And we thought Colorado had problems
Posted by Heading Out on February 22, 2006 - 1:23pm
The China Daily is carrying a story that the gas-fired power plants in East China are unable to get enough natural gas to operate.
The shortage of natural gas has put the bulk of China's gas-fired power plants on the verge of closure, and industry leaders are calling for the government to trim its gas power development plans.Although the country uses gets about 2% of it's electric power from gas plans are to triple this use by 2010 and double that again by 2020.
Due to the lack of gas supplies in East China, gas-fired power generation units with a total capacity of as much as 4 gigawatts (GW) must remain unused in the region where the country's biggest gas pipeline ends, Wang Yonggan, secretary general of China Electricity Council (CEC), said.
The same is true with the energy-guzzling southern areas of China, primarily driven the fast-growing regional economy of Guangdong Province.
"In the south, the construction completion of a gas power plant also means it's shutdown - because there is no gas to run it," Wang said over the weekend at a power conference hosted by CEC, the industry association of China's electricity generators.
(UPDATE:Although off topic GeoPoet's comment, attached below, is worth reading).
Gas is, of course, as was discussed in comments yesterday, also used directly for heating and the article gives some numbers
Gas demand from the huge Chinese market is expected to reach 120 billion cubic metres (bcm) by 2010 and 200 bcm by 2020, but its estimated domestic production would be only 80 bcm and 120 bcm respectively.Unfortunately the Chinese hope resides with LNG, in much the same way as ours is heading towards. Though the article concludes that problems still exist with that supply.
China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), is confronted with disagreements over prices to secure gas supplies from Indonesia's BP-led Tangguh project, for CNOOC's Fujian LNG terminal.Gas deliveries to Beijing are also of concern
It meant that more than half the gas reserves had been used with more than two-thirds of the heating season to go. Heating in Beijing will be switched off on March 15.Italy has had to cope with the pressure of running the Olympics with reduced gas flows from Russia (courtesy of Ukraine), although, just this week, they have apparently returned to normal. In the same way, Beijing has the major political party meetings in March, and to make sure that there is enough gasBeijing has used about 22 million cubic meters of natural gas every day this winter, said Li Jianzhong, a researcher with the Petroleum Exploration and Development Research Institute of PetroChina.
More than 95 percent of the city's natural gas is provided by a single pipeline from northwest China's Shaanxi Province, which can pump only 10.3 million cubic meters a day year-round. In spring and summer, when demand plummets, the surplus is stored in Tianjin for winter use.
In response to the crisis, the city has drawn up an emergency plan, halting or reducing supplies of natural gas for industrial use and replacing more than 1,300 natural-gas-powered buses with oil-fueled ones.Part of the problem is that the city has been trying to reduce the use of coal through a switch to gas-fired boilers, and as the mayor reported
"A vice mayor and I made a 'ridiculous' decision on the night of January 10 to check the gas meters of every boiler in the city's eight urban districts. After eight days, we found that real gas consumption as shown by the meters was nowhere near that reported by the district governments. Yet the real figure is critical for decision-making."Perhaps China needs to build some more tankers, although, as the rest of the world also starts to rely on this option, this may be another case of demand exceeding available supply for the next decade.
UPDATE Platts is carrying a story that Japan is running into a similar problem with Indonesia on LNG supplies.
Earlier this month Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued a presidential regulation enshrining a policy favoring domestic gas consumption over export sales. "The regulation is aimed at ensuring that domestic gas consumption will be prioritized over exports," energy and mines minister Purnomo said on February 8. Currently, 44% of Indonesia's gas production is consumed domestically with the remaining 56% exported. The regulation followed comments in December by former coordinating minister for economy Aburizal Bakrie that Indonesia would not extend its existing LNG supply contracts with buyers because it has decided that indigenous gas production, especially from Bontang in East Kalimantan, should be dedicated to domestic users. Indonesian energy officials also said then it had temporarily halted negotiations with Japanese LNG buyers to extend supply contracts due to expire in 2010 with the 22.25-mil mt/year Bontang LNG facility.UPDATE (2) I also just came across this on the LNG potential.
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In another comment, I mentioned something that bears repeating.
