Turning Up The Wind  

UPI has a report on the fast growing wind power industry in the US, with rising natural gas prices causing a surge in interest.

Skyrocketing oil prices and the need to end foreign energy dependence have some states, communities, and even homeowners turning to wind power as an alternative. "We have definitely noticed an upswing since the price of natural gas started spiking sometime in the fall," said Tom Gray, deputy executive director of the American Wind Energy Association. "We are currently importing a lot of oil but we are also importing natural gas ... so using a domestic source helps to save natural gas."

Wind energy is the world's fastest-growing energy technology, the Department of Energy says. Wind power also benefits the environment, Gray said. "It doesn't use any water in generation, emits no air pollution, no water pollution, no global warming, no drilling, no waste," he said. "The reason it hasn't caught on is because the utility industry is low risk, low return, so there is a tendency to do what you've always been doing," he said. "It's quite different from the power sources -- it's a big venture into the unknown."

Wired has an article on an interesting use of nanotechnology to reduce energy usage in manufacturing cars (along with other side benefits).

Sally Ramsey, co-founder and chief chemist of Ecology Coatings, began exploring the costs and potential environmental benefits of nano coatings in 2003. She used nano-sized particles of mineral oxides to create waterproof coatings for paper at half the cost of synthetic paper.

A similar nano coating, licensed from Ecology Coatings by chemical giant DuPont, could revolutionize the auto parts industry when it is commercialized, possibly as early as this year. DuPont hopes to produce nano paint that seals and protects automotive components, greatly reducing the environmental impact of producing cars by slashing the amount of energy and materials needed.

The nano particles are small enough to be applied using conventional spraying equipment, Ramsey said, and the nanotech coating can be cured simply by exposing the surface of the auto parts to ultraviolet light for 10 seconds or less. "After the UV (light) hits it, it becomes a thin sheet of plastic," she said. UV curing, which is completed at room temperature, would replace the standard curing process, which requires placing parts in ovens at temperatures of up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as 40 minutes.

Ken Deffeyes says the peak was passed in December 2005 (if correct, his prediction of thanksgiving was 3 weeks out) - given that there are plenty of financial analysts who are still assuming production will pick up in 2007 I think its worth waiting a little while to see if he is right or not - in the end depletion rates for existing fields (and various geopolitical interruptions) will be the key. He is predicting a re-entry into the stone age in 2025 so lets hope Jean Laherrere's 2015 peak prediction is closer to the mark. MonkeyGrinder thinks some drinks are in order to mark the occasion.

There are some interesting additional bits in the end-of-year statistics. Compared to 2004, world oil production was up 0.8 percent in 2005, nowhere near enough to compensate for a demand rise of roughly 3 percent. The high prices did not bring much additional oil out of the ground. Most oil-producing countries are in decline. The rise in production was largely from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Angola. The Saudi production for 2005 was 9.155 million barrels per day. On March 6, 2003 Saudi Aramco and the government of Saudi Arabia announced by way of the Dow Jones newswire that they were maxed out at 9.2 barrels per day. In retrospect, that statement seems to be accurate. Further details are in Matthew Simmons' book Twilight in the Desert.

Could some new discovery come along and reverse the global oil decline? The world oil industry is a huge system: Annual production worth 1.7 trillion dollars. I don't see anything on the horizon large enough to turn it around.

So what are the policy implications? Numerous critics are claiming that the present world economic situation is a house of cards: built on trade deficits, housing price bubbles, and barely-adequate natural gas supplies. Pulling any one card out from the bottom of the pile might collapse the whole structure.

1. There are calls for embargoing Iranian oil because of the nuclear weapons situation. Pulling four million barrels per day out from under the world energy supply might trigger a severe worldwide recession. In the post-peak era, we're playing a new ball game and we don't yet know the rules.
2. Ghawar, the supergiant Saudi oilfield, is producing increasing amounts of water along with the oil. When Simmons sent Twilight in the Desert to the printer, the water cut at Ghawar was around 30 percent. There are later reports on the Internet (home.entouch.net/dmd/ghawar.htm) of water cuts as high as 55 percent. Ghawar has been producing 4 million barrels per day; when the Ghawar field waters out, you can kiss your lifestyle goodbye.

Since we have passed the peak without initiating major corrective measures, we now have to rely primarily on methods that we have already engineered. Long-term research and development projects, no matter how noble their objectives, have to take a back seat while we deal with the short-term problems. Long-term examples in the proposed 2007 US budget (Feb. 9, 2006 New York Times page A-18) include a 65 percent increase in the programs to produce ethanol from corn, a 25.8 percent increase for developing hydrogen fuel cell cars, and a 78.5 percent increase in spending on solar energy research. The Times reports that solar energy today supplies one percent of US electricity; the hope is to double that to 2 percent by the year 2025.

