I'm off for a week - see you next Tuesday.

In the meantime here is a brief link dump (if I had more time I have about 1000 other interesting items, but alas...).

Technology Review has a look at Cellulolytic Enzymes - designing better enzymes for making biofuels from cellulose.

The Lahontan Valley News has an article outlining some of the challenges involved when expanding transmission capacity when building new renewable energy projects - in this case geothermal energy in northern Nevada.

Renewable Energy Access has a look at efforts by German organisation Green Step to teach people in Cameroon how to construct their own wind turbines and hydroelectric plants using local materials. Currently, ninety percent of the people in Cameroon are not connected to the national electricity grid.

TreeHugger has some video from "Six Degrees" looking at the segments on Jamais Cascio's cheeseburger obsession, including the "infamous latex glove scene".

Technology Review has a look at "Reality Mining" and "behaviour logging" - researchers looking at how to use data gathered by cell phones to learn more about human behavior. Frequent tinfoil consumers will no doubt view this sort of thing as a civilian spin-off of military/intelligence research - looking at how to extract some value from all of the monitoring infrastructure that has been set up to collect data on our every move (with the example used of modelling the spread of diseases further adding to the foily alarm bells). The idea of being able to predict human behaviour based on aggregated data is quite an interesting one - I used to watch the electricity grid data quite closely and you can see some mass behavioural patterns from that data quite clearly. Maybe one day when everything we do is monitored, measured, stored and analysed, Asimov's old ideas about "psychohistory" might become realised...

Bruce Sterling has a post on a Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press called "The Liberator" ("(It makes bricks out of dirt. Then you make cheap, open-source houses out of the bricks"), and introduces a new concept - "Neo-commercialization".

Bruce also has an annotated version of the Italian National Anthem and some notes on a simmering water war betwen Georgia and Tennessee.

Posted by Big Gav at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments

Solazyme are one the companies that seem to be making the most progress in coming up with a viable algae to biofuel process. I'm a little uncertain about their latest innovation (doing away with sunlight and instead feeding the algae sugar - any parent can tell you this is a bad idea when dealing with growing children) but Technology Review says that they produce more oil this way.

Solazyme, a startup based in South San Francisco, CA, has developed a new way to convert biomass into fuel using algae, and the method could lead to less expensive biofuels. The company recently demonstrated its algae-based fuel in a diesel car, and in January, it announced a development and testing agreement with Chevron. Late last year, the company received a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop a substitute for crude oil based on algae.

The new process combines genetically modified strains of algae with an uncommon approach to growing algae to reduce the cost of making fuel. Rather than growing algae in ponds or enclosed in plastic tubes that are exposed to the sun, as other companies are trying to do, Solazyme grows the organisms in the dark, inside huge stainless-steel containers. The company's researchers feed algae sugar, which the organisms then convert into various types of oil. The oil can be extracted and further processed to make a range of fuels, including diesel and jet fuel, as well as other products. ...

The process also has significant advantages over a quite different way of using algae to create biofuels--one that makes use of algae's ability to employ sunlight to produce their own supply of sugar, using photosynthesis. In these approaches, the algae are grown in ponds or bioreactors where they are exposed to sunlight and make their own sugar. In Solazyme's approach, the researchers deliberately turn off photosynthetic processes by keeping the algae in the dark. Instead of getting energy from sunlight, the algae get energy from the sugars that the researchers feed them.

Solazyme's process of growing the algae in the dark has a couple of advantages over approaches that use ponds or bioreactors. First, keeping the algae in the dark causes them to produce more oil than they do in the light. That's because while their photosynthetic processes are inactive, other metabolic processes that convert sugar into oil become active.

Just as important, feeding algae sugar makes it possible to grow them in concentrations that are orders of magnitude higher than when they're grown in ponds using energy from the sun, says Eric Jarvis, a biofuels researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. (Jarvis is not connected to Solazyme.) That's in part because the sugar provides a concentrated source of energy. These higher concentrations reduce the amount of infrastructure needed to grow the algae, and also make it much easier to collect the algae and extract the oil, Jarvis says, significantly reducing costs. High capital costs have so far stymied other attempts to make fuel from algae.

In spite of these advantages over other approaches, Solazyme's method for creating fuel is not yet cheap enough to compete with fuels made from petroleum, Dillon says. Indeed, Jarvis warns that one of the most expensive parts of making fuels from cellulosic sources is processing them to create simple sugars, a part of the process that Solazyme isn't focused on improving. But in the past 18 months, improvements in the amount of oil that the algae produce have convinced the company that competitive costs are within reach. Solazyme hopes to begin selling its fuel in two to three years, Dillon says.

Labels: algae, biofuel, solazyme

Posted by Big Gav at 9:21 PM | Permalink | Comments

Last year I came across the story of Dutch company Kema and their energy island idea - basically a variant on the usual pumped hydro energy storage concept where water is pumped out of a space below sea level then allowed to flow back in, generating power as it does. The "island" uses wind power to pump water out of the enclosed area. An obvious extension to this idea would be to harness ocean energy as well - letting wave and/or tidal power supplement the output of the wind turbines. An attraction of this concept is that it potentially allows a large amount of new energy storage to be brought online - and this storage would be along the world's coastlines, where most of the population lives.



Another form of energy island has been in the news recently, this one a substantially more ambitious proposal which envisions artificial islands to collect wind, wave, ocean current and solar power in the tropics, along with a more unusual energy source - harnessing the difference in water temperatures between the warm surface and the cold depths using a technique called OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion). These islands are being proposed by architects Dominic Michaelis and his son Alex Michaelin as a response to Richard Branson’s Virgin Earth Challenge, which offers $25 million in prizes for innovative solutions for combating global warming.



While the practicality of these particular proposals has yet to be put to the test, the various forms of ocean power are probably the most overlooked of the big 6 renewable energy sources (along with solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydro).

Other forms of renewable energy are sometimes criticised for being more intermittent and less predictable than traditional power generation, however ocean energy is much more reliable - steady ocean currents could provide good baseload power, as could OTEC, tidal power is diurnal and highly predictable and waves are predictable days in advance.

In this post I'll have a look at the amount of energy that could potentially be harvested from these sources and the various projects underway to try and make this a reality.

Tidal and Ocean Current Power

Tidal power stations usually take the form of a dam (or barrage) built across a narrow bay or river mouth. As the tide flows in or out, it creates uneven water levels on either side of the barrier. The water flows through the barrier, turning turbines to generate electricity.

Benefits of tidal barrage power generation include :

* Predictable source of clean energy
* No dependence on foreign fuel sources
* Flood protection
* Transport links for road and/or rail
* Better shipping and boating conditions behind the barrier

Disadvantages include :

* The timing of the tides doesn't often correlate with peak demand times (less of a problem if there are good energy storage options available)
* Existing ecosystems behind the barrage tend to be heavily altered
* Likely to stimulate silting in some areas and coastal erosion in others
* Enhance flood risk on the seaward side
* Shipping would have to navigate locks
* Industrial discharges behind the barrage are less likely to be dispersed out to sea

Variations on this theme include offshore tidal lagoons, which use a water impoundment structure and low-head hydroelectric generating equipment on shallow tidal flats, and tidal fences, which are composed of a number of individual vertical axis turbines mounted within the fence structure, known as a caisson.

Underwater turbines can also be used to harness both tidal power and ocean current power. The turbines (sometimes called aquanators) are similar to wind turbines. In water moving between 6 and 9 km per hour, a 15 m diameter water turbine could generate as much energy as a 60 m diameter wind turbine. Given the smaller amount of infrastructure required and the larger range of possible sites that this technology could be deployed to, it seems likely that underwater turbines will become much more widespread than tidal barrage style generation.



World tidal energy resources have been estimated at around 3000 GW, however less than 3% of this is located in areas considered suitable for power generation (these figures probably don't include ocean current power, which doesn't seem to be well studied).

A 240 MW tidal-barrage power plant has been operating at La Rance in Brittany since 1966. Other operational barrage sites are at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia (18 MW), the Bay of Kislaya near Murmansk and at Jangxia Creek in the East China Sea.

The largest tides in the world are found in Canada's Bay of Fundy, which has been earmarked to become a 4-berth test site for tidal power generation next year.

On the west coast of Canada, Marine Current Turbine and BC Tidal Energy Corporation plan to install at least three 1.2 MW tidal energy turbines in Vancouver Island's Campbell River by 2009. This the first step in a plan to develop larger tidal farms off British Columbia's coast, which the company says have a tidal energy potential of up to 4,000 MW.

In the United States, at the southern end of the Bay of Fundy, lies Passamaquoddy Bay, which has long been a target for a tidal power development - first initiated in 1935 by the Public Works Administration under the Roosevelt administration, then halted by Congress a year later. John F Kennedy revived the 550 MW project in 1963, however the plan died with him (spawning one of the stranger JFK assassination conspiracy theories I have come across).

Further south, in the Martha's Vineyard area, two underwater turbine projects are trying to get started - one a 300 MW proposal from Oceana Energy Company and the other from Natural Currents Energy Services. Other projects are being considered in the Cape Cod and New Bedford areas - part of a "gold rush" for good tidal power sites (the most desirable ones usually have hourglass figures, to get maximum force in the incoming tide) which has seen the FERC issue 47 preliminary permits for ocean energy projects (and generated mainstream news coverage on the NBC network).

New York's East River is the location of one of the more high profile tidal power experiments currently underway, with Verdant Power experimenting with underwater turbines there. The first attempt eventually ended in failure, with the strong tides breaking the devices.

The Gulf Stream has also caught the eye of hopeful ocean energy companies, particularly in Florida, with the 30 mile wide current pushing 8.5 billion gallons of water along per second and prompting some observers to consider the prospect of "Infinite Underwater Energy".

Californian utility PG&E is also investigating tapping tidal power in San Francsico Bay, with some observers talking about a plant of up to 400 MW in size.

Another bay famous for its tides is the Severn river estuary in Britain, with a tidal range of 14 metres. Plans for damming the Severn estuary or Bristol channel have existed since the 19th century (with tidal power generation being just one proposed application). The UK government recently proposed a new barrage design, which could produce 5% of the UK's electricity requirements, with a peak rate of 8.6 GW. A feasibility study is expected to be complete by 2010. An alternative proposal, by Tidal Electric, involves a series of lagoons, the first of which would be built in Swansea Bay. Some observers have noted underwater turbines may be more appropriate than a barrage.

Pentland Firth in Scotland is another UK location that is considered to have a large amount of tidal power potential - a DTI study in 1993 indicated that if all potential sites were developed, the total UK tidal stream resource could be about 60 TWh. Of this, almost half (28 TWh) could come from the Pentland Firth. The water depth is 60m or more, making potential energy capture huge but technically difficult - 63% of the tidal stream resource is estimated to be in waters deeper than 40m.

Marine Current Turbines launched the world's first underwater turbine project off north Devon in 2003. MCT also began installing a 1.2 MW "SeaGen" tidal current turbine in Northern Ireland's Strangford Lough in 2007, with the company planning to scale up to build a 10MW tidal power farm off Anglesey in North Wales, and to have 500MW of tidal capacity by 2015. Also in Wales, Lunar Energy and Eon are hoping to build an underwater tidal project off Pembrokeshire.

Another UK tidal power proposal is part of a plan by Metrotidal to build a tunnel under the Thames, currently under fire from environmental groups. There is also talk about regions like the Isle Of Wight and the Humber estuary harnessing tidal power as part of initiatives to become energy self-sufficient (like other "Transition Towns").

Norway has also begun investigating the use of tidal power, with an experimental facility opening in Hammerfest in 2003. The company that developed that technology, Hammerfest Strøm, is working with Scottish Power to develop a project near the Orkney Islands (the islands have also been a test site for another venture by Lunar Energy and Rotech).

There has been no tidal power development in Australia thus far, though the Kimberly region has long been a target for would be developers of tidal power projects, due to its enormous potential (a tidal range of 11 metres). Thus far all of the proposed projects have been stymied by the remoteness of the location from the Western Australian and national electricity grids and by environmental concerns. A number of possible sites have been identified, including Secure Bay, Walcott Inlet, George Water and St. George's Basin.

Liberal backbencher Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey has been the most vocal supporter of a Kimberly tidal project, pointing out if a link was built to the eastern states grid it would obviate the need for any consideration of nuclear power. Some Kimberly tidal power advocates have also tried to base the idea of a "hydrogen economy" on the resource, though this seems a lot more far-fetched than a grid link (the grid link could also potentially include large scale CSP solar in the western australian deserts, which are one of the best solar resources in the world) .

The Bass Strait area is also considered to have significant potential for tidal / ocean current power generation (one estimate claiming there is potential for 3000 MW of generation in the channel between King Island and Cape Otway).



New Zealand is another country with large tidal resources but without any existing tidal energy generation. According to TVNZ, there are at least 24 wave and tidal power projects currently under development. Trying to get a handle on who might be behind these projects isn't easy - there is an NZ wave and tidal power association, but it doesn't list members or projects - according to their latest newsletter they have 59 members. Crest Energy seems to be the most prominent local company, with a plan for a 200 MW plant in Kaipara Harbour using underwater turbines. Other potential locations include Manukau and Hokianga Harbours, and Tory Strait and French Pass in the Marlborough Sounds. The harbours produce 5 to 6-knot currents and tidal flows of 100,000 cu m a second from the flood and ebb tides, with tidal volumes 12 times greater than the flow in the largest local rivers.

The Phillipines is another potential location for tidal power, with a 2.2GW tidal fence proposed for the Dalupiri Passage using the Davis turbine, from the Blue Energy company and an estimated cost of $US 2.8 Billion is unfortunately on hold due to political instability.



South Korea also has ambitions to generate power from ocean currents, with pilot underwater turbines being installed at Uldolmok, in the country's south-west. Researchers at the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI) chose the site because it has flows up to 12 knots, believed to be among the fastest in Asia. The strong currents have resulted in a number of accidents, hampering progress. KORDI is also trying to improve the efficiency of more conventional barrage-type tidal power plants. The primary project involves building a power plant with a capacity of 250 MW at Lake Sihwa, with another plant up to 520 MW being considered for Garolim Bay.



Taiwan is another Asian nation considering the the possibility of large-scale ocean current power generation. There have been discussions about using the strong Kuroshio current off the east coast of Taiwan to generate up to 1.68 trillion kilowatt-hours per year (compared to Taiwan's current annual demand of electricity of around 98 billion kilowatt-hours).

Wave Power

Surface waves and pressure variations below the ocean's surface can be used by floating buoys or submerged platforms to generate intermittent power. Wave energy sources are widely available, are relatively consistent and predictable and (According to analysts Frost and Sullivan) have the highest energy density among all renewable energy sources. The best resource is found between 40-60 degrees of latitude where the available resource is 30 to 70 kW/m, with peaks of 100 kW/m. The potential global wave power potential has been estimated to be around 8,000-80,000TWh/y (1-10TW), which is the same order of magnitude as world electrical energy consumption.

The UK, for example, is estimated to possess the capacity to generate approximately 87 TWh of wave power per year - equivalent to almost 25 per cent of current UK demand. There are two main research centres in Europe focusing on the development and commercialisation of ocean energy technologies. The first is the European Marine Energy Centre located in Orkney, Scotland, which provides developers with sites to test their prototypes. The other is the Wave Energy Centre in Portugal.

Wave energy ideas are plentiful but real world examples are still rare - there are around 1000 patents for wave energy converters currently on the market and no consensus has emerged yet on which technologies will succeed.

Australian company Oceanlinx (previously known as Energetech) has had a 450 kilowatt wave power unit running at Port Kembla in NSW for a number of years, and plans to connect to the commercial power grid in early 2008. Oceanlinx is also at the advanced permitting stage for a project in Portland, Victoria which would deploy eighteen 1.5MW units for a total capacity of 27MW, which the company claims will be the largest wave energy project in the world.

The company has other projects planned in Rhode Island, Hawaii and Namibia, and intends to participate in the South West of England Regional Development Agency's "Cornwall Wave Hub" in the UK.

The Cornwall Wave Hub aims to create the world's first large scale wave energy farm by constructing a wave hub, or "socket", on the seabed. Oceanlinx is participating along with Ocean Power Technologies, Fred Olsen Renewables and WestWave. Ireland is looking to build a similar grid connected test facility on the Mullet Peninsula in Ireland's County Mayo. While the marine renewables industry in the UK seems to be quite vibrant, government programs to fund the sector have been criticised for not spending the money they have been allocated.

Another Australian company, Carnegie Corp has installed a small array of its CETO II units off Fremantle in WA, and is looking to set up a 50 MW facility in South Australia to desalinate seawater for the Adelaide market and the mining industry. The CETO technology was devised in the 1970s by Carnegie's chairman Alan Burns, a well-known Perth oil man who also founded Hardman Resources. It operates mostly underwater rather than on the surface like many buoy based alternatives, which the company believes will result in a much lower likelihood of damage from storms and rough conditions.

Another Australian company exploring wave (and tidal) power is Sydney based BioPowerSystems, which is trying to is commercialise "biomimetic ocean energy conversion technologies" (an example of "biomimicry", which I'll be doing a post on at a later date). BioPower has been awarded a $5 million grant under the Australian Government's AusIndustry Renewable Energy Development Initiative to test prototypes of the wave energy device (most likely at King Island) and the tidal energy device (at Flinders Island), with each generating around 250 kW.

Pelamis Wave power is a Scottish company that is constructing a 3 MW wave farm off the coast of the Orkney Islands. The company is also involved in the construction of a 2.25 MW plant in Portugal at Aguçadoura, which will soon be expanded to 20 MW, and is providing the technology for the WestWave project in Cornwall. The Pelamis design is a distinctive device resembling a 150m long red snake.