My company is currently suspending drilling operations in Oklahoma due to lack of available water. State, municipal and private water owners have all told us that they will no longer sell water to us. We are experiencing similar problems in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, but not to the degree we have encountered in Oklahoma.
So what we have here in Oklahoma is one resources scarcity(water) precluding the extraction of another (petroleum) declining resource.
Yea - Hubbert was right, but his science is about so much more than oil...!!
Ethanol also has water issues:
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/state/13906471.htm
Water might turn out to be a bigger problem than oil.
Of course, if we had enough energy, we could build desalination plants...
But shipping cost money and energy. :-/
Exactly. The idea behind building ethanol plants in North Dakota is to put them where the corn is.
That depends on where you grow the corn: In the irrigated Sacramento Valley and San Joaquin Valley of California much corn is grown with humongous quantities of highly subsidized water, obscene quantities of fertilizer, and enough pesticides to kill off a medium-size ethnic group. The yields are fantabulous.
By way of contrast, in God's Own Country, i.e. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, parts of Nebraska and some other places we get plenty of rainfall to grow corn without irrigation, though the quantities of artificial fertilizer and pesticides are huge, and the erosion of soil is not a negligible issue.
Like Sweden, Minnesota has abundant water. Indeed, a Swede will feel right at home in Minnesota, except that most of the Swedes I know speak better English than many of us do. Shucks, we even have Finnlander jokes and Norweigian jokes, just like in 'da Old Country. Yah, you bet.
As far as the Great Plains go: I say, give it back to the bison and the Native Americans--and quit draining the Oglalla Aquifer.
That is the deal killer for ethanol made from corn or just about any crop used to make ethanol. It won't free us from fossil fuel usage, it just hides said usage behind a politically good facade.
I guess with the public, out of sight is out of mind.
http://unplanning.blogspot.com/2006/02/plans-that-stink-to-hog-heaven.html
I think we are seeing fertilizer production already moving toward where the NG is.
Yes, NG fertilizer production in US has become uneconomic, odds are that all US fertiliser plants using NG will shut down.
Cheap transportation has perhaps temporarily distorted normal economics, that has swung back a bit and will swing further.
There will be further 'adjustments' along these lines.
It's not really a complicated problem - just one that the ethanol plants need to address. They could make some of their money back selling recaptured process water for irrigation, or else just return it to their own process.
Now there's a topic I haven't heard much about in a long, long time, except maybe with regard to the Middle East.
The Saudis and their neighbors have the biggest ones in the world. Even with high-efficiency, multi-effect evaporators, vapor recompression, etc, they are highly energy intensive. To some extent, the Saudis are in effect drinking a certain portion of their oil and gas. I wonder how well the increased population of Saudi Arabia and some other countries in the area could be sustained without desalination.
Back in the Sixties the Johnson administration had gradiose ideas of making the Southwest deserts bloom through the use of huge dedicated nuclear-powered desalination plants. It doesn't look like the concept got very far, and given our current energy situation, I think we can kiss that one goodbye, at least in the near term.
Indeed, water resources is going to be a worsening problem in parts of the US, and we're not going to easily solve it through expending energy from our shrinking supplies.
There have been some wild schemes for building pipelines from the Great Lakes, but I suspect you can only do so much of that sort of thing before you seriously start impacting the hydrology in the Great Lakes area.
But they are all petroleum-powered, so far as I know. Israel's new Ashkelon desalination plant has its own natural gas power station.
There used to be proposals to tow icebergs down the the Middle East and sell them for fresh water.
-Ptone
Back in the 70's there were some schemes developed to supply SA with alternate sources of water that went to the extremes of sending tugs up to greenland and towing back an iceburg. In Riyadh the average humidity is 8%. You feel like you need a drink every 15 minutes of walking outside. If you leave a piece of bread out on the kitchen table, its rock hard in 10 minutes. Outside August temps are 127-130 in the SHADE! 104ºF at 12 midnight. In the Sun, temps reach 150-160ºF near ground surface. I've left a cassette tape in my car parked in the sun and come back to find a melted globb of plastic.
