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Invite to TheOilDrum Community for Guest Posts
Posted by nate hagens on April 14, 2011 - 11:15am
We invite anyone with the skills and interest to contribute to the body of knowledge posted here. Though 'Peak Oil' isn't acknowledged per se, there is increasing acceptance in the mainstream that the era of cheap energy is likely over. This has myriad implications for our lives. Our hope is to get the online community to attack those topics which Wall St. firms and energy institutions won't/can't that would be of value to better understanding our situation, what got us here, and what we can do going forward. Below the fold is a short list of guest post topics that long time contributors here considered relevant to 'energy and our future' but don't have either the expertise or time to undertake.
First, here are the Editorial Subject and Content Guidelines:
"1. Standards for article subject matter
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It is understood that people write here because they care about/are passionate about a certain topic of relevance to the energy debate. As such the editors will use the above list as initial filters, but no post has to fit all criteria -those are general guidelines.
Here is a short list of welcome topics suggested by current TOD writers:
- an analysis on what would happen to global economic systems if we retreated, gradually, or sharply from the assumption of 100% reliable electricity
- in calculation of EROI or various fossil fuels, what is % of energy inputs that has 'already been spent'? Renewables?
- is population or 'aspiration' more influential on future energy use?
- can one interpolate a relationship between OECD debt levels and future oil decline rates? (i.e. if there was zero debt, decline would be pinned with geology -but after that?)
- instead of aggregate EROI numbers or various fuels, what is 'point of use' energy return for various uses of energy: agriculture, heat, transportation, etc.
- using widest reasonable boundaries possible, what % of wind/solar etc are fossil fuels?
- what impact would social equity disparity limits have on energy and resource consumption?
- at what energy price/availabilty does theory of comparative advantage for international trade break down
- A thorough analysis of coal availability looking at various qualities and regions.
- A review of shale gas economics and the future delivery capability at current natural gas prices in the U.S.
- A full review/or multiple reviews of energy subsidies and their impact around the world
- Better life cycle analysis of energy and resource use of most renewable energy technologies (including batteries)
- A U.S. wind delivery model based on accurate current hourly or sub-hourly wind data
- The effect of demand reduction policies that impair peoples choices versus demand reductions that do not
- An analysis of the potential and costs of local grids (as opposed to large interregional) with a large variety of intermittent energy sources
- A sector comparison of cost impacts of oil/energy prices changes
- An update on gas hydrate projects and studies conducted in the U.S. gas hydrate research program(s)
- A review of pilot projects of underground coal gasification
- An summary of the analyses of energy-economy interlinkages of the big economies (G20)
- Large scale energy storage (e.g. geological compressed air, high sea
compressed air, ammonia, ... )- Small scale electricity storage (zinc-air, etc)
- World's agricultural carrying capacity without fossil fuels
- Hydroelectric potential in Europe and the World
- Substitution of rare minerals and its impacts on energy spent in mining
- Ultimate limits: the amount of power/energy available from wind, solar and nuclear.
- Limits of scale: How far can non-combustion energy be ramped up, and how fast?
- Twofers: Using a solution to address more than one problem.
- Connections: What happens when formerly isolated energy systems, aren't?
- Dark horses: Nuclear energy went from the first chain reaction to the first nuclear-powered submarine in 12 years and the first grid-connected powerplant in 15. What's coming? How soon can it take up the slack, and how much?
Many of the above suggested topics may be 'undoable' given lack of available data, etc.. (But in my opinion, sometimes asking unaswerable questions can also be instructive in shaping our understanding).
Please add your own suggestions of what questions/issues might be relevant and worthwhile at this stage of the energy debate. And, if you have the interest/ability to address them (or your own), submit your posting to theoildrum@gmail.com.
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CRITICAL ELEMENTS
Efforts to harvest and recycle scarce elements from consumer electronics, medical equipment, industrial gear, etc, have been extremely successful in Europe, where strict regulation and common sense dictates heroic economy and recycling. 100 per cent of EU27 consumption of antinomy, cobalt, molybdenum, niobium, platinum, rare earth metals, tantalum, titanium minerals, and vanadium are imported from non-EU countries.
Are those critical supplies secure? Nope. Europeans are keenly aware of past, present, and likely future supply disruptions.
Take rhenium for example, used in jet engine blades, wind turbines, and rocket nozzles. 75 per cent of world supply comes from two companies, Molymet in Chile and Redmet in Kazakhstan. Five years ago, Redmet exports were blocked due to a dispute over debt with a copper company that supplied Redmet. The price of rhemium skyrocketed from USD 1,000 per kg, to USD 6,000 per kg. Known future production increases are already sold.
We live in a world of increasing scarcity and resource nationalism. China has banned export of aluminum ore and concentrates, copper, rare earth metals (used in DC motors), magnesium, nickel, and non-ferrous scrap. Not to be outdone, Russia banned export of ferrous scrap. China increased the price of antinomy from USD 0.80 per pound in 1995, to USD 2.25 in 2006. Supply at any price is uncertain today.
I possess some interesting sources/information on the subject of metal prices/scarcity/their relevant uses. I'll be willing to share them with whoever picks this up. I'm a member for something over a month, so I have most certainly not attained any rank or status here... But i'm available to write an article on this subject if it is deemed fit for TheOilDrum. Contact information is in my account info :).
I hope that someone finds that topic interesting. Disclaimer: I recently joined a company based in Hungary that deals in recycling of non ferrous metals so I have a very personal interest in this subject. If you'd like to share your information with me, my email is posted in my TOD profile.
How relevant is a connection to our energy sources in mitigating our energy conundrum(s)?
Can humans ever manage their use of invisible energy beyond their ability to pay?
1) The key to understanding possible futures is to understand our history. I'd love to see a respected historian like Ian Morris engage with this community. I just finished his superb book "Why the West Rules—for Now". He takes a sweeping look at history in the light of available natural resources and in particular energy capture. He's got some amazing data that would thrill TOD folk. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that questions like "what is the maximum possible development level (i.e. complexity in TOD speak) for a civilization that survives on solar energy flows" have already been answered.
2) History suggests all resource shortages result in war. But this might the first time that there is no "loot" to be got from conquering our neighbors. Or at least the energy expended in war may exceed the energy loot gained. So maybe our downslope has a chance of being peaceful? I'd love to see a historian address this issue.
3) There are 3 big forces at play. TOD gets and discusses 2 of them: energy and debt. But does not engage on the 3rd: climate. The 3 are deeply inter-related and one cannot understand the system without considering all 3. There is a sad lack of systems thinking on debt, energy, and climate in the world. TOD has the brains to be a leader. So what if we get some flames from brain dead deniers. It's the right thing to do.
I agree there is a dire lack of systems thinking. Sadly, as Nate pointed out above, the editors on this site, for reasons known only to them, have deliberately chosen NOT to engage in discussions of the whole system, but to focus instead on energy issues only.
Gail used to post many good systems thinking articles here, but she got forced out by that recent move to irrelevance here and now posts over at her blog "Our Finite World"
Cheers,
Jerry
Yes.
Good insight.
..
Maybe that is a great topic for next discussion by Gail at http://ourfiniteworld.com/
The way I see the oil-debt-climate-(resources) quadrundrum is this:
1) Debt= a promise to do something productive in the future
2) Oil= a means --if cheap enough-- to energize the fulfillment of the promise
3) Resources= a means --if cheap enough-- to materialize the fulfillment of the promise
4) Climate= a possible impediment --if sever enough-- to block/delay the fulfillment of the promise
Good points! However I'd add one more which I believe is the most important of all.
Unfortunately it is a point which by definition requires systems thinking at the highest of levels to be able to be adequately and meaningfully addressed.
The way I see the oil-debt-climate-(resources) quintundrum is this:
1) Debt= a promise to do something productive in the future
2) Oil= a means --if cheap enough-- to energize the fulfillment of the promise
3) Resources= a means --if cheap enough-- to materialize the fulfillment of the promise
4) Climate= a possible impediment --if sever enough-- to block/delay the fulfillment of the promise
5) Population Overshoot= a definitive impediment --which will block the fulfillment of the promise
Are the editors of TOD afraid of science and the truth?
6) Black Swans=don't give a hoot about promises
Imagine a population of Black Swans in overshoot >;^)
Anyways that would make it a hextundrum and would require burning those that place hexes...
After all that... Jerry, Fred, et al, though the editors have stated their emphasis is to be on energy, the TOD locals seem to be adept at pulling in their own systemic considerations. Comments are usually wide ranging enough, since it's impossible to decouple energy from other issues for long. Let's not put a hex on the whole kaboodle.
I continue to belive that the Campfires were a great outlet for interrelated topics: how sociological, political, economic, other factors affect energy use and policy related to energy; not just how, but why humans are in this impossible situation. It's something I commented about over at thearchdruidreport this morning, though even Greer responded:
"GHung, the "how" is complex enough; the "why" reaches into some very deep and obscure places. "
I guess limits to growth have to be respected, at least on TOD. Hopefully the Campfires will return. They were useful for reaching a deeper understanding of our complex issues, IMO.
The most interesting and compelling thing to me about this site (now that the "triune brain" posts and other Nate classics are in the rearview mirror) is the critical mass of fine minds covering a preposterously broad range of expertise.. among the commenters. Apparently it was a focus on energy which caused it to happen; but I find that the gang is at its best and most profound when it's discussing systems and their interactions.
It's always refreshing to see the group mind diverge from oil prices & supply; often I click directly on the comments and skip the articles. (show of hands.. who else does that?) Yes, peak oil is here, got it. The actual petroleum details are boring.... blasphemy, I know, but there it is. What I've enjoyed is the speculations on "Energy and/or Future".
cheers
Yep! I just barely skim the articles.
"show of hands.. who else does that?"
OK. Me too.
I usually skip the main article and dive into the "newest" comments to see if any of the many fine minds here on TOD have something insightful to say.
Sometimes the answer is yes.
A good example is Jerry McManus's observation above (link)
That grew into a Septadundrum of observations:
The oil-debt-climate-(resources) [Number]nundrum List is this:
1) Debt= a promise to do something productive in the future
2) Oil= a means --if cheap enough-- to energize the fulfillment of the promise
3) Resources= a means --if cheap enough-- to materialize the fulfillment of the promise
4) Climate= a possible impediment --if sever enough-- to block/delay the fulfillment of the promise
5) Population Overshoot= a definitive impediment --which will block the fulfillment of the promise
6) Black Swans= don't give a hoot about promises
7) The Triune Brain= still trying to grok the implication of its latest discovery: fire (a.k.a. production of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and depletion of combustible resources (oil, coal, forests, etc.))
Yep, me too. Here's an example, with about eight of my favorites weighing in on the most important topic for the future, in a row. What's not to love.
At this point, I divide people into about two groups--those who get it and those who don't. For example, I went to a talk last night by John Delaney from UW who was heading a big grant on ocean monitoring systems. While he bandied about words like complexity and energy and the ocean as a single system, and talked at the meta scale, he was also suggesting that his science was important because the ocean was going to have to feed a world of 10 billion people. His population graph was a straight line extrapolated out for 40 years. He mentioned the importance of the two kinds of energy (geothermal and solar). Yet he also talked about climate change, with not one word about Japan and the nuclear crisis and what it means. What about the fossil fuels, if he mentioned climate change??? At that point, I got a phone call, walked out, and never came back. So maybe he was going to talk about it later as an add on to his stock lecture, and I didn't give him time (I listened to half of it) but how can an endowed chair at a major university in the "most advanced" country in the world not mention something like this going on in his ocean, when he mentioned climate change? This guy doesn't get it. Either you get the big picture or you don't, and every step we take into the future makes those who don't increasingly lost, confused, and irrelevant in understanding how the world works. As we head forward into this strange new world of permanent contraction for a population in overshoot, there are going to be people sitting around lost, depressed, angry, or bargaining, wondering "who moved my cheese," and there will be those who get it, and are out there making plans for a new future.
I find that I do a lot of that these days; getting up and walking out of lectures so that I won't be tempted to ask obnoxious questions at the end, flipping through headlines titled oil, climate change, or some subset of the problem, and passing on the MSM. I've moved on, and am interested in how to descend without killing all of us and taking out the planet too.
