easier to dissolve, the oil is more often found in the joints and cracks and dissolved holes in these rocks, than it is evenly spread through the rock. In contrast, with sandstone, the oil is often in the pore spaces that are spread throughout the rock, and so let’s assume for now that we’ve got oil within a sandstone layer.

Read Article: Permeability and Initial Oil Production

Different types of holes (porosity) in which oil (green) might be found near an oil well (grey).

The sketch shows three different layers of oil lying next to a well. In the top case none of the little pockets of oil connects to another, nor do any reach the well. (Like the holes in a swiss cheese they can be large, but are not connected one to another.) If the entire rock were like this, even though it had porosity, and a fair bit of oil, none of it could be extracted, since none of it could flow to the well. Now we can make a path for such oil to get to the well, but this artificial stimulation of the well (through hydrofracing and its variants) is a secondary process that we will also leave until later. What we need is a clear path that connects all the oil that sits between the grains of sand to have a path to the well, similar, perhaps, to that shown by the second layer of green (for oil) in the sketch.

The existence of flow paths in the rock is known as the permeability of the rock. It is a measure of how easy it is for oil to move through the passageways that it finds in the rock. These are the interconnected spaces, and the fractures and breaks that occur in the rock.

The law describing the flow of fluid through rock is known as Darcy’s Law. (I’m not actually putting the equation in the post – but it can be found at the citation, together with the terms that go into it.) However, in simple terms it says that the volume of liquid flowing through a rock is going to be a function of the area of the rock through which the flow occurs, multiplied by the pressure difference between the two faces at each end of the flow path, multiplied by a constant which is related to the ease with which the oil can flow through the rock, and divided by the length of the rock path. We’ll assume that the volume that the rock will flow through is a constant (it’s the side of the well), so the area over which the flow will take place is also a constant.

When we had reached the rock just above the oil reservoir we had a break while we discussed the difference in pressure between the fluid in the well and the fluid in the rock. At the time we set the well pressure at 3,000 psi and the pore pressure, the pressure of the oil in the rock, at 5,000 psi. The difference in pressures, that 2,000 psi is the driving pressure that will push/pull the oil to move it to the well. This is the pressure drop that exists in the rock from the background pressure to the well. (As the oil flows the pressure along the path that it flows will start to drop.) The hydraulic conductivity is a phrase used to describe the resistance that the rock gives to the oil moving through it. (You might think of it as a reverse friction–in other words the higher the number the less resistance there is to flow.) A wide crack in the rock, with almost smooth sides (the third row above) has a higher conductivity than the second where the gap is narrower and more tortuous. And let us just say for now that the length is the distance from the well to the point that the oil pressure is equal to the original pressure when the drill reached the rock. (We call that the original pore pressure.)

Now you might think that with the original 2,000 psi difference, that I used above, between the pore pressure and the well pressure that the oil would really gush from the well. And yes it might – but we don’t want that and so we tighten the choke to reduce the difference in pressure between the well and the pore pressure, and the flow slows down.

However, as the flow of oil starts to move towards the well, it does not flow evenly through the rock. Think of watching rain hit a pile of freshly dumped earth. At first, as the rain falls it runs evenly over the surface. But as it does it finds some layers of soil are weaker, and others have been compacted a bit more. And so the water erodes the softer, less compacted soil, and the water near those channels finds it easier to flow into them. And so after a while the water coming off the pile is no longer evenly flowing but is cutting grooves in the soil and all the water is coming out of those channels.


Rain on a tilled field in Iowa – note that the rain is already starting to cut channels.

In many ways the rock carrying the oil acts the same way. The two channels in the top picture are in the same rock, with the same oil, but it is much easier for oil to flow through the bigger channel, and it will be at much less pressure drop than it takes to get oil to flow out of the thinner crack. And with the flow of the oil the channels in which it does flow well get bigger, reducing further the flow through the narrow channels, and trapping, or stranding the oil that is left in them.


Piece of sandstone, showing the grains

Now you might think that this has, initially to be a great difference. Well, here is a picture of a piece of sandstone I had in my office. It is at first glance made up of grains of about the same size and were it full of oil you might think that oil would flow evenly through it. (It has no oil in it–oily rock looks black and it is hard to make out the features I am talking about due to lack of contrast.)

But if you look more closely (and I have zoomed in a bit on one area above the 6-inch marker) you might see a thin connected path wandering through the sandstone. (I have marked it with arrows.)

That line is one of higher permeability. I have been on a site where the ground was supposed to be as evenly sized and permeable as this sandstone, if not more. A test was being run in which my hosts had pumped some fluid into the rock. Since they did not get the result they wanted, they dyed the next batch of water a bright color and pumped it into the ground. They then dug a hole over the site, and looked down the side to see the thick colored layer that they expected to find. They needed a magnifying glass, all the fluid (hundreds of gallons) had gone into a single flaw, about the size of the one shown in the two pictures, and none anywhere else.


For those who can’t see it very well, here is a picture of a block of sandstone outside the Oil Museum in Stavanger that I took this afternoon, and you should be able to see a number of larger fractures that have been naturally recemented running through the block)

However, while we were injecting fluid in the case just above, the opposite can happen if one is not careful in drawing the oil from a well. The initial production can create flow paths through the rock, leaving isolated patches of oil that are not recovered on either side.

But hold-on you say surely if we just keep dropping the pressure (by opening the choke) then eventually we will have enough difference to move even that oil. Well, No! (You may have noticed I am becoming a relatively negative person.)

I was reading “The Color of Oil” by Michael Economides and Ronald Oligney when I first drafted this post. It is a very fast (even more so than this) spin around the world of oil, but I am going to use their numbers (page 32-33) for this next bit.

The oil inside the pores of the rock is initially assumed, for now, to be at the same pressure as the burial depth of the rock (due to geological movement this is a very, very simplifying assumption, but let’s make it). But as we let the oil flow out of the rock this pressure, which is caused by the oil and rock compression will get less. While the oil can expand and flow, the rock does not, and so after a while there is no pressure difference between the oil and the fluid in the well. The oil stops moving because the differential pressure has gone away. Professor Economides

“Recovery of 3 percent or less of the initial oil in place can make the reservoir pressure equal to the pressure at the bottom of the hole. When this occurs, fluids are no linger driven into the well and 97% of the original oil is left “in place” in the reservoir. This defines primary recovery, the most elemental but generally unacceptable ending point in petroleum exploitation.”

What else can we use as a driving force? Well, some posts back I mentioned the analogy of a bottle of champagne. Shake it, pop the cork, and the dissolved gas in the wine will fountain it out over the happy celebrants. But after the fizz is gone, there will still be some wine in the bottle. It is the same sort of thing that happens with the oil. Oil usually contains gas dissolved within it. As the pressure within the oil drops, this gas begins to come out of the liquid. (Slowly release the cap on a bottle of soda water and you will see the same thing.) (Note that this does not change the pressure in the well, and thus reduces the difference or driving pressure moving the fluid to the well.)

Professor Economides continues:

“A specific (lower) pressure level called the “bubble-point” pressure marks the onset of natural gas evolution, known as the solution gas. When this level is reached (the point at which this occurs depends on the specific crude), recovery can increase substantially to 15% or more.”

Now let’s go back to our example of the two bottom layers of oil in the top sketch. The bottom one will flow oil faster and draw oil from further out, than the upper one. As the pressure in the larger channel drops, as it empties, the remaining oil in the channel will start emitting gas. While the gas will rise, overall, to give a gas layer above the oil, it will also flow more easily into the well than the oil in thinner channels. If the reservoir engineer is not careful at this point, all of a sudden he may find that all he is getting out of the well is gas. (Take a drinking straw and sucking gently move it down onto the top of water in a glass. Note that the straw has to be in the water before you can drink any. If you had machine strength suction and you don’t so DO NOT TRY, you would find that if the straw was within half an inch of the water you might start to get a little, but effectively you won’t get much.) So it is with the oil well. You need to be drawing from the oil zone only to keep oil production happening.

However, going back to Darcy’s Law (in itself an application of Newton’s Law) as the well has produced the oil and the compression has come off the oil as some of it left, the pore pressure in the rock has gone down, and thus the difference in pressure between the well and the rock is less. With less of a “push” the flow of oil from the well will also get less, and with no further stimulus, the oil flow will gradually stop as the difference between the pressure in the rock and in the well reached the same level, and if this were all that happened then it would leave about 85% of the well in the ground, and sometimes that does occur.

However, if you remember from the first post where I talked about rock pressure, there can often be water under the oil.


Simplified sketch of an oil bearing layer in the ground.

This water can provide some pressure on the oil above it, and as the oil flows up into the well, the water can rise up into the pore spaces that the oil has left, and keep some of the pressure on the oil a little longer.

Professor Economides:

“If a large water aquifer is in contact with the petroleum reservoir, a natural drive mechanism can be provided by natural water influx. The larger the aquifer, the more effective and the more long-lived this drive mechanism tends to be. If a strong water drive is in effect, 10 to 25% of the oil in place can be recovered.”

Once that is over, and with 25 – 40% of the oil recovered, then in a conventional well the oil is at the same pressure as the fluid in the bottom of the well, and no more oil will flow. To get the rest out will require some form of pumping.

And yes, one of the ways to increase the production is to pump water, under pressure, below the oil level to keep the pressure up. But to discuss that, and other steps in enhanced oil recovery are topics for another day.

But for now remember, it is not the oil in the reservoir that has been depleted, at this point, it is the force (the differential pressure between the oil and the well) that has been reduced, and finally gone away, and with it the oil production.

Unfortunately because driving pressure and permeability are so inter-twined this has been a long post. And yet I still may have glossed over some points too rapidly. So as usual if there are questions or discussion or correction, please comment.

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Debt/Resource Thought Experiment: How Would YOU Craft G20 Policy?

Monday, September 28th, 2009

The past few days, delegates from 20 of the worlds largest economies met in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to further develop international strategies to deal with the ongoing financial, energy and social crises. The “Leader’s Statement” could reasonably be summarized by this excerpt:

“We further committed to additional steps to ensure strong, sustainable, and balanced growth, and to build a stronger international financial system.”

Considering there was no mention of biophysical limits, nor of mankinds underlying consumptive drivers and considering that ’strong’ is at cross purposes with ’sustainable’ and ‘balanced’, I am left with the frustrating conclusion that our same old cargo cult beliefs – that growth and consumption will follow money/debt – are unfortunately alive and well. Below the fold is a brief overview and a chance for TOD readers to play G20 policymaker.


Read Article: Debt/Resource Thought Experiment: How Would YOU Craft G20 Policy?
Fiat vs. Real – A Wile E. Coyote moment…

First, some relevant quotes from Karl Polyani’s 1944 book, “The Great Transformation”:

“By the end of the seventies the free trade episode (1846-79) was at an end; the actual use of the gold standard by Germany marked the beginnings of an era of protectionism and colonial expansion. The symptoms of the dissolution of the existing forms of world economy — colonial rivalry and competition for exotic markets — became acute. The ability of haute finance to avert the spread of wars was diminishing rapidly. For another seven years peace dragged on but it was only a question of time before the dissolution of nineteenth century economic organization would bring the Hundred Years’ Peace to a close.”

“The breakdown of the international gold standard was the invisible link between the disintegration of world economy since the turn of the century and the transformation of a whole civilization in the thirties. Unless the vital importance of this factor is realized, it is not possible to see rightly either the mechanism which railroaded Europe to its doom, or the circumstances which accounted for the astounding fact that the forms and contents of a civilization should rest on precarious foundations.

“The true nature of the international system under which we were living was not realized until it failed. Hardly anyone understood the political function of the international monetary system; the awful suddenness of the transformation thus took the world completely by surprise… To liberal economists the gold standard was purely an economic institution; they refused even to consider it as a part of a social mechanism. Thus it happened that the democratic countries were the last to realize the true nature of the catastrophe and the slowest to counter its effects. Not even when the cataclysm was already upon them did their leaders see that behind the collapse of the international system there stood a long development within the most advanced countries which made that system anachronistic; in other words, the failure of market economy itself still escaped them.” [p. 20]

“The transformation came on even more abruptly than is usually realized. World War I and the postwar revolutions still formed part of the nineteenth century. The conflict of 1914-18 merely precipitated and immeasurably aggravated a crisis that it did not create. But the roots of the dilemma could not be discerned at the time. The dissolution of the system of world economy which had been in progress since 1900 was responsible for the political tension that exploded in 1914.”
[p. 21]

Note: 100 years ago today, the NYTimes ran a piece on dissipating misapprehensions for a Central Bank“.

And here are some excerpts from yesterdays G20 joint statement (bold added by me) :

7. Today, we reviewed the progress we have made since the London Summit in April. Our national commitments to restore growth resulted in the largest and most coordinated fiscal and monetary stimulus ever undertaken. We acted together to increase dramatically the resources necessary to stop the crisis from spreading around the world. We took steps to fix the broken regulatory system and started to implement sweeping reforms to reduce the risk that financial excesses will again destabilize the global economy.

9. The process of recovery and repair remains incomplete. In many countries, unemployment remains unacceptably high. The conditions for a recovery of private demand are not yet fully in place. We cannot rest until the global economy is restored to full health, and hard-working families the world over can find decent jobs.

10. We pledge today to sustain our strong policy response until a durable recovery is secured. We will act to ensure that when growth returns, jobs do too. We will avoid any premature withdrawal of stimulus.

16. To make sure our regulatory system for banks and other financial firms reins in the excesses that led to the crisis. Where reckless behavior and a lack of responsibility led to crisis, we will not allow a return to banking as usual.

17. We committed to act together to raise capital standards, to implement strong international compensation standards aimed at ending practices that lead to excessive risk-taking, to improve the over-the-counter derivatives market and to create more powerful tools to hold large global firms to account for the risks they take. Standards for large global financial firms should be commensurate with the cost of their failure.



A Cargo Cult

Some observations:
1) Money is not a resource
2) Governments plan to reign in excessive financial risk taking in the private sector, but increase their own.
3) The word ’sustainable’ appeared 51 times in the Leaders Statement.

MONEY AS DEBT

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve System governing our money spigot in 1913, the dollar has lost 95% of its value, as money (debt) has been continually created to match the demand for credit, irrespective of future resource flow rates. Following the demise of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971, (and US oil peak the year prior), there has been no natural speed-bump to this expansion of the money supply. Central banks controlled monetary policy via adjusting the discount rate, the Federal Funds rate, the reserve requirement %, and various other rule changes. Contrary to the distant past, when increases in money would require new energy and materials expenditures to procure more gold from mining to back the new currency issue, under the regime of the last 40 years, commercial banks under the permission of Fed, could create money (credit) at will. As long as there was a demand for credit, the money supply could grow with only a paper tether to the real goods it was designed to represent. As long as prior period debts could be serviced in dollars, not resources, money as debt increased, and people accepted it as a resource proxy itself and increased extraction and consumption of real goods accordingly. This was not a problem confined to the United States – virtually all countries, (and all major economies) use fiat currency – backed by nothing other than the faith of government.

It stands to reason that such a system would eventually decouple, not slightly but significantly, from its biophysical tethers – (much of what has been written on these pages since 2005 has in fact been attempts to quantify such departures). Roughly, the world now has hundreds of trillions in debt and other assets that require servicing, resting on top of 55 trillion in GDP and a depleting high quality energy supply, (the infrastructure of which has been long since paid for with 1960s-80s embodied energy). Too, some decent chunk of this GDP is ‘phantom’ (financial and government stimulus). As this debt is not really a zero-sum game but is more a marker money supply gone wild via social and policy responses over 4 decades, the amount of natural resources we’ll have available per unit time is extremely unlikely to allow us to repay but a fraction of this debt. (I will be presenting “Abstract Energy Gain and the Permanent Recession” at ASPO in Denver where I will hash this out in more detail).