There are no rivers running all year anywhere in S.A. except for a short fat inky looking one downstream of the Riyadh sewage treatment plant, which quickly disappears into the sand.
Occasionally it will rain and the drops dry up on the way down and never hit the ground. Watch out for the lightning though.
Much of SA's water is drilled and pumped from undergound "fossil water" aquifers, meaning it entered the aquifers thousands of years ago and needless to say, just like the oil, once it's pumped out its never replenished.
We think we've got problems. All we have to do is downsize our cars. Try matching a camel on MPG-H20.
It is obviously a very inhospitable environment in which for humans to live.
The indigenous nomadic tribes seemed to have been able to make a go of it, but their population was but a small fraction of the population of modern-day Saudi Arabia. It seems that the very existence of modern Saudi Arabia is totally dependent upon consuming large amounts of oil, a certain fraction of which they drink, via oil-fired desalination plants.
These exemplary entities, such as Dubai, seem to be artificially propped up through a massive influx of fossil fuel. Am I being over dramatic, but does anyone else out there think that Dubai closely resembles a nicer version of the planet Tatuine (sp?) of Star Wars? It makes Las Vegas seem absolutely natural.
I feel too old to move anywhere, but if I had to, I think I'd pick one of the Scandanavian countries, as they seem to have mastered the art of living cooperatively instead of competitively. Or maybe I'm misinformed. The climate, though, is another story. Cold weather doesn't help curtail one's alcohol consumption.
We do not have an uncompetitive culture, for instance IKEA comes from Sweden and Nokia from Finland, both of them learned their skills on the domestic market. There is no socialist paradise in any country although Norway probably comes closest and Swedish health care is a good example of a lumbering command economy that produces a lot of aimless work and consumes vast ammounts of money.
I think the cold winter is a key factor. Collect a lot of firewood and have consensus in your house or you will die cold and miserable, repeat this for hundreds of generations and it affects the culture.
I was surprized at the work they would let me get involved with whenever I offered to try something new and different from my usual work. I think perhaps the Americans engineers specialize too much in that regard. I would never have been allowed to do 75% of the stuff I did, if I was with a US company, due to the specialist mentality they usually have. I learned much more than I would have otherwise and did so in a very short time. Perhaps, when you have a relatively small population and live in remote areas in harsh conditions, everyone develops a level of self sufficiency that is quite advanced, regardless of the collective good political atmosphere. The combination seems to be a good one.
There is much room for innovation with water conservation. Singapore may be on the cutting edge with its water reclamation plant (i.e., "from toilet to tap"). What, you didn't realize that your bottle of Evian was once T-Rex piss? Singapore is just making the hydrologic cycle a bit more concise. ; )
I am reminded of a benefit of trade / globalisation: agricultural production is determined by the least available of its requirements, be that water, fertilisers or minerals, labour, etc. The movement of these resources mutually increases production for deficient areas. The principle is a general one, and we have exploited it to our benefit.
Now imagine it in reverse.
"That is what Tainter meant by the cost of complexity. As resources decline, the solution often cause more problems, until it's just not worth it any more.
Ethanol also has water issues:
BISMARCK, N.D. - Ethanol plants need more than corn: If all the proposed factories in North Dakota were built, they would use more than 1 billion gallons of water.
Drought in future years could curtail North Dakota's burgeoning ethanol industry or at least limit potential plant sites, particularly in the Red River Valley, officials say.
Ethanol plants are big water users. The Sioux Falls, S.D.-based American Coalition for Ethanol says it takes at least 3 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol fuel.
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/state/13906471.htm
Water might turn out to be a bigger problem than oil.
Of course, if we had enough energy, we could build desalination plants
Somewhat dated, but featured in a recent post by Mike Shedlock ("Mish") at http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/index.html (Peak Water?).
Some of the researchers at the Federal Reserve Banks get into heavy duty Baynesian and Markov Chain based what if studies. I've read a lot of them (despite not knowing what "supply and demand" means, Don) and I don't remember seeing any specific studies using systems dynamics modeling.
I have no doubt that complex systems models are routinely used in the FED and Treasury basements, but for WS.. its a long shot. Certainly my broker doesn't (he's me. Nobody watches my money as well as I do.) What do the other brokers out there say?