Same. I only skim now, at best. Once campfire went away, the real interesting reading went away with it. Seems to me this request would have been perfectly fit for the campfire section. Bring back campfire!
Iaato; Credentials are given out, but reputations are earned. It would be nice if there were some sort of a point system from peers, just to highlight bright people in the know, who get it. Cutting edge independent thinkers in academia are becoming too rare, because these systems of education may be more establishment status quo than we would like to think. In academia, the casper milk toast main stream babbler, who has nothing to contribute, is rewarded, while the worker and fighter is discouraged. The establishment hates a thinker.
That happens in every large organization, whether it's big pharma, multinational companies or government.
They're all risk averse.
Symptoms of the age of specialization; a reduction in systemic analysis.
'Experts' reluctant to venture outside of their area of expertise for fear of stumbling or stepping on toes = failure to effectively incorporate external factors into their conclusions. Websites with a narrow focus = reaching incomplete conclusions. Policy makers with specific agendas failing to implement effective policy. Lawmakers focusing on individual problems, failing to predict unintended consequences = laws that don't work. Peak specialization?
The most proficient technical people I know have difficulty incorporating the human element. This where they tend to get it wrong; their work often doesn't pass the dumbass test.
The best systems people are generalists first and foremost. They may not be the best at anything, but are good at alot of things. That's why I come here, and why too narrow a focus on energy isn't compatible with the stated (and assumed) goals of TOD (IMO); folks here are really good a a lot of stuff.
It's no wonder that some of the most enduring documents are general in nature.
Ghung, with due respect, I disagree.
You have to have expert level insight into what is going on in order to understand what is going on. Generalists are simply not the anal kind of people that many of us TODders are. Generalists wave their hands to wash away the details and they say, "It's all good".
It's only we, detail-oriented, anal retentive people on TOD who ask, "Hey wait a minute, what about this Peak Oil thingy! Hey wait a minute, what about the Climate Change and Population Overshoot thingies?", etc.
Here we agree.
Your average specialist suffers from Funnel Vision.
He (or she) simply cannot grok anything outside of the box they were trained in.
The usual refrain you hear goes something like this: "Hey, I ain't no thermodynamics rocket scientist, but if we went to the moon, surely we can become energy independent with some of them there 'alternative' energies that those geek scientists ("them") are always working on. After all. This is the 21st Century! The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones ha ha."
Could be a problem with the terminology.
There are 'generalists' who simply don't dig too deeply into any area of knowledge, and go with the consensus flow. There are 'specialists' who strive for the current definition of reductionist expertise and straightforwardly attain it. Then there are those who take the additional time to become proficient in multiple sorts of thinkology, and the additional step of considering it all simultaneously, and training themselves to allow their worldview to continuously evolve as more logically parsimonious conclusions about probable systems interactions become available.
I suspect that many prolific TOD posters passed through "scientific expertise" in a number of areas en route to this place. Indeed, the prevailing cultural notions of what constitutes useful expertise are badly dysfunctional, blinded by reductionist certitude. So one finds, too seldom, spontaneously emerging clumps of actual species self-awareness in enclaves like this one.
I agree!
Perhaps some generalists, while not having in depth knowledge themselves in specific areas are still able to understand concepts like non linear dynamics, tipping points, feedback loops and complexity. In other words while their big picture view may be somewhat fuzzy with regards the details they get that the whole is a multifaceted interconnected constantly evolving system and are aware that the stability of a particular state of that whole system can be a very temporary emergent property.
As a consequence they are more likely to apply the cautionary principle when confronted with data that indicates that something is safe in isolation but doesn't address the possible unknowns of how it might behave when interacting with other things. For example a specialist might assure us based on extensive analysis that a particular substance is safe to release into our drinking water, while never bothering to address the long term effects of such a substance on the whole ecosystem when interacting with thousands of other substances all of which are also deemed harmless in isolation.
I also think that most really good generalists do indeed take the time to get reasonably familiar with what is happening in multiple areas of scientific knowledge and are thus able to better integrate that wider perspective into a more accurate big picture than the very narrow boundary specialists. At the same time they do depend on the specialists to fill in the details of the big picture at high resolution.
It's hard to "generalize" (pun intended).
Everyone gets here (to TOD) by way of their own unique life journeys.
I can only speak for myself in observing that my life journeys took me through many diversified areas of study, not just study of computer engineering or study of human behavior. I learned a lot simply by reading all those Heading Out posts. Never knew a thing about the oil business before.
Had I not had all those widely diverse journeys, I would not be the present day me. I would be someone else, perhaps a PO denier and also perhaps an AGW denier. Who knows? When I look at PO/AGW deniers, I say; There but for the grace of ___ (fill in your deity's name) goes I.
Yes, the details are crucial. The details that people on TOD tend to miss: renewables (like wind power, solar, etc) and electric transportation really work.
Nick, you're a true believer and little else. None of the "renewables" work without government handouts, government subsidies, and government bailouts for maintenance. Electric transportation presupposes electric generation, which none of the renewables can reliably produce. 100% fail.
None of the "renewables" work without government handouts, government subsidies, and government bailouts for maintenance.
The government subsidies for oil and other fossil fuels are far, far higher. Who built the Inter-state Highway System? Who spent $2T on military expenses protecting oil supplies?
Electric transportation presupposes electric generation, which none of the renewables can reliably produce.
If nothing else, we'll use nuclear. Wind, solar and other "renewables" would also work.
Nothing is "reliable" - all sources of generation require backup. Wind and solar have higher levels of variance, but it's on the same order of magnitude as demand variance - there's nothing there that a good utility engineer doesn't recognize and know how to deal with.
Jeez, step back, you clipped the quote; The best systems people are generalists, first and foremost. And I didn't say that generalists are all good systems thinkers. My point is that, without the ability to generalise the big picture and see how all subsystems interact, it's impossible to ascertain the true condition of the overall system and formulate an effective strategy.
A Colonel may be a great artillery commander, but if he doesn't have a general understanding of all of the functions of his army, he'll never be a great General. I doubt Patton could tear down, clean and repair a M2A1 105mm howitzer or drive a Sherman tank very well, but you know the rest....he had to be a great systems thinker. I solved difficult IT problems that had our best developers and hardware techs stumped, back in the day, and they were much better at what they did than I could ever be. Some of the 24 year old "Engineers", with a 4 year degree, scared the crap out of me; knew just enough to be dangerous. Even worse was what they didn't know they didn't know. The good systems folks really stood out but were usually poor politicians.
This is why I feel so strongly about the need for multidisciplinary education programs and hate that things like art and music aren't being required or are being eliminated, especially for math and science students. If I had my way, engineering programs would be 5 years minimum, first three years strictly liberal arts and basic math. Teach them how to write well, including creative writing; plenty of art, including hands on; strong emphasis on history, music, lit and natural science. When I started out in AI/expert systems, I had to take a full year of philosophy and a nasty, hard course on musical structure; great program. This was after 2 2/3 years in a liberal arts school and ~6 years Navy. It all made a difference when I went back to the 'real world'.
Ho there Ghung.
I agree with much of what you say.
There are people who can think at the systems level and there are those that can think only in the realm of a small cog doing its small and insular part in a bigger machine.
The small cogs figure, hey I'm just a rank of private and I do what they (the smart a$$ generals up there) tell me to do. That's it. A systems level thinker doesn't get away with that crap. He or she has to step back and see the way bigger picture, and sometime, just sometimes, how one small cog can gum up the whole works.
Peace.
....Love & Rock 'n Roll
I once wrote a paper about the way that politics and history have contributed to the tense natural gas relations between Russia and Ukraine. I'm not sure if the draft is quite up to publishable standards, but it may still be of interest to readers here. I've made the document available via docstoc.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/74816026/Industrial-Strength-Blat
Please feel free to read, comment, and distribute.
I would love to write something for you, but you have to be open to the idea of accepting posts that are about Politics, from someone with little Technical Expertise aside from what has been gained from Independent Research. Be forewarned that I am immune to All Forms of Advertising, so you will get nothing from me but Truth and Pure Heart.
Politics is just about the human brain on testosteroids.
Any questions?
Sure, or in other words, "man is by nature a political animal," as Aristotle was saying.
But the current American hate for politics in its original sense, bordering in fact just plain misanthropy, associated to the naive "free market" limerick supported by good plain "protestant" puritanism, is actually what is killing America.
The fact that you are more or less totally unable to even talk about the possibility to raise the US gas tax being a prime example.
What about having some threads that are essentially organizing tools to push (or suppress) particular policies that there is broad consensus on here, such as dropping ethanol subsidies (x is about the only hold out on this one), or pushing for a dedicated gas tax (probably a bit more controversy here)?
If everyone on this site got ten to 100 people to write or call congress people, we could actually drive (or help kill) some important legislation.
Yes good idea, and about subsidies, seems to me that a general policy should be : no OPEX related subsidies to any economic process.
(apart from education and health maybe, as well as common infrastructure), but in general for all energy aspects, subsidies should be targeted towards R&D, possible experiments, not OPEX related to actual economic processes.
Subsidies rely on some federal or state budget (so on taxes or common debt).
Much better to take the problem on the other side : taxes on fossile fuels.
Taxes do not need to label a solution (like corn ethanol) as good, they just push any solution that make sense for a given fossile fuel price, be it on alternative production, or, as important if not more, on efficiency gain investments.
I think that there is a big difference between "politics" and "political". Any policy prescription that doesn't deal with Politics is nothing more than mental masturbation.
Seems to me historical aspects of the oil industry/market could also make good subjects, especially in helping people realize what all this cheap energy boom meant.
And in particular one historical aspect, which is what was really the first oil shock.
Indeed the "common wisdom" (especially the American one) usually describes the first oil shock as a "political" oil shock, linked to the so called "embargo" and OPEC price rise (production decrease).
However :
1) Fuel shortages started in the US way before the embargo and OPEC price rise, just from the US (then first producer) reaching its production peak
you can just check the NYT archives around 70 71 about this one.
James Akins was then named by Nixon to audit the US production capacities, conclusion : it is a mess
2) The embargo was never effective towards the US, Saudi oil contiued to flow to the US, especially to the US army in Vietnam
3) The OPEC price rise (production decrease) was suggested and pushed by US diplomacy and the majors, indeed this price rise was necessary to be able to start GOM, North Sea, Alaska oil. In other words the OPEC price rise was necessary for the majors to keep a relative bigger share in the total oil production (and associated profit).
So really the image of the first oil shock is totally skewed, and it should probably be renamed "the US production peak oil shock", this maybe could help in people realizing that peak oil is nothing not a joke, as well as making the average American realize that the US is indeed post peak (something that the vast majority of them still do not know).
Y - "the US production peak oil shock" - A valid point. I've mentioned it before: when I started with Mobil Oil in 1975 my first mentor went into great detail about PO (what we called the "reserve replacement problem"). Though I had 6 years of university geology I knew nothing about the oil patch...just like 99% of all new hires. Took a while for me to grasp his point. The oil biz was just starting to boom. When I began my studies there were very limited job opportunities in the oil patch. In fact, my profs warned there was virtually no job potential. But being young and foolish I didn't care...I just liked rocks. As you point out by the winter of '74 the world began to change significantly. We actually had oil companies coming to Texas A&M to recruit us...fly us around for interviews, buy us LUNCH (all impressive for a starving grad student). Even got a raise before I started working...making $12,000/yr...big bucks back then...twice what the US Geol Survey was paying but they weren't hiring any way.