The Scottish government is considering building a connection linking the north and west coasts of Scotland with England, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands by 2020 which could be connected to the proposed European Supergrid, with the aim of harvesting up to 10 GW of wind and wave power.



Spain is also dipping a toe into the waters of wave generation, with a 300 kW "breakwater wave energy plant" being constructed on the north coast, using Wavegen (now owned by Siemens) equipment.

In the US, the wave energy company getting the most attention has been Finavera, which has received preliminary approval to build a 100 MW facility off northern California (and has signed a power purchase agreement with PG&E for part of this). At hasn't all been plain sailing for Finavera however, with a test AquaBuoy device sinking off Oregon late last year.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimated that waves off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts could produce from 250 to 500 terawatt-hours per year - around 12% of US energy demand. Finavera also has approval for a project in Washington state, along with others in South Africa and Canada.

Another US based company is Ocean Power Technologies, which is looking at developing projects in Hawaii, New Jersey and Spain.



OTEC

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is not a new idea, it has been around for more than a century. OTEC uses the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water to drive a power-producing cycle. For this to be practical, the temperature difference needs to be at least 20 degrees C, which tends to limit potential application to the tropics. The potential of this energy source has been estimated to be about 10 TW, according to some experts.

The economics of energy production today have delayed the financing of a permanent, continuously operating OTEC plant. However, OTEC is promising as an alternative energy resource for tropical island communities that rely heavily on imported fuel. OTEC plants in these markets could provide islands with power and desalinated water. Other applications that have been considered are aquaculture and mineral extraction.

OTEC plants have been trialled in Nauru and India (along with extensive research in Hawaii). There are also plans to build plants for the US military base on Diego Garcia, and in the Marianas Islands.

One unusual apparent application of this energy source that I came across recently is a robotic "thermal glider" which, at the least, seems like a very interesting tool for environmental monitoring.

Regular news updates on OTEC can be found at OTEC News.

Energy Island Ideas

The thinking behind harnessing ocean power has traditionally focussed on systems built on or near the shoreline. The amount of power available is large, however we are still at the very early stages of learning to harness it, and it is unlikely that ocean power will provide a significant proportion of our energy needs in the next decade or two.

The Energy Island concepts that I began the post with show that people are now beginning to consider harnessing ocean power out at sea as well, which vastly increases the amount of energy that could be tapped.

(The term "energy island" is an overloaded one unfortunately - the Danish island of Samso, for example, calls itself Energy Island as it is completely self-sufficient. There is also a "solar island" being developed off Dubai known as Ras Al Khaima.)

Dominic Michaelis' energy islands are by far the most ambitious plan I've seen for harnessing ocean power in the open seas. These hexagonal islands, are designed to generate electricity using wave, ocean current, OTEC, wind and solar sources. The group estimates that each island complex could produce around 250 MW of power. 50,000 energy islands could meet the world’s energy requirements - ands provide two tons of fresh water per person per day for the entire world population as a byproduct of the OTEC process.

The island design also supports farming seafood in small pens below deck and growing vegetables in shaded areas on the platform. The group is planning to conduct a pilot in the waters off the British Virgin Islands or in the Indian Ocean over the coming year.

Most observers consider the likelihood of energy islands appearing in the near term as remote, however the ideas are thought provoking and put into context just how much energy could be obtained out at sea.

One of the main issues with generating power offshore is how to store or transfer the energy (assuming that the islands don't simply become mobile aquatic arcologies of the sort science fiction writers used to dream about). One possible way of storing the energy would be to produce hydrogen, and to use the islands as refuelling stations for ships that use hydrogen fuel cells. Alternatively, the energy could be used to process raw materials, or to produce materials like ammonia.

Labels: energy, energy islands, ocean power, otec, power, tidal power, wave power

Posted by Big Gav at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments

The SMH has a report on the Solar Cities conference that considers the idea that suburbia may be well suited to a distributed, clean energy future, noting "spacious suburbs are perfect for household electricity generation but there are obstacles".

If it is hard to imagine a future in which the suburban streets of Mosman, or Fairfield, or Parramatta are lined with revolving wind turbines and glinting photovoltaic solar arrays, it's worth remembering that 40 years ago, three-quarters of all Australian homes relied heavily on solar and wind power.

The Hills Hoist, the metaphor for suburbia, dried clothes without so much as a puff of greenhouse gas.

Australia's response to curbing emissions will be decided in the same streets. Suburban sprawl could be the surprisingly green ace in Australia's climate pack, said some of the 800 delegates who gathered in Adelaide this week for the International Solar Cities Congress.

Our preference for large backyards, detached homes and wide streets will allow for local electricity generation, effectively turning each home into a mini power-station. There are huge obstacles - principally the cost of manufacturing, buying and almost certainly subsidising the equipment - but the consensus among local government and the renewable energy industry is that the nation's cities will be transformed within 20 years.

"The suburb is perfect for low-energy development," said the ecologist Herbert Girardet, who helped plan South Australia's first sustainable suburbs and works on Dongtan, a Chinese city next to Shanghai that will be powered exclusively on renewable energy.

"Low density is good for wind and solar power because there's more space to generate locally," Girardet says. "I would like to see the spaces between houses, and the roofs, all being used to power the homes and cars."

The conference presented a curious mix of optimism, because most of the technology needed to slash Australia's greenhouse emissions has been proven to work, and frustration, because far too little money has been allocated to roll it out on a massive scale.

Rapid urbanisation has been the key driver of escalating greenhouse gas emissions. Professor Peter Droege, the chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy, Asia Pacific, said: "Cities have become humankind's illusory safety blanket, shielding it from grasping the advent of a man-made terrestrial calamity: the climate tipping point … Renewable energy needs to be central to mainstream thinking on infrastructure planning and the very design of cities."

Six cities around Australia, including Blacktown in NSW, are running experimental renewable energy projects designed to both clamp down on energy demand and supply the rest from renewable sources. These projects and others have shown mixed, but generally encouraging, results. ...

Labels: australia, renewable energy, solar cities, suburbia

Posted by Big Gav at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments

Labels: phoenix palm

Posted by Big Gav at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments

O'Reilly's ETech Conference in March has some interesting sessions on the agenda. One session which caught my eye is on AMEE - the “Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine”, which aims to measure the "carbon footprint of everything".

If all the energy data in the world were accessible, what would you build?

The Climate Change agenda has created an imperative to measure the energy profile of everything. As trillions of dollars flow into re-inventing how we consume, we have a unique opportunity to start with open data and open systems. AMEE is an open aggregation platform for energy and CO2 data, algorithms, and transactions. We aim to dramatically accelerate change, because we need to.

AMEE is a neutral aggregator of reliable carbon data, for use by commercial and noncommercial groups. Active users include the UK Government, Google, Morgan Stanley, and The Royal Society for the Arts. Developer API keys are available, and we’ll be showing some of the applications.

Labels: amee, environment, measurement, monitoring

Posted by Big Gav at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments

Paul Krugman is feeling a bit peaked.

Peak oil, that is — a dismal theory that keeps getting more plausible.

A curious fact: a couple of years ago the firmly held belief of many right-wing economic commentators (why is this ideological? I’m not sure, but it was) was that the spectacular rise in home prices wasn’t a bubble, but that the rise in oil prices was.

Oil prices are set to crash from this week’s record highs as a speculative market bubble bursts with an impact that could make the hi-tech bust of 2000 ‘look like a picnic’, business publisher Steve Forbes has predicted.

Forbes said the high oil prices currently dampening the US economy, which peaked at more than 70 usd a barrel yesterday as Hurricane Katrina headed for the US Gulf Coast, would fall to 30-35 usd a barrel within a year.

I took oil price and CPI data from FRED, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis database — an incredibly useful resource. I just guessed at 0.3 percent inflation for February, and used an oil price of $100 for the last data point.

Add: Commenter Gufblog asks, “Isn’t it true that at above $40 a barrel Venezuela and Canada can start profitably turning oil sands and other hard-to-get-at sources into petroleum (which together more than double the world’s total supply and elevate Venezuela to the nation holding the greatest reserves)?” Well, people say that — but they’re always saying something like that. My first serious economics work was during the first oil crisis, when I spent many hours with Bureau of Mines publications containing firm estimates of the price of shale oil and oil-from-coal, all of which said that huge alternative supplies should be arriving any day now. Eventually people began talking about “Weitzmann’s Law,” which was that the cost of alternatives to conventional crude is 40% above the current price — whatever the current price is. Seriously, don’t believe the hype: history says that these things always fall short of expectations.

Meanwhile Bloomberg is reporting "Oil at $100 May Look `Cheap' Within Five Years, Alfa Bank Says ".

Crude oil prices of $100 may look ``cheap'' within five years if OPEC production fails to keep pace with global demand growth, according to Alfa Bank. ``We may hit peak oil in the course of the next three, four or five years, in which case $100 oil will look somewhat quaint,'' Alfa Bank's Moscow-based Head of Research Ronald Smith said in an interview with Bloomberg television.

Peak oil is the theory that global crude production is set to decline as new discoveries fail to make up for falling output from older oilfields. Some forecasts indicate Saudi Arabia, the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, may be unable to reach sustainable output of 15 million barrels a day and fail to meet an annual demand increase of 1.5 million barrels a day, Smith said.

Global oil demand will ``hold up'' in the event of a U.S. slowdown as consumption growth is led by Asian and Middle East importers, while usage within the U.S. itself ``has not shown much sensitivity'' in the past to weaker economic activity.

Over at the BBC the question is "Who knows why oil prices are so high" ?. What happened to Adam Porter ?

Labels: paul krugman, peak oil

Posted by Big Gav at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments

Green Car Congress points to a report that Virgin Atlantic's Biofuel Flight Demo is to Use First-Generation Biofuel.

Flight reports that Virgin Atlantic will likely use a first-generation feedstock-based biodiesel or hydrogenated vegetable oil in its test flight this month. The airline is due to fly one of its Boeing 747s between London Heathrow and Amsterdam using a 20% blend of biofuel to power one of four GE CF6-80C2 engines, and has been working with Boeing and engine manufacturer GE Aviation on the initiative since last April.

Virgin has remained tight-lipped about the choice of biofuel, claiming it intends to use a “truly sustainable type” that did not compete with food and fresh water resources.

Boeing now admits that it will not be an algae or halophyte-derived alternative, second-generation biofuels that come from renewable and sustainable feedstocks. Rather, it will be a first-generation biofuel whose feedstock is generally understood to compete with either land and water use for food crops or carbon sinks such as rainforests.

Speaking to Flight at the Singapore air show, Boeing energy and emissions technology leader Dave Daggett said the Virgin flight would definitely not use algae-derived fuel, using instead what he called a first-generation feedstock, ie soy, canola, babassu or palm oil.

Labels: biofuel, virgin atlantic

Posted by Big Gav at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments

The award for most bizarre piece of nuclear power advocacy I've seen in a while goes to this proposal from some scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory reported on by the New York Times - constructing nuclear power plants to power the conversion of CO2 into petrol. Of course, you could use the nuclear power for electric vehciles instead, and use less than 20% of the energy this process requires. Or you could just skip the nuclear option entirely and plug your electirc vehicles into a clean energy grid instead (hat tip Engineer Poet).

If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming. In a proposal by two scientists, vehicle emissions would no longer contribute to global warming.

The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have patriotically named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.

The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.

This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle — equal amounts of carbon dioxide emitted and removed — would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.

Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small prototype, the scientists say it is all based on existing technology. “Everything in the concept has been built, is operating or has a close cousin that is operating,” Dr. Martin said.

The Los Alamos proposal does not violate any laws of physics, and other scientists, like George A. Olah, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist at the University of Southern California, and Klaus Lackner, a professor of geophysics at Columbia University, have independently suggested similar ideas. Dr. Martin said he and Dr. Kubic had worked out their concept in more detail than previous proposals.

There is, however, a major caveat that explains why no one has built a carbon-dioxide-to-gasoline factory: it requires a great deal of energy.

To deal with that problem, the Los Alamos scientists say they have developed a number of innovations, including a new electrochemical process for detaching the carbon dioxide after it has been absorbed into the potassium carbonate solution. The process has been tested in Dr. Kubic’s garage, in a simple apparatus that looks like mutant Tupperware.

Even with those improvements, providing the energy to produce gasoline on a commercial scale — say, 750,000 gallons a day — would require a dedicated power plant, preferably a nuclear one, the scientists say.

Cleantech.com has a report on the reborn, ex-Xerox PARC and its new focus on clean technology - including an interest in creating "liquid fuels from the air" - but using renewables rather than vast farms of nuclear power plants.

Formerly Xerox's R&D center, Silicon Valley-based PARC is using its new status as an independent business to leverage its almost 40-year history in IT, mass production, microfluidics and other scientific expertise for a variety of mostly corporate clients—unlike the government focus of other research institutes. And now, there are a number of interesting cleantech-specific initiatives underway at the sprawling hillside complex, a stone's throw from Stanford University and the VCs of famed Sand Hill Road. ...

The center's most visible cleantech-related initiative in recent years has been helping incubate solar concentrating startup SolFocus, which resided in and operated from PARC's labs until August of 2007. PARC scientists helped the company develop a second generation of its solar concentrator, which is now smaller, lighter and less expensive to make (see photos below.) PARC drew directly on its expertise in laser printing. The success of the partnership inspired PARC to institute a formal incubation program, which it calls Startup@PARC. Fledgling cleantech and other companies can leverage PARC staff and facilities in exchange for cash, royalties, equity compensation, or a combination.

We received a tour of the facility, and learned about the center's current cleantech-related projects, including:

Printing for solar PV - Gridlines on the front of most manufacturers' silicon cells for collecting current tend to be relatively wide, hiding much of the substrate beneath from the sun. PARC developed a new extrusion method for printing narrower yet taller gridlines on silicon with the same conductivity, but less "shadow".

The new technique apparently boosts the power output of a solar cell by 6 percent. "We invented the print head; we're looking at commercializing in a reasonably short timeframe," said Elrod.

LED lighting - Could PARC's optics and thermal management experience translate into differentiated designs? Researchers pursued phosphor-based solid state lighting that has proven to be 10-20 percent more efficient than LEDs, PARC claims. The technology has been developed, and the center is now interested in engaging commercial partners.

Membrane-less water filtration - A novel design inspired by years of toner manipulation through apertures has lead to what appears to be a high volume water filtration process not requiring a membrane. PARC scientists leveraged the centrifugal force of contaminants in water to direct them through an alternative path in a spiral flow. The technique requires little power, and appears to hold promise for wastewater treatment, according to PARC's Elrod.

Liquid fuels from the air - Perhaps the most ambitious project underway at PARC is an investigation into the practicality of generating liquid fuels from simply water and carbon present in the air.

PARC scientists are looking into using renewable energy to power large scale electrolysis, combining hydrogen from water with large volumes of carbon extracted from the atmosphere to produce hydrocarbon-based fuel.

Admittedly, carbon would be released back into the atmosphere when the fuels combusted, Elrod acknowledged. But using the atmosphere for carbon "transport," as described on a PARC briefing slide, would guarantee fuel could be made anywhere, even on small islands.

"This is speculative, high risk and potentially high reward," said Elrod. "We're not putting a lot of people on this; this still has to pass the sanity test. But we don't know of anyone else doing this."

Other cleantech projects underway at PARC include demand response-like adaptive control technologies for data centers and power grids, new manufacturing techniques for small form-factor fuel cells that take advantage of PARC's print head expertise, biofuel from algae and reusable paper.

Labels: carbon dioxide, cleantech, global warming, green freedom, parc

Posted by Big Gav at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

I came across this picture of a canal overpass in Germany today, completed in 2003 at a cost of 500 million euros. While the benefits of cross-country shipping are obvious, apparently the environmental cost is also high.

In what’s being hailed as an engineering masterpiece, two important German shipping canals have been joined by a giant kilometer-long concrete bathtub. The new waterway near the eastern town of Magdeburg opens Friday.

Public infrastructure projects are notorious for taking longer than expected, but Germany’s new water bridge tying the Elbe-Havel canal to the important Mittelland canal, which leads to the country’s industrial Ruhr Valley heartland, was over 80 years in the planning.

Engineers first dreamt of joining the two waterways as far back as 1919. Construction to bridge the Elbe river near Magdeburg actually started in the 1930s, but progress was halted during the Second World War in 1942. After the Cold War split Germany the project was shelved indefinitely, but things were put back on track following reunification in 1990.

Taking six years to build and costing around half a billion euros, the massive undertaking will connect Berlin’s inland harbor with the ports along the Rhine river. At the center of the project is Europe’s longest water bridge measuring in just shy of a kilometer at 918 meters. The huge tub to transport ships over the Elbe took 24,000 metric tons of steel and 68,000 cubic meters of concrete to build.

The water bridge will enable river barges to avoid a lengthy and sometimes unreliable passage along the Elbe. Shipping can often come to a halt on the stretch if the river’s water mark falls to unacceptably low levels.

Labels: bridge, canal, germany, magdeburg, transport

Posted by Big Gav at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

Grist sentimentally reports that Planktos' plan to combat global warming by seeding the ocean with iron has run out of funds.

Planktos, the company that proposed fending off global warming by seeding the ocean with iron dust, has failed to get enough funding to go forward with planned tests. Under the Planktos business plan, iron fertilization would encourage phytoplankton blooms, which would suck up extra CO2, allowing the company to sell carbon offsets. But it was not to be: According to the Planktos website, "A highly effective disinformation campaign waged by anti-offset crusaders has provoked widespread opposition to plankton restoration in the environmental world." We can just see 'em, shaking their iron fists at us.

