Buy a Honda, kill a polar bear

Updates added at end of post.

When it comes to fighting global warming, Honda has rolled out the worst car on the planet: the new Clarity.

This is the first auto that runs on fuel cells ever offered to consumers. As Honda's site explains,

Fuel cells produce electricity that can be used as a clean alternative to gasoline. The fuel cell stack in the FCX Clarity converts hydrogen(H2) and oxygen (O2) into electricity. Learn more about How Fuel Cells Work.

As Honda's TV ads point out, the only exhaust from the Clarity is water vapor. The Clarity is obviously designed to capture the market of car buyers who think that gasoline engines are bad things for the environment because they emit carbon dioxide. So the Clarity, emitting only simple water vapor, must be magnitudes better at rolling back global warming, yes?

Problem is, when it comes to global warming, water vapor is enemy number one: "Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect."

So buy a Clarity and kill the polar bears!

read the rest! »

Eco hypocrisy, chapter 2

Chapter 1 is here.

Today's greenwash example: ecotourism, defined by Wikipedia thus.

Ecotourism, also known as ecological tourism, is a form of tourism that appeals to ecologically and socially conscious individuals. Generally speaking, ecotourism focuses on volunteering, personal growth, and learning new ways to live on the planet. It typically involves travel to destinations where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions.

So places "where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions" shall now be overrun with tourists who need transportation, lodging, food and all manner of daily life support in places where no such accommodations already exist for tourists. And once the locals find out how much money the environmentally sensitive ecotourists will pay for the privilege of ruining the formerly pristine areas, why, the locals will build new roads, new hotels, new restaurants (serving, no doubt, nothing but lentils and soy) and communicatons infrastructure - because what the heck in the point in visiting a place "where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions" if you can't email photos home of yourself standing in the midst of it?

read the rest! »

Russia's Oil Output, and Peak Oil

Peak Oil theory doesn't say we're about to run out of oil. It says that the remaining oil will be harder to find, more expensive to produce, and/or more difficult to extract for physical and political reasons. The end result is slower growth that doesn't keep up with spiking demand, and eventually leads to lower absolute total production.

Lukoil's Vice-Chair Lukoil's Leonid Fedun got a lot pf attention when he said that Russia's production was set to decline soon, as highly-productive fields in Siberia are slowly being exhausted and the search is driven to eastern Siberia's untapped and remote regions. He added that the current total of 10 billion barrels per year may be the highest production level he sees in his lifetime, and said $1 trillion would have to be spent on developing new reserves if current output levels were to be maintained. That development would have to go far beyond wells and exploration - Russia also has serious weaknesses in terms of pipelines and transport infrastructure that would need to be addressed.

With many forecasts predicting that liquid fuel demand world wide will rise from the present 80 million barrels per day to about 100 million barrels a day by 2015, this wasn't good news. Predictably, oil markets spiked.

These production issues can, of course, be magnified by poor policy...

read the rest! »

Peak Oil & Energy Policy: Rep. Rocoe Bartlett Briefing

There aren't that many scientists in Congress. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett [R-MD-6] is one. I know him best as the senior Republican in the House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces (read: Navy and Marines) subcommittee. One of the other areas he's focused on, however, is energy policy.

Rep. Bartlett has argued for the "Peak Oil" theory for some time now. Boiled down to its barest essentials, that theory states that global production is at or approaching a peak, from which it will likely drop, while the same is not happening to demand. Naturally, there are lots of arguments about this, back and forth. It's a very consequential argument in terms of energy policy, and is bleeding into defense policy as well.

If this topic interests you at all, I'd recommend watching Rep. Bartlett's Deb 28/08 Peak Oil speech in Congress, complete with charts and other presentation material. The delivery isn't flashy - he'll never run for President. The content is very worthwhile, however, as he makes a case any intelligent viewer can understand, with full reference to alternative predictions, tar sands and oil shales, alternative energy options, and multiple studies that include the US Army Engineering Corps, the Congressional GAO, oil firms, financial institutions, et. al. Whether you agree or disagree in the end, you'll have heard a very strong presentation of the Peak Oil argument.

Speech page, incl: Video & audio | Transcript [PDF] | Full-size slides [PDF].

The 500 mpg car

I wrote last Friday (Can we cash-starve the oil tyrannies? Probably not) about whether the United States could starve Saudi-funded terrorism by eliminating the petrodollars the Saudis earn from selling us 1.53 million barrels of oil per day. At $90 per barrel, they earn approximately $137 million every day from American buyers.