As you point out this was a new age for the oil patch. Companies were going all out to find new plays to drill. Being on the inside it was easy to see the motivation: our reserve base was disappearing. The embargo and other issues that generated price increases (as well as expectations) wasn't the primary cause but enabled the effort. And during the last 36 years the motivation has been relentless with every company I've worked for: replace the depleting reserve base. All the more pressure with the public companies. Wall Street cared little about profitability...wanted to see y-o-y increases in the reserve base. I witnessed some very foolish biz plans that cared about nothing more than meeting WS's demands...or at least providing it with a false illusion of doing so. The oil patch is not a manufacturing biz: every day a company produces its reserves it decreases its value. In a way oil companies can be schizophrenic: love the cash flow but "Oh my God we're depleting our reserves!!!" LOL
One of the aspects I like about my latest gig is that we aren't a public company. No pressure to fool anyone about our "reserves". Simple biz plan: make a profit. This is also why we aren't resource players: not profitable enough...we don't have a stock to hype. Despite the low price of NG (our primary target) we still make a much better profit exploring for it in conventional trends and not the fractured shale plays. My company was actually founded on the basis of PO: convert the owner's cash assets into reserves in the ground and flip the entire company when PO hits hard. Unfortunately the latest phase of PO is hitting us sooner than we had hoped. We would have been much better off had oil stayed below $40/bbl for the next few years. Lower oil prices mean less competition and thus less drilling by others. And that would have made our reserve base all the more valuable in the out years. YES: we are very disappointed in the current price of oil. Thank goodness NG is still relatively cheap. Much great potential for significant inflation in its price over the next 4 or 5 years.
R, thanks a lot for the info, really think that the historical aspects of the oil industry in general and the US in particular, could help in bringing the "PO message" to the general public.
Here is a paper that Sam Foucher and I did five years ago (when we had annual production data through 2005):
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/16459
Texas and US Lower 48 oil production as a model for Saudi Arabia and the world
Since we will soon have five additional years of annual production data, I suppose we should do an update some time this year.
Thanks for the link but my point is more about having a true historical point of view, including the geopolitical "games" and domestic politics.
Because the first oil shock story is really :
1) 1970: US production peak, fuel shortages accross the country, lines at the pump
2) A bit of a panic, Nixon asks for an audit, conclusion, production capacity is in a mess, need to import and invest more, at current price investments difficult, and the public shouldn't know too much about all this
3) The embargo is coming, good opportunity to "put the blame" on the Arabs regarding the shortages, although the embargo is in fact never effective towards the US. In the mean time we are still in a mess regarding our own production capacities, and oil needs to be more expensive for us to start new stuff
4) Various meetings with OPEC where it is clearly said (from Americans, James Akins for instance) that oil should be more expensive
5) OPEC production cut, price increase, investment in new more expensive plays can start, message to the public : "price increase due to OPEC decided it"
Another key historical aspect is Reagan negotiating prod increase from KSA in mate eighties in order to bring the USSR down, cutting its foreign revenue by two third.
Incidentally, OPEC attempted to implement oil embargoes during the 1956 and 1967 Arab/Israeli wars, but Texas increased its production in 1956 and 1967, and the embargoes failed. But by the 1973 (Yom Kippur) War, Texas had already peaked. Of course, as you noted the 1973 embargo was more cosmetic than effective, but temporary supply/demand imbalances in the Seventies (especially after the Iranian Revolution) certainly caused huge price increases.
I suppose the question that you are getting at is what would have happened if global crude oil production never exceeded the Seventies level.
BTW, it's also useful to remember that the situation between the US and Soviet Union during the 1973 war, was, to put it mildly, very tense:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
My point is just that the first oil shock in the "general public mindset" is linked to :
1) the 1973 oil embargo
2) OPEC deciding unilaterally to increase prices (by lowering its prod)
Whereas :
1) the 1973 embargo is almost totally irrelevant (plus it was declared only towards US and Holland, and in reality not effective towards the US)
2) OPEC price increase (prod decrease) was pushed for by the US diplomacy and the majors
And a major key factor for this oil shock is put under the carpet :
1) The US 1970 production peak that is the reason for the first fuel shortages in the US :
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&daterange=peri...
Otherwise agree about the "USSR/USA tension climate of the time", and effect of Iran revolution in 1979
There is a great documentary with key persons interviews about all this (James Akins, KSA oil minister of the time, Gorbatchov) unfortunately only available in German and French to my knowledge :
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xewm92_la-face-cachee-du-petrole-2-2-le...
Note: the reopen911 logo has nothing to do with the doc, added by the guy that published it on daily motion.
But some quite amazing things, like the Shah of Iran telling KSA oil minister "why don't you want to increase oil price ? you think Americans won't like it ? but it is the Americans who want higher prices, go ask Henry Kissinger, and then after telling that to Faisahl king, he never wanted to talk about oil price with Kissinger anymore"
"The OPEC price rise (production decrease) was suggested and pushed by US diplomacy and the majors"
Wow fascinating. First time I've heard anything about this. Any good sources that discuss this you could point me towards?
nate - Many folks don't realize but back in the 1950's there was a very visible and publicly known effort to keep oil prices high enough to support additional development: the Texas Rail Road Commission. Despite the name they controlled oil production in Texas via the "allowable" system. An oil well might be able to flow 400 bopd but if the allowable was set by the TRRC at 50% the company could only average 200 bopd that month. This was done for the obvious reason: fix oil prices high enough to keep exploration efforts going. But as Texas production declined and ME rates increased their power became less significant. BTW: the TRRC allowable law is still in effect. But since the early 70's the monthly allowable has been set at 100%. If for whatever unimaginable reason Texas could change the allowable to 50% next month and our statewide production would drop to half of what it is this month.
Yes - before OPEC there was someone else who tried to control the price of oil in the world: Texas.
It is clearly stated in interviews in the doc linked above :
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xewm92_la-face-cachee-du-petrole-2-2-le...
And in E Laurent book "la face cachée du pétrole"
By James Akins (the guy named by Nixon to audit US prod capacity after 70 peak, who then was US ambassador to KSA, that quoted $4 or $5 a barrel in an OPEC meeting in Algiers)
By ex KSA oil minister (Ahmed Zaki Yamani)
By an ex Arab oil producer association guy (forgot his name, he was also at the Algiers meeting)
By a Berkeley professor (again would need to look up his name), that mention that OPEC and the majors really always worked "hand in hand"
But really it is not suprising at all, the US position was :
- domestic cheap oil is over (or going down)
- but we know we have some available more expensive ressources (GOM, Alaska, North Sea for majors in general)
- our domestic demand keeps on increasing
So either we let OPEC increase its prod, we import even more, are even more dependent, and lose a lot of market share
Or we push OPEC for prod decrease, this result in price increase, and we can invest in developing our own resources, and maintain more market share/less dependence towards foreign oil. And in any case don't forget that the higher the oil price the better for oil companies.
As for the embargo, Akins mention tankers going from Saudi Arabia through Bahrain and then to the US or Vietnam directly so that the embargo was never effective, however voices in the US were starting to ask for actions against the Arabs/OPEC due to the embargo, in particular from two senators, so he asked to be able to told them the truth, he told them, they stoped asking for action and there was no leak.
Would be good to have an English undubed interviews version of this documentary, tried to contact E Laurent and P Barbéris about it, didn't receive any answer yet, maybe somebody else could try.
James Akins really a key person in this story, unfortunately he died a couple of years ago (but these interviews maybe the only ones from him on this subject)
As to :
"- The effect of demand reduction policies that impair peoples choices versus demand reductions that do not"
Not sure what demand reduction policies that do not "impair peoples choices" are, but clearly policies should also make important subjects, and especially the one policy that is seldom directly discussed here although most probably the most efficient one, which is quantity based fossile fuel taxes, and in particular why the US isn't raising its gas tax ?
The only chance out of this complete mess is to accelerate products modifications and way of life adaptations to the scarcity of ressources.
And the prime policy for this acceleration, much more than subsidies towards labeled "good alternative solutions", should be volume based taxes on fossile fuel.
Indeed the key advantage of taxes compared to subsidies is that you don't have to define what are the good solutions, you just push in the ressource scarcity direction and accelerate the changes whatever they are (and in the mean time decrease the trade and fiscal deficit).
Proper redistribution should be adressed in parallel (like 100% direct redistribution per capita basis proposed by James Hansen, or other schema)
Subsidies should be aimed primarily at R&D and common infrastructures, not linked to OPEX in any way.
The US federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon was last raised in 1993. It has not been adjusted to account for inflation. I support raising the tax per the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform which proposed a 15 cents per gallon increase by 2015. However, at present, the odds of a gas tax increase being passed is slim to none.
"However, at present, the odds of a gas tax increase being passed is slim to none."
And when you consider that 15 cents a gallon is almost nothing compared to other OECD countries, it is a bit scary ... :
Scary in the sense that had it been raised, for sure current US cars fleet would be much more (or at least more) efficient.
Target should be $2 or $3 a gallon in five years, at least ..
I guess a analysis of the relationships between the different factors that can influence energy and transportation fuel use is in order. Factors include:
Size of the country or region
Population densities
Climate (Tropical, Sub-tropical, Temperate, Desert, Cold)
Wealth measured by per capita GDP
Amount of national regional wealth spent on importing oil
Amount of national/regional wealth earned by exporting oil
Political/Economic systems (Republic, Democracy, Dictatorship, Communist, Capitalist, Failed State)
It would really be interesting to see a comparison between the various factors and the resulting enrergy/fuel use efficiencies for Country/Regions like
USA/North America
Brazil, Paraguay/South America
Mexico, Costa Rica/Central America
UAE, Jordan/Middle east
UK, France/EU
Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania/Africa
Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados/Caribbean
India, Pakistan, Myanmar/Central Asia
Philippines, Japan/East Asia
Russia
China
Australia
For most of these, I have tried to pick an oil producer and non oil producer from each region but, there are so many other factors that affect energy/fuel use efficirency. Japan is a relatively small country with densely populated cities, medium fuel taxes and no oil production resulting in relatively high efficiency. The USA is a large country with significant oil production and very low fuel taxes resulting in relatively low efficiency. What about those oil producing states where fuel is subsidized rather than taxed such as Venezuela and Sauid Arabia.?
It would be interesting to have an analysis of these factors as a guide for countries that want to increase their efficiency in the use of fuels/energy. For example, in the face of the threat of protests, the government of Jamaica has just reduced fuel taxes. Is Jamaica shooting itself in the foot?
Alan from the islands
Yes such an analysis would be interesting, I found a report once (in English but from some German organism with a very detailed list of countries and associated fuel tax level and analysis, unfortunately can't find it back ...)
Otherwise with respect to fuel taxes, seems to me that factors such as country size and population densities aren't necessarily that important : a 20mpg car will consume twice more than a 40mpg one, whatever the number of miles driven, culture as much more to do there probably.
On the other hand, key factors or problems with respect to fuel taxes seems to me :
- they impact the poor relatively more than the rich like any direct taxes
- they impact the "energy intensive jobs" much more than the "low energy intensive jobs" : for instance a taxi driver or a fisherman will be much more impacted than a trader in NYC or London using public transport to go to his Office.
- in general they impact rural living persons more than city living persons (at least in European kind of cities)
So some form of redistribution or tax exemption has to be somehow set up depending on fuel usage, although if these taxes were seen as "pure change accelerators towards an inevitable future state", then the best schema is probably the one proposed by James Hansen : a tax on fossile fuel at the well head or port of entry, no distinction at all about the fuel future usage, and a 100% or at least a big part direct redistribution on a per capita basis (with some rules for children).
Baring in mind that the objective of these taxes shouldn't be seen as state revenue, but as a way to accelerate necessary changes in products and way of life, and in particular a way to shorten ROI time for energy efficiency investment : for instance for insulation, if you put a tax on heating fuel, you favor investment on insulation, in effect transfering some OPEX towards CAPEX leading to less OPEX/running cost for the same "functionality" at the end.
The analysis has been done already from a macrolens perspective, allowing international comparative analysis, in a 15-year old book that you can buy, below. There's even a biennial conference--the next one is next January. http://www.emergysystems.org/conference6.php
"[This book} offers offers key insights into:
* Provides formulas for emergy calculations, procedures for making an emergy evaluation table, and parameters for updating evaluations
* Demonstrates the use of emergy to evaluate environments, minerals, waters, primary energy sources, economic developments, and international trade
* Determining the real value of a product or service
* Transformity, or the relationship between emergy (input) and energy (output)
* Stored wealth, available energy, and the final product
* Balancing economic and environmental needs"
http://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Accounting-Emergy-Decision-Making/dp...