In sum, absolutely nothing has been ’solved’ in recent months. The components of the debt pyramid have just shifted ledgers. (Market analysts are now projecting the government will never get repaid on its recent loans, let alone other debt. In many real ways we fell off the cliff last fall and a giant airgun (govt intervention not based on real resources) has allowed us to continue the feeling of levitation since. Over 30% of G20 GDP has been guaranteed by G20 central banks via loan guarantees, commercial paper purchases, various Cash-for-coyote programs, etc. The result of these measures has been a moderate recovery in notional GDP, with costs of fewer resources and less time to deal with the real underlying problems. If we are unable to grow, let alone in a ’strong’, ’sustainable’ or ‘balanced’ fashion, the whole ‘increase money supply each year enough to pay off prior debts’ model not only hits a wall, but goes in reverse, which it eventually will as we have significantly overexceeded our sustainable/repayable debt levels.

There are 2 fundamental disconnects with reality prevalent among those advising our decisionmakers: 1) a misconception that money is somehow a resource and not the debt marker it really is and 2)that energy is treated the same as any other commodity, parsable into dollar terms by the market. Following these 2 faulty assumptions, we have painted ourselves into a dangerous corner – we expect by printing money and government guarantees, that the cargo will eventually resume flowing again, like magic. As such, after the phantom (government fiscal/monetary stimulus led) recovery in next year or so, I expect the financial system to unravel – either there is an across the board debt forgiveness, or the Fed and other parties tries to print their way out the problem.

We have enough knowledge to make better choices.



====================================================================================================
CAMPFIRE QUESTIONS:

1) Can you articulate a concerted policy response that would indeed lead to ’strong’, ’sustainable’, and ‘balanced’ growth?

1a) If not, what sort of ‘economic triage’ policy would you recommend? Think bold.

2) What will it take for international economists, policymakers and authorities to understand that money/credit is not a resource, and does not on its own produce cargo?

Please focus on the middle question – assume my view is generally correct for the moment – what could be done?

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Drumbeat: September 27, 2009

Monday, September 28th, 2009


‘A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster’ by Rebecca Solnit

The bad news is that more disasters are coming, arising from any number of sources: climate change, widespread infrastructural vulnerabilities, toxic threats brewed at cellular or weapons-grade levels, seismic or oceanic volatility, and so on and so on. Whatever their cause, disasters will be born of some mixture of human and natural action or inaction, lives will be irrevocably altered, and absurd numbers of people will die.


Yet Rebecca Solnit sees human possibilities inherent in the certainty of big trouble. In “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster,” this writer of impressive versatility explores disasters and the goodness that can come to characterize them. A careful student of the sociology of catastrophe, Solnit argues that the human experience of disaster so alters convention that a different social milieu can emerge, if briefly, within them; one distinguished by altruism and the absence of social hierarchies. In contrast to the presuppositions of the powerful (and Hollywood), steadfast about the inevitability of anarchic mayhem and riot, Solnit makes a convincing case for the sheer dignity and decency of people coming together amid terror.


Study may shift where foods grow

WASHINGTON — New York may be the nation’s second leading producer of apples, and Maine is near the top in potatoes — but the vast majority of the fruit and vegetables eaten in the Northeast come from other parts of the country.


A federal study aims to change that, by figuring out what could be grown more in the Northeast to satisfy big-city markets.


The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this week it is pouring an additional 0,000 into the food security effort, which will examine soil types, climate and economic issues that could shed light on the region’s potential to produce more of its own food. Doing so could dull the effect of high fuel prices and other transportation-related woes than can drive prices up in grocery stores.


New Presentations from Matt Simmons

Read Article: Drumbeat: September 27, 2009

• What Lies Beyond The Fossil Fuel Horizon?


• Investing In Energy: A Nightmare Or An Enlightened Dream


• How Did Our Energy Hole Get So Deep?


Pemex’s Export Revenues Down 55.5 Percent

MEXICO CITY – Mexican state oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos said the value of its crude exports during the first eight months of the year totaled .4 billion, 55.5 percent less than in the same period of 2008.


UK acts to back Cadogan Petroleum

THE British government has intervened on behalf of Cadogan Petroleum, the quoted oil explorer embroiled in a dispute with Ukraine that has pushed it to the brink of liquidation.


Climate change bill may drift

WASHINGTON — Although President Barack Obama confidently assured world leaders last week that the U.S. was determined to combat global climate change, that resolve isn’t shared in the U.S. Senate.


The chamber has instead been consumed by other domestic priorities — including the administration-backed push to overhaul health care — and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is months behind her original timetable for introducing legislation that would cap greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.


With all of the obstacles, it is increasingly likely the Obama administration will not have a new climate change law — or even a preliminary version passed by the Senate — to bring to international negotiations on a global warming pact this December in Copenhagen.


Heavier Rainstorms Ahead Due To Global Climate Change, Study Predicts

ScienceDaily — Heavier rainstorms lie in our future. That’s the clear conclusion of a new MIT and Caltech study on the impact that global climate change will have on precipitation patterns.


Dust storms spread deadly diseases worldwide

Huge dust storms, like the ones that blanketed Sydney twice last week, hit Queensland yesterday and turned the air red across much of eastern Australia, are spreading lethal epidemics around the world. However, they can also absorb climate change emissions, say researchers studying the little understood but growing phenomenon.


Small island states warn ecosystems already threatened by climate change effects, urge drastic reduction in greenhouse gases

Still reeling in the aftermath of a global economic crisis begun far beyond their shores, leaders of small island nations, among others addressing the General Assembly today, exhorted large economies to drastically reduce greenhouse gases that were threatening their ecosystems and sending shock waves through the very markets and industries on which their fragile economies depended.


Paul Roberts – The Future of Food in a Peak Oil

Roberts pointed out that in 1900, the average household spent half its daily income and half its hours providing food. Today, we spend much less time and much less money as a percent of our income, thanks to the industrialized food system. “I don’t think too many people want to go back to 1900, spending that much time making food,” he said later in response to a question about how disconnected we’ve become from our food sources.


“But,” he continued, “we have recognized that there are also costs. At the end of the day, food is not an industrial product. Food is not iPods or SUVs and there are troubling questions when industrialization is applied to food.” In a system where the inspection person on the chicken processing line has only three seconds to look for defects, he elaborated, it was only a matter of time before something like the 2007 recall of 22 million pounds of potentially E. coli-tainted hamburgers, which sickened dozens and ultimately put the meat company out of business.


Iran Plans 1 Billion-Euro Bond Sale to Fund Gas Field

(Bloomberg) — Iran plans to sell 1 billion euros (.47 billion) of bonds by December to fund the development of the South Pars natural-gas field, the Oil Ministry’s Shana news agency reported today.

Saudi not in favour of high prices

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, wants to keep crude prices from rising to the record of 7.27 a barrel seen last year, said the kingdom’s oil minister.


Saudi jobless rate to ease by 2014

Saudi Arabia’s festering unemployment problem could ease at the end of the forthcoming five-year development plan as the world’s oil powerhouse is intensifying efforts to find jobs for citizens, a local report said yesterday.


Unemployment in the kingdom, which sits atop a quarter of the world’s recoverable oil deposits, stood at nearly 10.5 per cent at the end of 2008 and it is expected to shrink to 7.1 per cent at the end of 2014, said the report by the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.


U.S. to Demand Inspection of New Iran Plant ‘Within Weeks’

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to tell Iran this week that it must open a newly revealed nuclear enrichment site to international inspectors “within weeks,” according to senior administration officials. The administration will also tell Tehran that inspectors must have full access to the key personnel who put together the clandestine plant and to the documents surrounding its construction, the officials said Saturday.


Smuggling Europe’s Waste to Poorer Countries

Exporting waste illegally to poor countries has become a vast and growing international business, as companies try to minimize the costs of new environmental laws, like those here, that tax waste or require that it be recycled or otherwise disposed of in an environmentally responsible way.


Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe, has unwittingly become Europe’s main external garbage chute, a gateway for trash bound for places like China, Indonesia, India and Africa. There, electronic waste and construction debris containing toxic chemicals are often dismantled by children at great cost to their health. Other garbage that is supposed to be recycled according to European law may be simply burned or left to rot, polluting air and water and releasing the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.


U.S. Panel Shifts Focus to Reusing Nuclear Fuel

OXON HILL, Md. — With a federal plan to handle nuclear waste in deadlocked disarray, an advisory panel that has spent 20 years studying a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain turned Wednesday to discussing ways of reusing the fuel instead.


But the meeting of the panel, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, made evident that such reuse was uncertain, along with the future of Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, about 100 miles from Las Vegas.


Solar Module Prices Halt Slide on German Demand, Barclays Says

(Bloomberg) — Solar module prices, which have dropped by more than half in the past year, have stopped declining as a seasonal demand increase in Germany reduces inventories, according to Barclays Capital.


Schwarzenegger to Children: Hurry Up in There!

LOS ANGELES — In a new twist on an old saw trotted out by generations of parents who think their children have it easier, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken to monitoring his children’s water use by timing how long they spend in the shower. If they are in there too long, he said, he turns off the hot water midstream, inciting screams.


The Future of Cars Was Hydrogen, Once

The enthusiasm for electric vehicles keeps growing, but only few years ago the auto industry was betting on hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars.


Tiny Cars Feel Smart

The Slaughters, both 86, are among several owners of ultra-compact Smart fortwo cars at Lake Ashton, a gated retirement community in Lake Wales.


It might seem odd to find so many of the cars, which project an air of European futurism, in a place where Cadillacs are common and the entertainment leans toward Joe Piscopo.


Then again, when you don’t have kids you don’t need a back seat.


Australia: Cutting the train line won’t ‘fix our city’

The report’s supporters obscure its true nature by focusing on the urgent need to reverse urban decay. But the reality is that the main goal of the “fix our city” campaign is to cut the rail line.


The rail line sits on prime land. Developing this land (especially the last 500 metres of it) has been the goal of a 25-year push by developers to get rid of the line.


E.P.A. Ordered to Reconsider New Mexico Power Plant Permit

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A federal appeals board has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider an air permit issued for a planned coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Nation.


The decision, in part, grants a request by regional agency officials who wanted to take another look at parts of the permit for the billion Desert Rock Energy Project, which is planned for tribal land in northwestern New Mexico.


There’s nothing ‘clean’ about it

Have you ever had that nightmare where you’re being chased by a monster and yet your legs feel like lead and you can’t get away?


That’s how I feel every time Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty start babbling about the joys of dragging us into a global cap-and-trade market, supposedly to lower man-made carbon dioxide emissions.


Fossil fuels are running out anyway; so why fight about climate-change?

Since fossil fuels are, in fact, running out, it seems senseless to keep arguing about climate change. The point is, whether or not you care to believe the evidence under our noses, what we need to be concentrating on is finding new, clean, renewable, eco-friendly energy sources.


Population: Overconsumption is the real problem

THERE is a pervading myth that efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will be to no avail unless we “do something” about population growth. Even seasoned analysts talk about the threat of “exponential” population growth. But there is no exponential growth. In most of the world fertility rates are falling fast, and the countries where population growth continues are those that contribute least to our planetary predicament.

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Peak Oil Not a Problem According to NY Times; Scientific American – Our Response on the Financial Aspects

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Recently, we have had two new articles aiming to put to rest people’s fears about peak oil. One is from the New York Times:

Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries

It talks about the many discoveries this year, and how, if they continue at the pace they have in the first half, they will be the best since 2000.

The other is from the October Scientific American, called

Squeezing More Oil from the Ground.

It is behind a pay wall (you can get it for .95). There is also a draft version available on line. Its premise seems to be that there are a lot of promising areas that we have not yet explored. When you put this together with advances in drilling and the promises of secondary and tertiary recovery, there is a good chance that oil production will not peak for many years.

In this post, we will look a little more at these articles, and see why peak oil, and perhaps the financial issues associated with peak oil, are still an issue, regardless of what these articles may suggest.

New York Times Article

A few excerpts from Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries

NY Times:

It is normal for companies to discover billions of barrels of new oil every year, but this year’s pace is unusually brisk. New oil discoveries have totaled about 10 billion barrels in the first half of the year, according to IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. If discoveries continue at that pace through year-end, they are likely to reach the highest level since 2000.

Two times 10 billion barrels of oil is 20 billion barrels of oil. Twenty billion barrels of oil divided by 365 is only 54.8 million barrels a day–not nearly enough, if we are currently using 72 million barrels of crude oil a day. If 10 billion barrels is an unusually large amount in the first half, the likelihood of having equal success in the second half by luck is not very good.

NY Times:

While recent years have featured speculation about a coming peak and subsequent decline in oil production, people in the industry say there is still plenty of oil in the ground, especially beneath the ocean floor, even if finding and extracting it is becoming harder. They say that prices and the pace of technological improvement remain the principal factors governing oil production capacity.

There are a lot of issues with difficult to extract oil beneath the ocean floor. While it is theoretically possible for the oil price to be high enough to extract this oil, there is a real issue with too high an oil price (resulting in wholesale oil costs of over 4% of GDP) causing a major recession. Currently, such an oil price is about per barrel. So it is not clear that prices can go enough higher, and stay enough higher, for extraction.

The more difficult to extract oil also has severe challenges in terms of the amount of up front investment needed, and the long time delay before it will actually come to market. For the new very deep ocean “finds’, it could be 10 years or more before we will actually get the oil extracted. By then, our oil needs, if economies continue to grow, will be much higher than today.

NY Times:

Since the early 1980s, discoveries have failed to keep up with the global rate of oil consumption, which last year reached 31 billion barrels of oil. Instead, companies have managed to expand production by finding new ways of getting more oil out of existing fields, or producing oil through unconventional sources, like Canada’s tar sands or heavy oil in Venezuela.

Companies haven’t managed to expand production. Crude oil production has been on a plateau since 2005. That is the problem.

Read Article: Peak Oil Not a Problem According to NY Times; Scientific American – Our Response on the Financial Aspects

Figure 1. Graph of world crude oil production, based on EIA data. *2009 data is average through june 30, 2009.

In Figure 1, note that oil production has not risen significantly since 2005. This happened, despite rising prices.


Figure 2. EIA graph of West Texas Intermediate oil prices. Graph of world crude oil production, based on EIA data. *2009 data is average through June 30, 2009.

In Figure 2, note that even when oil prices rose far above their historical average price of barrel in the 2003 to 2008 period, oil production in Figure 1 rose very little–virtually none after 2005. In fact, it was the lack of rise in production that was a major driver of higher prices.

When prices finally dropped, there is significant evidence that it was related to high oil prices indirectly causing problems with credit markets.


Figure 3. US Consumer Credit Outstanding based on Federal Reserve data.

In Figure 3, note that US consumer credit reached its peak in July 2008, precisely the same month oil prices reached their peak. Once credit started contracting, purchase of goods that required oil in their manufacture (such as cars) dropped. The drop in oil price reflected the inability of purchasers to continue buying products that used oil in their manufacture. If credit had continued to expand, it is possible oil prices would have continued to rise further, but still with virtually no increase in oil supply.

NY Times:

Reserve estimates typically rise over the life of a field, which can often be productive for decades, as companies find new ways of getting more oil out of the ground.

Maybe, maybe not. We don’t have very good knowledge of reserves around the world. In many places, particularly the Middle East, the reserves seem to be quite inflated. If reserve estimates are starting out from an inflated base, it is doubtful they will increase. They may still be overstated, even with huge improvements in technology.

One of the big issues is whether new technology can be implemented cheaply enough to keep the prices to a level that the consumer can afford. If new technology can only be implemented at 0 a barrel, and the economy starts crashing at or barrel, the new technology really may not be all that useful.

NY Times:

“The industry’s record has improved in recent years, thanks to high prices. According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, oil companies have found more oil than they produced for the last two years through a combination of exploration and field expansions.