We would either have to find another source for that much oil or find ways to reduce our demand equivalently. In fact, both are possible but neither would matter. The Saudis are in the catbird seat since worldwide demand for oil is rising more than fast enough for them to sell all the oil they can pump.

Even so, Saudi petrodollars are source of a great deal of the world's misery, including dollars backchanneled by Saudi princes to al Qaeda or its Islamist allies. Even though the Saudis could replace the American export market fairly easily, we should still reduce our dependence on oil as much as possible. Oil is the most important strategic substance in the world today. As demand rises, it will become more so.

So this post will address whether we can reduce our need for oil enough to substantially decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

read the rest! »

Can we cash-starve Saudi terror funders? Probably not.

The questions are these:

Can we stop or at least enormously reduce the amount of oil we import from countries that are unfriendly or even hostile to the United States?

And if we can, will it matter much to their funding of terrorism?

The short answers: yes to the first question, no to the second.

read the rest! »

...And In 'The World Is Ending' Statistics News...

Here's the problem with making huge public policy decisions based on statistical models:

The global burden of HIV has been overstated, with new surveillance data showing the number of people carrying the AIDS-causing virus is about 6.3 million lower than was estimated last year.

read the rest! »

Personal electrical independence

The day is not here yet, but soon will be, when connecting homes to central power grids will be unnecessary. By "soon" I mean within 20 years. Here's why.

"New Solar Photovoltaic Cell Efficiency Record: 42.8%." Once solar-cell efficiency reaches 50 percent, quite a large amount of electricity can be generated from much smaller areas than at present, making rooftop solar cells powerful enough to supply electricity for the whole home. Fifty percent is the efficiency rate set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at which solar-cell sets become portable enough to be militarily useful for tactical units.

So I think that the day will soon come when solar-cell technology will reach that 50 percent mark and manufacture of such cells will be cheap enough so that roofs of houses may be covered in them. Central grids won't go away, not soon, anyway, because solar roofs will still be more expensive than shingles, but excess electricity from solar-powered homes will be sold to the grid to help provide juice to conventionally-powered homes. Furthermore, businesses use more electricity than homes and even at 50 percent efficiency, solar cells probably won't be able to power businesses in full.

The question is begged, however: what about nighttime or very cloudy days? How will homes be powered then? Aha:

A new type of a room-size battery, however, may be poised to store energy for the nation's vast electric grid almost as easily as a reservoir stockpiles water, transforming the way power is delivered to homes and businesses. Compared with other utility-scale batteries plagued by limited life spans or unwieldy bulk, the sodium-sulfur battery is compact, long-lasting and efficient. ...

American Electric Power (AEP), one of the largest U.S. utilities, has been using a 1.2 megawatt NaS battery in Charleston, W.Va., the past year and plans to install one twice the size elsewhere in the state next year. Dozens of utilities are considering the battery, says Dan Mears, a consultant for NGK Insulators, the Japanese company that makes the devices.

"If you've got these batteries distributed in the neighborhood, you have, in a sense, lots of little power plants," [analyst Stow] Walker says. "The difference between these and diesel generators is these batteries don't need fuel" and don't pollute.

There is no reason that such battery piles couldn't be built into homes themselves, making a home entirely self sufficient for electrical power. But economies of scale would almost certainly mean that homeowners would find it cheaper to tie into a neighborhood battery pile, which would store the combined excess power from home during the day and provide it back at night or other low-solar times. In fact, it's not hard to envision homeowners associations starting electrical co-ops for that purpose. Battery piles, of course, can store electricity not only from solar cells, but from any other generating means. In some parts of the country that could be a boon to wind generation and can even reduce the amount of coal that coal-fired plants use by storing power from peak-generation times.

A final thought: is 50 percent solar cell efficiency high enough to make pure-electric autos self charging? What about hybrids, which use the gasoline engine to recharge their batteries; could they use highly efficient solar cells instead, thus decreasing their use of gasoline? I don't know, but I'm sure some smart people are working on the answers.

Walking away from a very good deal

The Acorn has been a supporter of the India-US nuclear deal as concluded between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush in March 2006. It has argued that for India, the benefits of the deal are worth making some difficult concessions---separating civilian nuclear facilities from military ones, and accepting constraints on the amount of fissile material India needs to produce nuclear weapons. The agreement allows India to retain a dynamic credible nuclear deterrent---although the contours of the deterrence need to change---while ending its costly isolation from the international nuclear power industry. The deal, moreover, is also part of a strategic transformation of relations with the United States mandated by convergence of interests in the geopolitics of the twenty-first century.