It also covers the issue of industrial agriculture, and the interplay of renewables and nonrenewables in the overall function of different economies around the globe. For instance, the emergy self-sufficiency of Japan in 1980-1993, as measured by the internal R/NR resources, was 31%, as opposed to 77% in the US and 97-98% in Russia and China (p. 217). And Japan's economic/environment ratio dividing NR and imported economic uses by nature's renewable components is 1.6, compared to the US at 7.1 and West Germany at 90, and Alaska at 0.08, which signifies extremes in importation of goods and services from other countries versus using one's own (p. 168). It has been done, and the results are pretty interesting.
Thanks for the link, but at this point in time, as much as theoritical work, the necessity is to accelerate products transformation and choices, and with respect to that, more than subsidies on "defined as good alternative solutions", the prime policy should (can only be) taxes on fossile fuels.
The one thing known is that fossile fuels and petroleum in particular is getting scarcer, and there is still plenty of efficiency potential gains, in particular in the US cars fleet.
There should be a target of $2 tax a gallon in five years at least, look at what Turkey went through in above pic, it is perfectly makeable.
I don't think I'm qualified enough so, I'd love to see somebody who has the chops tackle the link between the use of fossil fuels in agriculture and the decline of small scale or subsistence agriculture around the world. Things like how subsidized, FF fed agriculture has affected small farmers in places like South America and Africa. More importantly an examination of the implications for each of these types of agriculture as oil production declines and fuel prices rise. Will we see a return to the land (farming), a reversal of rural to urban drift?
Alan from the islands
edit: spelling and grammar correction
Yes indeed a key point, especially regarding the fact that the FF fossile fuel agriculture and small scale farm disapearing can occur in different countries : typically western FF sometimes subsidized agriculture killing small scale agriculture in Africa for instance.
(saw a documentary on this, where industrial chickens parts not wanted by the west are exported to Africa killing all small chicken farms there, but this phenomenon also exist for cereals)
Basically resilience should be favored and for agri products that means as much self sufficiency as possible at domestic level. Fossile fuel break this through the industrial agricultures processes, but also through cheap transport allowing to export rich "waste" or over production towards poor countries.
islandboy, That would be good, and I have just the person. Her name is Carol Steinfeld, and she is the author of a book called "Liquid Gold" which I strongly recommend. She's on Facebook, and twitter, and is well networked into the fertilizer usage of urine, and composting toilets, and water issues. I would really like to see her be welcomed here to do a guest piece about how these issues affect the small farmer and also the home gardener. One of my latest projects is a design for urine fed, and algae fed, and compost tea fed switchgrass, utilizing on site combustion and this augmented with CAES, peak electricity to the grid. I do believe we will see a major shift back to the land as more sustainable and holistic farming details are worked out.
http://www.grist.org/industrial-agriculture/2011-03-10-debunking-myth-th...
http://www.ifoam.org/growing_organic/1_arguments_for_oa/environmental_be...
Not only can regenerative agriculture work, it is the only viable option long-term because soils must be built and chemical ag destroys soils. It's like living on crack; it burns up the Soil Food Web. Adding in pesticides just compounds and expands the problem. Typical chem ag has soils with virtually no carbon content and virtually no biota creating a circle of dependency for farmers on chemically-based solutions. Regeneratively managed soils add carbon and biota to the soil each year, thus building productive and water holding capacities.
On "marginal" land, chem ag creates an illusion of productivity by loading soil with NPK, but when inputs stop, so does production. Regen ag, by comparison, builds carbon, thus moisture and biota such that over time it becomes more productive when we look at the full life-cycle energetics, and also is at least as productive as chem ag in terms of food production long-term.
If we start with healthy soils, regen ag will match chem almost from the beginning. The caveat is building an ecosystem properly takes a few years, but if you have the money (all things equal for comparison, we do), you can speed up the succession and bring the systems equal in a shorter time frame.
Also, regen ag will have more people involved, but that merely solves an unemployment issue. Chem ag reduces employment, regen ag increases it.
Let's look at the two cycles.
Chem Ag: FF extraction, shipping, refining, shipping, processing into products, shipping, retail, shipping (home/farm), tilling, application (via machine), growing season, application, growing, harvest (via machine), removal of "debris" (via machines), tilling, application.
Regen Ag: Spring cover (seeded in Fall), chop n' drop/compost, compost tea, seed/grow, chop n' drop/compost/compost tea (as desired/required), harvest, chop n' drop/compost, seedballs for fall crop, chop n' drop/compost/compost tea (as desired/required), harvest, chop n' drop/compost/compost tea (as desired/required), seedballs for Spring cover.
No brainer in terms of energy. And this is all de-contextualized from all the other issues that make small scale, regen ag not only a good idea, but necessary. Add in carbon sequestration, water conservation (1:4 carbon/water capacity), job creation for idle hands, resilience, walkable/livable communities, fewer machines needed, little transport, much higher food quality, etc., and it becomes obvious.
Pri-de, Thanks for those links, they were really great. I learned a lot. The second link was interesting in that it described how the total worlds ag lands, if managed properly, could sequester, into the soiles themselves forty percent of the yearly CO2 produced. That made me sit up and take notice. I also re-read your post and I do agree that it is obvious about all you touched upon in your last paragraph.
My contribution here, to Regen Ag is with a system of collection, the tripe system, of our own bio-products, #1, and #2 (to be delicate) that would be instrumental as a Regen Ag support system. The tripe can move anything you would like to put in a pipe, such as granulated lime, or grass, (not the kind you smoke) (so knock it off) (you know who you are) as well all the organic components, all liquids you may like for the farm or garden. And that's to and from the farm. Grow switchgrass, put it in the pipe, and off it goes. To boot: all of these materials shipped using sustainable energy sources, and these materials in great tonnages and at great efficiencies.
And, I didn't know about the Grist page till now, so thanks.
I'll check out your system when I can, but wanted to ask why we'd put humanure in a tube and send it away? It's a key component to sustainability.
Pri-de, Local use is usually better, due to transport costs, and now envirolet toilet users and such compost their own, at home, but it's considered fringe by many. But in the future, with shippment capacity, removing waste to compost areas and grow out areas will be the norm, I think. Our bacteria based sewage treatment is not as good as algae feeding systems are. The algae systems don't produce CO2 but instead make 02. I'm on FaceBook and regularly share links and such, and one recent one was on an algae treatment. My page is open to the public. As long as the waste is used, not poisoned and sent to ruin the aquifers and ponds, I'm happy. It all depends on location. For city and suburbs, they need to send their waste out, somehow. Hopefully not sent too far. Also, closed systems can prevent pollution, from pathogens or hormonal compounds etc. and I favor this, and these can be local. I am in favor of separation systems, big time. Especially the urine has a high fertilizer value.
Suggested research:
(1) "Risk analysis for multiple system failure triggered by an oil shock"
We have seen that both in the case of Macondo and Fukushima the risk analysis was flawed.
This is Deffeyes' contribution:
http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html
What will happen if such events occur simultaneously and on a global level?
(2) "Connecting the dots"
A continuing monitoring project to assemble socio-economic, financial and oil statistical indicators and events to prove that peak oil and/or peak oil exports has happened.
As an example, refineries are closing
13/4/2011
Australia's fuel import vulnerability increases as Sydney's Clyde refinery is closing
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=2980
(3) "How the Oildrum can structure its debate"
At present the oildrum is an unstructured collection of articles, contributions, weblinks and comments. The debate often goes in circles. Once the structure is in place articles should be referring to this structure, for example by a label. Ultimately, this should lead to a menu structure in which articles can be easily accessed
to whom / where should papers be submitted?
Rgds
WeekendPeak
Notice the contact given in the right side bar for content:
editors at theoildrum dot com
Most of the topics center on supply, I would venture that demand is half the equation.
- Human tendencies with respect to energy demand
- Factors affecting vehicle fuel economy
- Modeling a number of transportation scenarios: Long haul and short haul, cargo and people.
- Realizing car-free/car-lite communities: zoning, transportation (within and between districts, and between cities)
- AIA techniques to achieving 60-80% reductions in building energy requirements.
Gven our overstretched system of financial claims I would venture its more than half Will...
In fact, the more I consider our situation I don't think we really have an energy shortage, but rather a longage of expectations.
It would be a useful post; itemizing and quantifying discretionary and 'unnecessary' uses of energy. I've commented a bit about how folks seem entitled to use energy for recreational purposes, and Leanan posted this in today's Drumbeat:
Marijuana Growing Gobbles Electricity, Study Finds
My quick calculations reveal that, in the US, over 37 million MW·h/yr are used for growing pot, not including energy expended on enforcement, if this study is accurate. So there's a chunk of electrical use that could be easily converted to solar power with the stroke of a pen; growing weed is legal as long as it's done outside ;-)
I'm having a hard time thinking of a more direct way of saving this much energy. Eliminate nighttime sports, perhaps. Mandate LED-only lighting for buildings at night. A list would be useful. We need to get Halifax on this one.
well, not to start off topic thread, but I would bet if you extend the boundaries of analysis that the total energy footprint of growing all that pot would be negative -i.e. the end users would use much less energy than they would without the pot available by sitting on couches, playing ukeleles on beaches, and sleeping instead of driving cars or building shopping centers.
But I like your general (initial) idea. (which at its core gets to the wants vs needs issue)
There is some truth to all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Fulfilling one's desires clearly helps lubricate life's rough spots. Question: How can we make riding a bike more culturally acceptable than riding a jet ski? Reading a book preferable to watching TV? Taking a 'staycation' to plant a garden more prevalent than a trip to Atlantis or Disney?
Methinks that humans derive a sense of power through the act of consuming energy, perhaps born long ago with the discovery of fire, the ability to keep warm, stave off predators, cook food. Security. Going beyond the production of things we need, how can societies combat the high that seems to come from the shear act of consuming energy? Did you ever go camping with someone who spent the whole trip collecting and putting wood on the fire? For many, it seems that the fire can never be big enough. It's going to be a tough puzzle to solve: how to adapt as a species before we are forced to.
Thanks for the post, Nate. It's almost Campfireish ;-)
To the garden I go! Much to do after yesterday's storm.
"Question: How can we make riding a bike more culturally acceptable than riding a jet ski? Reading a book preferable to watching TV? Taking a 'staycation' to plant a garden more prevalent than a trip to Atlantis or Disney?" "Methinks that humans derive a sense of power through the act of consuming energy......"
Clearly not all humans, Ghung. I have to get on my aboriginal rant again and say that, for many of them, riding a jetski, watching TV, and tripping to Disneyland would just be incompatible with their ethic. This includes what a negative impact you were having on water quality (jetski), how distanced you were making yourself from the nature by watching the TV, and how ludicrous it would be to trek hundreds of miles to visit "Space Mountain" But it's not enough to "realize" ( 1. To comprehend completely or correctly. 2. To bring into reality; make real.) this in your cognitive sphere.....it has to be a part of your emotional sphere or it won't take hold.
Thus, I don't believe your comment "..how to adapt as a species before we are forced to."...since it's not a species problem, but a culture problem. Unfortunately cultures like ours are fast exterminating those with at least SOME answers.
Oh, but I do consider it a special charactristic, one we clearly have a problem with. Tool making is not unique to humans but the use of fire as a tool is. We just haven't learned to control ourselves, not instictually anyway. Cultures vary, the desire to burn stuff not so much. Our ability to exploit energy and resources is clearly an adaptation, one that cultural restrictions are unlikely to overcome. Can a propensity to conserve become an adaptation? Not Sure.
I agree that cultures can and do discourage resource and environmental overexploitation, but as you say: "...cultures like ours are fast exterminating those with at least SOME answers."
Interesting comments Ghung.....
"Our ability to exploit energy and resources is clearly an adaptation, one that cultural restrictions are unlikely to overcome." I half-way agree. I would rephrase it as "Our (species-specific)ability to make use of energy and resources.....". The word exploit encompasses not only "Make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource)", but also the noun form meaning "A bold or daring feat" and "a striking or notable deed; feat; spirited or heroic act". You can use something without having to exploit it. So culture may not be able to curtail the inclination to use energy "tools", but cultural "maturity" can aid in determining the context and extent of use.