This comment is strange. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) is part of IHS, and IHS was quoted as saying:

In 2008, world oil reserves declined nearly 3%, primarily due to a 5.2 billion bbl decline in revisions that stemmed from reduced commodity prices.

World oil reserves (excluding oil sands) were 1,261 billion barrels at the end of 2007, according to British Petroleum. A 3% decline would amount to about 38 billion barrels–more than the 20 billion barrels hoped for this year in new discoveries.

Another question is how a 5.2 billion barrel decline (from reduced commodity prices, as stated by IHS) could cause most of this decrease, if we are talking about a + billion decrease. One wonders whether the IHS statement really was intended to apply to some subset of world oil reserves. Perhaps the CERA statement should also be interpreted to apply to some subset of world reserves. It is possible the CERA statement about reserve replacement may also apply to oil and gas reserves on a combined basis, since companies generally give their oil and gas reserves on a combined “barrel of oil equivalent” basis.

These quotes regarding reserves illustrate how difficult it is to interpret statements found in newspapers about reserves. The reporters often don’t understand quite what they are talking about, so the quote doesn’t quite get all of the specifics needed to understand what is being described. If someone wants reserve replacement to sound favorable, he or she can often find a way to word the statement so it sounds good, whether or not the details really add up to an increase.

Price is important in all of this. If the price of oil isn’t high enough, reserves may not be developed. But if the price of oil is too high, it may sink the economy, and the reserves still may not be developed.

Scientific American Article


Figure 4. October 2009 Scientific American graphic illustrating areas that have allegedly not been adequately explored.

This graphic alleges that much of the world’s oil deposits have not adequately been explored with modern technology. It seems to me that one doesn’t really need modern technology to get at large reservoirs in easy to reach locations. It is only when one is looking for either very small deposits, or deposits in locations that are difficult to extract from that modern technology really is needed. We aren’t likely to find any more Saudi Arabias, whether or not we have fancy new equipment.

The issue that arises with deposits that are in difficult to reach locations, like thousands of feet under the sea, and then under a salt dome as well, is that the oil found in those locations is almost always very expensive to extract. It is hard to believe that even with new technologies that will change–it is the location that makes oil extraction so difficult. New technology may make extraction a little easier, but it is still likely to be expensive.

Scientific American also has a graphic on tertiary recovery techniques. It says:

After primary and secondary recovery have run their course, more aggressive methods, some of them still experimental, can soften the remaining oil so it can flow toward the wells. Because these advanced methods are expensive, the battle to get more out only gets this fierce when resale prices are sufficiently high.

incendiary
Burning part of a reservoir (which requires injecting air underground) enhances the recovery rate in three ways. First, heat from the fire makes oil less viscous. Second, the combustion produces carbon dioxide, which pushes oil out. Third, the fire breaks the larger and heavier molecules of oil, making it more mobile.

Chemical
Substances called surfactants, injected into a reservoir, help oil detach from the rock and flow better. Layers of surfactant engulf oil into droplets, similar to the way ordinary soap washes oily materials off a surface. A variation consists of injecting chemicals that generate the soaplike materials from components present within the oil itself.

Biological
Experiments are testing the injection of bacteria (together with nutrients and, in some cases, oxygen) that grow in the interface between the oil and the rock, helping to release the oil. The bacteria are allowed to grow for several days before recovery resumes. In the future, genetically engineered microorganisms could partially digest the most viscous oil and thin it out.

Here again, the issue is price. Can these techniques be implemented cheaply enough that they can be used without raising the price of oil so high that the price is beyond what consumers can afford?

More on the Financial Issues Involved


Figure 5. Dave Murphy’s graphic from this post.

Dave Murphy showed a graphic earlier this year that illustrated the relationship between oil prices and recession. In this graphic, Dave uses retail prices to determine his percentage of GDP. The threshold for retail oil prices seems to be about 5.5% of GDP (equivalent to 4% wholesale). The dollar per barrel cut off for causing a recession seems to be in the to barrel range.

It will be hard to maintain an oil price at a level that sends the US (and the world) into recession. While we usually think of oil production as being limited by geology, it seems to me that the weak link is really finances. What tends to happen is that when the price of oil gets very high, people change their purchasing patterns. People continue to buy oil products, because they need transportation to work. People also continue to buy food, and it also is a heavy user of oil. What people cut back on is expenses that can be deferred–buying a new larger house, buying a new car, going to a restaurant, contributions to charities.

This cutback in expenditures causes recessionary impacts. As things get worse, some debt holders start defaulting on their debt. This might be restaurant owners who have less business, and because of this can’t pay their debt. It might be homeowners with long commutes, who cannot pay both their mortgage payments and the cost of gasoline for their long commutes. It might be governments who cannot collect enough taxes, because of dropping demand (and lower prices) for houses in their suburb. It might be a charity with lower contributions.

Eventually, the debt defaults result in a cut-back in credit like we saw in Figure 3, because of the adverse impact of the debt defaults on lenders. Once there is a cutback in credit, consumers are no longer able to purchase as many cars and other durable goods. These durable goods require oil in their manufacture. With fewer purchases of goods using oil in their manufacture, the demand for oil drops. Because of the drop in demand for oil, oil prices drop again, allowing the economy to recover a bit, as it is doing now.

But as the economy recovers, demand begins to grow again. With the rise in demand, oil prices are likely to rise again to a level where they have an adverse impact on the economy. The world economic system was damaged pretty badly with the last price spike. Another spike could have much more adverse results. Eventually, the world economy may become so damaged by oil price spikes that recovery of the world economy in the form we now know it may not be possible.

I don’t know how this will work out. There could be huge international defaults. The result might be each country more on its own, with much less international trade, because countries would no longer trust each other for credit. Globalization could start unwinding.

How soon such a scenario would might occur is not certain, but it seems to me that a scenario like this, rather than the amount of reserves in the ground, is likely to determine how much oil is ultimately produced. Some countries may be able to keep up production for a while, even with a world financial crisis, but eventually oil producing companies are likely to run into barriers–parts they need for equipment that they cannot obtain, or lack of trained people to perform needed services (because such services were formerly done by an international trade partner).

It would be nice if there were a guarantee that came with oil reserves as currently reported that we really will be able to extract the oil that they represent. It seems to me this will be the case:

(1) If the world economy stays together,

(2) If the price of oil stays in a zone that is neither too high to crush the economy, nor too low to discourage the expensive investment needed for getting the oil out, and

(3) If there are enough investment dollars available, for the sizable front end investment required to produce the oil.

Those are three pretty big “if”s. Without them, it seems like oil production will be very difficult.

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Drumbeat: September 26, 2009

Monday, September 28th, 2009


Our oil, U. S. need

Canada’s oilsands may take a daily beating in the international media and from environmentalists, but the arithmetic of U. S. consumption and supply all but ensures a long, prosperous future for our dirty oil.


The United States imports 60% of its daily fuel requirements. President Barack Obama has vowed to wean his country off Middle East oil within 10 years. The U. S.’s other nearby secondary suppliers are either hostile (Venezuela) or their production is dwindling so quickly that they could be a net importer of oil within five years (Mexico). For every five barrels of oil America consumes a day, one comes from Canada. One barrel of every 20 now consumed in the United States is pumped straight out of the oilsands, a number that could triple inside of 15 years.


That leaves the United States with one stable long-term oil option. And we’re it.


Robert Bryce – America: A World Leader in Oil Exports!

There has never been a more global, more integrated, more transparent market than the modern crude oil and oil products market. And yet, the calls for America to be “energy independent” continue to be heard from both the Right and the Left.


Iran threatens oil transport route

With the prospect of Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities looming, Tehran has renewed its threat to shut down the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which up to 40 percent of the world’s oil supplies pass, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.


Iran’s massive oil revenue discrepancies

TEHRAN (UPI) — Massive discrepancies between Iran’s oil revenues and official statistics over the last four years are being covered in the national press.


Wednesday, Tehran’s reformist daily E’temad carried a report headlined, “Find the billion.”


Venezuela, Petrobras to build billion refinery in Brazil

PORLAMAR (MarketWatch) — Venezuela state-run energy firm PdVSA and Brazil’s Petrobras plan to ink an agreement Sunday to move forward with plans on building a refinery together, a top Venezuelan official said Friday.


Soaring cost estimates for the Brazilian refinery had in recent months threatened to kill the project before it begins. But Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, who also is president of PdVSA, said the issues are being ironed out.


Ukraine seeks new natural gas suppliers

KIEV, Ukraine (UPI) — A top Ukrainian official said Ukraine should review its existing natural gas contract with Russia in order to purchase natural gas from Central Asia.


One day, all houses will be built this way

Social housing tenants could soon be living in state-of-the-art green homes built from natural materials such as clay, hemp and sheep’s wool, which are being pioneered as part of Prince Charles’ campaign to create beautiful sustainable property.


The next wave

Cars with bodies and parts made from seaweed and powered by biofuel derived from algae and saltwater could be the wave of the future if a couple of companies have anything to say about it.


Ethiopia embraces renewable energy

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (UPI) — The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation has signed contracts with three Chinese companies for renewable energy projects.


One on One with Ali al-Naimi, Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia

GHARIB: But Mr. Naimi, when you — what are you going to focus on? What will be the biggest growth industry outside of oil ultimately?


AL-NAIMI: Number one is food. Number two is water. Number three, believe it or not, is energy and environment. These are the three areas of focus. Now, why do I say energy? It’s a different energy. It’s solar energy.


Oil and gas reforms announced after B.C. bombings

DAWSON CREEK, B.C. — In the wake of six bombings targeting natural-gas pipelines on the B.C.-Alberta border, the B.C. government announced Friday a package of reforms aimed at improving relations between the oil and gas industry and residents.


Pemex oil theft case nabs second exec

The president of an Edinburg gas company pleaded guilty today in Houston federal court on charges relating to theft of an oil product from Mexico’s oil giant, Pemex.


Oil prices impact Mexico’s budget

MEXICO CITY (UPI) — Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies speaker urged those dissatisfied with the president’s 2010 budget to present options not based on high oil price projections.


El Universal reported Thursday that Speaker Francisco Ramirez Acuna of the Partido Accion Nacional suggested that legislators who disagreed with President Felipe Calderon’s proposed 2010 budget offer options not based either on an increase in debt or high expectations regarding oil production and sales.


Ghana: Fuel shortage hits Tamale Metropolis

The Tamale Metropolis is facing fuel shortages as most of the petrol filling stations in the area had not received supplies, causing most motorists to park their cars and motorbikes.


Some of the fuel stations the GNA visited had only diesel on sale and the only fuel station with petrol was the Total station one along the Tamale Teaching Hospital road, which was crowded with buyers struggling for hours to buy the commodity.


Connecticut: Price war pumps up gasoline business

The statewide average is .52 a gallon. It was .70 a gallon at this time last year, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. But prices dropping a penny at a time were a regular occurrence Friday as two stations battled for the lowest price.


Carbon Emissions Can Really Build Up

The challenge of climate change usually brings to mind images of industrial smokestacks or gas-hungry SUVs. But commercial and residential buildings consume nearly two-fifths of all energy produced worldwide and spit out 8.4 billion tons of CO2 emissions each year, or 30 percent of the global total. And while the price tag for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is cheaper for buildings than for transportation or hard industries, construction of more energy-efficient buildings won’t pay for itself through lower energy bills. Pure market incentives aren’t enough; governments must get involved.


Canada MIA in carbon talks

With climate negotiations limping into the home-stretch, the United Nations pulled out all the stops this week. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon brought 100 heads of state together to tackle greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to re-energize bargaining.


While world leaders exchanged ideas, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper sent his environment minister, Jim Prentice, to listen in, take notes, and make excuses.


S.D. farm products take a price dive

Going into the 2009 harvest, all the state’s major farm products and ethanol are well below record highs set the past few years. Impatience is rampant as producers are looking for a recovering economy to jump start demand that will help use up stored grain and spur new production of milk, meat and renewable motor fuel.


Making that itch even more prickly is a projected bumper corn crop that would further upset the supply-demand balance.


Area pushes for rapid transit system

A group of community leaders plans to meet with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to request federal money for a rapid transit system that would link east and west Gainesville, the University of Florida and Santa Fe College, and major shopping and employment centers.


The estimated cost is 5 million and would include money from developers of several large projects along the route.


Mother knows breast

Breastfeeding saves energy, cuts greenhouse gases and uses fewer natural resources.


Oil-related firms feel impact of credit curbs

ITS Tubular Services (Holdings) says that economic conditions and the fall in available credit facilities have had a major impact on operators’ capital investment programmes.


Directors of the Aberdeen-based provider of specialised products and services to the global oil and gas industry say this has resulted in cancellations or delays in activity.


They add in their annual report for 2008, which has just been released by Companies House, that the near-term outlook is difficult to assess given the state of credit markets.


Rhine Barge Rates for Oil Products Advance on Low Water Levels

(Bloomberg) — The cost of shipping oil products on the Rhine River advanced as lower than usual water levels reduced the amount of fuel barges can carry.


Time to put pressure on Russia

What a difference a slump makes. Chief executives of the big western oil and gas companies met a kinder, gentler Vladimir Putin on Thursday in Salekhard, Western Siberia. The Russian Prime Minister had invited them to a town with a population of 36,000, right on the polar circle, to highlight the promises of the gas fields of the Yamal Peninsula, and to throw open the doors to Western investment and technology.


Venezuela says France’s Total to invest B in heavy oil production

PORLAMAR, Venezuela – Venezuela’s state oil company says France’s Total SA will invest billion in the nation’s Orinoco Oil Belt.


Natural Gas Declines on Concern Demand Will Increase Slowly

(Bloomberg) — Natural gas futures declined for the first day in four as a government report showing a drop in orders for durable goods signaled that a recovery in fuel consumption may be slow.


Demand for goods meant to last several years dropped 2.4 percent, the worst performance since January, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Economists expected an increase. Purchases by industrial users such as carmakers and chemical plants account for about 29 percent of consumption.


U.S. Gas Fund May Shrink With CFTC Rules, Hyland Says

(Bloomberg) — U.S. Natural Gas Fund, the largest exchange-traded fund in the fuel, may be forced to shrink if U.S. regulators tighten limits on energy speculation, said John Hyland, the fund’s chief investment officer.


The Commodity Futures Trading Commission may cap energy investments amid concern speculators contributed to record-high commodity prices last year. New limits may force the fund to reduce shares, Hyland said in a Bloomberg television interview.


Natural gas crusader

Randy Eresman’s job description is changing, and it is not just because EnCana Corp., the naturalgas and integrated oil company he now leads, is spinning off its oil and refining operations into a new company called Cenovus Energy Inc. He’s a petroleum engineer by training but increasingly is becoming a lobbyist and marketer for the natural-gas industry. His challenge? To convince legislators, auto manufacturers and consumers that natural-gas vehicles are the way of the future. Goodbye drill bit, hello podium. Mr. Eresman sat down with the Financial Post’s Carrie Tait to explain his changing role and the challenges in his way.


Phibro Fund Rose 22% as Commodity Indexes Fell, Document Shows

(Bloomberg) — Phibro LLC, the Citigroup Inc. energy-trading unit that the bank may be forced to sell, said funds that it manages for outside investors rose 22 percent since the start of 2008 as commodity indexes fell, a solicitation document showed.


Schlumberger ranks high on list of ‘green’ companies

Horseheads, N.Y. – This week’s issue of Newsweek magazine ranks America’s 500 largest corporations according to how “green” they are, and a company planning to build a controversial facility in Horseheads fared pretty well.


GE Energy bulking up in Houston

If the global energy complex were a giant roulette table, GE Energy would have a chip down on nearly every number. From wind turbines and solar panels to offshore oil and gas equipment and coal and nuclear power plants, the Atlanta-based arm of U.S. industrial and media conglomerate General Electric Co. is in the business. And a growing portion of that business is being done in Houston, GE Energy CEO John Krenicki said during a visit to local company facilities this week


The End of Oil?