Alex Steffen has a much more detailed look at the event in "Planktos, Geo-Engineering and Politics".

A great fluttering has arisen out there around the news that Planktos, the company which aimed to make a killing by selling carbon offsets from fertilizing ocean algal blooms with iron dust, has pulled the plug on their field tests, but not before grumbling that they'd been done in by a “highly effective disinformation campaign waged by anti-offset crusaders.”

The Planktos failure ought to draw our attention even more clearly to what I am starting to think is a question we just need to get settled: should geo-engineering be part of our tool chest for confronting climate change, and under what conditions?

Though I feel strongly about the issue, I recognize that opinions differ. As the debate over my last piece Why Geo-Engineering is an Idea Whose Time Has Gone showed, smart and credible people can clearly differ on this question, and some believe in the necessity of the Big Fix.

In the comments, Andy Revkin said:

So, at least as a backstop, they say (and this group includes the likes of Ralph Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences), why not include significant research along this path as part of a menu of responses to global warming -- including mitigation of emissions, adaptation to unavoidable change (and garden-variety climate threats), and a concerted quest for next-generation energy options?

to which Alan AtKisson added:

If "tipping points" are for real, and it simply doesn't prove feasible to get the world moved off of carbon energy (while also keeping people fed and employed) quickly enough, then every humane solution that *is* feasible must be on the table for serious review, including the family of interventions called "geo-engineering". ...No one is saying "start the pre-fab volcanos." But *not* to research the options for stabilizing possible runaway climate change would at this point be inethical.

So, it seems to me there are two main positions held by credible people that run counter to my argument, nicely typified by our allies here. The first is that geo-engineering is part of a menu of responses, and we ought to explore the range of our options, perhaps incorporating massive engineering as part of those responses. The second is that we need a backstop, some sort of last-ditch proposal should we at some point find that we have already pushed the climate past catastrophic tipping points.

There are two giant problems with these positions as I see it.

The first is that existing proposals won't work, not the way we want them to. Both the two main contenders -- seeding the oceans (ala Planktos) and filling the upper atmosphere with sulfate particles (what some call the artificial volcano approach, best presented by David Keith in his TED video) -- run up against the same problem: they have the potential to wreak unholy havoc on the chemistry of the oceans, with dire consequences for pretty much all life on Earth.

That's because seeding the ocean would take CO2 out of the atmosphere by encouraging giant slicks of algae to grow and suck into the water, where it would raise the acidity of the ocean itself, while the artificial volcanos approach wouldn't actually take any CO2 out of the atmosphere at all -- it'd merely temporarily shield us from the heat effects of what we've already put up there, and much of that CO2 would in turn find its way into the ocean as well. That acidity, in turn would kill off all sorts of critters, disturb all sorts of unseen-and-yet-vital natural processes, and quite potentially cook our goose just as thoroughly as climate change itself... not to mention that acidification would generate massive GHG emissions feedback loops, thus worsening the very problem we sought to solve in the first place.

What's more, the really is very little evidence that any planetary interventions on the scale we're talking about here will actually work. Space mirrors are a joke; hacking plants to make them suck more carbon out of the air could impoverish the topsoil and lead to more invasive species; the list goes on.

John Holdren, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has said,

"The 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects."

That's why talking about geo-engineering as a means to "reboot" the planet's ecosystems is so off-base. We don't actually know that much about the planet, its natural systems and their workings at these scales (if any massive, centralized research project is called for, a much more complete biological survey of the Earth is probably it). What, for instance, might the impacts be on the critical ecosystem services provided by other natural systems?

Here's the other problem: not only is geo-engineering unlikely to work, but we don't need it and discussing it as a fantasy option is, I think, politically dangerous at a time when so much of the debate about the crisis we face already floats in a mist of surreality. Put another way, discussion of geo-engineering offers a distant, quite likely illusory benefit in exchange for a real and immediate political harm.

We've known for at least twenty years that climate change demanded action; we've had a high degree of certainty for at least ten, and for at least the last couple years, the scientific alarms have been ringing at a deafening volume. Yet we have very little real action on the ground -- indeed, per global CO2 emissions have continued to rise -- precisely because those who benefit most from the status quo have waged an entirely intentional (and fairly well-documented) campaign to cast doubt on the science of climate change, raise the specter of economic crisis, question the need for speedy action and, most recently, to question whether or not such action can succeed even if we undertake it (moving, as Al Gore quipped, straight from denial to despair).

So we're left with a political struggle which pits those who believe we must act, can act in time and can do so in a way that leaves us better off against those who don't really want us to act at all, and will drag their heels until rising seas wash the ground out from underneath their feet. That's climate politics, circa 2008. To believe otherwise is to set yourself up to get played for a sucker. (You can guess which side I'm on.)

To meet this crisis, we need a tidal wave of innovation, of clever policy, of entrepreneurial thinking and new technologies. There are a huge number of important niches where we need real egineering breakthroughs -- greening air travel and putting out coal fires spring immediately to mind. But none of these things alone will be enough.

Our biggest challenge is not technological. It is not a question of policy. It requires no further scientific validation to address. Our biggest challenge is to change our own thinking and the thinking of our fellow citizens. We need to encourage widespread planetary thinking; we have to start preparing people to take actions commensurate to the scope of the emergency.

And that's precisely where talking about geo-engineering as if it were a proven option becomes so dangerous. It is already being spoken of in mainstream media sources as the solution for our failure to adequately cut CO2:

Geo-engineering cannot replace emissions reductions. The less CO2 you have to balance with sulfates, the more effective geo-engineering would be. But reducing CO2 emissions by, say, substituting solar and nuclear for coal will only delay climate change. Any net emissions will eventually tip the atmosphere into dangerous territory.

This argument, of course, dovetails nicely with the latest spin from those benefitting from the status quo: "A sane climate policy? Too expensive, too slow, too late bound to fail. But don't worry, we've got our best people working on a backup plan." Or, as the Guardian reports the Bush administration's position:

"The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions... The US response, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each IPCC report. It says: 'Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered.'"

But the reality is that we already know how to dramatically reduce emissions. Many of the things we need to do to fight climate change, even to launch a full-scale war against it, are things we'd want to do anyways, and done properly, at the right scales, with transparency and democratic oversight, the offer very little risk (compared to any of the geo-engineering proposals currently topping the charts) and a high degree of reversibility

Even acknowledging that our goal must be very soon be carbon-negative economic growth and an environmentally-beneficial ecological handprint, the technological and social innovations needed are entirely within our scope, given our current capacities. It's even quite likely that many of the steps we'd need to take to get there are economically beneficial, especially when the true costs of our current patterns (and their future consequences) are taken into account.

What we lack is the political will.

I can't see how geo-engineering will change that. Even if one of these proposals could work, the politics around them make Bali look like a diplomatic cake-walk. I've already written quite a bit about the naive assumption that governments which lack the political will to follow comparatively simple scientific counsel and take comparatively safe actions can be trusted to properly oversee mega-scale centralized engineering projects. But the political minefields don't end there. Just as a for instance, who, under international law, actually has the authority to deliberately change the chemistry of the world's oceans, with unpredictable results?

As Scott Saleska of the University of Arizona asks:

Let's say air capture, or any of the many geoengineering options being widely discussed... ends up being feasible in a few decades. And let’s say we actually reach the point where we can, as Roger Pielke suggested, tune the atmosphere’s CO2. What level do we tune it to? And who gets to decide that level? The "worst off" individual (to follow Rawls famous "Theory of Justice")? Then we probably let the Maldivians decide, since under current projections, sea level rise could completely wipe them off the map. Places like Russia, on the other hand, would probably prefer to have some moderate global warming, because that probably would give them better agriculture in Siberia, and ice-free ports on the north Atlantic.

And here we are led to what may be to me the most damning shortcoming of geo-engineering: These proposals are not actually very smart or cutting edge. They are a set of 20th century proposals kitted out in 21st century drag. This is the response you'd get if you took a bunch of 1950s scientists with slide rules and crew cuts, put them in a room, and showed them An Inconvenient Truth. "First, we build a space mirror, then, if that doesn't work, we'll fall back to the artificial volcano... it may be a long shot, but nothing else will save the American way of life!"

Many of the scientists who are being cited by the chattering classes as proponents of geo-engineering are worried about the idea moving beyond the thought-experiment stage. Take Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, who, though often cited as a proponent of geo-engineering, is "not enthusiastic about it":

"It was meant to startle the policymakers... If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this."

Or as the folks at RealClimate put it:

The problem is that geoengineering a sunshade is being sold as insurance long before anybody has any dea whether it would work and what the unintended consequences would be. It's not really insurance. It's more like building a lifeboat, but a lifeboat based on a design that has never been used before which has to work more or less perfectly the first time the panicked passengers are loaded into it. The problem is that by the time we know enough to have any confidence at all in this lifeboat, CO2 may have risen to the point where the lifeboat becomes not just a backup, but a necessity. Would diverting 1% of the world's climate research funds into this problem clarify the issues in time? I doubt it. Would devoting 10% a year to the problem be worth it? I doubt that, too, in comparison to more pressing research needs.

A number of marine scientists have called for a ban on any geo-engineering of the oceans. Climate scientist Raymond Pierrehumbert's proposed 10 year moratorium on geo-engineering efforts goes farther still. I'd like to propose a further step: what if we table all discussion of geo-engineering as a strategy for 10 years, primarily by instituting a moratorium on funding research into any specific geo-engineering interventions.

We can -- and should -- increase funding into climate and biological sciences; we can and should increase funding into all manner of green technologies and innovations; we can even have serious discussions about how we might evaluate and design geo-engineering approaches in the future. But for the next ten years, we ought to concentrate on the business at hand: building a prosperous, fair and carbon-negative society as quickly as we possibly can.

Before we call out "to the lifeboats!" let's both try to stop the ship from sinking, and make sure that the lifeboats actually exist.

Of course, the dream of large scale carbon sequestration in the ocean will never die - Energy Daily has a look at another idea - this time to pipe CO2 straight into the ocean depths - "Into The Abyss: Deep-Sixing Carbon".

Imagine a gigantic, inflatable, sausage-like bag capable of storing 160 million tonnes of CO2 - the equivalent of 2.2 days of current global emissions. Now try to picture that container, measuring up to 100 metres in radius and several kilometres long, resting benignly on the seabed more than 3 kilometres below the ocean"s surface.

At first blush, this might appear like science fiction, but it"s an idea that gets serious attention from Dr. David Keith, one of Canada"s foremost experts on carbon capture and sequestration. Keith will talk on the subject at the 2008 Annual Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston at a session entitled Ocean Iron Fertilization and Carbon Sequestration: Can the Oceans Save the Planet?

"There are a lot of gee-whiz ideas for dealing with global warming that are really silly," remarks Keith, an NSERC grantee and director of the Energy and Environmental Systems Group at University of Calgary-based Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy.

"At first glance this idea looks nutty, but as one looks closer it seems that it might technically feasible with current-day technology." But, adds Keith, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment, "it"s early days and there is not yet any serious design study for the concept."

The original idea of ocean storage was conceived several years ago by Dr. Michael Pilson, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island, but it really took off last year when Keith confirmed its feasibility with Dr. Andrew Palmer, a world-renowned ocean engineer at Cambridge University.

Keith, Palmer and another scientist at Argonne National Laboratory later advanced the concept through a technical paper prepared for the 26th International Conference on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering in June 2007.

Keith sees this solution as a potentially useful complement to CO2 storage in geological formations, particularly for CO2 emanating from sources near deep oceans.

He believes it may offer a viable solution because vast flat plains cover huge areas of the deep oceans. These abyssal plains have little life and are benign environments. "If you stay away from the steep slopes from the continental shelves, they are a very quiet environment."

For CO2 to be stored there, the gas must be captured from power and industrial point sources, compressed to liquid, and transported via pipelines that extend well beyond the ocean"s continental shelves. When the liquid CO2 is pumped into the deep ocean, the intense pressure and cold temperatures make it negatively buoyant.

"This negative buoyancy is the key," explains Keith. "It means the CO2 wants to leak downwards rather than moving up to the biosphere."

The use of containment is necessary because CO2 will tend to dissolve in the ocean, which could adversely impact marine ecosystems. Fortunately, says Keith, the cost of containment is quite minimal with this solution. He and his colleagues calculate that the bags can be constructed of existing polymers for less than four cents per tonne of carbon.

The real costs lie in the capture of CO2 and its transport to the deep ocean. "If we can drive those down," he notes, "then ocean storage might be an important option for reducing CO2 emissions."

Labels: geoengineering, global warming, planktos

Posted by Big Gav at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments

Totally off topic, but some nice images at this link.



Also off topic :

* Bush's popularity rating at 19% - lowest in history.
* Woman saves Lion's life - this is how he greets her.

Posted by Big Gav at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Solar Cities conference is on in Adelaide, with the event getting lots of press attention.

AUSTRALIA has the know-how and the industrial capability to become a solar nation, but needs government and individuals to take action, the country's largest producer of solar energy products says. BP Solar regional director Brooke Miller said Australia could install three gigawatts of peak energy, enough to provide solar power to more than one million homes and thousands of businesses. That would make the country a benchmark solar nation and a world leader in alternative energy.

She also told the third international Solar Cities Congress in Adelaide the drive towards a sustainable energy future would also produce more than 9000 new jobs and save four million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. "We have an enthusiastic and engaged market,'' Ms Miller said. "Australian families and householders are embracing the technology like never before and the Australian business community is awakening to opportunities to turn their roofs into power plants.''

Ms Miller said what was needed now was action from governments around Australia to adopt feed-in legislation, to make switching to solar power more economical for individuals and companies. Last week the South Australian Government introduced into state parliament the first feed-in laws in Australia, which will allow consumers to sell back electricity they produce in their homes or businesses to the grid at a profit.

More links on solar cities :

* SMH - Australia could become a 'solar nation'
* SMH - NSW deflects calls for solar subsidies
* Adelaide Advertiser - Off-grid solar power station worth $7.1 million for Coober Pedy
* Herald Sun - When you're hot you're hot
* The Age - Murray must not die urges Kennedy Jr
* ABC - Nuclear energy expensive: Kennedy
* Scribd - Geothermal Energy In Australia: An Overview. Petratherm presentation to Solar Cities. Some good maps of SA geothermal prospects and wind power sites.

Ross Garnaut also spoke at the conference, saying that "emissions cuts are needed now to curb global warming

SIGNIFICANTLY larger cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will need to be made almost immediately if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, the Federal Government's architect on greenhouse policy will say in a report to be released today.

Ross Garnaut's interim report will recommend to the Commonwealth and state governments a much tougher and speedier response to climate change, arguing that the cost of action is much less than the cost of inaction.

"The world is moving towards high risks of dangerous climate change much more rapidly than has generally been understood. Without strong action by both developed and major developing countries alike between now and 2020, it will be impossible to avoid high risks of dangerous climate change. The show will be over," Professor Garnaut told a conference in Adelaide yesterday.

Preliminary work carried out by Professor Garnaut's review suggests global greenhouse gas emissions must start to decline almost immediately if the world is to stabilise the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a level scientists believe would give the planet a reasonable chance of preventing dangerous levels of climate change. To stabilise the atmosphere even at levels that give less chance of preventing this, global emissions would need to start slowing now before declining no later than 2030, Professor Garnaut's research has found.

Although the Federal Government has set a long-term target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 it is yet to set an interim target. It has promised to do so this year.

Professor Garnaut was commissioned by state and territory governments to examine the effect of climate change on the economy last year. The Federal Government has joined the review, which was inspired by a landmark report by Sir Nicholas Stern for the British Government in 2006. Although Professor Garnaut's final report is not due until later this year he will release an interim report today. State and territory leaders will be briefed on the report this morning.

Professor Garnaut urged the Federal Government to take a leadership role in future international negotiations by encouraging the United States to commit to greenhouse pollution reduction targets. He warned that the international negotiations for an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol must include persuading developed countries to take on emissions reduction targets.

"Waiting until 2020 - potentially the starting time for an agreement to follow the one currently being negotiated - would be to abandon hope of achieving climate stabilisation at moderate levels," Professor Garnaut said.

To achieve this Professor Garnaut suggested Australia follow the lead of the European Union, which has committed to a reduction in emissions of 20 per cent by 2020, and 30 per cent if other developed countries commit to comparable reductions.

Crikey's take was entitled "Garnaut talks tough -- and looks north", noting the implications for our relationship with PNG and Indonesia.

Many Australians view PNG as a nation propped up by Australian aid dollars, but in last night's curtain-raiser to today's release of his interim report, Professor Ross Garnaut highlighted the nation could come to our rescue as we look for massive, low cost carbon abatement.

Garnaut told an Adelaide public forum that Australia should explore a regional trading scheme involving PNG (first up) and Indonesia – both of which have massive greenhouse gas emissions due in large part to deforestation. The bold proposal is particularly significant because of two other statements made last night by Garnaut.

One was his call for Australia to show it would be ready to make cuts greater than 60% by 2050 if negotiators broker a truly effective global agreement involving all major developing countries. The other was his response to a question in which he indicated "contraction and convergence" – the concept of equal per capita emission entitlements – will play a key role in determining how nations share the global burden of reducing carbon emissions. Developing countries are unlikely to commit to a deal that "doesn't emphasise this", he said.