Culture aside, "Can a propensity to conserve become an adaptation? Not Sure." There is some debate over the following, but here is a possible analogy. If highly virulent pathogens kill their hosts, and are dependent on those hosts for survival, then the pathogens themselves will become extinct along with the host they are killing (this is an idealized situation, but for the purposes of the argument, serves as an example). If the pathogen population undergoes an 'attenuation', perhaps making the host sick, but not killing it, then both the host and the pathogen survive. In the pathogen populations to date, the 'attenuation' is due to genetic differences between the virulent and attenuated forms of the pathogen. In reality, the attenuated pathogens are probably co-existing with the highly virulent ones at all times (with fluxes in the proportions), but those individual hosts that survive a virulent epidemic will more likely be carrying the attenuated form (and/or have greater host resistance to the virulent pathogen form). So I don't know if attenuation could be considered the same as "a propensity to conserve", but I don't see why not. The difference is that the earth is the host and humans are the (largely) virulent pathogen. Even if there are "attenuated" humans down the road, what will the host look like at that time?
As a final note, I can also muse that perhaps Homo is, along with many other primates, an experiment (by Nature) "gone bad". That although there is the ability present in the species to live more harmoniously with its surroundings, given the current context, reeling in the destructive tendencies is a possibly insurmountable task. I'm thinking of this as I just came from picking up some meat at a rural butcher who processes locally-grown/grazed beef. While I was writing out the checks, he was enlightening me on the fact that oil is a "renewable resource".....that his family's well in NW North Dakota was capped for 20 years and now uncapped is producing again. I didn't want to get into the particulars of his story, but simply noted how desperate he was to believe that we are not at the end of the resource. I imagine such desperation existing in the desert fathers, amongst others, when the original sky gods were coming into being.
If the government selected a good quality seed line that did not produce huge plants and permitted people to legally grow and consume from their own plant, grown from government seed purchased at a reasonable price, but not sell plant or seed it would solve several issues. The smuggling industry would be devastated. Power consumption cut. Slavery used to farm pot eliminated. Use of public land for growing eliminated. Pollution from farms eliminated. A genetic tag could be used for rapid identification of seed line.
NAOM
Perhaps many readers would like to see the second part of the post regarding Factors affecting vehicle fuel economy
which was posted by Will Stewart more than a year ago.
This looks like an artificially constrained question - an interregional grid (e.g., ISOs, RTOs, Interconnections, etc in US/Canada) would be the balancing authority (to include intermittent sources) across local grids, so why leave them out of the equation?
For example, the RTO PJM performs balancing for the generators within its jurisdiction;
http://pjm.com/faqs/nerc.aspx#FAQ3
My area of inquiry is about breaking through to the mainstream on a local level. The Transition movement is doing great work, but its only going to appeal to certain populations in certain communities. I am not fortunate enough to live in one of those places.
This is also professionally related to my job as a city planner working on economic development, which is the only game in town these days. If we can't make the economic development case, energy concerns are going to fall on deaf ears. So the question is how to bring the energy/peak oil discussion into the economic development discussion without, frankly, scaring people so much that they look at me like a lunatic or, even if local leaders are convinced of the oil supply problem, making action difficult because the issue is framed too negative for public consumption.
My attempt in powerpoint form is here: http://theyipblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/presentation.html
The basic framework is:
1. How do we create economic growth in an era of expensive oil? (Personally, I am more pessimistic about the possibility of economic growth in this era, but a goal of economic growth is a necessary hook for credibility).
2. Show that oil production has been flat since 2005 (this is key because its a fact and not a prediction. Its amazing to me that NO ONE knows this); that the IEA says crude oil has peaked; and that according to the IEA only expensive unconventional oil can keep supplies flat or barely growing. I don't go as far as talking about peak oil. Instead the jumping off point is to ask the question "what will happen to our economy if oil production stays flat?" Even this level of reality is enough to shock the person who is otherwise generally well informed.
3. Demonstrate how hard it is for the economy to grow with oil at $100 a barrel.
4. The key point: if we can't solve this problem on the supply side alone (although alternative fuels are critical), economic growth dependent on working on the demand side: creating a more energy efficient economy through transit, dense urban design, local agriculture and regional economic networks. Increase consumer discretionary spending by reducing energy costs for transportation and in the products consumers buy. The goal here is to craft a message that appeals to those who are already working on transit, land use, local ag, and economic development, and bring them together under the umbrella of energy. Give them the tools to make the case that a more energy efficient economy is critical to long-term economic development.
I haven't written this up in essay form yet, but I'd appreciate any feedback on this from the oil drum community.
Hi Natequist,
Have you seen the work of Bryn Davidson of Dynamic cities? He also does a very credible series of presentations related to transport planning, the need for roads, etc.
http://dynamiccities.squarespace.com/road-infrastructure-aging-sc/
-Jon
Jon--these planners are onto something which we could discuss further. No one among us has crystal balls and many predictions have been proven wrong, especially with regard to timing, even when they are substantially on target. It does make sense to have a set of escalating policy prescriptions to put forward after an event or a set of events unfold. As each event or set of events occurs, some of us in our community could have an impact through articles in our local newspapers, letters to the editor, radio spots, assisting others in interpreting these events. Now, we can't necessarily get full agreement on a set of prescriptions, but we can identify some that most of us (TOD community) would believe to be beneficial (carbon taxes, increased efficiency measures, powerdown, etc). I'm thinking this might help at least some to raise the consciousness of some citizens of our respective countries.
Jon--
good stuff there. I think the concept of triage is already coming into vogue in the local government world.
rdberg--
"we can identify some that most of us (TOD community) would believe to be beneficial (carbon taxes, increased efficiency measures, powerdown, etc)"
Agreed, but not on the "powerdown" message. People won't listen to that until long after the resource wars are over. I know it goes against the grain of the Oil Drum to disseminate a message that is in defense and support of economic growth, but its a "half-way" message that could start to widen the cracks in the social consciousness. Or we can wait until geology widens those cracks for us, at which point we will already be deep into "powerdown" and it won't matter.
Two thoughts:
Revenue is key for local government, so push things that are related. For instance, reducing implicit subsidies for personal vehicles by charging properly for parking (eliminate free parking required by zoning; raise meter prices to the market clearing level (the point where spaces open up spontaneously)).
Electric vehicles (hybrids, plug-in hybrids, extended range EVs and pure EVs) are the main solution to PO: they can be implemented much faster and more cheaply than transit, dense urban design, local agriculture and regional economic networks. EVs can be promoted by policies such as preferred access to carpool lanes and parking, and improved charging infrastructure.
Telecommuting and carpooling are also very important PO policies which local government can promote.
I would love to read an answer to this question: How much oil do we need to build a world without oil?
Lots of assumptions necessary:
-how many people?
-what sort of living standard?
-how much do you care about other species?
-is the 'world without oil' for the existing people or people yet to be born?
etc
Humanity produced about 6mbd during World War Two, and used most of that oil fueling machines to blowing each other up. So we might not 'need' that much oil to build a post-peak infrastructure...
The question recently has come up a couple of times--the other side of intermittency: What do you do when the sun is shining bright at the same time that the wind is blowing strongly and the water is flowing furiously? In other words, what do you do with intermittent renewable excess capacity?
Just shutting parts down seems a waste and sends an economic dis-incentive. But it is not very efficient to build entire production plants that can only be used under these relatively rare circumstances.
It seems to me an interesting puzzle that the bright minds around here could have fun batting around.
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Another area that seems to be screaming out for attention--particularly after Deepwater Horizon/Macondo and Fukushima--is the local and regional ecological impacts of energy production.
One place to start would be a chapter-by-chapter discussion of Peter Maass's "Crude World." I would be willing to summarize each chapter and throw out some preliminary questions to get the discussion going.
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I also really appreciate nate's suggestion that the problems are much more about demand 'longage' rather than supply shortage. That's why I prefer the term ILM (Import Land Model) to ELM. Specific policies that could be implemented at levels of gov that could be influenced by posters here (community, town, city, county...) that would have the most dramatic effect at reducing energy needs would be most helpful.
-----------------------------------
I personally miss some of nate's and other's more reflective, psychological and even philosophical posts on our basic relationship to energy, our 'energy identity' if you will, and what motivates various of us to jump to particular types of analyses or 'solutions.'
(Sorry for the multiple suggestions in one post.)
"What do you do when the sun is shining bright at the same time that the wind is blowing strongly and the water is flowing furiously?"
Make hydrogen or ammonia, or store in CAES, hydro-storage, etc.
I suspect hydrogen makes the most sense.
My question: what are the costs of producing, storing and producing power from liquid hydrogen? How do they compare to CAES, pumped hydro, or other alternatives?
Since I didn't bring up liquid hydrogen, you'll have to ask someone else. Costs for CAES and pumped hydro are highly situation-dependent.
What kind of hydrogen storage did you have in mind, and how much does it cost?
what do you do with intermittent renewable excess capacity?
That's a great question.
Let's say we overbuild wind power by 10%. That will reduce the percentage of time where power output is below the average, thus reducing the largest problem caused by intermittency. Roughly 50-60% of the time we'll have substantial excess power, which we could store to produce something that could be turned into power later, when needed.
So, we need a post exploring the costs.
Fossil fuels are themselves a form of energy storage, and the cheapest thing do to is to have enough gas capacity to cover any shortfalls. Eventually you can start to use syngas / biogas or even create hydrogen or methane from the electricity, although this is likely to have a fairly low round trip efficiency (~50% compared to 80-90% for batteries or pumped storage)
Also a good chunk (2/3ish) of building energy demand is in heating and cooling which doesn't have to be instantaneous. A frequency responsive heat pump with a thermal buffer would allow a lot of flexibility.
I agree - there are a lot of options. Others include Demand Side Management, especially with EVs, and V2G.
Regarding batteries or pumped storage: they're efficient and good at producing lots of power when needed, but expensive per kWh. They'd be good for hourly or daily variations, but not for long periods of low wind production - that week long period of low wind and sun that might happen once per year or less. On-site synthetic hydrocarbons (or naked hydrogen) potentially have much lower capital costs per kWh combined with lower efficiency. This would be useful for infrequent lulls, where cheap longterm storage is more important than efficiency.
We need a good analysis of an optimized system, or perhaps something simpler that looked at the relative marginal costs of the alternatives.
Nick,
The fundamental problem is all those alternatives are expensive. We have the flip side problem of wind power - to absorb these rapidly changing amounts of energy needs big equipment, for whatever the storage is. A sustained long windy period and your storage is full, a sustained windless period an you are empty.
Now, in an expensive electricity land model (an EELM?) of 30c/kWh, these things would be viable - but who is going to accept 30c/kWh? Only people crazy enough to do that is Hawaii, and look at their response - get everyone else to go there, and leave their money behind so they can afford the expensive electricity.
I think we are better off looking at ways to use the electricity, rather than just store it. The demand heating mentioned above is one example. It is the equivalent of having freed food suddenly available at 3pm, when you just had lunch - do you eat more, or wait for dinnertime (and pay for it)?
In any case, there certainly is plenty of fodder for a few posts on this - but who can afford to volunteer the time needed to thoroughly research it?
Paul Nash: I don't think that wind to compressed air, to a pipe, to a bladder,is unrealistic scaled up. CAES is not that expensive, especially at sea where the very depths provide air compression, at only the cost of some mechanical transfers, and storage lots of it is easy, at depth. With CAES the systems to me look very reasonable. Electrical is expensive. Costly wiring and line drop, for any long distance operations are prohibitive, I think. But energy or horsepower does not always need to be electrical. At depth lots of compressed air can be very cheaply stored and waiting. While you may be on the electrical storage and conservation wavelength, I'm only with you on the conservation side, as I think the electrical storage and its shippment is pretty tough to hope for. I do think of Hydrogen as stored electricity, in a way. Steve.
Good points. Do you know of specific plans for large bladders to store compressed air at sea? This seems particularly useful for coastal areas such as Seattle which is right now experiencing a large surplus of hydro power.
I will try to remember, but there is a professor, University of Nottingham I believe, who favored strongly the Wind to CAES using bladders. I tried but failed to make contact, but I too of course am intensely interested in this to say the least, as I have mountains of my own detail drawings on this subject. My core is wind to CAES and storage at depth, and really, unfortunately, I'm working all alone on this, and certainly not by choice. AND I'M TAKING A FAIR AMOUNT OF CRAP FOR IT TOO. (and I got a terrible wedgie at age 5 too) (but I did ask for it)
The fundamental problem is all those alternatives are expensive.