The Hyde Act, passed by the US Congress last year, introduced a qualitative change in the letter and spirit of the agreement that negotiators worked so hard to achieve. It has raised several contentious issues, but the most significant one involves linking America's keeping its end of the deal (to supply nuclear technology and fuel for India's civilian nuclear power industry) to India's non-testing of nuclear weapons.

read the rest! »

No Problem? Shell's Patent Application for Oil Shale Extraction

Alfred Donovan, a patent lawyer whose blog covers Royal Dutch Shell, takes a look at the largest patent filing in history. Shell thinks they have a sound method for getting top quality oil out of oil shale rock, which would remain profitable as long as oil stayed above $30/barrel. If it works, it would also be better for the environment than conventional drilling [JK: maybe, maybe not].

If they're right, the US would add a truly vast amount of oil to its reserves. Indeed, the USA accounts for 62% of the world oil shale resources, and USA, Russia and Brazil together account for 86% in terms of shale oil content. Other countries with significant oil shale include, in order, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Morocco, Italy, Jordan and Canada (we're focused on the tar sands, so haven't fully explored), among others. Then there's Israel.

Donovan is something of a gadfly re: Shell, and has been embroiled in a number of activist run-ins with them (gotta say, registering and then winning the rights to royaldutchshellplc.com gets him some points with me). He thinks Shell's technique will work, and notes that Shell has been granted rights to a small patch of shale field in Colorado to make an experimental run with its new method: The Mahogany Research Project.

I certainly hope this one works out for Shell. If not, however, they aren't the only ones putting research dollars into economical processes.

Al Gore's 'Petit Hameau'

Reading about Al Gore's house clicked something into perspective for me.

The basic facts are simple; Gore uses a lot of energy in his 10,000 sf residence. He's invested in energy-efficiency, but his lifestyle is still energy-lavish.

He's not alone; many of the leading advocates of environmental propriety have both a Prius and an Escalade, to make an automotive metaphor. The Prius makes them feel good about themselves, while the Escalade is both roomy, comfortable, powerful, and enough of a status object that it meets the intangible needs that cars also seem to have to meet.

Gore's response is that a) he's done everything he reasonably can to mitigate his energy use, by

1) Gore's family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family's carbon footprint ... a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore's office explains:

What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore's do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

read the rest! »

Mythbusting E85

Note: I invite reader comment for this post and welcome fact and arithmetic checking. Just please stay civil!

E85 is a motor-vehicle fuel consisting of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline by volume. Pure ethanol’s ambient-temperature properties require it to be combined with gasoline to useful as a consumer fuel. Fifteen percent gasoline is the most common mixture.

There are two major drawbacks to using E85. George Will explains one:

Ethanol produces just slightly more energy than it takes to manufacture it. But now that the government is rigging energy markets with mandates, tariffs and subsidies, ethanol production might consume half of next year's corn crop. The price of corn already has doubled in a year. Hence the tortilla turbulence south of the border. Forests will be felled (will fewer trees mean more global warming?) to clear land for growing corn, which requires fertilizer, the manufacture of which requires energy. Oh, my.

In fact, I read not long ago (sorry, no link) in another article that it takes about one gallon of diesel fuel to produce one gallon of ethanol. Diesel is used in ethanol production to clear fields, produce and apply fertilizer, harvest the crop and transport and store it. Because processing the corn into ethanol requires electricity, diesel or some form of fuel oil is likely used to produce the electricity, too, since hydropower is the corn states is pretty rare. Further, E85 can't be piped except for short distances, certainly not state to state.

[A]n ethanol-gasoline mixture can't be piped, because the two ingredients separate, which could cause the fuel to damage a car's engine. Ethanol has to be transported on the road, a much more costly endeavor than sending it through a pipe. ... "'Corn is in the center of the country and gasoline consumers are on the coasts,' he [Dr. Darren Hudson, a professor of agricultural economics at Mississippi State University] said. 'So transportation costs can be quite high -- roughly double the cost of shipping gasoline' or about $1.20 per gallon of ethanol."

Transporting E85 will require diesel fuel and lots of it. That aside, replacing 109 ounces of gasoline per gallon with ethanol results in less usable energy than 128 ounces of of plain gasoline.

read the rest! »

The new global-warming meme

Three days ago, I asked whether global warming was really worse than the alternative, global cooling.