The Fed banks have been involved in economic dynamics and modelling it at least since the 1950s and bigtime in the 1960s and 70s, before that Treasury squeezed funds. With no false modesty, I can say that some of the best research was done at the Minneapolis Fed, and at one time we had about three of the top ten macroeconomists in the country on the staff. Then they go on to some second-rate place like Harvard to get six-digit salaries and huge consulting fees.
You want to see some interesting stuff, go to your nearest Fed District bank, find the librarian, and talk to her.
What kind of water does your company use and for what purpose? Are there technical solutions, such as a pipeline which can alleviate the problem to a certain extent? Why are rising water costs/scarcity not being reflected in a higher Nat Gas price which would theoreticaly induce more exploration/extraction, and at what price could your company hedge to justify more expensive operations? Just curious, thx
There are no technical solutions when you simply are not allowed to purchase water - try doing much of anything without it. Even oil-based drilling muds utilize water in their mixture. The locals are concerned with their own homesteads and farms having enough water right now, so they are simply refusing to sell to us.
You will see this reflected in natural gas prices after a small lag. We get hit with this kind of stuff, we stop drilling, shortages appear,the prices rise, we can afford to truck from out of state with the new price. That is, provided we can get the next state over to sell us water. It all happens in increments. This is part of that "bumpy plateau" everybody talks about that thinks Peak Oil has a 10 year window...
As the margin gets smaller between the amount we want (oil, gas, whatever) and the amount we can get, we're definitely going to witness some seemingly minor issues get amplified into ever-larger consequences.
One night while driving home I considered the similarity between traffic jams and what lies ahead as the peak unfolds. Queueing theory suggests that you will experience shortages and other pleasantries prior to reaching the theoretical point of Supply=Demand.
And yes, I am using Supply and Demand in the loose, lay-person sense. Dammit Jim, I'm just a country engineer!
Ed
Have you considered switching to saltwater drilling fluids? You could just drill with produced formation water, perhaps supplemented with additional salt. This would have the added benefit of reducing formation damage to fresh water sensitive sands.
There are some other factors that fall in as well, one being the lack of rigs and trained people. Our drilling time has doubled on some rigs as they are full of worms and cannot perform ops in normal time. Rig and tubular prices have also shot up, to the level that some of our deeper projects aren't looking as attractive.
It's never just a single thing that brings on a decision like this, but the FW issue has sort of forced things in a hurry.
We need water to build a pipeline.
3!
what's mine is mine and what's yours we share.
Here in the southeast US, I am guessing the same thing would happen. So, power from companies like the TVA would be likely to be sent much farther distances than it is now. Then I started to think about the household solar PV systems that are connected to the grid. Could these be required to produce power for the central authority? My guess is that under the circumstances of a collapse, that the large producers (farms, clothing, energy, etc...) will be controlled faster. But, I would also guess that they would eventually get to the smaller farmers and other producers if a crisis lasts for very long.
Hey, a new potential market: camouflaged solar cells.
I'm more afraid of big guys with big guns coming if someone dares to keep "their" energy for his own use...
Or when I think further about it, the idea is silly. It as not as relevant as building in an efficient way with smart architecture, insulation and so on. What good incentives do this directive give that expensive energy do not provide?
If I only judge from your post it should pe put in a paper shredder and the cost for managing the directive could be spent on education about energy efficient architecture.
LED traffic signals seems to be installed as trafic signals gets renovated or a little faster in my town. I realy like them since they also give better contrast in sun glare. LED indoor lighting are starting to appear but so far only as design lighting such as in the Turning-Torso scyscraper or expensive bathrooms.
A good source of LEDs in the US is:
http://www.superbrightleds.com
More automotive, but several Edison base and a new 36 LED 120 V Globe in about a month !
New Orleans went to LED traffic lights 3 years ago but Icleand has not (yet). Of course, 100% of their electricity is renewable so "why bother".
Still, they're the obvious choice to take over small wattage tasks (like flashlights, auto tail lights/turn signals, Christmas lights), and brighter colored lights like traffic signals (colored LEDs are more efficient than white ones, and certainly more efficient than a filter over an incandescent!). The long life vs. incandescents is another bonus.