Not really. Synthetic hydrocarbons such as ammonia or methanol would likely be an inefficient (hence expensive per kWh) way to store electricity, but they'd be cheap to store. They'd only provide a small % of kWhs, so the high price per kWh wouldn't matter.
We might overbuild wind power by 15% and convert the excess into synthetics, to supply 5% of kWh overall. The synthetics would be used during infrequent but long lulls in wind production. The cost of the overbuilding is a 15% premium, which isn't that large in the big picture: perhaps $.01 per kWh overall. The other factor would be the cost of the equipment for producing, storing and producing power from the synthetics: I'd like to see that analysis, but I can't imagine it would more than a 30% premium. That totals to a 45% premium - perhaps $.03 per kWh. Significant, but very, very far from the $.20 premium that would be necessary to cause power to cost $.30.
On the other hand, I agree that that there are much cheaper solutions: geographical diversity; Demand Side Management; use of existing peak capacity; hydro balancing; overbuilding; and modest biomass balancing should all be maximized before we look at storage.
Those systems, except for pumped hydro, are clearly too expensive to be rolled out, commercially, at this time, and absent Hawaii type electricity prices, I can;t see this changing.
Keep in mind, that pumped storage can be turned on and off when we want, and it is, twice every day. but when we are looking at storing wind we do not have such regular cycles. Best analogy is a dam used for irrigation storage scheme. how big do you build? Too big and it will never be full, too small and it will overflow and you lose water. When you release, how much do leave behind in storage, and for how long? You are making decisions based partly expected weather patterns. Same with storing wind energy - the capacity factor for your storage will be much lower than for a daily pumped storage.
You could say the storage tech/equipment isn;t that expensive, but when when you have a low capacity factor for it, and can;t make an economic return, then it IS expensive.
When you say overbuild wind by 15% - of what? Average capacity factor is 30%, but the "reliable" output is deemed to be less than 10%, an extra 15 makes for 11.5%. Even 15% of 30 is only 35%
Given that wind is nowhere more than 20% of total gen, talking about overbuilding seems premature, as it is still a long way "underbuilt", but is already running into grid integration limits at 20-30%.
The other factor would be the cost of the equipment for producing, storing and producing power from the synthetics:
Costs for building Fischer-Tropsch type plants are over $120k/bbl/day. Methanol plants are about 1/3 of that.
Now, if it is wind powered, it only gets used about 30% of the time, so the effective cost has tripled. not only that, the process efficiency is terrible as it is always starting and stopping - thermochemical processes don;t like that.
On the other hand, I agree that that there are much cheaper solutions: geographical diversity; Demand Side Management; use of existing peak capacity; hydro balancing; overbuilding; and modest biomass balancing should all be maximized before we look at storage.
Yes. keep in mind that DSM does not just mean saving electricity, it can also mean shifting, and even increasing electricity use. Some hotels at two BC ski resorts have installed duel fuel heating systems -adding elec heat to their NG/propane boilers. Of course, they only use cheap off peak electricity, but it is cheaper than NG, and certainly propane. Now, such a hotel could switch from NG to elec anytime the wind is blowing, if they can buy elec on the spot market.
So this is what I mean by finding ways to use more electricity - it just runs counter what most people think of DSM. I think we can find many, many such uses before it is worth going to synthetic fuel making for wind storage - but I can predict many will involve offsetting NG use, either for elec generation or space/water/process heat. Hydrogen is a different beast as it is so expensive/unsafe to transport, that is is only worth doing if it can be profitably used at the point of electrolysis - and fuel cells to grid elec are not profitable, and likely never will be.
Those systems, except for pumped hydro, are clearly too expensive to be rolled out, commercially, at this time, and absent Hawaii type electricity prices, I can;t see this changing.
That's what I said at the end of my last comment, right? Viability is different from competitiveness.
when we are looking at storing wind we do not have such regular cycles.
True - it's a matter of statistical analysis and forecasting. That works pretty well. Remember, we don't have to handle the 6 sigma variations - there are much cheaper ways to handle very, very infrequent events.
When you say overbuild wind by 15% - of what?
I mean 15% of average output, which is the most useful figure (far more useful than nameplate, which gets focused on excessively).
Given that wind is nowhere more than 20% of total gen, talking about overbuilding seems premature
I agree. That's what I meant about this being a very theoretical exercise - akin to analyzing the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
is already running into grid integration limits at 20-30%.
What locations are you referring to? I've heard of minor integration problems in places like BPA and Denmark, but that doesn't sound familiar.
Costs for building Fischer-Tropsch type plants are over $120k/bbl/day. Methanol plants are about 1/3 of that.
What kind of methanol plants are you thinking of? Do you happen to have a link?
if it is wind powered, it only gets used about 30% of the time
Remember, we're talking about overbuilt wind, so generation will be above average perhaps 60% time - so we'll have that surplus power 60
% of the time.
the process efficiency is terrible as it is always starting and stopping - thermochemical processes don;t like that.
Well, we're designing a backup system - so the first thing we'd do is backup the synthesis plant to the degree that's optimal.
DSM does not just mean saving electricity, it can also mean shifting, and even increasing electricity use.
I agree - when I say DSM, I'm not even considering efficiency - I'm talking exclusively about shifting electricity use, including increasing it when appropriate.
fuel cells to grid elec are not profitable, and likely never will be.
Possibly. On the other hand, they might have a use for stationary storage for very infrequent use. It might be useful to show their costs in that function, just to reassure people that if all else fails, it's possible to design a simple system that makes wind stable at an affordable cost.
Nick and Paul,
The characteristics of wind power output are that some power is being generated most of the time, but mostly at less than average capacity and a lot of power generated for relatively short periods(12-48h) about once a week. Collecting wind power over a large geographical area( ie area of eastern or western grid in US) will reduce the maximum output to about 70% of capacity, but this is still twice the average capacity. Without any storage this would limit wind power to 50% of electricity production. If the rest is coming from NG or CST with storage, with 20-40% capacity, this would be more than enough to cover low wind periods.
If more than 50% electricity generated from wind, because of co excess wind has to be spilled or stored using a storage medium that can accept very high capacity, and store at this rate for at least 48h. So for US consumption of 400GW average, supplied by 80% wind(1000GW capacity operating range 200-650GW) would require about 250GW storage operating capacity(650-400GW demand) with a total of 12,000GWh storage capacity. This is a lot more than could be accommodated by EV charging, or even using used EV batteries. Several large dams can store >12,000GWh but this is usually accumulated and released over one or two years, rather than a few days.
Handling the variability of 50% of electrical energy coming from CST with modest thermal storage is a lot more manageable. Excess daily output would be predicable, even if there was a week of low output(due to widespread cloud ) existing hydro and NG capacity could make up for the loss not covered by daily CST storage. A modest increase in pumped hydro at large dams and lakes could store all of the excess summer CST output over a period of months, rather than days.
some power is being generated most of the time, but mostly at less than average capacity
I looked at the data from Ontario. Output was below average about 55% of the time. Now, that's to be expected - we know that wind power output doesn't follow a normal distribution. OTOH, while that's more than the 50% one would expect from a normal distribution, it's not dramatically more.
a lot of power generated for relatively short periods(12-48h) about once a week.
Where did you see this?
Collecting wind power over a large geographical area( ie area of eastern or western grid in US) will reduce the maximum output to about 70% of capacity
That seems plausible, but...maybe a little high. Again, how did you develop this estimate?
Without any storage this would limit wind power to 50% of electricity production.
Heck, that's enough. It's enough to displace coal. We could combine it with solar, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wave, a bit of biomass, etc. and eliminate fossil fuels entirely.
a total of 12,000GWh storage capacity. This is a lot more than could be accommodated by EV charging, or even using used EV batteries.
Not really. 12TWh divided by 230M vehicles is about 52kWh per vehicle. That's the right order of magnitude - heck, it's a Tesla, and only 2x the capacity of a Leaf. 50 years from now the average EV could easily be at that level, and every 12 years or so they'd throw off about 9TWhs of used battery capacity, recycled to utility storage. We could easily have 30TWhs of EV and post-EV storage.
I agree - CST looks very promising, though a bit more expensive than wind at this point.
Nick,
The 12TWh in a 48h period is excess to normal demand, so EV charging couldn't really contribute. Recycled EV batteries could help but if most EV's are PHEV, I would expect many PHEV owners will keep using them until they are almost exhausted, just as we do for laptop batteries.
Sure 50% from wind is enough but it means other non FF energy resources have to grow to a point where it can scale up to make a significant contribution, ie where wind is at present.Hydro will be hard pressed to continue providing 7-8%, nuclear will need to replace 100 aging reactors. Its not clear how quickly geothermal can expand.
You may find this interesting;
htpp//www.oz-energy-analysis.org click onto analysis
Look up simulated wind and CST plots based on wind speed data at 31 locations across Australia ( about the size of US). It also has output from individual states. its only data from one year(2003) but is similar to real output of wind farms in SE Australia(2008-2011).
The 12TWh in a 48h period is excess to normal demand, so EV charging couldn't really contribute.
1st, many EVs will be partially charged, just like gas tanks that are only partly full, so they'll be borrowing demand from the future;
2nd, that's a matter of forecasting and management - it will be possible to forecast a period of excess wind production, and EV owners will reduce their charging in anticipation (and the savings will go into hydro, transmission to other areas, etc), so they'll be borrowing demand from the past.
3rd, EV batteries could easily go larger than 50kWh, eventually.
Recycled EV batteries could help but if most EV's are PHEV, I would expect many PHEV owners will keep using them until they are almost exhausted, just as we do for laptop batteries.
And the same applies to some EV owners. I would expect that some EV owners will simply add a little capacity to deal with battery decline (rather than replacing the whole megillah) and at some point just live with declining capacity. That depends on a lot of things, including the price paid by utilities on trade-ins, and the relative demand for EVs. Of course, some EVs will be totaled in accidents, and their batteries will become available.
In the other direction:
1)there's V2G, which could be huge for dealing with lulls, and which would reduce slightly the need for overbuilding, and
2) there are a lot of other things that could be modulated besides EVs.
50% from wind is enough but it means other non FF energy resources have to grow to a point where it can scale up to make a significant contribution, ie where wind is at present.Hydro will be hard pressed to continue providing 7-8%, nuclear will need to replace 100 aging reactors. Its not clear how quickly geothermal can expand.
Sure. OTOH, there's little question that all of these can be expanded (though geothermal is a little murkier, it's true) - it's a social choice. A world in which we push wind up to 50% is a world in which we make a lot of choices differently from today.
You may find this interesting;
htpp//www.oz-energy-analysis.org click onto analysis
Thanks - I'll take a look!
**EDIT
I looked at the Australian wind analysis - it's interesting, - it's a simulation based on meteorological wind measurements, rather than actual wind farm output, and it's intended to cover the whole continent.
It seems encouraging - post number 9 at the end of the following link suggests that overall Australian wind production would be pretty stable: http://www.oz-energy-analysis.org/analysis/BtCC_simulated_wind_farms.php
The Maximum Entropy Principle applied to wind energy would predict that the output is less than the average about 63% of the time. That's the way that nature works when a variance doesn't apply, and you can see that from the figure below, which is not even close to a normal distribution. I am not arguing in the least, just stating that nature gives us entropy, and we have to deal with it.
Ontario Data:
The Maximum Entropy Principle applied to wind energy would predict that the output is less than the average about 63% of the time.
hmmm. Why the difference between the 55% actual, and the predicted 63%?
That's the way that nature works when a variance doesn't apply
Could you expand on that?
the figure below, which is not even close to a normal distribution.
What would a normal distribution look like?
The energy states of the system are spread out enough (from E=0 to E=infinity) that the only moment that applies is the mean value. Like I said, that is the way statistical physics works.
Your numbers are likely off. The actual data is closer to 63% than to 55%.
A normal would have a flat top and then it would drop off steeply around the mean value.
A blow-up of the actual data. The mean value is 168 MWh and is off the scale right.
The actual data is closer to 63%
If we were to add up a number of independent wind farm outputs, would we change that parameter of the distribution?
If not, what would?
I just checked my data for Germany wind energy distribution, and that is also at 63%.