I've always kind of suspected that underlying much of environmentalism is a desire for the impossible: stasis. For the earth will either get warmer or cooler, but it definitely won't stay the same. Even if everyone were to agree that the globe really is warming, can we please see some scientifically-sound documentation that it is worse than the alternative?

Comes now the estimable syndicated columnist, George Will, with a Newsweek piece, entitled, "Inconvenient Kyoto Truths," subtitled, "Was life better when a sheet of ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there?"

Are we sure the climate at this particular moment is exactly right, and that it must be preserved, no matter the cost?

It's a meme, folks! Get aboard! Now, to be fair, Will wrote his column before I posted by essay, given the lead times in the mainstream punditry industry. But, still, it's pretty good company, eh wot? (I mean that Will is keeping . . . .)

House votes to increase foreign oil dependency, punish American poor

ABC News:

WASHINGTON Jan 19, 2007 (AP) - The House rolled back billions of dollars in oil industry subsidies Thursday in what supporters hailed as a new direction in energy policy toward more renewable fuels. Critics said the action would reduce domestic oil production and increase reliance on imports.

Yes, it will. One of the fundamentals of economics is, "That which is subsidized, increases." Likewise, remove the subsidy and its beneficiary will fall. Without arguing here whether oil companies should even get industry-specific subsidies in the first place, if the whole Congress votes to remove them, and the president signs, the economic effect will be to reduce oil companies' financial incentive to explore and pump domestic oil. The reason is that the House's measure targets for deletion exactly the tax breaks that provide incentives for domestic production.

The legislation would impose a "conservation fee" on oil and gas taken from deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico; scrap nearly $6 billion worth of oil industry tax breaks enacted by Congress in recent years; and seek to recoup royalties lost to the government because of an Interior Department error in leases issued in the late 1990s.

What the House, or at least the Members who voted aye, seem not to understand is that the price of petroleum is completely internationalized because the market is, too. If US oil companies can produce oil wholesale cheaper than its retail, or spot market, price on the international market, then they will sell the oil on the market and make a profit. At least the oil company will sell internationally the oil it produces that is excess to its domestic-retail capacity.

read the rest! »

It's All About The Oil...Is It?

I was on the blogger call with Tony Snow and Bret McGurk yesterday, and was actually pretty impressed by them. But the basic truth is that while they knew and acknowledged that we were getting our heads handed to us in Information War, they really didn't strike me as having much of an idea as to what to do about it.

As one aspect, I asked about the report in the Independent (yes, Robert Fisk's paper) that the new Iraqi oil law would both provide shares in national oil revenue to all Iraqis (great thing to do, three years too late), and that it would rely on "Production Sharing Agreements" with US oil companies to exploit the oil - PSA's being a way that a nation might hypothecate it's oil reserves in return for allowing them to be exploited.

There's a bad history with national oil contracts like that in Iraq (and throughout the Middle east, to be honest); in 1925, the British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company had the exclusive franchise - which the British imposed on Amir Faysal (the king they had in turn imposed on Iraq).

read the rest! »

One China policy

President Hu Jintao of China came, saw, signed agreements and left for Islamabad (to sign more agreements). Unfinished and inconclusive, the public debate over India's relations with China relations that preceded his visit will soon die down. In this debate, many of those with any experience actually dealing China on political issues had advised caution. Many of those whose primary experience of China has been through trade and investment advocated closer ties. The oversimplified question on everyone's lips was a cliche: Is China a friend or foe?

That, though, is a wrong question to ask. The inherent anthropomorphism in the framing of this question confuses the issue, for relations between states are not like relations between people.

read the rest! »

Energy Efficiency, Government Regulation, and Thinking Before One Speaks

Kevin Drum writes a piece explaining that California's scores on energy efficiency are a direct product of government regulation, which is a good thing and can lead us all to a better future of less dependence on foreign energy, blah, blah.

Well, maybe. But the California Energy Commission document that Drum is claiming as support was a really bad choice - and the reasons why may be illuminating to some. Coyote Blog utterly demolishes Drum's use of the study, point by point, with arguments that really ought to have been obvious to any educated adult. Arguments like:

read the rest! »

Fuel Costs Biting USAF As It Seeks Alternatives

The rising cost of fuel has received extensive coverage at Defense Industry Daily, and military attention as well. This includes US Air Combat Command (ACC) officials, who are reportedly bracing for a "budget crisis" while looking for future fuel alternatives and simulators to pick up some of the slack.