I think it will be quite a while before it makes sense to use them broadly for room lighting ... they'll have to beat out fluorescents in both efficiency (may happen soon) and price (almost certainly won't).
I use 120 V LED to illuminate front door outside (amber to keep mosquitos away), night lights (two to get to bathroom) and one to illuminate keyboard. Rest are compact Fluorescent except one halogen reading light.
Smallest CF I have seen recently is 4 watts and it clearly beats LEDs. 2.2 watt to 0.3 watt LEDs.
Here in the US, I think that California is going to face problems first, along with the Northeast US.
I read some observations on this fairly recently that I agreed with but haven't saved the link (in a findable way, anyhow); I think the gist was: population 10k to 100k, remote (100+ miles) from 200k+ population centers, good water supply, decent soil and climate, minimal extreme weather risks, woodlands nearby. It predicted a significant change in US population patterns in this direction.
There aren't any unspoiled frontiers any more that are also decent places to live. (the wilds of Alaska and the Amazon rain forest might be largely unspoiled, but how many people really want to live there?) I am afraid that geography no longer offers the human race much of an escape, as it did centuries ago. All the good places have already been taken.
We're just going to have to roll up our sleeves and make things better mostly where we already are. Having said that, I will also say that the water resources problem does not bode well for continuing the high growth rate in places like Pheonix. The distribution of population will eventually correct itself, albeit quite painfully.
Okay, maybe changes that drastic aren't likely. But changes like more hurricanes or extreme changes in rainfall are likely, IMO. Then there's pollution. (The northeast has plenty of water, but they're also downwind of the rest of country. Acid rain generated in Ohio can kill crops in New England.)
My own view is that the "doomers" have found some solace in their doom. It is the honest uncertainty that is difficult to handle over time. There's a huge difference in the various scenarios on liquid fules depletion rates. Making early choices based on those scenarious potentially lead to different but still very negative outcomes. Conservation and sensible resource use, however, is one choice we can all make now without negative future effects.
See http://www.remineralize.org/don/synopsis01.html
Leave it to Hollywood...
Ideally, the gov't would help the hindmost and prevent disaster for any one region through coordinating relief and mutual help. Then one wakes up, stops dreaming, and remembers Katrina. In reality, the gov't is going pull up the drawbridges when things get rough -- and let all but the top few per cent go to hell. And if there's something you've got that they need, they'll come and take it.
Ultimately, no form of survivalism is going to work very well. There's going to have to be a political struggle to get a gov't that's interested in the welfare of the 95 pct and is reality-based.
Yeah, right. True, but what's the alternative?
There's going to have to be a political struggle to form a State that is reality-based. Whose welfare it will be interested in will be determined by that struggle.
A new Julius Ceasar is our best hope. I fear another Adolph Hitler is more likely.
I do agree that things here will get much worse before they get better. But I can't bring myself to believe that the human brain is totally useless on the societal level, that science and rationality will never prevail.
While I would be the last to deny the influence of the military-industrial-academic complex, I think it is quite a stretch to say that we have a "disguised military dictatorship" in the U.S. For one thing, the actual armed forces are politically very weak in this country: Rumsfeld dictates the party line, and you either toe it or get out.
Castro has succeeded in large part by expelling and imprisoning and otherwise silencing political opposition, and he is by far the most successful dictator on the planet.
Reasoning by historical analogy, my guess is that what will happen is that the U.S. will retain the forms of a republic, as ancient Rome did for hundreds of years after it was meaningless. The most plausible route would be for ditators to assume emergency wartime powers "for the duration" and the duration would go on indefinitely.
The great advantage of representative government is that we can throw out the sonsabitches now in office without blood in the streets and give the other sonsabitches a chance to screw up. Thus I do not see violent revolution as likely in this country, though a great deal of rioting and disorder (picture post-Katrina New Orleans fires and fighting multiplied by about 300 to 1,000) is likely when TSHTF.
Any city or region is no more than four meals away from chaos.