But a tougher target and burden-sharing involving some form of equal per capita emissions entitlements would pose an extraordinary challenge for Australia without access to some very cheap abatement – like the sort you can potentially get from avoided deforestation. Garnaut said he has no views at this stage on the detail of what any regional trading scheme involving Australia and its northern neighbours should look like. But he made it clear in the Q & A that he means much more than just project-based investment in PNG of the type encouraged through the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.

Garnaut wants Australia to approach both countries – starting with PNG – seeking their participation in some form of scheme involving their acceptance of binding national abatement targets. "Developing country adoption of national targets and participation in a regional trading scheme ... would be a world first and would have substantial demonstration impact," he said. "In addition to large gains through emission reductions, it could help generate momentum towards the adoption of binding targets by developing countries by demonstrating that it could be in their financial interests to do so."

Garnaut pointed out Indonesia's annual emissions – three quarters of which are thought to be related to deforestation -- are estimated to be about five times Australia’s. Papua New Guinea's forestry-related emissions might exceed a quarter of Australia's total CO2 emissions, he said. The prospect of pushing for such a scheme will no doubt seem foolhardy to some. But it shows no-one can accuse Garnaut of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

The interim report is now up at the Garnaut Climate Change Review web site - no doubt we'll see plenty of spin in the press tomorrow...

Labels: australia, garnaut report, global warming, solar cities

Posted by Big Gav at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments

I came across the latest installment of extreme financial doomerism from the Leap 2020 guys this week (whom you will hopefully remember got the starting slot in my "Day Of The Doombats" post back in the day).

According to LEAP/E2020, the end of the third quarter of 2008 will be marked by a new tipping point in the unfolding of the global systemic crisis. At that time indeed, the cumulated impact of the various sequences of the crisis (see table below) will reach its maximum strength and affect decisively the very heart of the systems concerned, on the frontline of which the United States, epicentre of the current crisis. In the United States, this new tipping point will translate into a collapse of the real economy, final socio-economic stage of the serial bursting of the housing and financial bubbles (1) and of the pursuance of the US dollar fall. The collapse of US real economy means the virtual freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies in large numbers, companies and public services closing down massively (2),

A revealing harbinger: from March 2008 onward, the US government will stop a service publishing its economic indicators due to budget restrictions (3). Those who read the GEAB N°2 (02/2006) and included Alert certainly keep in mind our anticipation which connected the upcoming fall of the US dollar with the US Fed's decision to cease publishing the M3 indicator. This new decision is another clear sign that US leaders are now anticipating a very bleak economic outlook for their country.

In this 22nd issue of the GEAB, LEAP/E2020's experts try in particular to anticipate very specifically what will come out of the collapse of the US real economy for the United States themselves and for the other regions of the world. Meanwhile our team presents five sets of strategic and operational recommendations helping to protect oneself from the upcoming deterioration of the global systemic crisis.

While the LEAP 2020 guys are Europeans, I occasionally wonder if some of the "Long Emergency" style doomerism emanating from the US is a reaction to the ongoing demise of George Kennan's post war "pattern of relationships" for maintaining the enormous position of economic "disparity" the US found itself in after the second World War.

I sometimes think of the outcome of this as a form of the "Dutch Disease" - instead of being dependent on income from a single depleting resource, the US became dependent on (and wasteful in its use of) a number of depleting resources. Now that period of dominance is waning with the rise / resurrection of Europe, China, India and Russia, and the financial costs of maintaining oil dominance via the Iraq war and the associated "war on terror" help to cripple the US economy, this dependence has become a huge liability. Resource depletion, particularly in the case of oil, makes the situation even worse.

The end result of this is that US based doomers may see through their looking glasses much more darkly than those elsewhere - because the adjustment the US faces will most likely be more severe.

In its favour however, the US still has a large, well educated and creative population (there are some exceptions to this of course), and a reasonable endowment of native resources which should still make for a prosperous economy once a number of adjustments have been made.

The neo-marxist article I linked to yesterday, theorising about dominant capital groups within economies and noting the strange cycles that the oil industry goes through in terms of its dominance relative to other sectors (I'd love to see an overlay of the same data for the military-industrial complex on that chart), made me wonder what will happen if the Democrats - largely beholden to a different set of capital groups - manage to seize control in the US elections later this year. It may well spark a clean tech boom, which would help initiate a lot of the adjustments required, and greatly weaken the capital groups that have been wreaking so much havoc at the same time.

Anyway - enough rambling - when I went to look up the famous Kennan quote about his institutionalised system of disparity, my Google query popped up another one of those fascinating essays from Gilles at Swans - this one noting that Kennan has usually been taken out of context.

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. ... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. ... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. ... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
—George F. Kennan, Policy Planning Study 23 (PPS23), Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948

You've all seen this quotation cited countless times on Web sites, listservs and other mailing lists, from the left to the right, and everything in between. Simply google George Kennan, PPS23, and you'll get an idea... Problem is, it's a truncated quotation, patched together from various parts of the original text with ellipses, and taken out of context. It is more than time to debunk this little assemblage. One should not have to resort to this kind of fabrication, either out of sloppiness or willfulness, to elaborate on conjectural analysis. To use and reuse this misquotation does a disservice to all. Please, people, can you check your sources?

George F. Kennan recently died (March 17, 2005). He was 101 years old. Kennan, whether one endorsed his view of the world or not, had a sharp and honed mind; he was a prolific writer with literary skills rarely encountered at foggy bottom (see "George F. Kennan on the Web"); and he was credited for having fathered the containment strategy of the former Soviet Union, which may be giving the man too much credit -- the entire US power apparatus was in the containing mode -- but it appears that Kennan did coin the word "containment" (though I can't certify this contention) and he wrote, aside from PPS23, two important secret (at the time) documents: the February 22, 1946 Telegram from Moscow and "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," published in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs under the name X -- documents that greatly contributed to shaping the US strategy after WWII. These documents have long been analyzed, discussed, parsed, deconstructed and interpreted by legions of historians and political pundits.

Mr. Kennan was a realist (and some suggest a pessimist) as opposed to faith-based neocon Wilsonianism. He eventually left the State Department to pursue a scholarly career at Princeton; was generally opposed to the Vietnam War; and even managed to express his dissatisfaction with Bush's Iraq crusade (again, he was a realist). Upon his death, obits ran large in the mainstream media as well as in the "alternative press" (honestly, I'm having a harder and harder time figuring out the alternatives offered by the majority "alternative press," but this is a story for another time...). Anyhow, the alternative press made ample use of this "quotation" (these are not scare quotes; simply the proposition that one can make up a "quotation" by assembling bits and pieces of what someone actually said, or wrote, in order to further one's line of thinking, a.k.a. ideological preferences according to one's frame of references).

Alexander Cockburn posits ("The Passing Show," AVA, March 23, 2005) that Kennan "will be best remembered for his self-consciously 'realistic' assessment in those postwar years, in State Department PPS23 that, [enter quotation]." In his latest Anti-Empire Report (#19, March 21, 2005) the ever-sharp Bill Blum has an entry on Kennan that includes the PPS23 quotation (see my Blips #15). Even Louis Proyect posted the NYT obit on Marxmail, beginning with the quotation... (See Marxmail archives.) The source is properly indicated, but then, how many people go the source...? And so like some kind of a meme, the "citation" propagates all over Cyberspace...and not just in Cyberspace...but in books, and special reports like that of John Pilger's "Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror." ...

What did Kennan actually write? (Note, I've bolded the passages used in the quotation) ...

Once the full quotation is read, one can engage in interpretating, parsing the text according to the historical context and one's own intellectual inclinations. (It is worth noting, especially in light of the current US strategy in the region -- e.g. pushing Japan to re-arm...besides encircling China, and supposedly wanting to elevate India to medium superpower status -- that Kennan's recommendation in regard to Japan has been followed almost to the letter for half a century, while his recommendation regarding Taiwan has been ignored.)

The issue here is not to defend George Kennan, or what he actually meant, but the accuracy of one's sources. While Kennan eventually regretted some of the positions he had taken and the strategies he had advised, one cannot forget that he initiated, or was an ardent proponent of, the covert operations launched by the CIA during the Cold War and thus carried a moral responsibility for the deaths or overthrow of many courageous leaders, from Iran's Mohammad Mossadegh to Chile's Salvador Allende... A brilliant thinker, blessed with the ability to doubt and acknowledge his mistakes, he was nevertheless a cold warrior, deeply conservative, and a supporter of the status quo. But there is no reason, besides sloppy research or willingness to assemble a "quotation" for ideological purposes (here, I'm convinced that it has more to do with the former than the latter), to misquote an author, any authors...

Moving on, Martin Wolf at the Financial Times is also spreading financial fear and loathing in "Twelve steps to meltdown" - although he has a somewhat soothing conclusion.

“I would tell audiences that we were facing not a bubble but a froth – lots of small, local bubbles that never grew to a scale that could threaten the health of the overall economy.” So wrote Alan Greenspan in The Age of Turbulence.

That used to be Mr Greenspan’s view of the US housing bubble. He was wrong, alas. So how bad might this downturn get? To answer this question we should ask a true bear. My favourite one is Nouriel Roubini of New York University’s Stern School of Business, founder of RGE Monitor.

Recently, Professor Roubini’s scenarios have been dire enough to make the flesh creep. But his thinking deserves to be taken seriously. He first predicted a US recession in July 2006. At that time, his view was extremely controversial. It is so no longer. Now he states that there is “a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome”. The characteristics of this scenario are, he argues: “A vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe.”

Prof Roubini is even fonder of lists than I am. Here are his 12 – yes, 12 – steps to financial disaster.

Step one is the worst housing recession in US history. House prices will, he says, fall by 20 to 30 per cent from their peak, which would wipe out between $4,000 billion and $6,000 billion in household wealth. Ten million households will end up with negative equity and so with a huge incentive to put the house keys in the post and depart for greener fields. Many more home-builders will be bankrupted.

Step two would be further losses, beyond the $250 billion-$300 billion now estimated, for sub-prime mortgages. About 60 per cent of all mortgage origination between 2005 and 2007 had “reckless or toxic features”, argues Roubini. Goldman Sachs estimates mortgage losses at $400 billion. But if home prices fell by more than 20 per cent, losses would be bigger. That would further impair the banks’ ability to offer credit.

Step three would be big losses on unsecured consumer debt: credit cards, auto loans, student loans and so forth. The “credit crunch” would then spread from mortgages to a wide range of consumer credit.

Step four would be the downgrading of the monoline insurers, which do not deserve the AAA rating on which their business depends. A further $150 billion writedown of asset-backed securities would then ensue.

Step five would be the meltdown of the commercial property market, while step six would be bankruptcy of a large regional or national bank.

Step seven would be big losses on reckless leveraged buy-outs. Hundreds of billions of dollars of such loans are now stuck on the balance sheets of financial institutions.

Step eight would be a wave of corporate defaults. On average, US companies are in decent shape, but a “fat tail” of companies has low profitability and heavy debt. Such defaults would spread losses in “credit default swaps”, which insure such debt. The losses could be $250 billion. Some insurers might go bankrupt.

Step nine would be a meltdown in the “shadow financial system”. Dealing with the distress of hedge funds, special investment vehicles and so forth will be made more difficult by the fact that they have no direct access to lending from central banks.

Step 10 would be a further collapse in stock prices. Failures of hedge funds, margin calls and shorting could lead to cascading falls in prices.

Step 11 would be a drying-up of liquidity in a range of financial markets, including interbank and money markets. Behind this would be a jump in concerns about solvency.

Step 12 would be “a vicious circle of losses, capital reduction, credit contraction, forced liquidation and fire sales of assets at below fundamental prices”.

These, then, are 12 steps to meltdown. In all, argues Roubini: “Total losses in the financial system will add up to more than $1,000 billion and the economic recession will become deeper more protracted and severe.” This, he suggests, is the “nightmare scenario” keeping Ben Bernanke and colleagues at the US Federal Reserve awake. It explains why, having failed to appreciate the dangers for so long, the Fed has lowered rates by 200 basis points this year. This is insurance against a financial meltdown.

Is this kind of scenario at least plausible? It is. Furthermore, we can be confident that it would, if it came to pass, end all stories about “decoupling”. If it lasts six quarters, as Roubini warns, offsetting policy action in the rest of the world would be too little, too late.

Can the Fed head this danger off? In a subsequent piece, Roubini gives eight reasons why it cannot. (He really loves lists!) These are, in brief: US monetary easing is constrained by risks to the dollar and inflation; aggressive easing deals only with illiquidity, not insolvency; the monoline insurers will lose their credit ratings, with dire consequences; overall losses will be too large for sovereign wealth funds to deal with; public intervention is too small to stabilise housing losses; the Fed cannot address the problems of the shadow financial system; regulators cannot find a good middle way between transparency over losses and regulatory forbearance, both of which are needed; and, finally, the transactions-oriented financial system is itself in deep crisis.

The risks are indeed high and the ability of the authorities to deal with them more limited than most people hope. This is not to suggest that there are no ways out. Unfortunately, they are poisonous ones. In the last resort, governments resolve financial crises. This is an iron law. Rescues can occur via overt government assumption of bad debt, inflation, or both. Japan chose the first, much to the distaste of its ministry of finance. But Japan is a creditor country whose savers have complete confidence in the solvency of their government. The US, however, is a debtor. It must keep the trust of foreigners. Should it fail to do so, the inflationary solution becomes probable. This is quite enough to explain why gold costs $920 an ounce.

The connection between the bursting of the housing bubble and the fragility of the financial system has created huge dangers, for the US and the rest of the world. The US public sector is now coming to the rescue, led by the Fed. In the end, they will succeed. But the journey is likely to be wretchedly uncomfortable.

Continuing the credit crunch doomer march, Gary Shilling at Forbes is also spreading a relatively mild form of financial doomerism, predicting that likely the US recession will be a global one (no friend of the decoupling theory either, he), and that commodity prices are due to plummet.

His peak oil analysis is devoid of reasoning - prices will fall because of new output from tar sands, coal liquefaction and "maybe shale". Plus substituting nuclear for liquid fuels. And Petrobras' "enormous" find offshore Brazil (presumably he means Tupi). This sort of amateur analysis in supposedly reputable journals (ignoring Steve Forbes' faux pas a couple of years ago when he got caught publically saying oil prices will fall while at the same time telling clients in his private newsletter to buy) drives me nuts.

The flow from tar sands is subject to a lot of constraints, coal prices are soaring, shale oil has yet to be proven economically practical (and will also be subject to flow limits), the Tupi field is apparently complex and a long way off producing anything, let alone large quantities of oil (I'd bet the jump in production from Iraq over the next 5 years is far larger than that from Brazil), and all of these will be appalling carbon emitters, likely to run into strong interference as the world economy attempts to decarbonise. The only saving grace here is that he isn't a fan of corn ethanol.

What to do? Sell or short commodities, perhaps via exchange-traded funds, stocks in companies that produce them or futures. Commodity prices, still high, are poised to fall hard as the worldwide recession takes hold.

Chinese demand, terrorism and talk of peak oil drove crude prices. Agricultural prices were hyped by biofuel's popularity, droughts and the prospect of a shift in demand in poorer countries from grain to meat. So institutional investors rushed into commodities, believing they are a relatively stable asset class like stocks and bonds. Individuals bought commodity-backed ETFs. That enthusiasm will soon be history.

With global recession, demand for industrial commodities and oil will fade. It will become clear that much of China's demand for commodities was not primarily to supply its citizens but to supply its export market.

No one will be talking anymore about how oil production is peaking. Look at Petrobras' huge oilfield discovery off Brazil and consider the gigantic energy supplies that will come from tar sands, nuclear, coal liquefaction and maybe shale. More supply equals lower prices.

Good weather and weak ethanol prices may knock down ag prices. A recent report in Science magazine has discredited many biofuel schemes as environmental salvations. We're going to stop fueling our cars with taco ingredients.

The WSJ's Environmental Capital blog points to a Richard Branson video up at Grist, with Dick expressing regret for having jumped on the first generation biofuel bandwagon.

They also point to reports about the new carbon tax being introduced in British columbia. I wonder when Alberta will follow suit ?

British Columbia broke ranks with the rest of Canada and announced its own carbon tax of $10 per ton, reports the Toronto Star. The plan, which won’t be levied on petroleum producers but on businesses and consumers, could hit the poor the hardest, notes the Globe and Mail. That’s exactly what some groups in California are afraid will happen with an emissions cap-and-trade scheme favored by Gov. Schwarzenegger, reports the L.A. Times. None of that has deterred Japan, notes Reuters: The country will consider replacing its voluntary emissions caps with a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme like Europe’s.

Finally, Richard Branson says he regrets supporting first-generation biofuels, in a video at Grist.

ABC (the US version) has an article on the peak oil / resource wars war game "Frontlines: Fuel Of War" (long time readers should remember tinfoil from both RI and Cryptogon at various stages regarding the use of video games as a desensitisation / propaganda / recruiting tool for these scenarios).

Sometime in the near future, gas will cost about $20 a gallon. It gets worse: China and Russia will form a military alliance that threatens the security of the United States and Europe.

Amid hunger, water scarcity and power outages, the two sides will go to war. Soldiers will descend upon bombed-out cities and abandoned villages, where rusting appliances and old car engines litter the streets. But don't let that get you down. "What you're trying to deliver in the game is fun," said Luis Cataldi. "We don't want someone to come in and become depressed."

Cataldi, an art director at New York-based KAOS Studios, is one of dozens of minds behind the dystopian vision presented in Frontlines: Fuel of War, a new video game inspired in part by contemporary fears about oil, war and, yes, war over oil.