The USAF reports that it paid about $4.2 billion for petroleum in FY 2005, with JP-8 jet fuel at $1.74/gallon and BP as the #1 fuel provider among many thanks to its lowest-cost bid. That was still almost $1.4 billion more than fiscal 2004, and more than the $3.57 billion spent on petroleum in FY 2005 by the US Army, Navy and Marines combined. Indeed, ACC reportedly faced an FY 2005 shortfall of $825 million in must-pay funds.

The current price reflects a 31% jump to $2.53 per gallon, and there are consequences - especially for training. There are only a few options for getting around these consequences, and other than just paying more money they all involve both significant up-front investment and a waiting period before the full benefits kick in. DID has the coverage...

Superconductors, Nanotech, Electric Ships & the Power Grid

American Superconductor Corporation has received a $1.3 million contract extension for its second generation (2G) high temperature superconductor (HTS) wire from the US Office of Naval Research (ONR), with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This is the 6th contract or contract extension received by American Superconductor for 2G HTS wire development over just the last 10 months; the total dollar amount is approximately $8.1 million within that timeframe.

Superconductivity normally works at temperatures close to absolute zero (-459F/ -273C); "high temperature superconductor" wire has the ability to work in conditions you still wouldn't exactly consider comfortable. Targeted defense applications for 2G HTS wire include ship propulsion electric motors and generators; that area is particularly interesting, and ties into another research effort DID has noticed...

read the rest! »

“Magic Bullet” found! Oil crisis eliminated!

Four days ago I wrote a long post explaining why oil will remain the basis of the American economy for decades to come, namely that there are no ways to replace oil-derived fuels that are technologically, economically and politically possible (all three at the same time) except over a period of decades rather than mere years. Armed Liberal followed up with a different take.

But today I see I must eat a sizable portion of humble pie and admit I was wrong. In fact, a very simple device has already been invented that improves automotive fuel economy by an incredibly amount and which is so cheap it pays itself back in only a few tankfuls of gas or diesel.

Its called the "Tornado Fuel Saver:"

Install the Tornado Fuel Saver fuel saving device in the air-intake of your vehicle for better gas mileage and increased horsepower!

Save Up To 28% On Fuel Increase Horsepower Up To 10%
Easy to install - Takes Less Than 5 Minutes
100% Satisfaction Guaranty - Lifetime Warrantee
Fits Virtually All Makes And Models Of Cars And Trucks
Works On Carborated And Fuel Injected Engines
For Gasoline And Diesel Engines

It's a bitter thing to admit I was so, so wrong, but I'm man enough to swallow this hemlock. I humbly beg your forgiveness for so badly misleading you.

Cutting oil imports will not affect al Qaeda's funding

Well, it's clear that energy and energy policy are hot-button topics. Two days ago I posted, "The Wrong Size Glass," an explanation of why there are no quick, easy or inexpensive way to significantly replace the present ways we produce energy.

Armed Liberal today responded with "The 3% Solution," in which he said he agrees "that replacing oil in one swell foop is somewhere between unlikely and impossible."

Which in fact is exactly the point I was making, but I need to insert a disclaimer about "The Wrong Size Glass." I am neither an engineer nor scientist and the content of my post was almost all quotations from Steven Den Beste's 2002 series. Considering his essays are four years old, I think they've held up very well. I am not so scientifically uneducated that I can't think about the details uncritically, but as I said, I'm not an expert myself.

That being said, Steven's series brings up points that I think need to be addressed by anyone who thinks there is a way to signficantly replace our present forms of energy, especially oil - signficant in Steven's assessment as being 10 percent or more of present, total energy production.

The problem with AL's "three percent solution" is that he imagines things like this:

This idea - substituting minivans for SUV's is a small idea, but there are probably hundreds of them - ideas big enough to have an impact but small enough to be doable without changing the whole world.

So, over the last six years, we've sold about 40 million SUV's (figure roughly 50% of new car sales of 14 million units/ year - not a figure I've checked, but it's close to correct).

So 21 million SUV's (half the number sold) times six years (duration) times 3,000 gallons - we would have saved 58 BILLION gallons of gasoline if everyone who had bought a SUV bought a minivan instead.

Notice the three-card monte trick going on? "If everyone who had bought a SUV bought a minivan." So we can't replace oil "in one fell swoop" but we can replace 100 percent of SUVs with minivans in one fell swoop? Pray, how?

AL, my friend, you claim that magic bullets for energy production are impossible but magic bullets for consumption are easy!

Over time we will be able to garner incremental efficiencies for both production and consumption, but in decades, not mere years. As Steven Den Beste pointed out at length in his 2002 series, "The people who suggest these kinds of [magic-bullet] alternatives don't realize just how much energy we consume, and don't have any idea about the problems of scaling in engineering."