Oil is the curse of the modern world; it is “the devil’s excrement,” in the words of the former Venezuelan oil minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, who is considered to be the father of OPEC and should know. Our insatiable need for oil has brought us global warming, Islamic fundamentalism and environmental depredation. It has turned the United States and China, the world’s biggest consumers of petroleum, into greedy, irresponsible addicts that can’t see beyond their next fix. With a few exceptions, like Norway and the United Arab Emirates, oil doesn’t even benefit the nations from which it is extracted. On the contrary: Most oil-rich states have been doomed to a seemingly permanent condition of kleptocracy by a few, poverty for the rest, chronic backwardness and, worst of all, the loss of a national soul.


We can’t be rid of the stuff soon enough.


Oil shipping sector heading for downturn: Teekay

“Today’s voyages are barely paying owners enough to get the ship from point A to B. It’s just paying for the fuel and certainly not paying enough for owners to pay back their bank financing and debt costs,” Chan said.


This in turn is leading to poor maintenance of ships by some owners who are running out of cash, he added.


Mexico’s Cantarell oil field may be stablizing

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican oil production fell again in August but state oil company Pemex said it had some early indications the rapid fall in output at its giant Cantarell field may be slowing.


Mexico pumped 2.542 million bpd in August, a decline of 7.9 percent on a year ago but production at Cantarell edged higher for the first time in more than two years.


Oil price to rise on stronger demand: Goldman Sachs

(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs said oil prices are likely to be higher in the future due to a recovery in demand and a decline in production, and expects European integrated oil companies to struggle to sustain the current level of production.


Tank farm opposition files petition
Community Strength asking judge to repeal Petroplex permit

VACHERIE – A community group is asking a Baton Rouge judge to appeal the state’s approval of an air quality permit for a proposed petroleum storage tank farm along the Mississippi River near Vacherie.


The New Case for Natural Gas

Natural gas has recently emerged as a vital but neglected complement to the paragons of low-carbon energy: renewable energy and energy efficiency. Recent developments in technology, from gas wells to home appliances, suggest a need to fundamentally reevaluate the role of natural gas in the energy system. Together with renewable energy and energy efficiency, natural gas should be a cornerstone of strategies to advance energy security and reduce the threat of climate change – a conclusion that has recently been supported by U.S. environmental leaders, including Robert Kennedy, Jr., John Podesta, Carl Pope, and Tim Wirth.


Hartwick College picks ‘energy’ as 2009-10 theme

On Oct. 16, the college will present “Energy Roundtable: Peak Oil” from noon to 1 p.m. Associate Professor of Education Mark Davies will lead a discussion of issues surrounding peak oil.


…The theme will include educating the Hartwick community about fossil fuels, peak oil and alternative-energy sources, involving the campus and community in efforts to reduce their ecological impact. Local energy topics such as natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale will also be addressed.


Worldchanging Interview: Paul Hawken

Hawken was this year’s Sustainable Industries: Economic Forum keynote speaker. During the event, Hawken asked the 300 plus sustainably-minded business leaders, entrepreneurs and political heads to truly look at the data: dangerous levels of atmospheric CO2, peak oil, peak soil – peak everything. Despite this, he said he remains optimistic. He focused much of his talk on solutions such as innovative solar design and collaborations, like linking green banking with affordable, green housing, food and transportation.


U.S. Chamber of Commerce in climate rift

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A rift widened between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and some utilities as another major power provider quit over the business group’s hard stance on pending climate regulation.


The Public Service Company of New Mexico, the state’s largest utility, quit the chamber Friday just days after California’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., said it was leaving because of the chamber’s “extreme” positions.


California funds biggest energy efficiency plan

LOS ANGELES – California is embarking on the most aggressive energy efficiency plan among U.S. states, having earmarked .1 billion to retrofit homes and other programs that will cut power needs equivalent to three medium-sized power plants.


Some grapes are purple, but this winery has gone green

The air conditioning runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the new building. His first electric bill for the new structure was .


That’s because Carroll, his wife, Christine, and son Tom Jr. care about the environment and spent a small fortune to use the latest technology, geothermal heat and solar roof panels to power their business.


Tom Carroll is a prime example of what state Rep. Steve Santarsiero, D-Bucks, and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s John Hangar want to see as they are working to push House Bill 80 through to passage.


Talking transportation — NuRide: The secret way to a cheaper commute

I have the solution to highway congestion — a simple plan to cut traffic by 50 percent. All we have to do is get every SOV (single-occupancy-vehicle) driver to carry one additional passenger who’d otherwise be driving alone. But don’t call this “carpooling” or it’ll never succeed.


Scrubbing the Atmosphere

Governments are doing practically nothing to study the removal of carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, but this technology could be a much cheaper form of climate protection than photovoltaic cells and other approaches getting lavish support, according to an article published today in Science.


“An Idea Whose Time Has Come”

The OECD has just released a new book: “The Economics of Climate Change Mitigation: Policies and Options for Global Action beyond 2012.” To quote from the Executive Summary (pp. 5-6): “Closing the gap between domestic and international fossil fuel prices could cut GHG emissions drastically in the subsidising countries, in some cases by over 30% relative to BAU levels by 2050, and globally by 10%.” Further, “Energy subsidy removal would also raise GDP per capita in most of the countries concerned, including India and, to a lesser extent, China.”


Inhofe on why global warming isn’t real: ‘God’s still up there. We’re going through these cycles.’

On C-Span’s Washington Journal this week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the godfather of global warming deniers, said that he will travel to the climate change summit in Copenhagen this fall to present “another view.” “I think somebody has to be there — a one-man truth squad,” he said.


Indian PM on climate deal: ‘I’m not an astrologer’

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AFP) – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday he could not predict whether the world will meet a deadline on a climate deal, saying a summit here only took up global warming in broad terms.


“I’m not an astrologer,” Singh told a news conference when asked if a December conference in Copenhagen would succeed in sealing a successor framework to the landmark Kyoto Protocol.


Calif. OKs fee to pay for global warming program

Despite industry objections and threats of lawsuits, California air regulators on Friday approved the nation’s first statewide carbon fee on utilities, oil refineries and other polluting industries.


Bill McKibben: Why 350 is the most important number on the planet

We’ve been running a huge ­ campaign – it’s blown up into the first real grassroots global political protest about global warming – called 350.org. The number comes from new science that followed the shocking melt of Arctic ice in the summer of 2007. Researchers became convinced that climate change was happening faster than they had previously expected, and that they had enough data to put a real number on it. That number was 350, as in parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. Above that level, in the powerful (and peer-reviewed) words of Nasa scientist James Hansen, we can’t have a planet “similar to the one on which civilisation developed or to which life on earth is adapted”.


Unusual Arctic Warmth, Tropical Wetness Likely Cause for Methane Increase

Unusually high temperatures in the Arctic and heavy rains in the tropics likely drove a global increase in atmospheric methane in 2007 and 2008 after a decade of near-zero growth, according to a new study. Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, albeit a distant second.


Science Report: Climate Change Speeding Toward Irreversible Tipping Points

Losses from glaciers, ice-sheets and the Polar Regions appear to be happening faster than anticipated, and melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet surface also seems to be accelerating. In the summer of 2007, the rate of melting was some 60 percent higher than the previous record in 1998.


Some scientists are now warning that sea levels could rise by up to two meters (6.5 feet) by 2100, drowning low-lying countries and coastal cities.


So Shall You Reap: How Climate Change Will Affect Farms

Many farming communities think global warming won’t hurt them. They’re wrong.


You might think a little global warming is good for farming. Longer, warmer growing seasons and more carbon dioxide (CO2)—what plant wouldn’t love that? The agricultural industry basically takes that stance. But global warming’s effects on agriculture would actually be quite complicated—and mostly not for the better.

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Drumbeat: September 25, 2009

Monday, September 28th, 2009


Denninger: The Horrible Conundrum Facing The Fed

But Japan had an advantage we do not – a weak currency benefited to a tremendous degree their exporters, and they are an export-based economy. As a consequence the damage done internally to import prices by the continued downward pressure on their currency was counterbalanced by an improving balance-of-payments picture.


America, on the other hand, has a huge trade deficit. Attempting to reverse this is essentially impossible as we have offshored production to low-labor-cost locales such as Vietnam and China. We are also absolutely dependent on foreign energy sources and despite 30 years of political promises to resolve that problem we have refused to take the steps necessary to do so, including funding massive nuclear energy development and drilling for all of our currently-known resources as a bridge while those nuclear plants are brought online. There is and has been zero political or public will behind accepting that resolving these problems does not lie in “pie in the sky” battery, solar and wind technologies, but rather through aquaculture-produced bioldiesel, massive nuclear power development and full exploitation of our existing fossil-fuel stores, all of which will cause energy costs to rise and exact what amounts to a tax on the American people. In short we demand not only cheap TVs from China and cheap blue jeans from Vietnam but cheap gasoline from Saudi Arabia, and combined this makes addressing trade imbalance politically impossible.


An alternative G20 model

On the eve of the world summit, G20 leaders – who have presided over the biggest financial expansion and the most catastrophic economic failure since the 1930s – bickered over the arrangement of the IMF’s “deck chairs” and squabbled over whether to rap bankers on the knuckles.


No leader has risen above the fray to address the scale of the “triple crunch” threatening the world: sustained economic failure, the climate change threat and peak oil. Nor is there a world leader willing to confront, subdue and discipline the finance sector as Roosevelt did in 1933. Instead today’s leaders scramble with undue haste for a return to “business as usual”.


Cabot Oil ordered to shut fracturing ops in Penn.

(Reuters) – Pennsylvania regulators said they ordered Cabot Oil & Gas Corp (COG.N) to stop all hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations in Susquehanna County until it completed a number of important engineering and safety tasks.


Cabot voluntarily shut down fracking operations at the Heitsman well in Dimock Township on Tuesday afternoon, following three separate spills in less than one week, said the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in a statement.


The Resolute Ahmadinejad Knows How To Survive

Ahmadinejad is a survivor.


The first time he ran for the presidency of Iran, while careful not to offend the establishment, he said all the right things to get elected — promoting economic and social justice, cash payments from oil revenues to families in the name of equity, eradication of corruption, better educational opportunities and health care for all, an Iran that could defend itself against foreign aggression, and no compromise on Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment. His tactics worked.


Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan

WASHINGTON — A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a 9 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about ,000.


The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a 5 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a 9,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns.


U.S. natural gas rig count climbs 5 to 710 for week

NEW YORK, Sept 25 (Reuters) – The number of rigs drilling for natural gas in the United States climbed five this week to 710, according to a report on Friday by oil services firm Baker Hughes in Houston.


The U.S. natural gas drilling rig count has gained in nine of the last 10 weeks but is still down sharply since peaking above 1,600 in September last year, standing at 849 rigs, or 54 percent, below the same week last year.


During the week ended July 17, 2009, the natural gas rig count dipped to 665, its lowest level since May 3, 2002, when there were 640 gas rigs operating.


Oil market response to Iran-West tension

LONDON (Reuters) – Heightened tensions between the West and oil exporter Iran pulled crude prices off an eight-week low on Friday, sending them back above per barrel.


News of Iran’s second uranium enrichment plant may heighten Western calls for tougher U.N sanctions against the Islamic Republic — a move which could ultimately increase the risk of a supply disruption in the key crude producing region.


The Himalayan Gas Tango

Through September 2009, the government of India has issued a variety of statements designed to quell India’s long-lived China bogey. It has done so to contain what it calls panic and scare-mongering about alleged incursions over the India-China border by units of the People’s Liberation Army. The ‘incidents’ (as the Indian media like to call the events) have all occurred over India’s north-western border with China, in the mountainous Jammu and Kashmir state.


China to rely on coal ‘for long time’: Beijing official

BEIJING (AFP) – China will continue to rely on coal for most of its energy needs “for a long time”, a senior official said on Friday, just days after President Hu Jintao pledged action on its greenhouse gas emissions.


“It is an indisputable fact that China mainly relies on coal for its overall energy structure. Such a structure will remain hard to change for a long time,” Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, told reporters.


China discovers combustible ice in land-based regions

BEIJING (Xinhua) — China has successfully excavated combustible ice, a kind of natural gas hydrate, in permanent tundra in the south margin of the country’s northwestern Qilian Mountains, the Ministry of Land and Resources said Friday.


Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great City

Detroit must address the fact that a 138-sq.-mi. city that once accommodated 1.85 million people is way too large for the 912,000 who remain. The fire, police and sanitation departments couldn’t efficiently service the yawning stretches of barely inhabited areas even if the city could afford to maintain those operations at their former size. Detroit has to shrink its footprint, even if it means condemning decent houses in the gap-toothed areas and moving their occupants to compact neighborhoods where they might find a modicum of security and service. Build greenbelts, which are a lot cheaper to maintain than untraveled streets. Encourage urban farming. Let the barren areas revert to nature.


Precious Metal

Battery-powered electric vehicles may be heralded as the next big thing, but will lithium reserves that are already being devoured by consumer electronics be enough meet future demand?


Nuclear Loan Guarantees Should Be Doubled – US Energy Secretary

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power plant construction should be at least doubled to allow construction of four to five additional plants, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said late Thursday.


Recession slows U.S. wind power growth rate

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The United States will add 6,000 megawatts in wind power this year, down nearly 30 percent from last year as the credit crisis slowed expansion of the renewable energy source, an industry group said on Thursday.


Wind power has been one of the fastest growing sources of power generation, and the 2009 additions are equivalent to about six coal-fired power plants.


“The lion’s share of that was commissioned on or before the economy went south,” Denise Bode, head of the American Wind Energy Association told a news conference.


The End Of Globalization

Jeff Rubin has gone as far as to suggest the present global financial crisis wasn’t started by the sub prime mortgage crisis. Instead it was the July 2008 price peak to 7 per barrel that caused the financial meltdown. Rubin writes, “What put the world economy really in recession, is not Wall Street, but triple digit oil prices…”


Many economists disagree with Rubin’s hypothesis but do believe the massive oil price rise may well have been the tipping point that started what now is called “The great recession”-there’s still a reluctance to use the word depression and thereby conjure up images of “The Great Depression”.


Chesapeake to Sell Half Its Pipelines in Barnett Shale

Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, which has a large regional office in Fort Worth, said late Thursday that it will raise 8 million in cash by selling half its natural gas pipelines in the Barnett Shale of North Texas, as well as properties in other petroleum basins.


EU: carbon policy could leave UK in the dark

Britain’s old coal-fired power plants have only six more years to live at the most. Their death sentence has been passed by the European Union, which decreed that the most polluting stations must be retired after a fixed number of hours. But experts predict that the phasing out of these reliable but dirty old beasts will leave the UK facing a catastrophic shortage of energy that may lead to power cuts and vastly inflated bills.


Russia plays pipeline politics

BEIJING – While the United States is engrossed in Iraq and Afghanistan – even planning a troop surge in the latter – a new and bigger strategic risk looms in a much more sensitive area – Europe and Russia. The challenge is about energy and influence in the “old continent”, still the richest industrial area in the world.


Kazakhs mulls over transport for oil boost

Kazakhstan, which plans to double oil production in the next decade, is in talks with Caspian Sea neighbour Azerbaijan to find new routes for delivering its extra crude volumes to the Black Sea and beyond.


The ex-Soviet republics are considering various options, including construction of a new pipeline, to add to the volumes now shipped by tanker across the Caspian Sea, Reuters reported Kazakh and Azeri officials as saying today.


South Korea Predicts Oil Prices to Rise to in 2010

South Korea on Friday predicted the international oil prices are likely to rise to an average of per barrel in 2010.


According to a report prepared by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the price of the benchmark Dubai crude stood at per barrel this year, and it will rise to in 2010 as the global economy is showing signs of recovery.