The game, which cost about $15 million to produce, is set in the year 2024. It is a time when, according to Frontlines' "speculative fiction," the Western Coalition (the U.S. and Europe) are at war with the Red Star Alliance (Russia and China) over the world's last oil reserves on the Caspian Basin in Turkmenistan. Taking on roles as American troops, gamers use futuristic weapons and vehicles to battle their way across Central Asian oil fields, ghost towns and crumbling cities. In the game's multi-player version, gamers can also assume the identities of Red Star troops.

While Cataldi and KAOS emphasize the game's graphics, fast pace and technical prowess — in the game's "open world" setting, just about any object, structure or person you see can be shot at, blown up or otherwise annihilated — they're also passionate about Frontlines' fraught premise.

Conflict over oil "is a very resonant story in the world. It's a global issue that everyone's very much aware of, but it's also fascinating," Cataldi said. He spoke breathlessly of oil's role in World Wars I and II, of the Peak Oil theory – the idea that the world's oil production is on the brink of falling — and of reported military exercises between China and Russia aimed at protecting their oil interests. "You don't have to dig very deep to realize that it isn't a new problem," he said. "There are some great pieces of research that suggest that the world is in a very sensitive place."

Envisioning War

To devise the game's geopolitical context, he said, developers "read everything we could get our hands on." That included the books "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies," by Richard Heinberg, and "Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict," by Michael Klare.

Heinberg, a senior fellow at the California-based Post Carbon Institute, was surprised but pleased to learn that his book helped to inspire a video game. "I think anything that helps people understand the situation that we're facing is, in general, good," he said. "My hope would be that people who play the game then take the time and trouble to actually research some of these issues and look both into the science of oil depletion and the implications for our economy and our future."

Klare, a professor at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, called the prospect of a world war over oil "very plausible" and said he saw potential for the game to raise awareness of the issue among young people. "If you want to have an impact on young people on important issues, it's important to reach them outside the classroom as well as inside the classroom," he said, "Therefore entertainment has to be part of the mix."

Klare is hoping another form of entertainment will turn more people on to his research: movies. His book "Blood & Oil" is being made into a documentary. "I know the power of visual imagery," he said.

Labels: credit crunch, doombats, finance, george kennan

Posted by Big Gav at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments

The US has now downed its "rogue" satellite, thus saving the world's population from the perils of the hydrazine (pdf) it enclosed (clearly the Bush administration is far more concerned about this stuff in the atmosphere than it is about carbon dioxide).

A missile launched from an American navy ship has successfully struck a dying US spy satellite passing 210 kilometres over the northern Pacific Ocean. "The missile's been launched and (it was) a successful intercept,'' a Pentagon source said. It happened just after 10.30pm (1430 AEDT) today, but full details were not immediately available, another defence official said.

The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 450 kilograms of a toxic fuel called hydrazine. US officials have said the fuel would pose a potential health hazard to humans if it landed in a populated area. Although the odds of that were small even if the Pentagon had chosen not to try to shoot down the satellite, it was determined that it was worth trying to eliminate even that small chance. Officials said it might take a day or longer to know for sure if the toxic fuel was blown up.

Russia and China had expressed concern about the operation. The Russian Defence Ministry said it could be used as cover to test a new space weapon. But Washington insisted the operation was aimed purely at preventing people being harmed by the satellite's fuel load. Wreckage from the satellite was likely to pass over south-eastern Australia within an hour of the missile's launch.

The Russians and Chinese, cynics to a man, claim that this is just a thinly disguised anti-satellite weapons test (shame on them) - presumably playing tit-for-tat with the Chinese for their test last year. Kevin at Cryptogon is also of this opinion, further theorising that it could be linked to the recent spate of undersea cable cuttings, and pointing to a previous satellite knockdown in 1985.

Labels: asat, hydrazine, satellite

Posted by Big Gav at 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

WorldChanging has a post on the startlingly large improvements in energy efficiency to be had by using heat pumps to heat water.

A heat pump water heater removes thermal energy from a low temperature source like air, waste water or the Earth, and moves it to a high temperature water tank.

Electric heat elements are 100 percent efficient - so for each 1KW of electricity they use, they transfer 1KW of heat to the surrounding water.

In hot climates like the one shown, the electricity spent to drive a modern heat pump ends up heating the water at around 400 percent efficiency. Even in cooler climates, the efficiency of this process is around 250 percent. One hundred percent efficiency is not the maximum, in energy.

Heat pump systems have a continuous recovery cycle, so they work around the clock and into the night time when the air is a little cooler (this is when the video shows the hot water). It seems illogical, but even in cool climates there's more than enough thermal energy to heat water with no more electricity than it takes to run the mechanical work moving refrigerant and heat. Heat pumps are even efficient below freezing.

I met with Rod Innes, technical director of Energy Saving Concepts Ltd (ESCL) and he had some jaw-dropping statistics for me regarding the savings that would come from mass adoption of these solar convection heaters for residential hot water in New Zealand or Australia.

There are an estimated 1.1 million electric hot water cylinders in New Zealand, with 50,000 new units sold each year. Eighty percent of these new units are replacements, so assuming an even failure rate, the "fleet" is fully replaced in 25 years.

The consumption across all units in New Zealand is around 45 percent of domestic sector electricity and almost 20 percent of total annual electricity production. Heat pumps currently available on the market save around 70 percent of the electricity that would be used by an electric element water heater. Australia, which has similar usage figures, would reduce its annual carbon emissions by five million tonnes if heat pumps were widely adopted. If we replaced old elements with heat pumps as they failed (and installed heat pumps in all new houses), New Zealanders would heat their water by solar convection as early as 2033.

The exciting opportunity here isn't just that 10 percent of the country's total electricity bill could be wiped, it's that there's still space for design innovation in heat pump systems. Rod showed me his key innovation - twisting the conductive tube that runs through coolant increases the surface area contact and improved conductivity by 300 percent. Adding a opposing twisted rod through the centre of the coil (a "turbulator") improves the heat exchange efficiency relative to space by a further twenty percent. That's an efficiency improvement to a mature product that already achieves between 250 and 400 percent efficiency.

Labels: heat pump

Posted by Big Gav at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments

Cryptogon has an interesting find today - a study showing the correlation between lagging oil company profits and wars in the middle east. I'm not sure how to classify this one - some form of neo-marxist economic analysis ?

The New Order of Capital

The central change concerns the underlying nature of capital, a transformation that began in the late nineteenth century but became evident only recently.

Existing theories, anchored in the reality of the early nineteenth century, continue to examine capital from the ‘material’ perspective of consumption and production. Neoclassical economists anchor their analysis in utility, while classical Marxists base it on labor time. In contrast to these approaches, we suggest that, under modern conditions, capital can no longer be viewed as a ‘material’ entity. As we see it, capital represents neither neoclassical utility nor Marxist abstract labor, but rather power—the power of its owners to shape the process of social reproduction as a whole.

Based on a power understanding of capital, we argue, first, that the analysis of capitalism should focus not on capital ‘in general’ and many capitals ‘in competition,’ but specifically on the dominant capital groups at the centre of the political economy. Second, we claim that accumulation should be understood not absolutely, but differentially—that is, in reference to the ability of dominant capital to ‘beat the average’ and increase its relative power.

The implications of this power perspective are far reaching. For our purpose here, they suggest:

1.That over time, corporate mergers, rather than economic growth, become the main engine of differential accumulation (‘breadth’); and

2. That under certain circumstances, dominant capital can benefit greatly from inflation and stagflation (‘depth’).

In our research we found that, over the past century, global accumulation indeed oscillated between these two regimes of merger and stagflation. The most recent phase, which lasted through much of the late 1980s and 1990s, was clearly one of breadth. In that period, dominant capital benefited greatly from the opening up to corporate takeover of the former Soviet Union and other ‘emerging markets,’ as well as from the collapse of the welfare state and the massive privatization of government services.

This breadth cycle, with its emphasis on neoliberalism, deregulation, sound finance and disinflation, came to a close at the turn of the new millennium. The financial crisis that began in Asia and later spread to the core markets, the crumbling of the ‘new economy’ and its scandalous accounting practices, and talk of global terrorism and the infinite war to defeat it, have together made capital movement look less tempting and mergers far less promising. Furthermore, two decades of neoliberalism have weakened pricing power, raising the specter of price and debt deflation for the first time since the Great Depression.

Faced with these predicaments, capitalists generally and dominant capitalists particularly began yearning for a little dose of ‘healthy’ inflation both to avert debt deflation and to kick-start differential accumulation. As it turned out, the solution for their predicament—intended or otherwise—was a new ‘Energy Conflict’ in the Middle East (that is, a conflict related directly or indirectly to oil). Over the past thirty-five years, these conflicts have been the prime mover of oil prices, and oil prices have provided the spark for broad-based inflation. It was a turnkey mechanism for triggering inflation, and it was ready to use.

In this sense, military conflict has come to assume a new, roundabout role in the accumulation process. Until the 1950s and 1960s, the main impact of military conflict worked through large military budgets which directly boosted aggregate demand and overall profits, as well as the income of the leading military contractors. But with the re-globalization of ownership and the on-setting of détente, military budgets started to contract. Initially, they fell relatively, as a share of GDP, but since the late 1980s, they also began to drop absolutely, in constant dollar terms. Although these expenditures still nourish the military contractors, their direct effect on capital accumulation has diminished significantly.

However, military conflict as such hasn’t lost its appeal; it still has a big impact on accumulation. The novelty is that the impact now works mostly indirectly, through inflation, relative prices and redistribution.

Energy Conflicts and Differential Profits

The key beneficiaries of this new, indirect link are the large oil companies. The geographic centre of this process is the Middle East. After the Vietnam War, the Middle East has become the hot spot of global conflict, with obvious corollaries for the price of oil. The relationship between these conflicts and the differential profits of the oil companies, however, has received little or no attention.

The reason for this neglect is not difficult to see. Most analyses of Middle-East conflict and oil are situated in the disciplinary intersection of ‘international relations’ and ‘international economics.’ Their basic reasoning boils down to a struggle among states over raw materials. On the one hand, there are the industrialized countries that need cheap oil in order to sustain their growth and expanded reproduction. On the other hand there are the countries of the Middle East , organized through OPEC, whose intention is to extract from the process as much rent as they can. This broad conflict is complicated by various factors: for example, inter-state rivalry—say between the United States and the Soviet Union (previously) and Europe and Asia (presently); religious and ethnic hostilities in the Middle East itself; or the interests of various sectors and capitalist fractions in the industrialized countries.

In this polemic of high politics and resource economics, few have bothered to break through the aggregate front, fewer have done empirical work, and almost no one has dealt with the question of how exactly accumulation by the oil companies fits into the picture. Figure 2 offers a glimpse into what is missing from the story. The chart shows the history of differential accumulation by the ‘Petro-Core’ of leading oil companies—specifically: BP, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, Royal-Dutch/Shell and Texaco.

Each bar in the figure measures the difference between the rate of return on equity of these companies and the average rate of return on equity of the Fortune 500 benchmark (with the result expressed as a percent of the Fortune 500 average). The grey bars show years of differential accumulation; that is, years in which the leading oil companies beat the average with a higher rate of return. The black bars show periods of differential decumulation; that is, years in which the leading oil companies trailed the average. For reasons that will become apparent in a moment, these latter periods signal ‘danger’ in the Middle East . Finally, the explosion signs show ‘Energy Conflicts’—namely, conflicts that were related, directly or indirectly, to oil.[7] The figure exhibits three related patterns, all remarkable in their persistence:

First, every energy conflict in the Middle East was preceded by a danger zone, in which the oil companies suffered differential decumulation.

Second, every energy conflict was followed by a period during which the oil companies beat the average.

And, third, with only one exception in 1996-7, the oil companies never managed to beat the average without an Energy Conflict first taking place.

Posted by Big Gav at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Greener Gadgets award for 2008 has been won by a LED light powered by gravity. Sounds like some crazy free energy scam but its actually just smart design. The device is estimated to last for 200 years.

Gravia is an LED-lit floorlamp energized by people. To light Gravia, the user places a mass approximately 48" above the ground, that, in falling, powers a mechanism, generating electricity. Gravia harnesses the potential energy imparted by the user, rather than relying on any existing electrical infrastructure.

The design goal of Gravia is to provide light in a room (600-800 lumens—roughly equal to one 40 watt incandescent lightbulb), over a period of 4 hours, using people to generate power.

The precedent for this lamp lies within horology—the science of keeping time. Gravia recalls the archetypes of 'grandfather clock', 'hourglass' and 'wind-up clock'. User input provides the potential energy for these devices, and maintains a cycle of timely upkeep for the life of the object.

Gravia is also metaphor for an understanding of social activism. The mechanism of social activism is like a flywheel, where each participant in society is not necessarily required to provide all of the energy to power a movement, but instead, contributes with others, bits at a time to accomplish positive change

Labels: gravia, led lighting

Posted by Big Gav at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Toronto Star has an editorial on "the scary oil sands" and the massive problem they pose.

Canadians' concerns over Alberta oil-sands development centre largely around its impact on climate change.

And for good reason. In a list of 207 nations ranked by greenhouse gas emissions, Alberta's oil sands come out higher than 145 of them.

And that comparison is based on 2007 emissions. Under its proposed "intensity" caps to fight global warming, the Harper government predicts a near doubling in oil-sand emissions by 2020.

But as a study released last week by the advocacy group Environmental Defence shows, the dangers posed by the tar sands go far beyond climate change. The most frightening is the leaching of toxins into the region's water supplies, which the study terms "a giant slow-motion oil spill."

After one study found that moose meat in the region could contain 453 times acceptable levels of arsenic, the Alberta government produced its own study showing arsenic to be "only" 17 to 33 times the acceptable levels. So tainted are fish in the area that some First Nations have reported that "fish frying in a pan smell like burning plastic."

The study, Canada's Toxic Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth, goes on to discuss the massive tailing ponds containing a poisonous mixture of water and oil that result from the oil extraction process. It says they constitute "a megadisaster waiting to happen to the region's water supplies." Already covering more than 50 square kilometres, these lakes of toxic soup are held back only by earthen dikes, one of which rivals China's Three Gorges as the largest dam on the planet. Quoting David Schindler, one of the world's top water scientists, the study warns: "If any of those tailing ponds were ever to breach and discharge into the river, the world would forever forget about the Exxon Valdez."

Clearly released to stir debate in the provincial election campaign underway in Alberta, the frightening findings in this study also need to be addressed by federal parties as they gear up for a spring election.

Labels: canada, global warming, tar sands

Posted by Big Gav at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today's SMH has an article on some guerilla gardeners (who call themselves "bewilderers") operating in Sydney's south- "The Bewilderers: On the verge of a revolution".

Where most people see nature strips that need mowing, scrappy grass verges and useless "waste" land, Bob Crombie sees only endless opportunities for more planting. Mr Crombie is a retired National Parks and Wildlife Service senior ranger and TAFE teacher but prefers these days to describe himself as a "bewilderer".

"'Bewilder' is an old term meaning 'to become connected to life, the source, the spirit, God'," he says. All of which sounds pretty high-falutin' until you realise how startlingly practical Mr Crombie's "bewildering" is. With a couple of mates, he spends his spare time clearing weeds and planting out any public green space that catches his eye. "Once you start thinking, you see opportunities everywhere you look," he says.

When the inevitable question arises of seeking permission from whatever public body owns the land, he just grins. "We just go ahead and do it," he says. "If I see a place and think, 'Jeez, an angophora would look good there', I just put one there."

Labels: bewildering, guerilla gardening, sydney

Posted by Big Gav at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments

JD at Peak Oil Debunked can be pretty funny at times - and this post is one of those times (though I'm sure it has caused plenty of annoyance, as per usual).

For those of you just coming to peak oil, you're going to want to understand the most basic concept of peak oil: The doomer feedlot. Forget about the Hubbert curve, and oil, and all that complicated math/science bullshit. That's all irrelevant to the actual day-to-day reality of peak oil. Today, I'm going to tell you what you really need to know to survive in the peak oil world.

First you're going to want to go to a doomer feedlot, like peakoil.com or DrumBeat at the Oil Drum, and get a user ID. It's like one of those tags that they crimp onto your ear. All the doomers look the same, and they're all packed nose-to-bunghole into the feedlot, so the feedlot needs a way to tell them apart in case one "goes down" or flips out etc.

Now, I know it's intimidating, but you're going to want to shove your way through all those packed in, fly encrusted doomer asses until you get to the trough. It's a real thrill, waiting for the truck. You got grizzled doomers on the left and right. Their fat guts are thickly marbled from all the scary news articles they've read over the years. They'll body check ya if they sense you're not scared. Just look one in the eye and say: "We are soooo fucked." They'll think you're one of them.

You're going to want to get used to this ritual of bellying up to the trough, cause you're going to be doing it about 10-20 times a day at the doomer feedlot. Ideally you'll want to work your way towards the front of the trough, near the fresh news items, but don't get too eager, some of the grizzled old-timers have staked out the best positions, like that Westexas bovine that just hangs there at the front of the trough, come rain or shine. Animals can be real stubborn like that.

Then the tails start waggin. Hot diggidy dog! Here comes the truck!! It's Leanan, in her overalls. She shovels the doom into the trough every morning, so you get your head in there and start slurping those juicy news items.

Here comes a shovelful: "Babies freeze to death in Kyrgyzstan."

That's got the stink of doom all over it, and the cows' eyes bug out with excitement...

"Babies freeze to death in Kyrgyzstan? Oh mama... Got bunker?"
"We are soooo fucked!"

Leanan really knows how to blend that feed. You see, lesson 1 is that peak oil is not about peak oil. Peak oil is about the inevitable die-off of industrial society and mankind due to hubris and stupidity. Any news item which advances that thesis... goes in the feed.