AL's assessment also breaks down by claiming that incremental energy changes in the U.S. will "Slow the rate of investment in jihad by the oil-rich Arab states."

Nope, not by one thin dime.

read the rest! »

The Pentagon's Energy Conversation

DID has covered the Pentagon's increasing focus on energy consumption and conservation as a growing logistics and sustainability issue. Part of that coverage has mentioned "Energy: A Conversation About Our National Addiction" inter-agency events run by the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation and the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, supported by the Cebrowski Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.

Perhaps you couldn't be in Virginia for the events either, but the Cebrowski Insitutute is carrying on its founder's legacy by providing a web site where you can get the presentations, listen to audio recordings, et. al. Their site will continue to be updated, and events to date have included:

• April 24/06: Congressman Roscoe Bartlett [R-MD] and Dr. Robert Hirsch of SAIC: Averting a Liquid Fuels Crisis from "Peak Oil"

• March 27/06: R. James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA: Energy, Security and the Long War of the 21st Century

Gotta confess, I'm more than slightly dubious about the wisdom of recruiting Jeremy Rifkin for the next event, given his track record. Following Rifkin, however, is energy-focused investment banker Matt Simmons - Trent covered his work a while back.

UPDATE: Greg F points us to a Reason Magazine article, which offers a balanced look at the "Peak Oil" question.

E&E's Peak Oil Panel

In the wake of Cicero's "Greater Expectations" observations from his new home in semi-rural New England, I thought I'd throw this out.

Environment & Energy Publishing has a video of a panel at the Sustainable Energy Forum 2006, Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton University, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett [R-MD], author Richard Heinberg and other panelists discuss arguments made by peak oil (Armed Liberal explains | Trent thinks the Saudis may have hit it) skeptics, and point to growing evidence that world production is nearing its apex.

They had a number of good arguments, but by far their weakest moment was when they dismissed points re: Canada's Tar Sands and the USA's oil shales as "changing the definition."

read the rest! »

Greater Expectations

Some of you may know that my family and I recently took up residence in Massachusetts. Left far behind us are cheap burrito lunches, supermarket liquors and the occasional San Andreas tremor. Now our landscape is filled with maples and apple farms that surround our little Cape Cod style house. It's spring here in New England, bursting with blossoms and young leaves. For every large lawn, there seems to be a cardinal on its periphery who is a sentinel to the grass and sky.

Certainly, life here is different. We expected that. But not just because we're Californians transplanted in New England. We also crossed what might arguably be a more precipitous border that crisscrosses many American landscapes. Some forty miles inland from the metropolis, we have planted ourselves in a kind of 'sub-suburban' world that borders on being rural. But not quite rural, no. Among the apple farms and around the Town Forest are homes, some quite palatial. This isn't quite rural, not with tractor mowers, Trader Joe's and Talbots just a few miles away.

read the rest! »

Energy Conservation Moving Up Pentagon's Agenda

DID has covered contracts that begin to illustrate the US military's massive requirement for fuel, and also noted measures like wind power installations, the US Navy's alternative energy projects, R&D efforts like camouflage solar structure surfaces from Konarka, Solar Integrated, et. al., the installation of fuel cells, and more. And how about this solar parking lot? Meanwhile, advanced green technologies like hybrid drive vehicles offer both fuel economy and stealth benefits in combat, a significant plus in the urban warfare scenarios that appear to be such a big part of future wars.

The truth is that the military can't live without fuel, but every gallon of it is both a logistics burden and a financial burden. While some military items cannot realistically be converted, every conservation success or renewable energy conversion within the military's jurisdiction makes it more deployable to the field, and more self-sufficient once there. Now add the fact that diversified "green infrastructure" lowers vulnerability to the kind of "system disruption" attacks one sees in Iraq, and the military/ security benefits become compelling. That means the military will be willing to invest in these technologies even when the dollars and cents case alone may be in question. It's a trend that has already started... and it's about to pick up speed.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) is Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Projection Forces subcommittee. He has been talking about Peak Oil issues [PDF format] for about a year now, and recently discussed a September 2005 Army Corps of Engineers Report entitled "Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations" [PDF format] in the House. Part of its conclusions section notes:

Read the rest at Defense Industry Daily...