EU: energy security is in the pipeline

After years of dithering, and despite Moscow’s threats, agreement has been finalised for a project to bring non-Russian gas to Europe.


LNG terminal opens in Saint John

Repsol and Irving Oil officially opened their controversial liquefied natural gas terminal in Saint John, N.B., on Thursday.


About 400 people attended the Canaport LNG commissioning ceremony, including politicians and energy-sector officials, who were all shuttled in from the facility’s entrance on Red Head Road to a large white tent, where violinists played.


The -billion terminal is the first to be built in Canada and the first land-based LNG-receiving and re-gas terminal built on the East Coast of North America in 30 years.


Petrobras Eyes Ultra-Deepwater Prospects Off Bahia

Brazilian state-run energy giant Petrobras (PBR) is currently researching possible ultra-deepwater oil prospects off the coast of northeast Brazil, company CEO Jose Sergio Gabrielli said Friday.


Quoted by the local Estado news agency, Gabrielli said in Brasilia that “there could be (subsalt oil there), we’re there conducting research. We have to drill to see.”


Officials Tout Offshore Drilling in Bipartisan Letter to Salazar

Georgia’s two Republican senators joined their colleagues in the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress in pitching for opening offshore waters to new natural gas and oil development and leases.


Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson were among 35 signers of a bipartisan letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking him to support a proposal by the U.S. Minerals Management Service to open up new offshore areas.


Chevron Seeks to Foist Billion Amazon Liability on Ecuador

(Bloomberg) — Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company, may force Ecuador’s government to foot the bill for a billion environmental lawsuit marred by allegations of bribery and political interference.


Chevron asked the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to shift responsibility to Ecuador for paying any damages that a group of Amazon Basin residents could win in a 16-year- old toxic-waste lawsuit, according to a company statement yesterday. An investigator appointed by the Ecuadorean court overseeing the case estimated that damages could be billion, more than half of the Andean nation’s gross domestic product.


Saudi offers mid-October Jubail fuel oil

SINGAPORE: Saudi Aramco is offering via private talks a cargo of 380-cst fuel oil for mid-October loading, its fifth parcel in three weeks, as it rides on buoyant Middle East and east Asian demand, traders said yesterday.


Malta: Gas supply was about to finish, report reveals

A three-day cold spell in December 2007 and a delayed shipment of gas because of bad weather left Enemalta with “only 90 minutes” of gas supplies, a dossier published by the government has revealed.


The internal Enemalta dossier, drawn up in March 2008, just two days before the general election, said the corporation had a low capacity of storage and this meant it was “not in a position to secure continuity of gas during peak periods arising from abnormal cold spells”.


Nigeria: Government Must Save Manufacturing Companies From Folding Up

Lagos — Niger Delta Budget Monitoring Group (NDEBUMOG) has called on the Federal Government to introduce policies that would save manufacturing companies from folding up or relocating from the country.


The call is coming at a time most manufacturing companies in the country are experiencing multidimensional difficulties, ranging from deteriorating infrastructure, energy crisis, as well as low patronage of locally manufactured products.


China Considers Cutting Wholesale Power Prices, Citigroup Says

(Bloomberg) — The Chinese government is considering cutting wholesale power tariffs to lower costs for grid companies, Citigroup said, without citing anybody.


Grid companies who buy electricity from generators are making losses and they have “huge” capital expenditure requirements, analysts Pierre Lau and Maggie Mok said in a research note today. The companies’ capital spending between 2009 and 2011 is estimated at 1.5 trillion yuan (0 billion), twice the expenditure for 2006 to 2008, the analysts said,


Motoring Memories: American diesel cars

Although diesel engines are more efficient and economical than gasoline engines, the clatter, smell and smoke of earlier models found little favour with North American motorists until the 1970s when energy crises threatened gasoline supplies. And even then, their popularity in cars was fleeting.


In Europe, where fuel is much more expensive, motorists enthusiastically embraced the oil sipping diesel. Daimler-Benz introduced the world’s first diesel production car, the Mercedes-Benz 260D, in 1936. Although meant for taxi use, the 260D’s economy and durability appealed to ordinary motorists and Daimler-Benz became a strong diesel car advocate.


An Immune System for the Planet: Bill McKibben on Organizing Popular Action When Political Leaders Disappoint

I thought Obama was quite disappointing. It felt to me like he was pre-excusing failure both in Washington and in Copenhagen. If this is as important as he says it is–and in fact, it’s far more important than he says it is–then you’ve got to do more than the occasional speech or reference. You’ve got to go out and campaign. This guy knows how to campaign. I think we’ll know he’s completely serious the day he fires up Air Force One and the day begins with the whole press corps in tow in Barrow, Alaska and ends in McMurdo Station in the Antarctic.


North Sea has potential to store over 100 years worth of UK power station CO2 emissions says DECC

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said:


“There’s enough potential under the North Sea to store more than 100 years worth of CO2 emissions from the UK’s power fleet. We are also working closely with Norway and other North Sea Basin countries to ensure the North Sea fulfils its potential in the deployment of CCS in Europe. We want to get the UK regulatory framework in place so we can harness that potential and make the North Sea part of the CCS revolution.


We need land to grow food. We need a Community Land Bank

The concept is simple. The Bank would negotiate for land, hold it and then release it to user groups under legally enforceable contracts, attracting charitable funding as appropriate, and facilitate transfers of tenants (community gardening groups) across a portfolio of land holdings. The Land Bank would also arrange insurance and ensure legal and technical compliance. In effect, it would be a safe pair of hands in which both land owners and users could trust.


The catalyst behind this idea is the rapid rise in demand for land to cultivate for food. Hardly a day seems to go by without some reference to the growing waiting lists for allotments – some estimates suggest that there are now 100,000 people on waiting lists for the current 300,000 plots. In London you might have to wait for ten or more years, in Bristol the wait can be up to three years.


Author’s ‘Food’ Lecture Draws Attention On Campus

MADISON, Wis. — The author of a book about food that has sparked debate on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus gave a lecture Thursday night in which he presented his ideas to supporters and critics in attendance.


UW-Madison selected Michael Pollan’s best-selling book “In Defense of Food” for a campus-wide reading program, and the book’s selection has set off a debate over the American diet and food production system in classrooms and far beyond campus borders.


For the World’s Hungry, the Recession Is Far from Over

It’s late morning and Minara Khatoon’s five young children haven’t eaten yet. They sit huddled on the dirt floor of their mud thatch hut, waiting as their mother stokes a makeshift fire with straw and dry leaves to prepare what will be their main — and perhaps their only — meal of the day. Minara has just returned to her home in the riverside village of Kapasia, 192 kilometers north of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, with a monthly supply of wheat grain given to destitute rural families like hers by the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP). The food aid helps, but only lasts Minara’s landless peasant family —among the poorest of the poor in what is already Bangladesh’s most impoverished district — for 20 days. Her husband doesn’t work due to a chronic asthma condition so to make ends meet she toils as a maid in wealthier households during the day and at night cobbles together handicrafts to sell in a local market. “This is how we survive,” says Minara, pounding fistfuls of wheat on an earthen plate, her tired face far older than that of a woman of her 30 years.


Drought to Pare India Oilseed Crop, Supporting Palm Oil Imports

(Bloomberg) — India, the biggest buyer of palm oil after China, may producer fewer monsoon-sown oilseeds as dry weather in the main growing areas reduced sowing of peanuts.


Russian Oil and Gas Industry Surprises Analysts

Russia is the biggest oil producer in the world, but the Russian domestic market is not as big as the oil production. Russia’s consumption of hydrocarbons is only about 25% of the domestic oil production, so Russia exports the majority of oil it produces and whatever it refines.


I think the biggest issue that concerns most investors as far as Russian oil production is concerned is the growth rate or decline rate. At the start of the year, there were calls made by quite a large number of commentators that Russian oil production would decline this year by quite a considerable amount. The numbers published were between 1% and 5% and even 7%.


In actual fact, the Russian production is up this year. Year to date it is up 0.4% and we believe it will be up 0.3% for the full year. This growth has really surprised a lot of market commentators.


Arctic Oil Tempts Norway to Seek Drilling at ‘Gates of Hell’

(Bloomberg) — Norway started a push to explore for oil and natural gas in more remote regions like its Arctic volcanic island of Jan Mayen, as the country seeks to reverse almost a decade of dwindling North Sea output.


“We’ve explored an increasingly large part of the Norwegian shelf,” Oil Minister Terje Riis-Johansen said in an interview on a trip to the barren outpost on Sept. 23. “If we now wish to develop Norway as an oil and gas nation, it will have to be in other areas.”


Diminishing access to traditional reserves is prompting countries to turn to unconventional sources such as oil sands and shale-rock formations to meet demand. Russia, Canada, the U.S. and Iceland are vying for a stake of the Arctic, which may hold as much as 50 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, according to BP Plc.


Shell Output Set to Pass BP With Billion Spent on Projects

(Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc, held back by almost seven years of falling production, is set to overtake BP Plc after about billion of investment from Qatar to Brazil.


Shell will boost its oil and gas output by a third, adding 1 million barrels a day to capacity by the end of 2012, according to company estimates. That would push Shell to 4.25 million, more than the 4.1 million BP anticipates for 2012.


Indonesia’s Cepu Oil Field to Miss 2010 Output Target

(Bloomberg) — Indonesia’s Cepu oil field, jointly run by Exxon Mobil Corp. and state-owned PT Pertamina, will miss its 2010 crude output target of 165,000 barrels per day, BPMigas, the country’s oil and gas regulator, said.


“Peak production should be in May 2010, but it is impossible for Exxon to achieve it,” Hadi Purnomo, vice chairman head BP Migas said today in Jakarta.


Slumping Energy Demand Has Bottomed, Fund Manager Melis Says

(Bloomberg) — The decline in energy demand and drop in German electricity prices may have ended, according to the chief executive officer of hedge-fund manager Energy Capital Management BV.


“The forward prices are at lows, the spot prices are at lows,” CEO Marcel Melis said yesterday at an energy markets and derivatives conference in London. “One thing is for sure — energy consumption will not decrease anymore.”


Oil Heading to Test Support in Low s: Technical Analysis

(Bloomberg) — Crude oil may test support in the low s after breaking a trend of rising prices that began in February, according to technical analysis by Newedge Group.


If prices drop below a barrel, there will be support in the .60-to-.75 area and then at .38, said Veronique Lashinski, a senior research analyst for Newedge USA LLC in Chicago. Crude oil for November delivery fell 3.9 percent to .97 on Sept. 23, ending more than seven months of price gains that started on Feb. 18 when the contract slipped to .87.


Crude Oil May Decline Amid Rising Fuel Supplies, Survey Shows

(Bloomberg) — Crude oil futures may decline in anticipation of extended increases in U.S. fuel supplies as demand drops.


Twenty-four of 44 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News, or 55 percent, said futures will drop through Oct. 2. Seven respondents, or 16 percent, forecast that the market will rise and 13 said prices will be little changed. Last week, 38 percent of analysts said oil would fall.


China to build third phase strategic oil reserves

BEIJING (Xinhua) — China will “certainly” build a third phase of strategic oil reserves to meet international standards of reserve capacity, Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration said Friday.


Zhang, also vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, said China was aiming for enough oil reserve to cover 90 days, the standards of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).


China’s oil reserves at present is far from meeting that standard, he said.


Iran acknowledges second nuclear facility

(CNN) — Iran has acknowledged the existence of a second uranium enrichment plant in a letter sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a spokesman for the nuclear watchdog agency said Friday.


Recession Fallout: Fewer Women Having Kids

If the sidewalks seem less clogged with Bugaboo strollers these days and you can’t remember the last time you had to diaper a doll at a baby shower, it’s not your imagination or fuzzy memory. Birth rates in the U.S. fell 2% in 2008, the biggest drop in nearly four decades, and that trend is expected to continue. A new study out Sept. 23 from the Guttmacher Institute suggests that the timing is not a coincidence; the recession may be to blame, as women factor economic anxieties into their decision about having children.


How to Sustain a Local Economy

When The Chronicle entered the lower level meeting room of the downtown Ann Arbor library, the first things we noticed were three large trays of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut into bite-sized wedges. As public forums go, this was an offbeat gnoshing choice.


It turned out that the sandwiches – and apples, soft drinks, potato chips and other food – were all sourced from Michigan, in keeping with the theme of Wednesday night’s event. The panel discussion focused on the state’s economic crisis, and how the community can respond to it. Buying local products is one example.


Joe Berlinger’s “Crude”

Yesterday, San Francisco’s Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force released their much anticipated report, a comprehensive and important tome that will hopefully serve as a primer, as well as a clarion call. Recently, films like Josh Tickell’s wonderful “Fuel”, “The Age of Stupid” and “An Inconvenient Truth” have also served as important reminders that we face real challenges in a world of diminishing resources.


Another fantastic film is “Crude”, now playing at the Landmark Lumiere. Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus


Author speaks of future oil, environmental, economic crises

The kind of society Americans know and support cannot continue, said James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency”, a book about the issues future generations will face regarding the oil crisis, global warming and living in suburbia. Kunstler spoke on Tuesday in Lewis Lab.


America does not know how to pay back its debt, and our resources are approaching their scarcity limits, he said.


Kunstler also spoke about the future of America and what must happen for the country to be able to thrive in the future.


Urging a conclave on transportation in the Northampton-Greenfield-Amherst triangle

With the inexplicable non-green recent proposal by the Transportation Section of Pioneer Valley Planning Commission to take the train away from Amherst and give it to Northampton and other centers on the west side of the Connecticut River, many feathers have flown, as you surely know.


Since trains have lower carbon per passenger per mile than do buses, and buses lower than cars, and cars lower than SUVs, don’t we need to publish that authoritatively far and wide right away to residents in the Northampton-Greenfield-Amherst triangle?


Horizons Community Planning Article

I believe that planning strategies inadvertently influence people’s lifestyle choices, amplifying their ease or hardship – which has everything to with people’s economic circumstances (i.e. poverty). Therefore, it is critical to the health and wealth of communities to adopt a framework on which to grow that promotes healthy and useful development. All too often, towns grow according to the activities of the few with commercial interests and not necessarily in a way that is advantageous to all. I am not sure local leaders realize how affected we are by these decisions.


The most obvious and impactful case in point is how development is planned to cater the automobile and how those decisions dictate our lifestyle choices. During the settling of the west, small towns dotted the landscape because people needed to have access to goods and services near enough so the trip could made in one day by horseback or buggy. Many modern and prominent academics claim that the rise of the automobile has caused the widespread decline of small rural communities all over the world.


Ask AP: Wind power and wildlife, jobless benefits

Wind power has its fans, but the turbines that turn breezes into energy are also generating concerns: Some worry that the huge contraptions might put wildlife at risk.


So has anyone considered illuminating them with floodlights or painting them hot pink, so animals know to stay away?


Our future: a biomass-powered economy

AUSTRALIA should aim to run its economy on renewable energy sources by 2051, a new analysis argues, with rural areas playing a leading role in the creation of energy from biomass.


Within 40 years, given an early commitment, 90 per cent of Australia’s transport fuel and 20 per cent of its electricity generation could come from bio-methanol or ethanol produced from wood, according to the report, “Powerful Choices”.


For this to happen, currently cleared farmland, by 2051, will need to carry 40–60 million hectares of timber in plantings tightly integrated with traditional cropping and livestock production systems.


Clean-energy jobs touch off bidding wars between states

When Arizona economic development officials look across their state, they envision the Saudi Arabia of solar.


The state has sun, land, workers and proximity to California, the biggest solar market in the U.S.


Yet for years, Arizona has failed to attract the big solar manufacturers that build the mirrors, panels and other components for solar equipment. In the past three years, about 50 renewable-energy companies considered Arizona but opted to put plants — and jobs — in other states, says Barry Broome, CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.


“We’ve lost every one of the projects to incentives offered by other states,” Broome says.