Remember: This is very much NOT about helping suffering people in other countries. The die-off is inevitable, so help is pointless. It's about the process of deriving nourishment from suffering in the form of news. Plowing through reports and commentary and blogs, day after day, for years on end, for signs of depression and mass death. Using reports of suffering to score debating points. ...

One of JD's comments on the post points out that pure doomerism is really a form of entertainment (I said something like this about Kunstler a long time ago, and gave into the same temptation myself eventually - the entertainment aspect, not the doomerism - hence my forays into all sorts of weird territory from time to time, which I thought was a more positive variant than fear mongering - albeit one which clearly hasn't been appreciated by some readers).

I think it's a classic Marshall McLuhan situation: we like to think it is the *content* of the news items which is the reality, but, in a way, that's just an excuse, and the real story is the social relations created by a new media (in this case, the internet).

Consider power outages and brownouts, for example. Certainly, there have been chronic failures of power grids for decades, paticularly in the 3rd world. However in the past you couldn't agreggate real-time news of such outages into a feed. But now you can, and you can also aggregate a readership around it. And the feed has a sort of iconic, brute power. Imagine a teletype machine in the back of a room, reeling off power outage news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It would be even more effective if you had a robot voice read the reports over a loudspeaker. It would be totally unnerving... You would start worrying that the world was ending due to a massive overload of power outages, simply due to the number and flow rate of reports.

In fact, though, you're just reading/listening to noise. It was there all along. You just didn't have a microphone hooked up to it before.

In a way, I think we're all just drunk on the power of the internet. The ability of the media to generate news is now surpassing the ability to digest it, so you need feedlots of media consumers to try to choke it down, like a snake trying to swallow a pig. The ability to gather and analyze statistics has taken leaps and bounds too, resulting in new forms of journalism like Stuart's massive opuses. But we're starting to reach saturation, where the consumers can't choke it down. The supply of peak oil information is grossly exceeding the reading capacity.

The solution to this problem is the Feedlot. Zones of concentrated, intensive media consumption. It's ironic that peak oilers are so strongly against "consumer society", and yet they tend to be absolutely feverish consumers of the classic post-industrial product: Media.

You've got the spellbound people, huddling around the speaker, listening to the never-ending power outage news, and they like to think they are in touch with "reality". But they aren't actually obsessed with reality. They're obsessed with *media*.

I think, if you asked a lot of wives out there, the #1 impact of peak oil on their family is their flabby husband addicted to the computer. *That's* the reality.

Peak oil is something you can cope with quite easily, without following any news at all. So that doesn't explain the phenomenon of the feedlot. It's like you say: there is an illusion that something useful is being done, but in fact, it's more akin to entertainment, like people watching sports.

Posted by Big Gav at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments

I had the misfortune of listening to Andrew Bolt prattling away nonsensically on the TV about Fidel Castro's retirement earlier today, so in order to compensate I'll post Guy Rundle's column on the occasion from Crikey just to provide some cosmic balance - "Goodbye El Commander, hello Cosmo Kramer. Castro quits.".

So in the end, he didn't die in harness. But nor did he leave with a cigar in his hand, having given them up for health reasons a few years ago. He did however announce his retirement, after a half century, to make way for younger people, wearing not military fatigues, but an Adidas jacket, the label clearly showing. He looked pretty relaxed. He looked less like El Commander than he did like Cosmo Kramer.

So now the war of words will begin – though the whole thing is somewhat muted given the so far peaceful handover to his brother, Raul. The points will be pretty predictable and can be summed up by the following two word strands, which are most effective if they are shouted simultaneously by parties on both sides of the room:

PRO: Batista mafia revolution Bay of Pigs Blockade Che third world solidarity revolution in the revolution G77 group Brigades Namibia apartheid Mandela anti-globalisation doctors Africa Venezuela
CON: Firing squads communism exiles Isle of Pines homophobia Mariel boat lift stagnation dictatorship relic backwater Michael Moore chafing?

Repeat.

My sympathies are obviously with the pro side, but defending Cuba as it is, with the added virtue of never having visited it, is not the same as advancing it as a model for a social system in the future, anymore than Hugo Chavez's increasingly erratic rule – though who can tell really through the ludicrous right propaganda – is hardly a model for liberation from neo-liberalism.

Those who support Castro, the Cuban revolution have to deal with quite a few negatives, from the execution and imprisonment not only of Batista's thugs, to the same treatment meted out to not a few revolutionaries, and then to dissidents. The imprisonment of homosexuals and prostitutes in camps, the 20 year sentences etc etc.

Then there has been the wilfully harebrained insistence on an economic model that – whatever the results of the blockade – couldn't really deliver results on its own, and which was in part the insistence on trying to develop a new human ethic by sheer revolutionary will.

But it was also forced on the Cubans by the great gringo to the north.

For Castro, Guevera, and anyone else south of the Rio Grande, politics has to be understood in terms of three key events – 1954 when the CIA overthrew the elected and moderately left Arbenz government of Guatemala, plunging that country into decades of dictatorship and civil war, leaving a quarter of a million dead, 1961 when Kennedy backed a bunch of gangsters to take back Havana - and the other september 11, 1973, when the Allende government met the same fate.

The implications were obvious – the Americans would subvert any of the internal affairs of any Latin American nation no matter how moderate its policies, and especially if it opened its borders. (Ariel Dorfman's 'How To Read Donald Duck' showed how this had happened in Chile- it was championed in Australia by media studies teacher Keith Windschuttle, who noted in the Nation Review that it was an essential tool for the coming peasant revolution of the unemployed and aborigines - of course he might have been on acid at the time).

Thankfully, due to Bush's incompetence, the US has now lost Latin America pretty decisively, but they were tough times.

In the midst of them Cuba built up a social system with western levels of education, social services and health care – or better than western levels, as life expectancy, infant survival rates and other indicators began to far outstrip those of most states in the US.

In Africa, Cuba sent brigades that were essential to finishing off the remnants of imperialism – the brutal Portuguese colonies, where tens, hundreds of thousands had been slaughtered by Lisbon's troops. They helped free Namibia and kept pressure on South Africa at a time when people such as Margaret Thatcher and John Howard called Mandela a terrorist.

When the cold war was over they trained thousands of doctors across the world, including offering some to the US after Katrina – which Cuba had survived, evacuating 20% of its population from the projected hurricane path – an offer the refusal of which undoubtedly cost lives. They should really be invited into to run aboriginal health, as they're clearly the only non-aboriginal group with the will to make a difference.

Where you stand on Castro comes down to what you believe about human freedom. More people have died crossing the seas to the US from Haiti than from Cuba – and Haiti, a sort of control test for Cuba, is a craphole without real freedom that comes from some sort of social solidity.

Those for whom freedom is simply the presence or absence of political prisoners, simply never see the wretched of the earth, never figure them into their calculations, see their misfortunes and suffering as unpolitical – a mass traffic accident, no more. To try and defend anything of Castro to them is like teaching lacrosse to spaniels. They look they nod they bark they don't get it. If Cuba finds a path to greater political liberalism – and it is hardly a total dictatorship – all the better. But what you can say about Castro is what Mandela said when the US tried to prevent him from being invited to Mandela's swearing in as president: "he didn't desert us then – we won't desert him now".

Labels: castro

Posted by Big Gav at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments

Lloyds List has an interesting report on a German company that is attempting to drastically reduce the carbon emissions from its supply chain, particularly the transport related activities.

GERMAN coffee and retail chain Tchibo, the fourth largest coffee producer in the world, is trying to lead the way with its new environmental protection programmes by putting the pressure on its contracted container carriers and forwarders.

The shipper is aiming for a 30% reduction of its CO2 emissions by 2015.

Almost a quarter of this figure is to be achieved by the end of this year. 92% of freight forwarding is already done by sea. Annually, the shipper handles 9,000 teu of coffee beans and 22,000 teu of non-food products.

"Quite a number of our contracts with logistic providers expire in the coming months and weeks. We will negotiate new contracts on the grounds of eco-friendliness", said Achim Lohrie, Head of Corporate Responsibility at Tchibo.

Some of the measures Tchibo is pressing for are a reduction of ship speed to save fuel; and the implementation of eco-friendly technology like the Skysails towing kite technology, which recently had its debut on a merchant vessel. The company is already in talks with owners and Skysails.

"We are making the technology subject of our contract negotiations but we are also willing to invest ourselves", said Mr Lohrie. However, Tchibo is not revealing the names of possible contract partners.

The logistics arm of the coffee trader will try to reduce 7% of its CO2 emissions by the end of 2008 by shifting two routes which are very essential for the company from road to rail forwarding. Tchibo is already in talks with German logistics provider Deutsche Bahn and the port of Hamburg over the freight capacity they would like to run between the company's headquarters in Hamburg and its coffee roasters in Berlin.

The conversion from road to rail on the route between Tchibo's logistic head office in Bremen and its distribution centre in the east German town of Gallin will be not as easy. New facilities for cargo handling have to be built. "We are willing to share the costs with Deutsche Bahn", said Mr Lohrie.

Posted by Big Gav at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Guardian has a list of reasons why Britons should "see red over green power", outlining the dismal lag between UK efforts to go green and those of Germany.

You'd hope, wouldn't you, that the government department responsible for energy to heat our homes, power our cars and so on would be on top of two key issues - a switch to a low-carbon economy and the possibility that oil might run out sooner than we thought. Both these issues should concern us greatly and, indeed, there is growing discussion of them everywhere. But, the Department of Business As Usual (DBERR) doesn't seem to be on the case at all.

It spends most of its time pointlessly changing its name (from the Department for Trade and Industry, you will recall) or changing ministers so often that few have time to get their feet under the desk before they are gone.

Ed Matthew of Friends of the Earth puts it bluntly. "BERR [the department has inexplicably even dropped the D] is not fit to govern. They should all be sacked."

That may sound a bit harsh but you have to wonder whether he has a point.

First, renewable energy. The figures we uncovered last week were shocking.

BERR is set to under spend the paltry £18m in domestic grants of its low carbon buildings programme by £10m over the three years to March 2009. This in spite of strong demand for renewables among the general public.

How bad is the situation? Well, BERR handed out grants for part of the cost of fitting solar photovoltaic systems covering only 270 houses last year. The Germans fitted 130,000. We have a total installed capacity (including commercial) of 16 Megawatt peak (Mwp). They have 3,800 Mwp.

But even worse, during the year the pace of grant-giving slowed. Last May BERR simply slashed the grants and made them more difficult to get. The result, entirely predictably, was a collapse.

Throughout much of 2006, for example, it was making 30-40 grants a month for ground source heat pumps. In the last three months of 2007, no such grants were made. There is a similar decline for solar thermal (hot water) and micro wind turbines. Not a single grant was allocated for a domestic solar PV system last month while the Germans installed about 12,000 systems.

Malcolm Wicks, BERR's energy minister, recently acknowledged that Britain needed a "revolution" to have any chance of raising the share of its energy derived from renewables to 15% by 2020, as the EU demanded last month, from 2% - the lowest in the EU after Malta and Luxembourg.

It's important to remember, though, that the EU wants 20% of its energy from renewables by 2020 but allowed Britain to shave that to 15%. Thank goodness the EU has set a demanding target. So why is Wicks still trying to claim that Britain is showing "leadership" on renewables? The UK has about 40% of the EU's wind, yet only 10% of the installed wind capacity of Germany. Sorry to go on about this but it really does bear repeating.

German revolution

I am hearing, though, that many branches of government are fed up with the situation and are putting pressure on BERR to get real with its policies, particularly regarding the feed-in tariff (FIT) behind Germany's renewables revolution that has been copied in so many other countries.

This works by rewarding those who produce power from wind or solar power with an above-market payment guaranteed for 20 years. The additional cost is spread across all power users, since the saving in carbon is shared by all. It is a market-supporting mechanism since the FIT is reduced slightly each year for new projects as increasing scale reduces the cost of the equipment (a solar PV system in Germany, for example, now costs half the UK level).

A properly designed FIT rewards early adaptors, helps kick-start a new industry and creates jobs. The German PV industry added 10,000 jobs last year.

Friends of the Earth want the chancellor, Alistair Darling, to put tackling climate change at the heart of next month's budget. They want a FIT for households and businesses generating their own power and a top-up of the LCBP to £1bn a year to meet half the cost of any renewables anybody wants to fit.

The Treasury, after all, commissioned Lord Stern to write his review of the economics of climate change in 2006. He recommended spending 1% of gross domestic product each year, straight away, to combat climate change. That would be £13-14bn in the UK's case. So £1bn in the LCBP is not a lot to ask.

Another key reason to push for a dash for renewables is energy security. There is a growing fear among academics and many in the oil industry, that oil may be running out quicker than we thought. I used to write about the oil industry 15 years ago and more and back then the conventional wisdom was that "peak oil" theories had been right about US oil production but were fantasy for the world as a whole. As soon as the oil price rose, went the argument, producers would spend more on getting oil out of the ground.

Well, oil prices have been rising for about a decade. They've gone up 500% roughly. That's a lot. You might expect that, even allowing for the lags in developing new fields, supply might have responded by now. This is basic economics.

Argument

But it hasn't, not really. We are stuck at about 85m barrels a day in global production. And the output of the oil majors Exxon, Shell and BP fell last year!

I don't want to get into an argument about whether peak oil is upon us but you have to admit that it could be. After all, UK oil production peaked at 3.2m bpd in 1999 and has since halved. Dirty tar sands in Alberta could perhaps produce 3m bpd (Canadian estimates, not mine), but that's not going to be enough. Not that it ever should be dug out - it's filthy stuff that requires huge amounts of energy to produce.

The point is that you may hope BERR would have a plan for coping with oil at $200 or $300 a barrel in a few years' time, or a physical shortage (remember the fuel protests of 2000?). As my colleague George Monbiot noted last week, when asked about peak oil, BERR also quotes the International Energy Agency as saying the peak won't be till 2030. But the IEA doesn't say that any more - it has said there is a great deal of uncertainty about the issue. So you might think BERR would have a Plan A in case peak oil is upon us. But no, they don't want to work on a contingency plan in case news gets out about what they are doing and causes a panic.

That panic, though, would be nothing compared to the panic if oil starts to run short. If I were BERR I would be having a dash for renewables. They plan to subsidise nuclear power for decades to come so why not bung some money at proper green energy that won't need subsidy for very long?

Posted by Big Gav at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments

THE IEA is calling on the US to do more to reduce energy consumption and fight global warming, noting policies that adjust prices higher are the best way to achieve this goal.

The world's biggest economy and energy consumer has made progress toward a more sustainable energy system but is lagging behind other industrialised countries and even developing countries such as China in some areas, the IEA said in a report. "To address the multiple challenges that United States energy policy is facing, the price mechanism is the most important tool," said the report "Energy Policies of IEA Countries - United States 2007 Review." "The government should use it, by abolishing fossil fuel subsidies and creating taxation or other pricing regimes that internalise environmental costs," it said.

The IEA, which advises the US and 26 other members on international energy policies, acknowledged the challenge of changing the habits of Americans who are used to abundant resources and cheap energy prices. "Failing to give the right incentives for conservation has removed the strongest reason for energy users to demand more efficient products."

The current US policy for low energy prices "is leading to forecasts of demand that are unsustainable, and creates significant security and environmental risks not just for the United States, but also for the rest of the world," the Paris-based agency warned.

The IEA said the transport sector was key to achieving the country's energy security and sustainabilty. The IEA welcomed Congress's passage in December of the first tightening of CAFE vehicle fuel-efficiency standards since 1975, which calls for a 40 per cent increase in the fuel standard to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. But it said the standards remain weak, and noted relatively little improvement in fuel economy since 1996. "In general, in the field of vehicle efficiency, present policy goals in the United States are too timid to lead to the achievement of the cost-effective efficiency potential in the vehicle sector," said the report produced in conjunction with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

At a news conference in Washington, IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka said a "more ambitious program is recommended" for the US to achieve a 50 per cent cut in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050. "Stringent fuel standards are what we are recommending," he said.

Posted by Big Gav at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments

The flow of oil money into the Gulf states is having the usual blowout effect on strange collectibles - one UAE resident recently paying almost 10 million euros for a number plate marked "1". The buyer admitted later he would have been willing to pay up to US$27 million. During the great Japanese bubble, when gold flecked drinks and oxygen bars were all the go for people with money to burn, I had a friend who used to fantasise about hiring an icebreaker and collecting Antarctic ice to sell as "pure water" iceblocks to a price-unconscious market. Maybe its time to dust this idea off again...

The value of "vanity license plates" climbed to new heights Saturday when a car license plate with nothing but No. "1" on it went for a record US$14 million (€9.5 million) at a charity auction in the Emirati capital.

"I bought it because it's the best number," said Saeed Khouri, a member of a prominent Abu Dhabi family that made its fortune in real estate. "I bought it because I want to be the best in the world." Khouri refused to reveal how many cars he owned and which one of them will carry the record-breaking single digit plate.

Vanity license plates, as they are popularly called, are a series of unique car license plates which the state auctioneers in this oil-rich Gulf state began auctioning off since last May. But unlike ordinary car plates issued to drivers here and most other vanity series plates which carry both Arabic and Western numerals and script, defining the issuing city and country, Khouri's plate had only the Western numeral and no letters.

Posted by Big Gav at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Asia Times has an excellent article on Iraqi oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani, now taking on "the decider" role given the failure of the proposed oil law to pass through Iraq's parliament, and his role in determining who gets to exploit the greatest prize of all. The report notes that the new mechanism for handing over the oil is almost as unpopular with the Iraqi population (ie. the owners) as the legislated handing over of the oil...