New Energy Currents, March 2006: Deep Currents

Peter and I were unable to get together this month's 'New Energy Currents' postings due to various unavoidable professional and academic obligations - including a mind-expanding take-home midterm for my Alternative Energy Resources class, in which I sit in a room with a bunch of engineers and try and do my best impression of being able to understand these science guys when they talk about the mechanical/physical/chemical principles underlying various alternative energy technologies. Interesting for sure, but no fun - I feel really unhappily out of touch when I don't have time for the monthly energy plow.

Fortunately, it's karmically consoling that one of my teachers from that same class, Dr. Klaus Lackner, has just published an excellent paper (with bigshot Jeffrey Sachs), "A Robust Strategy For Sustainable Energy" (PDF) that covers much of the next few years' worth of energy news in one (long) shot. You can read the press release for the report here (via Gary Jones, who has some typically worthy words on this), but the translation into enviro press release-ese doesn't really reflect the breadth of the perspective presented in the full paper, which you can and should check out here [PDF format] if you're at all interested in this issue. The authors themselves sum up their work as follows, emphases added:

read the rest! »

Energy Policy and Markets: 2006-01-10

In an attempt to broaden our coverage of energy news here at Winds, we're splitting off the 'policy' section of our New Energy Currents posting, adding news on private sector initiatives, market trends, and international energy-related relations, and making it a separate post. My good friend, housemate, and soon-to-be Columbia B-school student Peter Wolfgang will be taking the lead on these, and we hope to run both segments more or less concurrently and more or less regularly every month from now on. The format and our methods are very much 'under construction' - please e-mail us at newenergycurrents at gmail dot com with any comments, suggestions, or sources that would improve the quality of these briefings. Here's the first:

• Private Sector Initiatives
• Investment and Mergers
• Domestic Policies
• International Relations

read the rest! »

New Energy Currents: 2006-01-04

It's the first New Energy Currents of 2006, and boy, it's pretty amazing to see how much things have changed in the past year. Look at where we were in January 2005 - struggling with natural gas supply issues, wistfully reading about how much we could be saving with cogeneration over at the Engineer-Poet's place, waiting impatiently for breakthrough hydrogen and solar energy technologies, searching for ways to make biofuels make any economic or environmental sense, worrying about the Putinization of Russia's energy supplies...

Wait, seriously, we've seen and learned a lot in the past year! These winds of change are blowing steadily, if (seemingly) slowly, and it's New Energy Currents' monthly pleasure to help you keep track of the latest news and innovations in energy technology, policy, and markets. Now in two parts - tech today, policy and markets tomorrow or Friday - by John Atkinson and Peter Wolfgang.

• Bio
• Electricity
• Fossil Fuels
• Hydrogen
• Nuclear
• Solar
• Water
• Wind

read the rest! »

New Energy Currents: 2005-12-02

After a two-month hiatus to 'adjust' to some new academic obligations, New Energy Currents is back, and better, with a more robust selection of links and significant expansions in two different directions. First and foremost, I'm happy to announce that this bulletin will now be a collaborative effort between myself and my friend/partner in crime Peter Wolfgang. Second, with the expanded staff will come expanded coverage - we will now run two segments here at Winds, with our regular monthly news on new energy projects and technologies supplemented by a second monthly posting, tentatively titled New Energy Politics and Markets, focusing on domestic and international energy politics as well as domestic and global energy market trends. Please e-mail us at newenergycurrents at gmail.com with any tips and/or suggestions - we'll be back with the new post in two weeks.

Back in the saddle again -

• Bio
• Electricity
• Fossil Fuels
• Geothermal
• Hydrogen
• Nuclear
• Solar
• Water
• Wind

read the rest! »

NEW ENERGY CURRENTS: 2005-09-02

I am speechless/blogless on the unprecedented disaster of Hurricaine Katrina, other than to link again to Instapundit's massive-and-growing list of charities and to offer my prayers, thoughts, and meaningless condolences in the face of all this - I spent two seriously magical, unforgettable days in New Orleans almost exactly two years ago, and will remember it with love.

And it's not just a human tragedy of unspeakable proportions, it's provoking at least a mini-crisis for US gas prices - as noted below, Geoff Styles and Mike Millikin are examining the repercussions for the US energy industry from a variety of angles.

The rest of this post, as usual, is an attempt to provide you with a wide-ranging overview of scientific, commercial, and political developments in the energy industry for the past month - by John Atkinson.

• Bio
• Electricity
• Fossil Fuels
• Hydrogen
• Nuclear
• Solar
• Water
• Wind
• Policy, Etc

read the rest! »

Peak Oil

Speaking of Kleiman, he points out that the futures markets are pricing oil in 2010 at $39/barrel.