Well, I will modify what I said a little -- it's not just a (disguised) military dictatorship, it certainly involves the largest corporations, especially the defense contractors. Rumsfeld and Cheney are in the very center of that whole web. This administration has poured tons of money into the pockets of all these people and have their support. Rumsfeld and Cheney may issue orders to individual military people, but they certainly don't go against the whole complex.
I don't think that we can throw the sob's out anymore -- not in 2000, not in 2004, not in 2006/8. I don't advocate violent revolution - I advocate voting in such large numbers that they can't fudge it, kind of like what happened in Haiti recently. Not that this will happen anytime soon either. Violence has to be delegitimized, so that whoever uses it loses the respect of the whole world.
As for Castro, my daughter was there. The poorer half, especially the older ones, still support him, or least they did 6 or 7 or so years ago when she was there. He was the first to do anything for them. Read THE REAL FIDEL CASTRO by Coltman. He recounts an exchange between Castro and McNamara. Castro says "you guys tried to assassinate me 33 times". McN replies "it was only 7". Something like that. They're piss poor, but they are better educated than we are and have better medical care for people at the bottom. Their longevity is roughly equal to ours.
The US has overthrown one Latin American gov't after another for over 100 years. Prof G will get mad at me if I clog the blog with the full log. Yes, Castro has been a dictator, but the threats have been real. Our liberties, however, are melting like snow on a hot tin roof -- why?? -- who threatens us? There is zero excuse here.
Anyway, I agree, TS will HTF. We'll see which way if flies.
Actually, all the good places have been taken up for quite some time. However, this didn't stop others from attempting to displace them. Probably won't change any in the future, either.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/22/nstar_seeks_36_percent_gas_rate_d rop_citing_lower_than_expected_costs/
http://www.energy.gov.on.ca/english/pdf/electricity/OurEnergyOurFuture.pdf
Softening people up for a price increase, maybe? Or just a CYA if the lights go out?
Ontario's plan shows a 31% increase in installed nuclear capacity by 2025.
Ontario intends to continue subsidizing electricity consumption for at least the next three years. Residential consumers often pay only a fraction of the spot market price. Meanwhile, the energy intensity of the Canadian economy is twice that of the US and consumers are completely complacent. The government intends to bring in smart metering and time-of-day pricing in order to encourage load shifting, but isn't using the meter-upgrading opportunity to introduce any better consumer feedback. The price differentials aren't likely to be large enough to have the desired effect. Although the new pricing regime will raise prices overall, the proposed rates were left behind by reality months ago. Even the peak rate they propose to charge is scarcely higher than the off-peak spot market price during high demand seasons.
The CANDU nuclear plants have aged prematurely and have required phenomenally expensive refits. The government wants to close the coal plants even though Ontario only barely has enough generation capacity now and can't possibly build much more before the coal plants are supposed to be shut down. (Personally, I think pigs will fly before those plants are closed.) They'd like to build more NG plants, followed by many more CANDUs and a lot of wind turbines, but they are still $40 billion in debt from the old Ontario Hydro days. The debt repayment charge they attach to each electricity bill isn't even enough to cover the interest on that debt, so it continues to grow.
The problems are likely to get worse as many consumers are switching to electric heat as NG prices rise. The whole system is a disaster waiting to happen IMO.
My bet is that after the lights start going off, there will be a crash program of building nuclear reactors, but this still leaves us with a couple of decades of very hard time.
Unfortunately, Ontario's instinctive response to the impending electricity crisis was to add yet another layer of bureaucracy. Although they say they want to encourage renewables and conservation, almost everything they're doing seems designed to achieve the exact opposite.
- Wait 5 years and then start building nukes in a rush.
- Wait 5 years and then start building wind mills and building insulations in a rush.
- Start wind mills and insulations now.
- Start building nukes, wind mills and insulations now.
- you ruled out
- you can forget
- is not bad, but Germany needed 15 years to drive the renewable part of their electricity to 12% (Denmark needed 20 years for 20%). Now they are both stalling it because they need to build expensive energy storages for all those windy things.
IMO the obvious choice is 4).But noone wants to hear.
From financial decision (with design work done & regulatory approval) to operation in 12 to 15 months for add-ons to existing sites and less than 2 years for greenfield sites in most cases.