The more data sources you add, the closer it will converge to 63% I bet.
Is this the source of your German data?
http://www.amprion.net/en/wind-feed-in#
According to my records it is from:
http://www.tennettso.de/pages/tennettso_de/index.htm
Thanks - I think we're working from the same data.
How was the 63% derived? Is it from 1st principles, or a constant derived from observation?
First principles according to the Maximum Entropy Principle above. It comes out to 1-1/e as a fraction.
Nick,
The cheapest storage is hydro that is saved for later use. The advantages are the dams already exist, storage can be for months or in some cases years.
Additional costs would be increased generating capacity and additional transmission lines unless the wind power is sited close to the hydro then some transmission could be shared.
The next cheapest storage is pumped hydro using two very large near by lakes or dams, such as Lakes Ontario and Erie( both about 18,000 sq km, 99m elevation difference).Massive amounts of energy could be stored by small adjustments to lake level.
Generally its only very small pumped storage where costs per kWh stored are high, generally costs are due to establishing capacity(turbines and especially tunnels or pipelines).
Until US wind capacity exceeds average electricity demand not very much wind power has to be wasted. This would be about 400GW, or X10 present US wind capacity. Add in another 200million EV and PHEV's with smart charging you could add another 400GW wind capacity. Peak wind output is usually localized and for short duration, ideal to be absorbed by EV charging.
Yes, I always thought of pumped hydro as the best solution.
But on the one hand some locations have very little hydro.
On the other, sometimes it is hydro that is part of the problem of over production, and in those cases it can't also be part of the solution.
There is a thread in the recent Drumbeat about the Seattle area having an embarrassment of riches like this--a winter with lots of snow is making for a spring with lots of excess hydro-power. So now when it gets windy, the grid can't handle any extra energy (57% of their local energy comes from hydro.)
Compressed air energy storage (caes) can also be promising, but as I understand it, the cheapest way to do it is to use existing underground caves, and these don't exist everywhere at the right size and other specs.
Topping off millions of evs could help, but I don't know how soon (if ever) we will have the vehicles and the smart grid to do this.
A combination of approaches is doubtless needed, and different ones for different areas. But what would be useful is so energy storage system (besides hydro for reasons noted) that is cheap to run and easy to draw down. It is the difficulty of investing in lots of infrastructure that only gets used fairly rarely.
I don't know how soon (if ever) we will have the vehicles and the smart grid to do this.
For better or worse, we have a lot of coal, and it will be as cheap or cheaper than wind for quite a while (unless we internalize pollution costs, of course).
That means that wind is a choice, just as EVs are. A world in which we choose to build a lot wind power will also be a world in which we build a lot of EVs.
"A world in which we choose to build a lot wind power will also be a world in which we build a lot of EVs." Elegantly put, but one could also imagine a world that builds a lot of wind power but walks away from the whole car culture.
I will admit to have soured a bit on EVs having owned one now for four years. It could be that I could have been more careful in my nurturing of the batteries, but they lost power and then went dead much sooner than I had anticipated. Power reduction in the winter in MN also was much more than I anticipated.
I still try to correct common misconceptions about them, but I really think we have to move as quickly away from our car culture altogether as we possibly can.
Ding, ding, ding!
So, you've soured a bit on EVs because of the poor performance of the batteries? What kind of batteries were they?
The cheapest storage is hydro that is saved for later use.
I agree. I assumed that would be maximized, and that the difficulty was what to use after we exhausted that.
The next cheapest storage is pumped hydro
The cost of storage depends heavily on how often it's used. Pumped storage that is used 6 times per year will be 60x more expensive per kWh, compared to pumped storage that is used on a daily basis. This is why the capital cost of either batteries or pumped storage becomes prohibitive for infrequent but long periods of low renewable production.
What is needed are storage solutions that have very low capital cost, even if that comes at the cost of much lower efficiency.
Until US wind capacity exceeds average electricity demand not very much wind power has to be wasted.
I agree - figuring out how to handle an "all-renewable" grid is a very long-term question. Given the difficulty of forecasting technological change, one might even compare it to analyzing the number of angels that can dance on a pin.
pumped hydro using two very large near by lakes or dams, such as Lakes Ontario and Erie( both about 18,000 sq km, 99m elevation difference).Massive amounts of energy could be stored by small adjustments to lake level.
So, you're suggesting using the two lakes as the two reservoirs? Wow. That sounds like a great idea. Has that recieved any public consideration? If not, why not? What are the major obstacles?
"If not, why not? What are the major obstacles?'
The Great Lakes are open systems in that water is always flowing out (can't really be stopped), so there's nothing to be gained from pumping from one to the other. Other reservoirs have been used for pumped storage for decades. I've linked to a couple of examples (Lakes Oconee and Sinclair in Georgia, USA, serve the Vogtle nuke plants; purpose built pumped storage). I've suggested connecting lakes Powell and Meade, though flows are problematic there as of late; water quality issues down stream. I'm sure there are many candidates for pairing existing reservoirs, especially in the TVA system. Most of the infrastructure already exists in these systems, though most of the water already has claims upon it as well.
I once (in jest really) suggested flooding Death Valley and using it as a sink for reservoirs built in the mountains around it. Since it's below sea level it should be easy to flood with seawater. Plenty of solar there. But then again, it's a "National Treasure". Go figure. I doubt there would be many NIMBYs though.
A really good post on pumped storage would be interesting/useful. Works great for irrigation and potable water.
Lake Michigan is used as the lower reservoir for the largest pumped storage facility in the US (Ludington).
I guess the interesting question that raises is: should we dam one or two of the Great Lakes for hydro and pumped storage?
Pumping from the Great Lakes is one thing. Pumping into a Great Lake seems like filling a swimming pool with a teaspoon, and the pool leaks a bit. I'm not familiar enough with the layout of the various lakes to comment on damming them, though if it was feasable it likely would have been done. A series of smaller storage reservoirs would be useful if siting was feasable. Getting people to move?
BTW: It depends on how you define "largest". Lake Oconee mentioned above is larger in terms of acrefeet:
It's over 19,000 acres, though average depth is only 21 feet.
Actually, it looks like the hydro plants at Niagara Falls have dammed Lake Erie about as much as people want.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewiston_Pump-Generating_Plant#Lewiston_Pum...
Interestingly, those hydro plants already include pumped storage! The utilities were way ahead of us...
Ludington was the largest in terms of it's 1.8GW generating capacity - now it's the 2nd largest, behind Bath County.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant#Charac...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station
....and Ludington is pure pumped storage, while Oconee is part of a river system.
I went to Racoon Mountain in TN years ago. Quite impressive.
It looks like pumped storage is scaled up to the point where expansion potential is limited and the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Imagine that. I'm sure these companies keep these facilities fully tasked, producing/buying spare capacity to sell on-peak. Renewables have to compete for this storage, same as other sources, and their intermitancy and unpredictable production means producers have to work harder to find a place to send it. Other sources can usually be scheduled. I suspect that NG and coal plant operators don't enjoy chasing the wind and sun, and I know the nuke plants don't. Steady state is a good thing.
The limiter is that RE storage of any sort will need to be largely dedicated, though if these folks are smart, they'll build their energy sponges big enough to store and resell energy from other sources.
pumped storage is scaled up to the point where expansion potential is limited
I don't see a geological limit: Ludington, for instance, could be expanded as much as desired. For better or worse, Michigan is really suffering, and it would welcome any expansion there or perhaps further north in the Northern Peninsula. Similarly, Alan Drake sees a great deal of potential for expansion elsewhere. I think the only real limit is economic: how much we want to spend on it, and the value we'd get relative to other possible investments to mitigate renewable intermittency.
I agree - resources built to deal with renewable intermittency will be a system resource, available to all sources. That optimizes things much better.
I think that the main problem of intermittency is that of marginal cost. Once the total power capacity exceeds the potential demand, it means that every extra device (windmills, solar panel, and so on..) will be less and less used. One could think of sharing the "non-use" among all devices, but of course those who have invested first won't be very happy to unplug their plants because a new one, mainly useless, has been built ! so if the burden of unplugging when will likely be concentrated on the last build devices, so increasing a lot their marginal cost, and discouraging investors from building them.
Good points.
I would say that the first producer that could go down should be ff burning plants rather than whatever was most recently built. Having a fair chunk of the pie in natural gas should allow quick shut down when there is excess electricity on the grid. But ultimately we have to plan for an all alternatives grid, so these problems should be anticipated and planned for.
Dohboi: and others, Let's let the market decide these contingencies, and with a long planning horizon, starting now, to gauge the values with different fuel commodities and then to either tax, for negatives, or discount or reward through subsidy, for the positives. It's all about judgements and control and the new markets would work thusly: I'm a farmer who grows switch grass, and I have a power plant. My plant sells power onto the grid, the old electrical grid, and it uses power from the new green grid as well. And it also produces, let's say hydrogen which goes onto, or into, the new green grid. Using a points system, and so then by the graded KW the electrical commodity can be tethered to good and bad criteria. This means we create markets from whole cloth. These markets didn't exist. There is no market (positive or negative) for coal externalities, let's say both good and bad to be fair, (assume we get rid of carbon trade silliness where we pay a poor country good money to do nothing) so then we make one up. The energy commodities of the future need regulated economies to protect stability and to insure efficiency. Efficiency means no free riders, with the negatives, and reasonable returns for the positives. It may mean also some protectionism as the old systems are forced out by new criteria.
So my switch grass power generation operation gets points of all sorts from and to both the old electrical grid system and the new green grid system. I'm saying we would be wise to have market systems in place pre energy system conversion from the old to the new. These commodity market systems would regulate such that there would be some safe utility investment, and some competition. For the fact that the switch grass grower is buying urine and grey water on the market, then this would mean points. The reason it is good is that it closes a loop and stops pollution, and it lessens lots of muni expense in sewage disposal. The switch grass farm has algae and compost systems and it is buying hog waste. There's more points. The switch grass plant has wind mills, and they only produce CAES, no electricity. The steam from the switch grass is super charged by the Compressed Air (CA) so there's some more points. We give points for regularity and stability and green things. We subtract points for the un-green things, and for intermittancy (or non-connectedness issues, or say improper or non ideal connections). Green grid technology is largely storage, but it itself is a delivery system for mostly sustainable energy forms, those carried in pipes.
These commodity energy markets have to be designed first, integrated first, even before great new physical systems come on line. Investment stability dictates that. And, we're talking utilities, not banana sales. I don't have to have a banana, but I must take a shower (re: board of health) so I am a captive user of the utility. So model systems and prototypes and hybrids of all sorts need to be piloted for this purpose alone, never mind the technology, the command structure of the markets comes first .... to prevent chaos. I think you are wise to say: "But ultimately we have to plan for an all alternatives grid, so these problems should be anticipated and planned for." Now if you could further expand that to mean an all alternatives grid as well as an additional corollary pipe-able energy commodity grid, that would be the ideal, I think. Urine etc. may be thought of, or regulated as an energy utility because it would be consequential to the fuels burned, willows may be a fuel too.
This would require the installed renewable power base to be sufficient to reach full consumption at a given time, which is very far to be the case anywhere yet, so the ones having to lower their production are for a long time the gas or coal plants, needed next to any renewable power base.
This is the sort of thing I'd like to be tackling in a new career...I'm about done with IT.
One of the big characterizeable differences between the status quo and a "greener" future is that everything about our national electrical infrastructure assumes the permanence of majority baseline generation. Coal plants are always burning coal, day and night...our nuke plants are always nuking...our rivers always run (sort of). We've got nearly no storage ability; we need to better bridge time - i.e., being able to generate at noon and release at midnight - and we need to better bridge distance - i.e., sun's setting in Boston but it's still well up in Seattle. I see us needing both macro-scale storage in terms of Raccoon-Mountain-like pump facilities, compressed-air plants, or lifting-weight systems and far smaller and more local solutions, perhaps all the way down to UPSses becoming standard household appliances.
Feel like researching and doing a post on the costs of storage?
I'm especially curious about solutions for infrequent but long periods of low renewable production. It seems to me that we need things that have low capital costs (with modest production volumes over long periods of time using excess wind power) and are easy to store, like synthetic hydrocarbons (or possibly liquid hydrogen). There would be large efficiency losses, but that would be more than made up for the low cost of storage.