By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age.

The Age has an opinion piece on the need to change the way we think about urban planning and public transport in a post peak and warmed globe era.

The history of the city could be described as one punctuated by technological innovation. The invention of gunpowder in the 14th century impacted our urban form through increased city-edge fortifications, with the building of moats and outposts establishing a more distinct separation between city and country. But the emergence of an oil economy and the invention of the internal combustion engine blurred this distinction, creating a vast suburbia well beyond the reach of effective public transport infrastructure.

Perhaps less tangible than the threat of cannonballs or invaders at the city walls are the converging crises of peak oil prices and global warming. These events now comprise the greatest threat to our current concept of the city. Their confluence will, one way or another, bring about decisive action by governments on the urban transport problem.

Broader approaches to transport policy and planning are needed. The critical question is: what will be the new paradigm within which planners will create transport and urban design visions for our cities, and will it be one that consists of car tunnels, minimum car-parking standards and new, public transport-less suburbs? Or will it be one which acknowledges the reality of our environmental future ?

ABC Radio National has an interview (mp3) with Jeremy Leggett and Alan Dupont (of the Lowy Institute) on the "Decline of Oil".

In his recent State of the Union address, President George Bush acknowledged that the US had an unhealthy dependence on cheap oil. Dr Jeremy Legget has been saying this for years – he is a geologist, who was for many years a consultant with the major oil companies, before he jumped ship in the 1990s to join Greenpeace UK as its chief scientist. Today he’s the CEO of Solarcentury, a solar electric company in the UK. He thinks that the growth in demand from India and China, and the lack of big new oilfields to be found, means that we will never see cheap oil again.

Alan Dupont agrees, and says that tension around access to oil fields will come to be an important factor in international politics.

The Greens have called for an "independent investigation into the connections between the fossil fuel industry, the Howard government and Australia's position on climate change".

Coal industry lobbyists are regularly at the side of government representatives at international climate change meetings, Australian Greens senator Christine Milne says. At the same time, she said, renewable energy and non-government organisation representatives are being shut out.

Senator Milne said her experience at these international meetings meant she was not surprised at allegations on ABC TV's Four Corners program that the government had been infiltrated by coal industry lobbyists.

Four Corners aired claims coal industry lobbyists had infiltrated the inner workings of the federal government and had written several cabinet briefing papers over the years. Three former senior CSIRO scientists also told the program they had been silenced on climate change issues that conflicted with government policy.

Turkey is apparently (this piece hasn't had the best translation) looking at turning to nuclear power due to difficulties in obtaining natural gas, with the French appearing to be front runners for contructing the plants.

Turkey is planning to set up 3 nuclear power plants, each with 5000 megawatt capacity. According to Turkey Atomic Energy Agency seismic investigation results, the most appropriate place for the construction of a nuclear station is Akkuyu. Sinop and Kizilirmak deltas are other candidate sites for nuclear power stations.

Turkey's energy market wet France's appetite amid Turkey's natural gas bottleneck. When the visit of French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to Ankara coincided with Turkey's new plan to restart its nuclear activities, the aim of Douste-Blazy's visit appeared from behind the scenes.

Turkey has just decided to kick-start its nuclear energy activities thinking that it will run into a major energy crisis beginning from 2020 in the case of a cut in additional investments. In accordance with this decision, the government is expected to announce its new nuclear energy strategy within a few months.

Dick Cheney's little hunting expedition is getting plenty of attention - I was hoping he'd get impeached for some form of corruption one day but who knows - maybe a murder charge would be better ?

Some people are speculating that this is a way of distracting people from stories like "Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information" and hearings into the illegal wiretapping operation that has been going on - this does seem a little extreme but who knows...

Tonight should be fun, as Jon Stewart and the late night comics get to tee off on Cheney for his Elmer Fudd moment. (If you can't wait that long, DallasDem at Kos has the Top Ten Cheney Excuses For Shooting that Guy. My favorite: "Pheasants? I thought we were hunting peasants.")

That aside, the whole episode's pretty fishy, the way they kept a lid on the story for a day. It could be that secrecy's just a reflex with these people. It could be, as John Robb points out, that these kinds of hunting accidents usually involve drinking. Maybe they needed time to sober Cheney up. Or, it could be that they were trying to decide whether to claim somebody else pulled the trigger.

None of which is terribly important on its own, but it is telling that their first instinct, as always, was to cover up, hide, lie.