The cynosure of Western eyes at the meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, commonly known as OPEC, in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, last December 5 was an unexpected personality - Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani. But that wasn't a chance occurrence. By the time OPEC gathered in Vienna six weeks later, it was beyond doubt that Shahristani was on the way to becoming a celebrity in the West.

Shahristani is "a rare thing" in politics, to quote Toby Lodge, the well-known scholar on Iraq at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London - "not too religious, not too political, not too secular, not too pro-American Shi'ite who [Grand Ayatollah Ali] Sistani would talk to".

But for the ease with which Shahristani traversed in his later years the dividing line that separates religiosity and idealism from worldliness and pragmatism, Shahristani would have become a cult figure for human-rights activists, given his extraordinary background as a top nuclear scientist who turned a stubborn dissident, and then a reckless jail breaker from Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib prison where he was tortured and tucked away in solitary confinement for an impossibly long 10 years till 1991.

But in Abu Dhabi, if Shahristani became a rising star for the Western media, that was for an entirely different reason. It was hardly metaphysical. Plainly speaking, the media had good enough reason to flatter him and pamper his vanities.

Of course, the soft-spoken, English-speaking Iraqi Shi'ite dissident leader was a familiar face in Western capitals through the 1990s. But today, he is no longer a political fugitive. He is no longer an Iraqi dissident seeking patronage. On the contrary, Shahristani finds himself in an enviable position as a creator of wealth for the Western world. He holds the key to the door that opens out to the magical world of Iraqi oil.

Iraq's proven reserves of oil are only smaller than those of Saudi Arabia and Iran - and Iraq is only about 30% explored. Experts are generally of the view that Iraq's actual oil reserves could well turn out to be at least double the 115 billion barrels of proven reserves. Beyond that, it is anybody's guess as to the scale of Iraq's as-yet-untapped gas reserves.

And Shahristani is visibly getting ready to negotiate the contracts for Iraq's "super giants". In the idiom of Big Oil, "super giants" are fields with at least five billion barrels of oil in reserve. Iraq's super giants are Kirkuk (in Kurdistan), Majnoon (bordering Iran), Rumaila North and South (in the south), West Qurna (west of Basra) and Zubair (in the southeast) fields, and, possibly, the Nahr Umr and East Baghdad fields. In addition, Iraq is estimated to have 22 "giant" fields, each having more than 1 billion barrels of oil.

In fact, Iraq may host the largest untapped reserves in the world. There is a strong likelihood that Iraq's reserves may turn out to be exponentially higher than the current estimations, which are based on old-style seismic surveys. All said, unsurprisingly, the world oil market is in a tizzy when Shahristani says something, anything. He is about to sign the contracts for these and many other large Iraqi oil-producing fields. ...

Yetiv and Feld, with much hesitancy, proceed to make an absolutely unthinkable suggestion that the Saudi reluctance might be borne out of a possibility that Riyadh is "getting global markets ready for the possibility that they may not have enough oil to be a long-term fuel pump to the world".

After all, it merits attention that the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) significantly has revised its earlier 2000 prediction about how much oil Saudi Arabia would produce in 2010. The EIA scaled back the figure from 14.7 million barrels per day to just 11.4 million barrels per day. That is a major reduction. (Feld, incidentally, worked for 17 years for the US Department of Energy.)

In the current circumstances of the world energy scene, the above underscores why any plan to hasten the US effort to achieve greater oil independence translates in political terms as taking control of Iraq's oil reserves. There is simply no other viable alternative open to the US. Essentially, it boils down to the 20 words that the former US Federal Bank chief Alan Greenspan wrote towards the end of his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil." ...

Therefore, it becomes imperative that Iraq plays a major role in meeting the additional global demand of 30 mn b/d during the coming two decades. There is yet another side to it. Peak oil - when global oil production will reach a peak and then begin to fall - is a real possibility sooner or later. It has happened in the US; it is happening in Britain, the North Sea and Indonesia; it is expected to happen in Mexico and some other major oil producing countries during the coming five-year period.

In this scenario, the criticality of Iraqi oil production cannot but be overstated. Furthermore, Iraq is particularly blessed in certain other ways. Apart from its massive reserves of oil and gas, the cost of oil production in Iraq at US$1 to $2 per barrel is very low. Second, the oil fields are dispersed evenly across the country. Third, Iraq's location itself is a boon. Unlike, say, the Caspian, Siberia or the Arctic, it is easy to develop oil export routes out of Iraq heading in several directions simultaneously - the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. All this means that rapid expansion of Iraq's oil production and the arrival of substantial amounts of Iraqi oil - exceeding 10 mn b/d - in the international market is an attainable objective. ...

In sum, as Ben Lando, United Press International's energy editor put it, "Big Oil's big dreams are close to coming true ... According to insiders, Shell, which produced a technical study of Kirkuk in 2005, wants a deal for the field. BP wants one for Rumaila, which it studied last year. Shell and BHP Billiton are angling for the Missan field in the south. ExxonMobil is interested in the southern Zubair field while the Sabha and Luhais fields are being targeted by Dome and Anadarko Petroleum. ConocoPhillips is talking with the [Iraqi] ministry about the West Qurna oil field ... Chevron and Total have teamed up in a bid for the Majnoon field."

No doubt, it is pay-off time for the four majors who didn't make an issue of the US military occupation of Iraq or the ensuing mess-ups during Paul Bremer's rule or the ensuing acute security situation, but kept going with their nose on the ground and worked with the Iraqi ministry during the past four years in conducting reservoir surveys, assisting in the drawing up of work plans and in training personnel. These oil majors simply chose to be around in Baghdad even when much of the oil industry was idling. Lando adds, "While service contracts would be highly profitable for companies, Big Oil wants risk contracts. Such deals are usually long term, covering its exploration costs and guaranteeing a profit if oil is found, and allowing them to put the reserves it discovers on the books, a boon in Wall Street's eyes." ...

Of course, Shahristani is skating on thin ice. His moves, despite the robust backing by the Bush administration, are political and highly controversial. The point is, Shahristani is virtually in a position to hand out jackpots to the oil majors. Everyone knows that apart from the security factor, the risk in exploring for crude in Iraq is virtually nil. "Historically it [oil] has been easy to find, inexpensive to produce and top quality", Lando points out.

Washington counts on Shahristani to push the oil deals through despite the vehement opposition within Iraq. First, about 70% of Iraqis firmly oppose what Shahristani is attempting. The Iraqis see what is happening as a capitulation of their national sovereignty. Iraqis look back at the nationalization of their oil industry in 1972 as a source of pride and empowerment. Second, there is vehement opposition from the labor unions in the Iraqi oil industry. They say that Iraq could increase its oil production by investing its own money and there is no pressing need at this juncture to solicit foreign investment.

Indeed, in 2006, the Iraqi Oil Ministry could only utilize 3% of its $3.5 billion reconstruction budget. The US Defense Department in a December 2007 report acknowledged, "The lack of capacity in contracting, the lack of trained budget personnel, concern about corruption and numerous other systemic structural impediments hamper faster execution."

Iraq's oil exports in 2007 brought in $35.5 billion, according to the US State Department. But a study by the Washington Times newspaper in January concluded, "Increased oil revenues stemming from high prices and improved security are piling up in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York rather than being spent on needed reconstruction projects."

To be sure, the Iraqi labor unions have a point when they say that foreign investment is not the real need for the oil industry currently, but rather the ability to invest the surplus budget. Again, the labor unions are questioning the need of foreign expertise. They insist that national expertise is available within Iraq. The fact remains that in spite of Saddam's gross mismanagement of the oil industry, Iraq had built up over the years a significant reservoir of manpower with a range of technical expertise.

"If they [Oil Ministry] are prepared to allocate more funding and spend the resources that already exist, there would be improvement and we could recruit more workers," Hassan Jumaa Awad, president of the umbrella Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions recently told the United Press International news agency. Awad alleged that Shahristani is following a "deliberate" policy of shunning domestic investment with a view to make Iraqi oil workers look incapable.

The labor unions have now sought the help of the international labor community to their demands, which also question Shahristani's intentions in awarding to international oil firms concession or risk contracts such as production-sharing agreements. Awad calls for an Iraqi oil law, "but we need to gain our full sovereignty before such a law is enacted", and he insists that if a law is to be passed, it should be approved by Iraqi voters in a referendum.

Iraq's oil unions and civil society organizations have joined hands in alleging that Washington and the present authorities in Baghdad, especially the Oil Ministry, are conspiring to hand over control over Iraq's oil to oil majors. The news agencies reported that protesters who fear that Iraq's oil wealth might be squandered met at a Middle East oil conference on February 5 in London where Iraqi and British oil industry leaders attended.

Labels: greatest prize of all, iraq, law, oil

Posted by Big Gav at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments

MetaEfficient reports that Sandia Laboratories has achieved a new efficiency record at their Solar Thermal Test Facility for solar to grid efficiency, using a concentrating dish with 82 mirrors combined with a stirling engine filled with hydrogen.

On a perfect New Mexico winter day — with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual — Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled Jan. 31 on SES’s “Serial #3” solar dish Stirling system at Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility.

The conversion efficiency is calculated by measuring the net energy delivered to the grid and dividing it by the solar energy hitting the dish mirrors. Auxiliary loads, such as water pumps, computers and tracking motors, are accounted for in the net power measurement.

“Gaining two whole points of conversion efficiency in this type of system is phenomenal,” says Bruce Osborn, SES president and CEO. “This is a significant advancement that takes our dish engine systems well beyond the capacities of any other solar dish collectors and one step closer to commercializing an affordable system.”

Labels: energy, sandia, solar power, stirling engine

Posted by Big Gav at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

Al Gore is warning investors in carbon emitting industries that their investments will become the equivalent of the financial sector's subprime loans - worthless items that cause a great deal of financial harm.

Al Gore advised Wall Street leaders and institutional investors Thursday to ditch businesses too reliant on carbon-intensive energy — or prepare for huge losses down the road.

"You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you — as my longtime good redneck friends in Tennessee say, I guarandamntee you — that if you really take a fine-tooth comb and go through your portfolios, many of you are going to find them chock-full of subprime carbon assets," the former vice president said.

Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the leading component of "greenhouse gases," which scientists say are playing a key role in warming the globe.

Gore's remarks before a high-profile business crowd that collectively controls some $20 trillion in capital were intended to unleash a financial ripple effect that could force the world to start putting a price on carbon emissions.

Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to warn about climate change, compared the financial risks facing investors in carbon-using industries with the meltdown in the market for subprime mortgages given to people with blemished credit records or low incomes.

"Similarly, the assumption that you can safely invest in assets that come from business models that assume carbon is free is an assumption that is about to go splat," he said. "You have lots of assets, many of you do, in your portfolios right now that truly do deserve that epithet 'subprime.'"

The U.N. played host to nearly 500 prominent financial leaders and institutional investors who came searching for insights on shifting business currents as the world shifts to cleaner energy sources and fuels.

Fifty U.S. and European institutional investors managing $1.75 trillion in assets agreed to invest $10 billion more in energy efficiency and "clean energy" technologies over the next two years and to aim for a 20 percent reduction in energy from core real estate investment holdings over three years. California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer said his state's leading pension funds would invest more than $800 million in environmental technology with similar aims.

A report by the McKinsey Global Institute released at the U.N. conference said major investments over the next decade in boosting the output from various types of energy that consumers use could earn investors double-digit rates of return.

"As soon as people believe carbon has a price, it's going to have a price," said Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist who was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems.

Labels: al gore, global warming

Posted by Big Gav at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments

Greenpeace UK is promoting a "virtual town" called EfficienCity which demonstrates how towns can achieve "lower greenhouse gas emissions, a more secure energy supply, cheaper electricity and heating bills and a whole new attitude towards energy" by decentralising power generation.

While our government promotes the fallacy that we need coal and nuclear to keep the lights on, innovative councils, businesses and individuals are taking the leap into a cleaner, greener future with decentralised energy.

What is decentralised energy? Well, it's pretty much the opposite of our present, outrageously inefficient energy system, which was designed to meet the needs of a society that hadn't even heard of climate change. This centralised system is a shambles - in fact, it would be impossible to invent a less efficient way of generating energy.

The typical power plant in the UK is only 38 per cent efficient. By the time we use electricity in our homes and offices, we've lost nearly 80 per cent of the usable energy inside the fossil fuels we burn. This is mostly because we have two separate energy systems: one for electricity, and another to heat water and buildings. It's news to some, but heat is a far bigger culprit than electricity when it comes to global warming.

For electricity, we burn fossil fuels in a few large power plants, miles away from the homes and offices they supply. Two thirds of the energy available in fossil fuels is lost in the power plant as waste heat (a by-product of electricity generation) and during transmission. Another 13 per cent is lost through inefficient use in our buildings.

For heat, we burn more fossil fuels (mostly natural gas) in boilers in our homes, offices and factories. It's a little bit like putting radiators on the outside of your house instead of inside it; we're burning one lot of fossil fuels for electricity, and another lot for heat, but waste heat is a by-product of electricity generation. Can't we just burn one lot of fuel to generate electricity, and capture the 'waste' heat at the same time?

We can. Combined heat and power or CHP does exactly that.

Combined heat and power

CHP is the heart of an efficient, decentralised energy system like EfficienCity's. It's the most efficient way possible to burn fuel because so little energy is lost as waste heat. That's how CHP plants in Denmark can reach up to 95 per cent efficiency. Because the heat needs to be captured and piped around the local district, CHP plants are usually sited in the towns and cities where the electricity and heat will be used. This makes it more efficient for electricity generation as well as heat; very little energy is lost in transmission.

If we combined the efficiencies of CHP with improved efficiencies in the home (proper insulation say, and minimum efficiency standards for appliances), we'd practically eliminate the profligate wastage of our current system. CHP is also brilliant in the transition from a fossil-fuelled energy system to one based on cleaner, greener fuels like biogas and biomass. CHP plants can run on a variety of fuels, which means that the fuel mix can include fossil fuels like natural gas but, as more cleaner fuels like biogas become more available, they can switch to those.

Pretty much any organic matter can be used to produce biogas; farm waste is the most famous example (thanks to The Archers) but we could be reaping energy from all of our food that ends up as landfill - food makes up about half of our total landfill, where it produces large amounts of methane, another greenhouse gas.

Local renewable energy sources

But decentralised energy isn't all about CHP. There's an abundance of energy out there in our natural world, ready to be harnessed. We could be harvesting energy from the wind, the sun's rays, the ocean, underground springs and even the earth itself. According to the government, just the wind, wave and tidal resources of our windswept island could meet 40 per cent of our energy needs by 2020. In the longer term, the sky's the limit.
A flexible, scalable energy system

Unlike our conventional power plants, decentralised energy is completely scalable and flexible. You can have a tiny CHP plant in a supermarket or an enormous industrial plant like Immingham, which will soon provide as much electricity as Sizewell B. You can have a single wind turbine like the one at Manchester City's stadium or a massive wind farm like the forthcoming London Array. This also means that decentralised energy systems can be installed much faster than huge power plants, and can be tailored to fit local needs.

Energy security

Whereas decentralised systems like EfficienCity's rely on local, diverse energy sources, our current system will soon rely mostly on imported fossil fuels. On top of that, using hundreds of small energy generators instead of a few major ones means there's a far lower risk of system failure; it's far less likely that several small plants will fail at the same time than that one big plant will. If a local decentralised network did fail though, only one small area would be affected, and that area could import from neighbouring areas.

No more energy price hikes

Decentralised energy can also save consumers an enormous amount. Efficiency measures alone can save consumers a whopping £12 billion a year (the government's own figures) and they save more money than they cost to implement. But there are other savings to be made. Although energy from decentralised systems may be more expensive per kilowatt hour than energy from coal, it can actually work out cheaper for the consumer. Why? Because only 37 per cent of the average British electricity bill is for the electricity. The rest goes to propping up the grossly inefficient infrastructure.

And of course, if the UK decoupled itself from the fossil fuel market, we'd be protecting ourselves from the massive price increases of gas, coal and oil, which will inevitably keep coming.

Labels: chp, efficiencity, greenpeace

Posted by Big Gav at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments

Attention conservation notice: Any remaining hard core doomer readers, avert your eyes for this one, you'll only get annoyed.

I think I linked to Bruce Sterling's "State Of The World 2008" a few weeks ago, but I only just finished reading it and thought I'd include a snippet from part of the discussion about peak oil (Bruce's responses are marked with a *, the original reader question is broken up into segments marked with >>).

inkwell.vue.317 : Bruce Sterling: State of the World, 2008
permalink #45 of 116: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sat 5 Jan 08 06:03

>> The real question is how adaptable or fragile civilian institutions are to a rapid rise in the price of oil/rapid decline in supply

*I agree, but my problem with Peakists is that they're desperately eager to prove that civilian institutions are fragile, mostly because they're weird cranks who've never found one they like.

*If you want to understand how frail civilian institutions are, you need to study them under conditions of great stress. Epidemics, storms, fires, mass evacuations, and, yeah, total war. That's how you know how much humanity can bear.

>>not what a society engaged in total war would experience. Will the financial system go into cardiac arrest?

*It might, but the financial system isn't the heart of a civilization. Communism went into cardiac arrest. The GDP of Russia dropped something like 30 percent, the whole shebang was privatized to mobsters... The Asian financial system went into cardiac arrest a couple of years ago.

>> On a mundane level, would people be able to get to work?

* No, but when it really hits the fan people find themselves doing other work. Guys in the siege of Sarajevo didn't "go to work," but they had plenty to do.