One issue is maximum wind penetration, and that depends upon how much hydro. Western Denmark has gotten up to 70% wind at peak, with DC ties to Norwegian hydro and AC to Germany. New Zealand beleives that with current mix, they can have a maximum of 35% wind at peak (-> 20% total MWh) due to a large hydro component.
Texas, with almost no hydro, may get a maxium 15% from wind at peak without changes to the grid.
Still, the reflex may be more wind (as it was more NG) because it is quick (NG about 3 years from financial decision to operation).
Quick is an overriding factor in these short-sighted days. And that will favor wind over other alternatives.
I did some research on how much ethanol would have to be produced to power all the cars in Canada... if oil was "used all up". (this is ignoring obvious things like water usage and gas usage in making ethanol)...
I'll submit my answer to him here... for peer review at the least. (ie. so that people smarter than me can tell me that I'm way off.. or not) ;=)
http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/transportation/alcohols.html
A gallon of gasoline contains... 111,500 Btu
M85 contains approximately 65,000 Btu/gallon
E85 contains approximately 81,000 Btu/gallon
So in terms of energy output... Ethanol and Methanol are already at a disadvantage.
As far as growing enough grain to power your own car (let alone the millions in Canada alone).
Think again...
Here's a website that lays out the numbers for a trip of 4400km.. which is probably also an average amount of km you put on a car in Port Alberni over a year.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question707.htm
"Through research performed at Cornell University, we know that 1 acre of land can yield about 7,110 pounds (3,225 kg) of corn, which can be processed into 328 gallons (1240.61 liters) of ethanol. That is about 26.1 pounds (11.84 kg) of corn per gallon"
In a 2000 Toyota Camry, you'd get 20mpg (8.5km/L)...
4,464.2 km / 8.5 km per liter = 525.2 liters
525.2 liters * 3.13 kg = 1,642 kg of corn
That's about .5 acre of corn
So... say there are 10 million personal cars in Canada.
That's 5 million acres of corn.
According to the CIA world factbook...
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html#Econ
Canada's total land area is over 22 million sqkm. That's about 2,247,051,047 (2 billion) acres. 0.02% of that land mass is currently being used for "permanent agriculture"... That's 449,410 acres.
The CIA also says there is about 1.7 million acres of "irrigated land"... so lets take that as the current maximum amount of land we could grow corn.
That's about 3.3 million acres of corn SHORT of what we would need to ensure everyone could drive a very modest 4400km per year. You might also want to consider then how we are going to grow the grain and fruit and other products we depend on to survive if we're using our entire agricultural land to produce ethanol to power our cars (and that doesn't take into account trucks, trains, planes... etc)?
.... so.. that's the long answer to your question.
As energy prices climb, these changes will be forced on (first) the general population and then (second) the government. It will take a new crop of younger politicos to deal with these changes in a rational manner. The current bunch has already proven themselves incapable of grasping the coming crisis. They will have to get retired en masse, and that means the populace has to be hurting in order to turn them out. It may get nasty, but it's certainly going to be interesting!!
And why is everybody so UP on corn for ethanol? It stinks compared to other sugary options, which is why Brazil uses cane...
Some were cut down for sugar water during Katrina.
There's no surplus of sugar. It's at record highs.
Given the limitations of the way our political system works, I see no near-term way to beat the stampede to corn-ethanol--except with something better, namely ethanol from biomass.
And large-scale production of ethanol does NOT require any technological advances (though they will be nice when they get here), on-the-shelf technology exists and is being used and has been used bigtime in Russia for more than thirty years.
The way to beat a bad idea is with a better idea.
Is that a good motto for TOD's attitude to PO?
Stoics believed it was our sacred responsibility to do our duty cheerfully. To be grumpy was to be foolish, because a sour attitude relflects a profound lack of wisdom--namely, the inability to distinguish between that which is in our power to control [or influence] and that which we must accept because we can do nothing about it.
I have a great fondness for stoic philosophy; it seems especially appropriate for times of trouble and collapse. See especially the "Discourses" of Epictetus and the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius.
But for the sake of the truth I think that the spectrum here is much larger than this, otherwise the blog would not be that popular.