Dear sixofone, and HalfDozenOfTheOther, Welcome aboard the tripe train system, energy shipment system, everything you lay out that we need in systems, is what the system has for accomplishments. The system is top notch at bridging distances, using held in the pipe new green fuels, hydrogen, compressed air, and what I call ORCA or oxygen rich compressed air. I too see micro and macro systems coming together using a new reference, which is piped sustainable fuels, like compressed air at 8,000 psi that can supercharge coal, or gas. or just straight. Bridge the energy in the pipe, from the banks, and in Time the same pressures come out the other end miles and miles away. That's a tall order, yes some minor drop, and will require major pipe capacity, but why would that be a problem or an issue, and major pressures so that user system can't suck the pipe dry if they tried. Realistically, unknown to mainstream thinkers on the oil drum, the vast reserves of energy in wind and wave, especially following the lows, are just so enormous that with good machinery of my own designs loading the pipes with CAES and Hydrogen etc will be sustainable energy overcapacity. Especially since the new technology to retro a coal plant for a compressed air refit, will take time. There are so many cash flows with this energy storage and shipment system, being that it is also multi-utility in nature, nothing like it you have ever seen, that I think it's just too complex for even the oil drummer to get. The paper is on my web page. www.environmentalfisherman.com The Tripe System 11 pages illustrated
Trains can't run on a pipe. Hogwash.
We don't have the resin for this job. Not so.
Windmills on land are better. Take your pick
Compressed air systems aren't that good. You have an idea thats better?
Hydrogen is too expensive. Oil is too expensive
I have no credentials. True
The idea is not worked out in detail. True
The idea will not work. The Tripe system has not been modeled up for a look see yet.
Posts being deleted and not archived. Why?
"We invite anyone with the skills and interest to contribute to the body of knowledge posted here."
A new editorial policy? Of course not. This has always been TOD's open minded perspective.
But it's a good reminder that we all have a different take on this incredibly complex subject that will determine the future of human civilization.
speak your peace
There is no prohibition on the oil drum to having a really bad idea, and then pushing it. Given that fact, I am still waiting to be invited to do a still as yet preliminary brainstorm theater on the Track-Pipe system. Should I be booted off this list? Having posts summarily deleted is not cool with me. The Tripe System is a system proposal that has been discussed on the oil drum, some scoffing, but generally not too bad. Initially there were some ham handed shoot from the hip assertions that took their toll, which weren't in keeping with my designs.
In the planning realm of economic development, such a system would mean plenty of jobs. But is there a cash flow to fund the jobs? With the Track-Pipe system, both the costs and cash flows would be pretty much staggering. The Track-Pipe, or tripe system is a multi use system. Essentially it is an energy storage and shipment thing. It doesn't produce for the most part, with a few odd exceptions any energy at all. But that's OK. Production of energy at remote sites with the ability to store and ship that energy is what we need. We have the ability to harness the wind and the wave, the sun and geothermal, but no way to store and ship. The tripe is the answer there.
First of all the costs for world wide systems, (and with the partners to match) would be as follows: 25% for R&D; 33% Power Company Purchase costs; 20% Track-Pipe construction; 12% Rail Road takings; 10% utility easement and property costs and social costs. While I think the total project cost worldwide may be about three hundred trillion, the tripe component may be about a third. Input plants may be about a third, and usage and conversion technologies also a third. More or less the quasi-public consortium would concern itself with the ownership of the long term coupling assets, and not input investments and output uses, with the exception of the transportation portion which will be public/private through the consortium.
The tripe cash flows add up to 118% to allow for my summer home on Nantucket. Cash flow income is as follows: 20% each for Transportation, Water, and CAES. Having a natural gas pipeline system will bring in 10%. Modern sewage systems using multi conduits 12%, ORCA (oxygen rich compressed air) 6%, Broadband etc. 5%. And then last, but not least Hydrogen paying in at 15%.
This system makes the bet that there can be three green fuels in heavy usage in the future, and that these can overlap and take over where the FF leave off. It's not such a long term project for it's scope. I have personally drawn up hundreds of sustainable energy wind, wave, solar, geothermal, ideas and such. My brick wall was always energy storage, shipment, and those conversions, until I came up with the Track-Pipe idea. I'm really surprised and dismayed you oil drummers don't find promise in the system, as I do. I really think it's the future. It's not because it's mine, but because it answers all the questions for us. As I've said earlier, I'd be willing to get all my work on disk, which is hundreds of detail drawings etc. The tripe system works with all of our new and old energy systems. I have said the system is the common denominator, in that all of our sustainable energy plugs into the tripe, and then too, all of our existing, coal, gas, gasoline, nuclear systems plug into the system as well. Just because it's a panacea, doesn't mean it won't work, just as the old saying goes: "Just because your paranoid, doesn't mean their not out to get you"
www.environmentalfisherman.com The Tripe System Report. 11 pages illustrated.
I'd like to see an analysis of efficiencies, theoretical and currently achieved of various energy transformations. I'm thinking in particular of the electric car, and how come it seems to be assumed that is some kind of answer to reducing our energy consumption. It's true that in the (quite far?) future most energy will be delivered via electricity, since that is what most non-fossil energy production seems to be best suited to. Unless of course the hydrogen route, with its much greater potential for storage, takes over. But right now electricity coming into my home is about 3x expensive per BTUs as gas or oil. I know it has already gone through the inefficiencies of heat conversion; but there is still a lot lost energy to come before it manifests itself in miles driven, with the battery charging and discharging cycle and the inefficiencies of motors.
I'm no expert on the Carnot cycle and all that, but I know that electricity generation transmission and transforming is somewhere south of 30% efficient. Add to that the abovementioned cost of getting the power to the wheels, and it seems no better than the internal combustion engine can be with its theoretical performance I believe somewhere in the 20 percentile. And that gives us free heating in the winter which is no unimportant thing in much of the US & Europe.
No doubt if I dig around other sites there must be a cogent explanation that would lay my scepticism to rest. But I do suspect that the many numbers for efficiency that are thrown around are not necessarily comparable. And what are the likely limits. That would give us maybe some clues as to which technologies may be more promising to pursue.
I very simple way to compare energy efficiency of EV and ICE vehicle is to compare the Chevy Volt in EV mode(0.2kwH/MILE) with Chevy Volt in ICE mode(0.02gallons/mile; 47mile/gallon).
Since 0.2kWh has 0.72MJ and 0.02 gallons has 3MJ( 130MJ per gallon plus 20MJ refinery energy use).
This puts EV mode about X4 more efficient than a very efficient ICE vehicle.
In an ICE the heat engine is between the fuel tank and the wheels. In an EV the heat engine is between the hole in the ground and the battery pack. The heat engine being the lossiest step. It isn't clear to me the merits of efficiency even if I could annoint a clear winner. Electricity has the advantage that we aren't running out of it. If we had a century of gasoline reserves, nobody would be building electric cars. Gasoline has the advantage of being a dense storage of energy.
The key point is that a heat engine isn't necessary for electricity. Wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, etc.
Nuclear is a heat engine. Solar thermal is a heat engine. Geothermal is a heat engine. The key point is that there really isn't an apples to apples comparison to be made.
When the heat is free or low cost, we don't worry so much about the efficiency as when the fuel is a significant cost. We still have to pay for the kit.
Whoops - of course, nuclear, CSP and geothermal are heat engines.
I was really thinking of wind. PV would qualify as well.
Yes, it's hard to make comparisons.
Perhaps the key point is that non-fossil fuel sources of electricity are viable: high E-ROI, scalable, affordable, etc.
It is a pity that math gets in the way of simple concepts and so many people get scared away.
Imagine you had a rushing stream next to your house.
Imagine you put a water wheel (with paddles) into the stream so that the bottom rim of the wheel (and its paddles) just touches the top surface of the stream.
Hooray! The wheel starts to turn.
[ i.mage.+]
You think to yourself, aha more is better.
So you dunk the entire water wheel under and the stream stops flowing because it is totally dammed up.
You now realize there is a live and let live relationship here.
The stream has to keep moving so that the water particles striking the paddles of your wheel have momentum (sorry, a tiny amount of math here: momentum = mass times velocity) to impart to the paddles of your water wheel. Otherwise the wheel will not turn.
Well, all that Carnot stuff is basically that.
It says the water in the stream should come from a high place (a.k.a. high temperature, Th).
It says that the water in the stream should have a low place (Tl) to go to so that the stream keeps flowing.
It says that when you slightly dam up the stream, you take away from the lowness of that low place and the water moves slower and slower past your paddles.
Yup. Th minus Tl.
And you divide by Th to normalize the thing relative to your energy source.
Efficiency= (Th-Tl)/Th , all in Kelvin scale of course. :-)
Recommend inviting Steve Mohr to present models from his 2010 dissertation:
PROJECTION OF WORLD FOSSIL FUEL PRODUCTION WITH SUPPLY AND DEMAND INTERACTIONS
e.g. See:
Combined Generalized Hubbert-Bass Model Approach to Include Disruptions When Predicting Future Oil Production, Natural Resources, 2010, 1, 28-33, doi:10.4236/nr.2010.11004 Published Online September 2010. Or pdf
Projection of long-term paths for Australian coal production – comparisons of four models
International Journal of Coal Geology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coal.2011.03.006 Article in press
Lower your sights a bit.
When introduced to the subject of peak carbon, the mind reels.
Just like cabbage, power comes from the store, yes?
The seven stages of grieving then play out.
The questions at the end are:
When?
What should I do?
When has no answer.
What to do seems to involve independence.
Having gained this one direction, the rest of the conversation fades into the splitting of hairs. Interest may wane.
There are a number of people on The Oil Drum who are having practical experiences in living away from central distribution. Others have inherited this knowledge and those skills. A place to share them would retain like-minded and active energy to the site.
_____________________________
Among the homeless, the giggle is "When it hits the fan, they're not even gonna know how to take a s***"
It's almost a year since the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, when I first discovered TOD. In this past year, I've learned a great deal about Peak Oil. I might even be brave enough to say that I'm far more knowledgeable than the average layman. Sadly, I'm more knowledgeable, on this topic than the majority of our elected officials and the talking heads on the major networks.
I have two recommendations for what members of TOD can do:
1. Prepare simple presentations of 12 to 15 charts each, that should be presented to every member of Congress. More detailed presentations, with briefs reports and statistics should be prepared for those members of congress that are members of committees that deal with energy, economics and the environment.
2. Secondly, many members of TOD mention what they are doing to prepare for the future that is inevitable. However, most of these individual solutions are not applicable for everyone. What is needed are recommendations based on a number of factors, among them being:
a. Age
b. Financial Health
c. Physical Health
d. Individual Skills
e. Current Geographic location
f. Willingness to make incremental, significant or major lifestyle changes.
However, until political leaders of both parties acknowledge the problem and the media starts telling the truth about the future, most Americans will assume that the Good Times are about to start again, if only ...(pick your cause; "Drill Baby Drill or get all of our energy from the sun and wind within a few short years).
Here is an obvious suggestion. This week TOD had a guest post written by J. Michael Bodell of CERA*.
Ask him to do another post explaining CERA's modeling methods and why there is such a disconnect between their post-2005 projections and actual production numbers. It's worth a shot because rarely will we get a chance to reveal inside information used to affect policy.
*I have a suspicion that he still has some involvement with CERA.
I would like to do a post on climate change and CO2.
How the increase in CO2 is in fact something that could be used as a benefit.
That carbon capture is a waste of money and using that money for other things would be of much greater benefit and achieve better results.
I was on a Hydrogen web site, and I learned that Natural Gas and Hydrogen could be stored in the same tank, and that Hydrogen conversions were very similar to Natural gas conversions, for a car etc. One expense that is given with Hydrogen is the production expense, which I would like to learn more about, and the other is compression to a tank or to a pipe. How much pressure is absolutely needed with Hydrogen, with a small system? How are storage systems for Hydrogen evolving? How efficient are the fuel cells and how's that coming? We could have a Hydrogen expert lead a post. I would like that. I would like some answers on theory: If a pipe line were in place, how would that affect efficiencies?