There's been a lot of interesting peak oil discussion lately - see this post by the Stephen Levett, the Freakonomics guy. Max Sawicky didn't like it much.

I tend to side with the freaks on this one, though, and let me tell you why.

read the rest! »

New Energy Currents: 2005-08-05

Much like the thank-God-it's-finally-over Energy Bill, New Energy Currents for July is a little late. Hey, it's summer. New Energy Currents is a broad, monthly roundup of new developments in energy science, technology, and policy, by John Atkinson of chiasm.

• Bio
• Electricity
• Fossils
• Hybrids
• Hydrogen
• Nuclear
• Solar
• Water
• Wind
• Policy

read the rest! »

Have the Saudis Hit Peak Oil?

The article I clipped below uses a book by a oil industry insider to back the claim that the Saudis have passed 'peak production' on their main oil fields and, due to their H20 injection/extraction techniques, they will rapidly exhaust what they have left.

I would not be shocked if the following were true, the Saudis lie about nearly everything that is important to them, but it has the feel of environmentalist Mathusalen "I-told-you-so" doomsaying to it. Still, this CV does have me watching closely:

read the rest! »

New Energy Currents: 2005-06-17

This week, debate in the Senate began in earnest on the federal energy bill - and the debate in the US, around the world, and on the internet shows no signs of abating. In a widely cited poll, Yale University researchers found that an overwhelming majority of Americans are worried about dependence on foreign oil (92%) and want government to develop new energy technologies to address it (93%). Apparently, they haven't been reading their Kunstler, or else they'd know that there are no solutions other than the long-overdue destruction of our sinfully consumptive civilization - or maybe they've been reading their Engineer-Poet instead, and know better than to buy into sci-fi catastrophilia.

...Or maybe they've been keeping up with New Energy Currents here at Winds of Change, a broad, monthly roundup of new developments in energy science, technology, and policy. By John Atkinson of chiasm

• Bio
• Electricity
• Fossils
• Nuclear
• Solar
• Wind
• Policy

read the rest! »

Energy Slopes and Peaks

[Update: Kevin answers with a crushing blow via Prudhoe Bay...]

I've been following Kevin Drum's excellent series on 'peak oil' with a lot of interest; I think that Kevin's interest in the strategic issues around energy policy is appropriate and significant.

But I'm less certain that his point - that we're at or near an absolute level of peak oil production, and that an absolute decline in oil produced matched with increasing demand from an industrializing Asia risks severe economic dislocation - stands up.

I'm not an oil economist, but my guess is that as technology improves and prices rise, supplies do move upward. And we don't eat oil. Economic efficiency - the unit of productivity per BTU - just keeps moving up.

read the rest! »

New Energy Currents: 05-20-2005

[JK: Originally posted May 20th. Moved up to the 21st because it also fits our "Good News Saturdays" theme.]

As the US energy bill is being written in the Senate, the debate over our energy future is in full swing. Hydrogen fuel cells, or "gas optional" hybrids? Nuclear, or not? Coal... or not? As these different technologies begin to compete in earnest for your attention, acceptance, and tax dollars, New Energy Currents does its best to give you a broad overview of developments in energy science, technology, and policy. By John Atkinson, of chiasm.

• Bio
• Electricity
• Fossil Fuels
• Geothermal
• Hydrogen
• Nuclear
• Solar
• Water
• Wind
• Policy

read the rest! »

Wind Power at Gitmo

That's right, the U.S. Navy has just installed four 275-foot tall wind turbines at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Apparently, they're the most visible sight in the area - and the Navy's biggest wind power project to date. Details over at Defense Industry Daily.

For maximum fun, the next time you're discussing Gitmo with a liberal, look confused for a minute: "Gitmo, Gitmo... I've heard of that place somewhere. Oh, yeah, that's where the Navy installed 8 million kilowatt-hours/year of wind power to reduce greenhouse emissions!" Keep a straight face throughout, brighten and smile at the end, then keep your expression and look at your counterpart expectantly. If engaged further, return to your subject enthusiastically and begin to recite emissions figures.

Come to think of it, this trick probably works equally well if you're a liberal talking to a conservative.

New Energy Currents: 04-22-2005

Spring is in full bloom in the NYC, and the energy bill season is in full swing - a great time to be alive, in other words. As different technologies begin to compete in earnest for the public's attention, acceptance, and tax dollars, New Energy Currents will do its best to give you a broad overview of developments in energy technology and policy. By John Atkinson, of chiasm.

• Bio
• Electricity