Duke, FPL to switch to hybrid, electric vehicles

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Two of the nation’s largest power generators said Thursday that they plan to begin switching their company cars and trucks to plug-in hybrid vehicles or all-electric vehicles starting Jan. 1 to help cut greenhouse gas emissions.


China Backs Market Price for Wind Power

BEIJING — A top Chinese energy policy official said Friday the price for wind power and other renewable energy should be set by market forces, rejecting calls for fixed prices, a system used in some countries to promote the use of renewable energy.


As China looks to renewables to fill more of its energy needs, many Chinese power companies are looking to develop wind energy but are worried about profitability and thus looking for price guarantees.


New California rules allow timber firms to sell carbon credits

Environmental groups criticize the Schwarzenegger-backed changes, which allow the companies to benefit from the fight against global warming while continuing to clear-cut forests.


Climate Change in Alps to Leave Europe High and Dry

Picturesque views of the snow-covered Alps may soon be relegated to picture books due to increasing climate change, a new European environmental report says. And it’s not just skiers and tourism officials who are getting nervous about the fate of the continent’s famous mountains.


Temperatures in the Alps are increasing at a rate more than twice the global average, according to a recent report by the European Environment Agency, “Regional climate change and adaptation: The Alps facing the challenge of changing water resources.” The change has serious ramifications not only for the alpine climate itself, but also for the broad swath of Europe that relies on the water these “cherished but endangered mountains” collect and deliver.


‘Super-typhoons’ forecast for second half of century

The effects of global warming will spawn “super-typhoons” packing winds of up to 288 kph in the second half of this century, causing unprecedented damage to Japan’s coastlines, researchers warned.


“If a super-typhoon lands on Japan, the high tides could bring about more serious damage than that in the Isewan Typhoon,” said Kazuhisa Tsuboki, associate professor of meteorology at Nagoya University and a member of the research team.


The Isewan Typhoon that struck the Ise Bay area facing Nagoya in 1959 killed more than 5,000 people, many of whom were swept away in the high tides.


The researchers from Nagoya University, the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Meteorological Research Institute and other organizations said the super-typhoons will also be stronger than Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people in the southern United States in 2005.


Calif. bans high-emission paint thinners, solvents

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California air regulators approved strict regulations Thursday for aerosol air fresheners, paint thinners and solvents as a way to lessen smog-forming emissions and reduce a health threat.


Has China Really Gotten Serious About Climate Change?

To get a sense of how far the Chinese leadership has come on the issue of climate change in a relatively short period, consider a conference held two years ago on the tropical island of Hainan, where, every year, China invites the high and mighty from around the world to address the weighty issues of the day at a plush resort. The theme of the conference was “Green China,” and if there was a single underlying idea, it was that China, having just become the world’s largest emitter of CO2 gases, was going to jump wholeheartedly on the global bandwagon to combat climate change. But on the conference’s final day, during the main event and keynote address, President Hu Jintao talked about China’s commitment to economic reform, to maintaining its extraordinary pace of economic growth, to opening China’s market further to foreign investment and products — but only the barest nod in the direction of climate change. A confused American environmental consultant left the speech sputtering. “What was that about?” he asked former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was walking out with him. Powell laughed. “You know what the first thing is that Hu Jintao doesn’t think about when he wakes up every morning?” Powell joked. “Climate change.”


EU CO2 Permits Rise After Commission Vows to Prevent Surplus

(Bloomberg) — European Union carbon permits rose the most in almost eight weeks as the European Commission pledged to prevent surplus credits following a court ruling that overturned pollution limits on Poland and Estonia.


Group Plans Market Standard for Emissions in China

WASHINGTON — A French emissions exchange and a Chinese exchange are forming a carbon market standard for China, marking a step toward a voluntary system to limit greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and forestry in the world’s top emitter.


Rather Than Melt, some Glaciers Race to the Sea

The seas are rising, and climate scientists say they’ll keep rising as the globe continues to warm, causing all sorts of problems along tens of thousands of miles of coastline around the world. What the scientists can’t say for sure, though, is how much sea levels will go up, or how fast. That’s largely because nobody knows for sure how the vast ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica — especially the glaciers that flow down and into the sea — will respond.


At summit, doubts grow on reaching climate deal

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AFP) – European leaders voiced growing doubts on whether the world will meet a December deadline for a new climate deal as a summit here looked set to take up global warming in generalities.


Krugman: It’s Easy Being Green

Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change.


So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit global warming would destroy the economy. As the blog Climate Progress puts it, opponents of climate change legislation “keep raising their estimated cost of the clean energy and global warming pollution reduction programs like some out of control auctioneer.”


Steven Chu to greenhouse gases: we will bury you

The U.S. Secretary of Energy—channeling former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev perhaps?—has one thing to say in this week’s Science to the greenhouse gases emitted by coal-fired power plants: we will bury you. Nobel Laureate Steven Chu’s department has funneled .4 billion in stimulus dollars to research and develop the technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).


Behind the Furor Over a Climate Change Skeptic

WASHINGTON — Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration.


In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the surfacing of a few e-mail messages that seemed to show that his contrarian views on global warming had been suppressed by his superiors because they were inconvenient to the Obama administration’s climate change policy. Conservative commentators and Congressional Republicans said he had been muzzled because he did not toe the liberal line.


But a closer look at his case and a broader set of internal E.P.A. documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act paint a more complicated picture.

Read Article: Drumbeat: September 25, 2009

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Passive Solar Design Overview – Part 5: Distribution, Ventilation, and Cooling

Monday, September 28th, 2009

This is a guest post from Will Stewart, a Systems Engineer in the energy industry.

In this final article in the passive solar design overview series (see Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4), we will cover the techniques used to avoid hot and cold spots in a passive solar building, how to provide fresh air, and how to provide cooling (in many situations).

Wind directed HRV cowlings at BedZed


The first aspect we must address is the needs of the building occupants. While we may strive for ideal conditions as often as possible, a zero net energy home might not be required by its owners to always fit the mold of a typical power-intensive HVAC design. To understand how we need to distribute the heat from the building’s thermal masses, we need to understand how the human body interacts with the conditioned space, and how to define comfort.

Comfort

In simple terms, the human body is considered to have obtained thermal comfort when a body’s heat loss equals its heat gain.

More specifically, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) devised a simple chart showing the upper and lower bounds of temperature and humidity by for what it defines as human comfort zones, taking into consideration differing clothing levels by season.

ASHRAE Comfort Zones

Other factors are also important, such as metabolic rate, clothing insulation, radiant temperature of other masses or heat sources, and air speed.

The body exchanges, in a typical scenario [17]:

  • 62% of it’s body heat via radiation,
  • 15% by evaporation,
  • 10% by convection,
  • 10% by respiration and
  • 3% by conduction.

Note that during the US Energy Crisis in the 1970’s, Jimmy Carter sat in front of a fire with a sweater on, asking Americans to set their thermostats to 65 degrees F in the winter time, outside of the ASHRAE comfort zone. As we experience other such shortfalls in supply in the future, expect the BAU comfort zones to be questioned and expanded to fit the situation at hand.

Distribution

Capturing and storing solar thermal energy is not enough; how do we ensure its dispersal when and where we need it? There are two types of heat transfer related to passive solar heat distribution; convection and radiation.

  • Convection:

    Simply put, warm air rises. Any thermal storage element that is warmer than the surrounding air will heat the air closest to it, causing that air to rise. There are extensive calculations necessary to determine convection heat transfer with precision, but for our purposes, an approximation will suffice;

        Q = h A (Ts – Ta)

        where;
                Q = heat transferred
                h = convection parameter (approximations assuming laminar flow)
                     Horizontal surface: h = 0.27 (ΔT / A) 0.25

                     Vertical surface: h = 0.29 (ΔT / A) 0.25
                A = area
                Ts = surface temperature
                Ta = ambient (indoor) temperature

  • Radiation:
    If a thermal storage element is warmer than nearby objects within line of sight, the element will transfer heat in the infrared wavelengths. The energy emitted via radiation from an object warmed by the sun (i.e., thermal storage wall, masonry floor) can be calculated with this formula;

        Q = ε σ A T4

        where;

                ε = surface emissivity (See Part 2 of this series and additional values in this list).
                σ = Stephan Boltzmann constant, 5.7 x 10-8 W/m2/K4

                T = absolute temperature K (°C + 272)

Direct Gain:

Part of our answer here depends upon the depth of the heated space, and the location and conductivity of the thermal mass; if a house is too deep (north to south), then the polar-facing side can be cooler than the area warmed by the thermal mass.

The heat is convected up from the warmed masonry floor, allowing one to walk about in stocking feet in the winter.

Heat transfer from direct gain thermal mass (Graphic courtesy of greenbuilder.com)

Interior design of direct gain buildings that utilize thermal mass can take advantage of the depth the winter sun can penetrate into the occupied space, which reaches the maximum depth on December 21st. Rooms or portions of larger rooms on the polar-facing side of the building where the sun does not directly heat the thermal mass are candidates for utility rooms, closets, bathrooms, and other rooms where occupancy is infrequent and/or of short duration.

Direct Gain heat transfer (Graphic courtesy of RecycleWorks)

Indirect Gain:

Trombe walls distribute heat in two manners;

  • By convection of warmed air back into the top of the room during the daytime, and
  • by thermal radiation from the trombe wall mass, primarily at night

In designs that take advantage of trombe walls, we clearly see that during the night, objects close to the trombe wall will be warmer than those further away. Such considerations play a major role in the interior design and living space layout of homes utilizing this technique. Unless a storage mass with a period of at least one day is factored in (see Part 3), trombe walls would not be suitable to office or other work spaces that are only occupied during the day.

Trombe wall heat distribution

Isolated Gain:

Isolated gain designs are very similar to Trombe walls with respect to heat (or cooling) distribution.

Isolated Gain

Ventilation

An occupied space requires a minimal amount of circulation and fresh air to avoid the sense of staleness. During pleasant weather, the most obvious approach would be to simply open the windows (except for offices without operable windows). During heating (and cooling) weather, there are several ways to accomplish bringing in fresh air, including;

Passive Solar Pre-Heat

Fresh air can be brought in through a passive solar panel on sunny days via the thermosiphon effect (i.e., warm air rises). To avoid unwanted infiltration, the opening should be sealed during non-sunny hours. Fans may be used to control the flow rate.Very cold locations and/or those with marginal solar resources may not be viable candidates for this approach. Air that is expelled from the house is normally at the desired temperature, and the heat energy in that air is lost to the outside.

Passive Solar Pre-heater

Heat recovery ventilator (HRV)

Heat recovery ventilators are (normally) powered ventilators and are considered active technology when such, though are often employed in passive solar buildings and are a key element in Passive Houses. High efficiency is important, and they are often only turned on a scheduled basis, when CO2 levels reach a threshold, or when indoor humidity is excessive. HRVs exchange the heat energy from stale warm inside air with fresh cold outside air, warming the incoming fresh outside air with outgoing warm inside air. Confused? Just take look at the picture below, and note that HRVs capture the indoor heat energy before it is exhausted to the outside;

Heat Recovery Ventilator

A new non-powered twist to HRVs was made at the London Beddington Zero Energy Development (dubbed “BedZed”). Wind is used as the motivating force, steering a rotating wind vane ventilator on the roof. The fresh air intake is on the windward side, and the stale air exhaust is on the leeward side. While the wind speed determines the overall air change rate, manual damper controls can be employed to moderate the ventilation rate on high wind days.

Wind directed HRV cowlings at BedZed

Energy recovery ventilator (ERV)

These are very similar to HRVs, except that they also account for differences in humidity, capturing latent heat energy that might otherwise be lost. The moisture capture is often implemented through the use of a rotating dessicant wheel, which absorbs the humidity from one air stream, and releases it into the other air stream as the wheel turns. This helps to maintain humidity levels in winter time, and often keeps humidity out in summer, though high humidity climates can often overwhelm the dessicant wheel capacity.

Energy Recovery Ventilator

Cooling

There are a number of approaches and variations concerning summer ventilation in passive solar design; in this overview, we will briefly examine two techniques that are applicable in low to moderate humidity environments.

Solar Chimney

Air rises when it is warmed. Some designs incorporate an elevated component in a building, often as a cupola or a stairway with an extended height ceiling. The solar chimney is a collecting point for warm air, which it dissipates through its vents or a high window. One step further is the use of a vertical passageway from different floors to the elevated compontent, so that the warmer air from each floor can rise through up in a chimney effect. Taking it yet one step further, painting a vertical exhaust element black would absorb the sun’s energy, heating the air further, and creating a stronger updraft.

Solar Chimney (Graphic courtesy of Greenbuilder.com)

Night Flush

In areas where cooling season nighttime temperatures are lower than approximately 65F (for at least some portion of the season) and humidity levels are low to moderate, a night flush can be employed by opening windows and exposing internal thermal mass to lower ambient temperatures, reducing the temperature of the thermal mass. This has the effect of rejecting heat accumulated during the previous day. When morning comes, the windows are closed when the ambient temperature rises above that of the thermal mass, with the thermal mass helping to moderate the temperature swing throughout the day (if enough thermal mass has be utilized). One drawback of this approach in residences is the potential for sleeping occupants to be warm upon repose, then chilled during the early morning hours. Commercial office and retail buildings, on the other hand, do not have this issue.

A number of commercial buildings have been designed and constructed utilizing the night flush approach, some examples of which include;

US Federal Building, San Francisco (night flush windows open)

References:

1. David Kent Ballast, Architect’s Handbook of Formulas, Tables, and Mathematical Calculations, Prentice Hall, 1988

2. Kissock, J, Internal Heat Gains and Design Heating & Cooling Loads, University of Dayton Lecture

3. Michael J. Crosbie, The Passive Solar Design and Construction Handbook, John Wiley and Sons, 1998
4. John Little, Randall Thomas, Design with Energy: The Conservation and Use of Energy in Buildings, Cambridge University Press, 1984

5. Passive Solar Heating and Cooling, Arizona Solar Center

6. Jeff Vail, Annualized Geo-Solar, JeffVail.net

7. K. Darkwa *, J.-S. Kim, Dynamics of energy storage in phase change drywall systems, Wiley, 2005
8 Jo Darkwa, Mathematical Modelling and Simulation of Phase Change Drywalls for Heating Application in a Passive Solar Building, AIAA, 2005

9. Warszawski, Abraham, Industrialized and Automated Building Systems, Taylor & Francis, 1999

10. US Department of Defense, Passive Solar Buildings, Unified Facilities Criteria, UFC 3-440-03N, 2004

11. F. Bruckmeyer, The Equivalent Brick Wall, Gesunheitsingenieur, 63(6), 1942, pg 61-65
12. J. Douglas Balcomb, Passive Solar Buildings, MIT Press, 1988

13. M. Hoffman, M. Feldman, Calculation of the Thermal Responses of Buildings by the Total Time Constant Method, Building and Environment, Vol 16, No. 2, pg 71-85, 1981

14. Givoni, Baruch, Climate Considerations in Building and Urban Design, John Wiley and Sons, 1998 pg. 115-147

15. Hoseggen, Rasmus, Dynamic use of the building structure – energy performance and thermal environment, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2008
16. Bruce Haglund, Kurt Rathmann, Thermal Mass in Solar and Energy-Conserving Buildings (.pdf), University of Idaho

17. D. Baggs, Thermal Mass & its Role in Building Comfort and Energy Efficiency, EcoSpecifier Technical Guides

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When An Uncle Sam Connection Trumps Greentech Innovation

Monday, September 28th, 2009

greenamericanflagIf you’re been following the cleantech industry for awhile, you know that cleantech, more than any other venture-backed sector, is very reliant on support from Uncle Sam. As David Anthony, founding partner of 21Ventures, put it to us recently: “There’s more money allocated to cleantech in the stimulus package, than there’s probably going to be invested by venture capitalists in North American cleantech startups over the next three years combined.” But two figures that the Wall Street Journal recently published really drove that point home for me, suggesting that the sector has hit a turning point at which the ability to get Washington aid now rivals the importance of the tech innovation itself.

The first data point, sourced from the Center for Responsive Politics, is that employees of the venture firm Kleiner Perkins have donated more than .2 million to political campaigns, largely to Democrats, including President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Kleiner, which employs Al Gore, has been one of the most aggressive venture firms focusing on cleantech, pledging a third of its latest fund to the sector plus 0 million for later-stage, less risky cleantech startups.

While it’s not unusual for partners at venture firms to donate funds to support candidates and parties (read: Why Cleantech Investors Love and Back Obama), we can expect campaign contributions from cleantech-focused venture capitalists and investors to only increase given such high stakes for cleantech in DC. Kleiner hasn’t had too many successes yet in terms of exits for its cleantech startups, and the Wall Street Journal raises the question of the connection between a recently promised loan to Kleiner-backed Fisker Automotive and Kleiner investor Al Gore. The DOE tells the WSJ that Gore had no influence on Fisker’s application, but Gore’s involvement couldn’t have hurt the company’s prospects.

Lobbyists are already starting to make a major difference when it comes to aiding a startup or sector to grab federal aid. For example, lobbying dollars spent by the backers of three-wheel electric vehicle maker Aptera, succeeded in getting some lawmakers to reconsider the definition of an electric car to include three-wheeled vehicles, which could make them eligible for the government’s loan program.

It’s unclear yet if either Fisker or Aptera are demonstrating any kind of breakthrough innovation, and neither is yet producing vehicles. Aptera has delayed its production to the end of the year, and Fisker pledges to use its loan to move into production of its first car and start on development of its second. But the situation clearly puts the DOE in the position of picking which company has the best technology and prospects — something it’s probably ill-equipped to do.

The other “wow” figure comes courtesy of the smart grid stimulus, which we’ve been tracking here. In another article the Wall Street Journal says that there’s been 570 applications so far from utilities asking for .6 billion in smart-grid funds. There’s only .5 billion available, so that’s more than three times what’s available.

Because there’s so much competition for these funds, I suspect that the most important factor in getting these funds is how well-versed the company is with the stimulus application process. Many leaders in the smart grid industry are very concerned about putting “well-meaning bureaucrats” in charge of choosing technology leaders. Some execs are even predicting that lawsuits will follow the awarding of the funds, because of misplaced funds.

At the end of the day the amount of funds that the DOE is allocating for cleantech is so high, compared to private investment, that the ability of a startup to get these funds has become more important than the company’s innovation potential itself. Kleiner saw the writing on the wall when it hired Al Gore in the first place, and until the government funds are allocated, connections, lobbying efforts and who you know in Washington will continue to steer the industry.

Image courtesy of Flickr.


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Clothes Dryers Meet the Smart Grid, Courtesy of Whirlpool

Monday, September 28th, 2009

whirlpooldryerLarge manufacturers have been tinkering with smart appliances — dishwashers, microwaves and other devices embedded with communications technology — for years. During the height of the dot-com bubble, connected appliances saw renewed hype, with announcements like that of Sun Microsystems, whose CEO Scott McNealy paired a tablet PC with a Whirlpool fridge. But with the emergence of the smart grid, Whirlpool, as well as other appliance makers, finally seems to be taking some concrete steps toward commercializing networked appliances. Whirlpool said this morning that it plans to produce 1 million smart clothes dryers by the end of 2011.

Whirlpool has already pledged to be able to connect all of its appliances to the smart grid by 2015, but this latest production pledge suggests the company is seeking to move even more quickly. As the Wall Street Journal points out, 1 million dryers in 2011 will account for a quarter of Whirlpool’s expected production. GE plans to soon start selling a smart water heater that can reduce energy consumption by half compared to a traditional heat pump.

Like other smart appliances, Whirlpool’s smart dryers will react to a signal from the utility’s smart grid that will tell it to power down during times of peak energy use (right after work when everyone comes home, for example, or during a mid-summer day when air conditioning is on full blast) in exchange for a lower monthly energy bill. Whirlpool says the savings from the smart dryer (if your utility has variable pricing) would be on the order of – per year.

With such modest savings, Whirlpool won’t be able to make those dryers too much more expensive than non-smart dryers if it wants to sell a lot of them. The Wall Street Journal notes that smart appliances “aren’t expected to be priced much higher than regular EnergyStar products.”

A company like Whirlpool is interested in smart appliances for a few reasons. First, any excuse to convince consumers to buy new products in this economy is being embraced by appliance makers. Second, adding digital intelligence and using low-cost chips and cheap wireless or powerline connections won’t be that expensive for appliance makers.

But a bigger draw is that the smart grid is finally getting significant attention and funding from the federal government — and smart appliances will play an important role in that buildout. Whirlpool says that the development of smart grid standards for the pricing signal that utilities will send to smart appliances (see our 5 Next Steps for Smart Grid Standards) is playing a major role in its aggressive commercialization timetable. Expect to see more announcements from big manufacturers that are starting to feel more comfortable with this technology as the standards mature.

At the end of the day, most consumers won’t want to play an active role in managing the energy consumption of their appliances, so machines and software that will do the job for them will be a necessity.


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5 Next Steps for Smart Grid Standards

Monday, September 28th, 2009

smartgridnextstepsIn a crucial step for the smart grid industry, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its smart grid standards road map last week, which revealed close to 80 standards that will serve as the building blocks for the nascent industry. OK, cool…so now what? The 90-page plan is actually just a very early step in the smart grid standardization process. Here are five more steps that need to happen to put the industry on the right path.

1. Certification and Testing: Standards on their own aren’t sufficient, explains the road map — “A testing and certification regime is essential.” In other words, after the proper standards are identified, the industry needs to have a process through which hardware and software are proven to be compatible and based on the individual standards.

Certification and testing groups are common in the Internet and telecom industries. For example, the Wi-Fi Alliance certifies Wi-Fi equipment based on the 802.11 standard to make sure that all wireless gear that says it’s using Wi-Fi is actually based on that industry standard. NIST says it has started work on developing an overall framework for testing and
certification and plans to initiate steps toward implementing that framework in 2010. That development process will include looking at the current organizations that already certify and test gear in the energy and IT industries.

2. Public Comment Period: Now that this initial draft of the smart grid standards road map has been released, the public has 30 days to comment on it and the standards still under consideration. While the road map identifies 77 smart grid standards (31 official standards and 46 still under review), the report notes that there will be hundreds of standards that will eventually guide the industry. In particular, some in the industry have been concerned that some of the 46 standards that were placed on the “under consideration” list for the road map are actually very crucial for the industry. But given the hurried pace and condensed time line of the process, we’re expecting the important industry standards to make it onto the official list eventually.

3. How to Make Energy Info Available to Consumers: The report notes that given that public utility commissions in California and Texas are mandating that consumers have access to their energy information by 2010, a standard format and method for displaying and storing this data are needed quickly. A standard to guide energy information, making sure the data is easy to read and access, could potentially help consumers curb their energy consumption habits more effectively. In the road map, NIST declared that an energy information standard is one of the important areas that needs an action plan, and it expects to create a definition for the standard by October 2009 and an initial specification of the standard by January 2010.

4. Smart Grid Security: Because increasing the complexity, the amount of connections, the number of entry points, and the digital intelligence of the power grid can cause more vulnerabilities, NIST has decided to approach security with additional groups and frameworks. NIST has established the Smart Grid Cyber Security Coordination Task Group, which has over 200 members and is responsible for helping create the NISTIR 7,628 Smart Grid Cyber Security Strategy and Requirements, a 200-page document that is supposed to be available before the end of 2009. The document, which will also under go a public comment period, will look at the risks, definitions and strategies to combat smart grid vulnerabilities.

5. Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Panel: The recently published road map is Phase I of NIST’s three-phase smart grid standards plan. Phase II involves creating an interoperability standards panel, which NIST says will be developed before the end of 2009. NIST says the panel will be responsible for delivering “a more permanent process with stakeholder representation to support the ongoing evolution of the Smart Grid Interoperability Framework.” The group will find and work on holes in the standards framework and help keep the standards updated.

Image courtesy of Flickr creative commons.


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Energy Bill Update: Senate Version Coming This Week, But Pessimism Remains

Monday, September 28th, 2009

solargeneric1The most important U.S. energy legislation, which will put a price on carbon emissions, could be introduced in the Senate as early as Wednesday of this week. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and California Sen. Barbara Boxer plan to introduce a version of the energy bill into the Senate that will look very similar to legislation the House passed back in June, according to Reuters, which quoted anonymous sources.

But despite the likely introduction of the bill this week, many policy watchers aren’t optimistic that it will pass the Senate and get signed into law before the international negotiations in Copenhagen in early December. The Senate has other issues it’s focusing on like health care, which as the Houston Chronicle notes, is being given a higher priority by “top Democratic leaders.”

Republicans as well as some conservative Democrats in the Senate also appear to be unified in opposition against an energy bill in this economic climate. If the Senate legislation looks similar to the House version, we can expect significant opposition to it, as well as a drawn-out negotiation process.

But the rub is that if the U.S. doesn’t pass this climate legislation in 2009 and before the international climate negotiations, which kick off Dec. 7, the negotiations will be seriously negatively effected. While John Holdren, White House science and technology director, tried to downplay to a group of reporters last week the effect of not passing the bill in time for Copenhagen, the situation is clearly urgent. As Al Gore explained last week at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York, the success of Copenhagen hinges on the Senate’s progress on legislation that would limit the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. “The road to Copenhagen goes through the U.S. Senate,” Gore said.

Without U.S. legislation that puts a price on carbon, Copenhagen won’t have the teeth that many were hoping it would. European leaders are already upset. The European Union’s ambassador to the U.S., John Bruton, recently accused the Senate of “dragging its feet” and threatening the international negotiations. If the Senate doesn’t act on the energy bill within 2009, it “would open the United States to the charge that it does not take its international commitments seriously, and that these commitments will always take second place to domestic politics,” Bruton told the Wall Street Journal. Harsh, but true.


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Earth2Tech Week in Review

Monday, September 28th, 2009

The week of A123Systems: A123Systems upped its estimated share price on Tuesday, and then ended up pricing its shares even higher late Wednesday for its Thursday morning Nasdaq debut. At the end of the day on Thursday the battery maker saw its share price jump by 50 percent.

Earth2Tech’s Guide to Car 2.0: Everything you ever wanted to know about the future of connected vehicles.

Smart Grid Standards!: Close to 80 standards for the smart grid were revealed on Thursday, largely drawing praise from the industry.

Top 5 Tips for Cleantech Startups Headed to Washington: While spending time in D.C. can certainly bring rewards, once there it’s easy to spend tons of cash without much to show for it. Here’s our list of the top 5 things startups should know before hopping on a plane to Washington.

Fisker Grabs DOE Loan for Project Nina: Just as Kleiner Perkins investor and former Oracle president Ray Lane let slip last week, electric vehicle startup Fisker had some big news this week about how it will build a ,000 plug-in hybrid vehicle: the Department of Energy and a 8.7 million loan. Fisker will use the loan to help it both build its first plug-in car, the Fisker Karma, and start working on “Project Nina,” a plug-in hybrid car that it plans to build in the United States and manufacture at a volume of 75,000 to 100,000 per year starting in 2012.

Silver Spring Buys Greenbox: Smart grid networking company Silver Spring Networks announced that it plans to buy Greenbox Technology, a 2-year-old startup founded by the creators of the well-known interactive web technology Flash, which has built software to measure a home’s energy consumption.


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Crossing Diesels with Plug-In Hybrids: Good or Bad Idea?

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Volvo V70_PHEV_dieselDiesels and hybrid-electric cars have often been posed as competitors racing to capture the green-automotive market. Diesels are more popular in Europe, while hybrids are more popular in the United States. Both have their advantages and disadvantages: diesels can get impressive fuel economy without complicated drivetrains (providing a cost advantage over hybrids today), while plug-in hybrids bundled with a renewable energy-powered grid can be even cleaner.

But now, it looks like these competitors are coming together. Volvo Car Corp. announced Friday that it plans to bring a diesel plug-in hybrid to the market by 2012. The news comes after Peugeot earlier this month unveiled a diesel PHEV minicar that it plans to bring to the market next year, and BMW also showed off a sporty diesel PHEV concept car at the Frankfurt auto show. While companies have been tinkering with the concept for some time, it looks like diesel PHEVs are finally starting to gain some traction.

It’s an exciting idea. First of all, diesel fuel packs 10-20 percent more energy per gallon than gasoline, according to Fusel, a site that advocates running diesel engines on vegetable oil. That higher energy content, combined with some engine advantages, means modern diesel cars can get about 40 percent more miles per gallon than their gasoline counterparts, according to the site.

With that kind of diesel fuel economy, it means the new crop of clean diesels, such as the Volkswagen Jetta TDI, achieves similar fuel economy to hybrids like the Toyota Prius without a complex drivetrain, according to AutoblogGreen. On top of that, advocates say diesels are more fun to drive, because they deliver more torque. Perhaps the most important factor to consumers: diesels often cost less than hybrids. According to an Edmunds comparison earlier this year, the 2009 Jetta TDI cost ,890, compared with ,933 for the Prius. And plug-in hybrids are expected to cost even more.

But diesels also emit more particulates than gasoline, and while new technologies have enabled companies to meet strict U.S. standards for particulates, those technologies cost money. Diesels also have an image problem. In the United States, many people still think of diesel as the “loud, smoke-belching beast” they remember from the 1970s, as this Edmunds.com article puts it, even though they have changed dramatically.

A marriage of diesel and plug-in hybrid technology could produce a wonder child that brings out the best of both technologies, boosting fuel economies to their highest levels yet while avoiding the range issues of pure electric vehicles. An electric motor could help diesels easily meet even the strictest potential particulate standards being considered today, while a diesel engine could boost the fuel economy of a PHEV.

But some think that the match could also produce a monster. Adding the technologies together could result in an even more complex drivetrain that ends up being far more expensive than its worth. And it could still have trouble winning diesel converts in the United States. We’ll be waiting with our fingers crossed to see what automakers produce. What do you think?


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Thanks to Our Earth2Tech Sponsors!

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Thanks to our Earth2Tech sponsors, Dice.com.

Interested in sponsoring Earth2Tech? Contact Nick Basso and Paul Irving at sales@gigaom.com.

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The Algae Fuel Backlash: Here Come the Skeptics

Monday, September 28th, 2009

algaefuel2Judging from the flurry of venture-capital deals, big oil company investments, and attention from politicians on startups creating biofuels from algae, it might seem like the world has fallen in love with the technology to power vehicles with pond scum. But after all of the algae euphoria this summer, we’ve started seeing a few signs of an algae fuel backlash, with several prominent investors publicly questioning the economics of algae fuel.

At the AlwaysOn’s GoingGreen conference, outspoken cleantech investor Vinod Khosla said his firm has aggressively been looking at algae technologies, but hasn’t found one viable plan after looking at “maybe two dozen.” “The economics of algae don’t seem to work,” he said.
(You can watch the video here by clicking on “Renewables at Scale.”)

In contrast, Khosla has been investing millions into biofuels made from cellulosic biomass. His sentiments also seem to be a change from the rhetoric just last year, when Khosla said at the Algae Biomass Summit that algae could “be a solution” and play a significant role in replacing oil.

Khosla isn’t the only one warning against too much optimism where algae fuel is concerned. At the EmTech conference this week, Jim Matheson, a general partner at Flagship Ventures, said he doesn’t think the costs calculate out either. “We just don’t believe in the economics,” he said, and added that he isn’t sure that “algae is going to come down the cost curve,” according to Technology Review.

At the same event, Technology Review also reported that David Eyton, head of research and technology at BP, which has invested in algae startups Synthetic Genomics and Martek Biosciences, questioned the viability of different types of algae technology, and more specifically the kind that Exxon Mobil recently invested 0 million in. “We don’t think that [technology] will ever reach the kind of cost or supply that we think people are prepared to pay,” he said.

Is the algae-fuel backlash snowballing into a full-on trend? Well, algae has always had its skeptics. As far back as three years ago, companies like Imperium Renewables were stating that producing significant amounts of algae for biodiesel was further away than cellulosic ethanol. “It’s not about whether algae can produce oil, but about whether it can meet a standard quantity needed for fuel,” then-CEO Martin Tobias said at ThinkEquity’s Greentech Summit in San Francisco back then. “It’s going to take longer than anyone wants to say at an investor’s conference.”

Nobody so far has been able to produce algae cost competitively in large quantities, and – in spite of all the promising ideas — it’s still unclear whether that will happen. Matt Horton, CEO of Propel and a principal at @Ventures, said his view of algae hasn’t changed in the last few years. “It’s one of the most promising opportunities in the liquid fuels arena, but the timelines for true commercialization are still years down the road,” he said. It’s tough for a company like Propel to work with algae companies at this point because it’s difficult to predict – with any certainty – when algae-based fuels might realistically be delivered.

When a technology like algae fuel gets as much attention as it has this summer — with politicians visiting algae fuel startups on a weekly basis — it becomes an easy target for the skeptics. What the industry needs right now is less hype and more proof that the pond scum can really come down in cost to reach mass commercialization.

Image courtesy of NREL.


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SG Biofuels: Amasses World’s Largest Jatropha Library, Aims For $1/Gallon Oil

Monday, September 28th, 2009

SGB_logoIn the rush to grow energy crops for producing alternative fuels, jatropha has often been heralded as the most promising because it can be grown on marginal land. But so far jatropha hasn’t lived up to the hype — requiring too much water and producing too little yield — prompting some early investors, like oil giant BP, to give up on the crop. But a young Encinitas, Calif.-based startup, SG Biofuels, says the problem with these early efforts was that they put the cart before the horse.

The firm has spent the last three and a half years amassing what it says is the largest and most diverse library of jatropha genetic material in the world. The team scoured India, Southeast Asia, and most importantly Central America, the native home of the shrub, to build the firm’s library. “This is the foundation for any effective crop improvement program, and we were shocked that no one had done that,” SG Biofuels CEO Kirk Haney told us. “That is step one, but many jumped to step five by putting [jatropha] in the ground and crossing their fingers.” 

SG Biofuels scientists are applying breeding techniques and genetic engineering to this pool of jatropha material to produce superior strains that could be harvested for oil. That oil could then be processed into a variety of bio-based products, including biodiesel and feedstock substitutes for the petrochemical and jet fuel industries. 

Besides the library, Haney said the firm’s other advantage over competing biofuel companies is that it’s focused on doing a few things well and not spreading itself out too far along the value chain. Despite its name, SG Biofuels has no intention in the near term to extract oil or process it into products itself; that would be done by growers and energy outfits. Instead, the startup aims to develop superior strains and then provide services to plantations for growing their seeds.

SG Biofuels has already had some success. It’s identified strains that can grow in higher elevations and colder climates than initially thought possible. The company says its jatropha crop could already produce oil at .50 per gallon (before refining), if at commercial scale, and Haney predicts that the cost will drop to less than per gallon within the next two years with the release its first commercial product.  At that price, SG Biofuels’ jatropha would yield oil that is cost-competitive with petroleum while still offering growers a healthy margin, Haney says.

But biodiesel, while only part of the startup’s target market, has been more bust than boom as of late, regardless of the feedstock. And SG Biofuels isn’t alone in its attempts to genetically improve jatropha. La Jolla, Calif.-based Synthetic Genomics is partnering with Malaysia’s Asiatic Centre for Genome Technology to modify existing varieties of the shrub and increase yield, oil quality and disease tolerance. The partnership announced in May said that it was the first to complete the sequence of the jatropha genome. And BP’s former partner, London-based D1 Oils, is still in the business of improving and growing jatropha. 

SG Biofuels has so far been financed by founders and friends, raising funds “in the millions” of dollars but less than million, Haney says. The company hopes to raise its first institutional round in the first quarter of next year.


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Steve Jobs Seeks to Remake Carbon Accounting via A Greener Apple

Monday, September 28th, 2009

greenappleLeave it to Steve Jobs to use Apple’s carbon footprint disclosure as a way to disrupt the very way that carbon footprint calculations for products are made. Like Jobs does with all other aspects of Apple, he’s launched a major green effort, but done it in his own way, while maintaining control over his own brand. In one of the only interviews Jobs has given in recent weeks, he explained to Business Week how he wants to change the way the industry calculates companies’ environmental records.

For the first time Apple has now divulged its carbon footprint: 10.2 million tons of carbon emissions annually. That’s significantly larger than competitors HP (8.4 million tons) and Dell (471,000 tons). But Apple’s figure takes into account the carbon emitted when consumers use its products, as well as the carbon emissions from product manufacturing. Apple’s competitors don’t often take into account product use, or emissions from manufacturing.

Jobs emphasizes in the Business Week article that the carbon footprint of its operations is far less important than the carbon footprint of its products. This very issue has drawn criticism for companies like Dell in the past, which skeptics claim neglects emissions from its products. Jobs tells Business Week:

A lot of companies publish how green their building is, but it doesn’t matter if you’re shipping millions of power-hungry products with toxic chemicals in them. . . It’s like asking a cigarette company how green their office is.

On this point I completely agree and I think that Apple’s announcement will help get competitors like Dell and HP to offer more low-energy products and gadgets with less toxic chemicals. But of course companies want to tweak these types of processes to best reflect their own records.

I thought it was also particularly interesting that Jobs was so peeved about all the criticism that Green Peace and others have hurled at Apple (APPL). Job’s passion — and what Apple excels at over every other consumer electronics and computing company in the industry — is maintaining obsessive control over its brand. So having third parties like Green Peace take control over, and tarnish, the company’s image in this area, particularly given that green has become increasingly “cool” over the past couple of years, was clearly a very big deal to Jobs.


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Food Supply Worries of an Agricultural Scientist, Part 3: Climate Change

Monday, September 28th, 2009


a picture of drought in Java

I’ll come back to the Mycotoxin issue soon.  Instead, I’ll talk today about my serious worries about Climate Change.  

People involved in world agriculture have no patience with the supposed “debate” about climate change.  We are already seeing the effects, and the projections for the future are not encouraging.  The most troubling feature of this phenomenon (and one that occurs even if you don’t believe that it is human-driven) is that we are facing increasing variation in climatic events.  The yearly changes in average temperature or even annual rainfall may not be dramatic, but what we are anticipating is that there will be more extreme weather events.  Climate averages are not what matters for crop production - Variation is.  A few days of intense rain or heat at the wrong time can devastate a crop.  A few weeks of drought can do the same.  A single hail or frost event can make all the difference in what a farmer can harvest.  We have always had those risks for farming and only long term data will demonstrate whether there has been an increasing trend as is predicted.  For instance, It isn’t possible yet to say that the current, extended drought in Australia is caused by elevated greenhouse gasses, but some day we will know whether it was by looking back historically.  Of course that will be too late.  Our actions have to come now.  The other huge threat from climate change is that water supplies will be more limiting in many areas that are irrigated today.  Though that area is much smaller than rain-fed areas, it is very important to the food supply.

Some have predicted that “Global warming” and elevated CO2 will boost crop production in certain areas.  There might be some occasions where higher temperatures will enhance some yields in normally cold areas, but if the warmth comes with other extreme weather events, the benefits will be diminished.  It also turns out that plants can’t really take full advantage of high CO2 levels.  Basically,  there is no real “up-side” of climate change for farming.

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B.S. And Organic Marketing – Figuratively and Literally

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Some cows at an Organic dairy

The large-scale Organic dairy cooperative, “Organic Valley” has just sunk to a new low in the practice of “I will market against my farmer neighbors by stoking consumer’s fears.” They announced that they have launched an on-line calculator that is supposed to show you how much pesticide and fertilizer use is avoided when you buy their products.  The news release essentially boils down to the message, “buy our products or you will probably die!”  It also essentially accuses the 97.5% of us who don’t buy Organic of destroying the planet.

When talking about pesticides the press report says: “For adults, exposure through diet has been linked to infertility, Parkinson’s, testicular cancer, birth defects and much more. More than one million children in America age five and under ingest at least 15 pesticides daily. Early exposures are suspected in the sharp rise in health problems including autism, obesity, asthma, brain cancer and other childhood cancers.”  This broad-brush assertion is misleading on so many levels that it is hard to know where to start.  I’m not saying that there have never been any health issues with any pesticide anywhere, but we also have sufficient food in part because of pesticides.  Though many people don’t know it, there are pesticides used on organic crops as well.  Actually, the EPA has done a very good job of regulating pesticide use over the years so that people don’t need to be frightened about their food.

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Green Talk Radio: Smaller Homes with Shay Salomon

Monday, September 28th, 2009

GreenTalk Radio

Shay SolomonSean Daily, Green Living Ideas‘ Editor-In-Chief, discusses the topic of the smaller homes living movement, and how downsizing helps you go green with Shay Solomon, author of Little House on a Small Planet and Co-Founder of The Small House Society.

[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]

Click Play Below,Right-Click and Choose Save Link/Target As.. to Download Podcast in MP3 FormatorSubscribe to Podcast via iTunes

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Developing Door County: Preserving a sense of place

Monday, September 28th, 2009

How does a community develop when preserving a sense of place is essential to the long-term prosperity and quality of life for those who reside there?

When development starts taking on the “more is better” mantra, some communities opt to take a breather, declaring a moratorium on development until county and municipalities can get a handle on what its residents want and what the environment can handle. That’s exactly what almost happened in 1996 in Wisconsin’s Door County, one of the most scenic and alluring places in the state with over 300 miles of scenic shoreline.  The then Door County Chamber of Commerce called for a development moratorium for all townships (except the City of Sturgeon Bay) in Door County until careful study was made as to exactly how new large-scale construction development would impact the quality of life for all those who reside in the county.  Surprisingly, it never gained traction, and the initiative died.

Yet years later, on a recent trip with my family and friends, we savored an authentic “fish boil” prepared with white fish caught just off the tip of the peninsula, hiked in one of the many state parks, sampled plenty of Door County’s famous cherry juice and pie, and meandered through postcard perfect small towns with names like Fish Creek, Sister Bay and Baileys Harbor.  As a credit to its natural beauty and cultural richness, the county was among the original pilot communities for Travel Green Wisconsin, having earned somewhat of a reputation for being green before green was the thing to be.

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Conservation International Teams Up with Starbucks, Dell to Launch Team Earth (video)

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Conservation International spear heads Team Earth to address climate change.

I am a big fan of Conservation International (CI) and have been for ten years ever since I worked with the NGO during my previous life at a multinational corporation.  I admire CI’s collaborative approach by accepting the world’s largest corporations as part of the environmental solution and not just the source of the problem.  Realizing the importance of the private sector, CI created the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB) partnering with such companies as Starbucks, McDonald’s and Wal-Mart.

CELB’s mission is to leverage the power and reach of corporations to “improve human livelihoods through: innovative business practices that reduce companies’ ecological footprint, strategic investments in conservation opportunities and dynamic communications campaigns that engage consumers and employees worldwide to take action in their everyday lives.”

As part of their progressive communications campaign, CI recognized the influence and reach of social networking and social media.  And now, they are set to launch a groundbreaking tool designed to catalyze personal and collective action via the connective power of the web.  Are you ready for “Team Earth”?

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High Tech Airships Making a Comeback

Monday, September 28th, 2009

airshipAirships are making a comeback with the US military, which could be good news for civilian applications. The military has the deep pockets for research and development, but then, once these ideas are worked out, civilian applications often follow along. So it is for those reasons, and not military boosterism, that we are excited to see that the US Army is planning to deploy an unmanned airship called the LEMV which can spend up to 3 weeks at an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,100 m) with a 2,500 pound (1,134 kg) payload of surveilance equipment by the middle of 2011.

LEMV (Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle) is a hybrid airship which gets most, but not all of its lift from the buoyant volume of the vehicle. 20% of the lift, however, comes from the aerodynamic shape of the craft and from its thrusters. The LEMV is capable of a much longer period of continuous operation than other contemporary unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

The attached video shows trial flights of the Lockheed Martin P-791 prototype which, at 125 feet (38 m) long, was about half the size of the proposed LEMV. The initial Army deployment of the LEMV is to be in Afghanistan. But research applications and disaster relief are just two of the more beneficial uses this technology could be used for in the near future.

via: Slashdot and Gizmodo

 

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Take a Climate Change Tour on Google Earth

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Ahead of the Climate Change Convention in Copenhagen (a.k.a. COP15), Google Earth is launching a series of layers that allow users to look at possible future climate scenarios depending on our actions now.  One new layer is a guided tour of potential climate change effects narrated by none other than Al Gore.

The other layers show climate projections, including temperature and precipation changes, in a low emissions scenario and a high emissions scenario.  In the next few weeks, Google plans on adding layers that show solutions for dealing with these changes.

In addition to these new layers, Google has also launched their own YouTube channel for COP15.  Users can submit questions and opinions, and the highest rated of those will be broadcast at the conference and during the COP15 CNN/YouTube debate in December.

 

Read Article: Take a Climate Change Tour on Google Earth

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Juice Up Your Roadster for Free!

Monday, September 28th, 2009

roadster-charge
For the next few months, Tesla Roadster owners can charge their battery for free along California’s Highway 101.  Five charging stations between San Francisco and Los Angeles have been installed by SolarCity.  Though they are currently only compatible with Roadsters, universal plugs are on their way in the next few months, making Highway 101 an electric highway.

The charging stations are located at Rabobank parking lots in Salinas, Atascadero, Santa Maria and Goleta, and one station is located in a parking garage in San Luis Obispo.  The Santa Maria station is powered by a 30 kW solar array, while the rest are grid-powered.

While the stations are only able to service Roadsters, the electricity will be free, but once they’re outfitted with universal plugs, the charge will come at a cost.  The stations are fast-charging with 240V, 70 amps and a charge-time of three and half hours for the Roadster.

via Inhabitat

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Going to San Jose? Bring Your Own Shopping Bag

Monday, September 28th, 2009

plastic-bags
Reusable shopping bags have become ubiquitous.  They’re available at almost every retail store you walk into, but the majority of Americans still aren’t using them.  That may change soon as more and more cities are taking away the choice and making them a necessity.

On Tuesday, the City of San Jose voted to place a ban on all plastic and paper bags at stores.

The ban won’t go into effect until 2011 – after a lengthy environmental review of its impact.  This will allow all retailers and consumers to become prepared in time.  For stores who still want to offer shoppers a one-time use option, bags made from at least 40 percent recycled materials can be made available, but at a fee.

Other cities, like San Francisco, have banned plastic bags or levied a tax on them, but San Jose is the first to take action on paper ones.  China’s ban on plastic bags, while not strictly adhered to, still resulted in 40 billion less bags being used and cut their petroleum use by 1.6 million tons.

We might see more cities inacting these types of bans very soon. It seems plastic bags are starting to go the way of the incandescent bulb.  In June, the U.N.’s Environment Program Chief called for a global ban on plastic bag production.

via Treehugger

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EPA Acknowledges ‘Uncertainties’ In Biofuel Analyses

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, responding to criticism from a key Democratic senator, acknowledged Wednesday that a recent peer review of the agency’s methods for calculating lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels…

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Wind Power Lines Being Eyed In New England, New York

Monday, September 28th, 2009

A consortium of New England utilities is considering building a major new power line to bring promising wind energy resources in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to down-state markets, and a similar wind-oriented transmission project is under discussion for…

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