>> Would we be able to raise sufficient quantities of food and get them to market?

* Cuba had a peak oil experience when the Soviets stopped shipping it. The average Cuban lost thirty pounds, or so I'm told. It was a calamity of sorts, they called it the "special period." Cuba is still there.

>> Clearly, $100/barrel petroleum doesn't seem to be resulting in societal collapse.

* Except in Iraq, maybe.

>> Presumably there is a rate of change in price/supply that society can accommodate fairly gracefully, and no doubt a point at which the rate of change becomes uncomfortable, and another point at which it becomes catastrophic.

* There's also a rate of change of zero when oil is no longer consumed, and that would be the victory condition. So, anxiously wondering whether a loss of oil is merely bad or catastrophic is a little short-sighted. Oil has to go away like whale-oil went away.

>> Which scenarios are most likely? Is there anything we can do to influence the likelihood of a better outcome -- and if so, how much influence can we have?

* Stop using oil. Coal is worse, mind you.

>> What about rapidly developing economies like India and China?

* I love those guys, actually. I'm old enough to remember when India and China were described in terms of "lifeboat ethics."

>> What about the possibility of exporting economies like Mexico simply consuming all the oil they produce as they grow?

* Texas does that already.

>> Examining the end stages of the Third Reich doesn't provide us with much guidance.

* I don't wanna come across all Mike Godwin here, but if you wanna talk catastrophe, it's important to have a coherent understanding of genuine historical catastrophes, not make-believe pipe-dream catastrophes that serve to feed somebody's cornball apocaphilia.

* Or, if you wanna explore the mental space of ALL POSSIBLE catastrophes, you can try this ( http://openthefuture.com/2006/12/an_eschatological_taxonomy.html ) in which peak oil would barely register as a "class zero."

Jon Lebkowsky has a follow up comment to that one, which underlines part of the difference in viewpoints - if you live in a relatively sustainable location, and spend most of your time looking at the solutions side of the problem, then things don't look so bad. If you live in outer suburbia, with huge, energy inefficient houses filled with people who spend 3 hours a day driving large SUVs too and from remote workplaces, and spend all your time admiring the problem, then things look far, far worse. By and large I recommend the first alternative.

In 2001 I wrote an article on global warming (Being Green in 2001) for the Bruce S.-edited issue of Whole Earth Magazine. One source of info for that article was an interview with James White, who was director of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Here's an exchange from that interview that I've quoted and referred to often since:

> Jon Lebkowsky: One point that John Firor makes is that with six billion people on earth, if everyone had the same standard of living that we [Americans] have, there's no way that we could sustain.

> James White: Yes, that's very clear. I teach a course on energy. That's just one of the resources that you'd need, and if you do the calculations, we use thirty times the energy the average African does. We use ten to fifteen times the average energy that people do in general developing countries overall. We're 250 million, they're 6 billion people. You bring them all up to our standard of living, and the multiplication factor for energy, for aluminum, tin, lead, all the other resources we need is just enormous. It's probably on the order of a hundred, or something like that - I've never done the calculation.

But there's no way that I could see that we could support six billion consumers of the American type, or even six billion consumers of the Western European type, and they use half the resources we do.

(http://www.weblogsky.com/works/Jim_White.html)

Jamais and I discussed this a few years later, probably 2005, but in that discussion I referred to "our high standard of living." He argued that it was perfectly reasonable to assume all 6 billion could have a high standard of living, because a *high* standard of living *doesn't have to be* as resource intensive as in the U.S. The question then is how we define a "good life" that consumes fewer resources, with innovations like eco-balanced architecture and alternative transportation systems. And how do we get buy-in... how do you convince citizens of ascendant developing nations that they don't want SUVs, suburban lifestyles, swimming pools in every back yard, etc.

There's also the question of accumulation and hoarding of resources by the very rich: what if you assume that general widespread scaling up means that they have to scale down, let go of some resources? Will they fight to hold on? (It's been interesting to watch the Bush administration strategy: on the one hand, draining government coffers into wealthy corporations like Halliburton; on the other hand, nudging the U.S. toward greater financial and resource dependence on other countries, especially China, which seems to be buying more and more of the U.S. - all the while arguing a case for "keeping America safe/strong." Not meaning to get into partisan wrangling here - I'm not saying this to be critical of one party over another, it's just what I think I'm seeing; somebody correct me if I'm wrong.)

Mark - I'm less concerned about peak oil because I've been hanging out with clean energy business people who are dead serious about energy alternatives. Austin's already thought through how it'll support pluggable hybrids, and our utility, Austin Energy, is deep into thinking about alternative sources. We have guys all over town - all over Texas, really - who are rethinking energy. For them, global peak oil is opportunity. Bruce has seen this, too - we were both at a clean tech conference in Austin that was busting the seams of the local Hyatt.

Posted by Big Gav at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments

Incensed by CERA's latest outlandish claim ("only we have the data", ignore those silly peak oilers and their claims that oil production will one day go into decline) Nate "The Last Sasquatch" Hagens has a look at the sorry predictive record of Daniel Yergin and co (mind you, he got one thing right).

We have been writing for almost 3 years on this site about the privatization of energy data by IHS Energy and the negative impact the lack of accuracy that CERA's historically optimistic claims are having on energy policy. The rebuttals and counteranalysis at TOD to CERAs assertions are too numerous to list. Today at the IHS Energy Conference in Houston, the CEO of IHS Energy, parent of CERA and other energy information agencies, asserted that Peak Oilers don't have the data to support their claims. This post is a brief rebuttal to this 'news' coming out of Houston, and a plea to refocus the questions to what is relevant and probable, not on what is irrelevant and unlikely.

Well right off the bat I should point out, with a track record like the one below, I'm not sure we want the data that IHS refers to**, but here are some excerpts from the Bloomberg story this afternoon. I should also state that it's not CERA's fault that the traditional media still seems to fawn over their every assurance. ...

Labels: cera, daniel yergin, ihs energy, peak oil

Posted by Big Gav at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments

The "infamous latex glove scene" from "Six Degrees" :

Labels: global warming, jamais cascio, latex glove, six degrees

Posted by Big Gav at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments

The Independent has an interesting piece on the potential for global warming to rapidly increase the insect population, with dire effects on food production.

Food crops could be ravaged this century by an explosion in the numbers of insect pests caused by rising global temperatures, according to scientists who have carried out an exhaustive survey of plant damage when the earth last experienced major climate change.

Researchers found that the numbers of leaf-eating insects are likely to surge as a result of rising levels of CO2, at a time when crop production will have to be boosted to feed an extra three billion people living at the end of 21st century.

Scientists found that, during one of the last great episodes of global warming 55.8 million years ago, there was a significant increase in both the amount of damage caused by leaf-eating insects and the variety of injuries they inflicted on plants.

They believe that the 5C rise in global temperatures caused by a tripling of CO2 levels during the palaeocene-eocene thermal maximum (PETM) period sent insect numbers soaring and left an indelible impression on the fossilised leaves preserved since that time.

The percentage of leaves that suffered extensive insect damage rose dramatically during the PETM as foraging became more intensive. The researchers warned that the same effect might be seen during the present period of global warming caused by man-made emissions of CO2, which could double the pre-industrial concentration of the gas by the end of the century.

Ellen Currano of Pennsylvania State University, the lead author of the study, said that although the global warming experienced during the PETM occurred tens of millions of years ago, it is still the best analogy we have for what may happen in the future.

"By looking at the fossil record, we can observe the long-term – thousands to millions of years – response of ecosystems to abrupt warming and increased atmospheric CO2," she said. "Our study shows [that] ... when temperature increases, the diversity of insect-feeding damage on plant species also increases."

Labels: global warming, insects

Posted by Big Gav at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments

Mish Shedlock has a great set of photos showing the growth of Dubai over the last 20 years. No wonder Halliburton shifted residence to the Gulf...









Lots more at the link.

The next time you drive into a gas station, thank Bush for the war that helped make all this possible. Thank Bush for all those sorties and combat ships that use all that fuel. Thank Bush for the fact that there is less oil coming out of Iraq today than there was seven years ago. Thank Bush for the policies of fear, intimidation, and strike first ask questions later that keeps the Mideast in a constant state of stress and adds to the price of oil.

The fake fiscal conservatives who supported Bush and this stupid war, the fake fiscal conservatives who supported Bush's insane military spending, and the fake Republican conservatives that supported numerous other Bush insanities in clear violation of the constitution brought this all about.

And as amazing as it seems, the public has finally figured out that Bush's policies in the Mideast are a significant part of the reason why the dollar is collapsing and oil prices are soaring.

Labels: dubai, oil

Posted by Big Gav at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

Another Australian biofuel producer, Agri Energy, has given up and decided to move to the US , following in the footsteps of other troubled local biofuel producers Natural Fuels and Australian Renewable Fuels, unable to make the economics stack up in the face of rising feedstock prices.

The company behind troubled plans for big ethanol plants at Swan Hill and Murtoa, in western Victoria, has suspended trading in its shares. The trading halt was requested by Agri Energy this morning. It has been struggling to finance projects in the United States because of poor sentiment for the biodiesel industry in Australia and limited margins because of high grain prices.

It had shelved its Australian plans in favour of American projects, where it said the prospects were better. The Swan Hill project had been sold to a securities company, but it says the company has now failed to meet a milestone agreement for a $5 million loan. Agri Energy says it is continuing to pursue finance options in the US.

Labels: agri energy, australia, biofuel

Posted by Big Gav at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

Bloomberg is reporting that Vietnam is considering limiting coal exports in order to reserve local coal production for soon to be commissioned coal fired power plants. The intersection fo resource nationalism and the export land phenomenon, in action.

Vietnam, China's largest coal supplier, plans to reduce exports by 32 percent this year and gradually eliminate the sales to meet rising domestic demand, a government official said.

Coal exports may drop to a forecast 22 million metric tons from 32.2 million in 2007, Nguyen Khac Tho, vice director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade's energy and petroleum department, said yesterday in an interview in Hanoi. The ministry will recommend Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung halt overseas shipments by the world's eighth-largest exporter of energy coal after 2015. ...

``Coal is a resource that can't be renewed,'' the ministry's Tho said in a phone interview. ``Our most important task is to meet domestic demand to ensure national energy security.''

Labels: coal, export land, vietnam

Posted by Big Gav at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Toronto Star has an interesting article on topsoil depletion and carbon emissions caused by our current system of industrial agriculture.

Like most city dwellers, my knowledge of farming is embarrassingly limited. But a conference on agriculture and global warming has inspired me to dig deeper (pun intended) into things rural. The speaker who grabbed my urban-oriented attention was American-born, U.K.-based Craig Sams, co-founder of Green and Black's organic chocolate bars. His message was, well, grounding.

"When we talk about food and farming we are talking about carbon," Sams pointed out. "The process by which food is made starts with carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the atmosphere and turns it into protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Plants conjure food out of thin air with help from water and sunshine ..." Even better: "Of all the carbon capture and storage technologies on the planet, none can ever hope to be more efficient than photosynthesis ... It's absurdly cheap and has been tested for millions of years ..."

Sadly, the brilliance of nature has been tarnished by the short-sightedness of humanity.

Sams was born on a farm in Nebraska. In the 1880s, when his great-grandfather first plowed the prairie, the topsoil was four metres deep. Now it's less than one metre and "shrinking." Every tonne of soil that Sams' great-grandfather plowed contained about 50 per cent carbon and 5 per cent nitrogen. During erosion, that tonne reacted with oxygen in the air and produced about three tons of carbon dioxide, along with the more damaging nitrous oxide – equivalent to another 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Sams said that his great-grandfather lost about four tonnes of soil per acre annually, "so over 160 acres he emitted 21,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from our little farm. Every year." That was in the days of horsepower. "In the 1930s, when oil sold for 10 cents a barrel and tractors began replacing horses, production went up, plows went deeper, and soil erosion went crazy." The result was the Dust Bowl.

Sams pointed out that half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions from 1850 to 1990 came from agricultural activity, but therein lies the good news. "There are 1.5 billion hectares of arable land on the planet and if you just saved one tonne of carbon emissions per year per hectare that would give us a 1.5 billion tonnes emission reduction. If you went further and instituted practices that captured and locked carbon in the soil, then you would have another 1.5 billion tonnes reduction, giving a total of 3 billion tonnes per year of carbon reduction."

This would cover more than half of the 80 per cent emissions reductions we need to stabilize our climate, he told us.

Labels: agriculture global, soil depletion, warming

Posted by Big Gav at 8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments

Green Car Congress has an update on algae-to-biofuel company Solazyme, who seem to be cheating now by juicing up their process with a sugar drip into fermentation tanks where the genetically modified algae grow in the dark.

Tom Philpott at Grist has a post on "Biofuels and the fertilizer problem", looking at the issue of biofuel production dependency on phosphate - one mineral which might be heading towards a "Limits To Growth" style scarcity in the foreseeable future (see "The Fat Man" and "The Limits To Scenario Planning" for background).

The Independent reports that global warming may cause an explosion in the insect population that is 'a threat to food crops'.

Barack Obama is reportedly promising to pay for rebuilding crumbling infrastructure in the US with money saved by ending the war in Iraq ("which senators Clinton and McCain voted for"), with the money being distributed via a "National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank".

The WSJ reports that Bank Of America has decided to put a price on carbon when deciding to lend money for coal fired power plant construction (following Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley and their "Carbon Principles" announcement last week).

The WSJ also reports that GE is expecting $6 billion in wind turbine sales this year (around 4.2 gigawatts of turbines - almost as much as the US installed last year. Demand for wind power is so strong that GE says its turbine production is sold through to 2010.

Layer8 reports that the US Department of Energy will spend $21 million on projects aimed at advancing solid-state (LED) lighting research, as it has the potential to more than double the efficiency of lighting systems, significantly reduce its carbon footprint and transform the environment.

Technology Review has an article on "nanowires that convert motion into electric current that could lead to textiles that can generate power". Recharge all your mobile devices as you walk (or sit in the wind). In another nanotech story, Cleantech.com has a report on a company called Bloo Solar that is using nano-sized "bristiles" to make solar photovoltaics cheaper and more efficient.

The Washington Post has an interesting post about techniques middle class Chinese citizens use to organise protests - in this case the target is Maglev trains, which seems a bit unfortunate, but on the bright side its a good way of practicing complaining against a government that doesn't listen to the wishes of the governed.

Jeff Vail's blog has been transformed once again this year, now rebranded as "Rhizome" and back to what I'd categorise as more of an anarchist's theoretical analysis of energy geopolitics and related topics (ie. the interesting stuff from the old "A Theory of Power" days). Posts are once a week, which is a good frequency for content that forces you to stretch the brain muscles a bit. Episode 1 of a mini-series on "The Problem Of Growth" is out called "Hierarchy must grow, and is therefore unsustainable".



Peter Martin has an interesting post on the remarkable transformation of the Australian Treasury Department, first under the neglectful eye of the Rodent (obviously busy cultivating division elsewhere) and now under the difficult-to-categorise Mr Rudd. "Its mission statement does not, as you might imagine, require it upfront to increase the nation’s GDP. Nor does it require it to save the government money. It’s new statement, adopted a few years back, instead simply requires it “to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people”".



Good Magazine has an article on "The New Nostradamus" - Bruce Bueno de Mesquita - a new school game theorist who has a magic model that predicts political outcome (see "The Shockwave Rider for background).

Posted by Big Gav at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments

The SMH reported today that the European Space Agency has found that one of Saturn's moons (Titan) is an oilman's dream - a "giant factory of organic chemicals". It is rumoured that Dick Cheney is having invasion plans drawn up as we speak, with Exxon believed to have the inside running on a heavily one-sided production sharing agreement with any single celled organisms that are discovered in the soup...

Imagine a place awash with more hydrocarbons than a Texan oilman can dream of and where no one has staked a single claim -- all that energy is just going begging. The problem: this massive reserve is at least 1.2 billion kilometers (750 million miles) away from Earth, on a tiny inhospitable world where on a warm day it's minus 179 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit).

New findings by the mission to Titan, reported on Wednesday by the European Space Agency (ESA), say Saturn's orange moon has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth.

Methane and ethane fall like rain from the sky, forming massive lakes and seas, while complex organic molecules called tholins are believed to make up Titan's oily dunes, ESA said in a press release.

"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material. It's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said scientist Ralph Lorenz. Lorenz, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is a member of a team poring over radar data sent back by the US space probe Cassini, which dispatched a European probe, Huygens, to the moon's surface.

Understanding Titan's carbon-chemistry cookbook may unlock knowledge as to how Earth's carbon-based life began, the researchers hope. The study appears in the latest issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Labels: moon, saturn, titan

Posted by Big Gav at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments

The SMH has an article quoting Hugh Outhred of UNSW pointing out that instead of selling off old coal fired power stations to the private sector, who will then fight to be able to make a financial return on them, the NSW government should be planning to bulldoze them over the next 10-20 years.

COAL-FIRED power stations should not be privatised but bulldozed over the next 20 years to curb greenhouse gas emissions, one of the state's leading energy academics has told the Iemma Government. In a submission to the Government's consultative committee on the power sell-off, Hugh Outhred, of the University of NSW, argued against the sale of state-owned retailers such as Energy Australia, saying they should be kept in government hands to drive a push to energy efficiency and cut demand.

Professor Outhred, who has worked as an adviser to the state's electricity industry and the Government, told the Herald that deep reductions in emissions from electricity generation were urgently needed. This meant phasing out coal-fired stations, and the process would take longer if they were privatised because new owners would need to make a profit.

"The existing coal-fired power stations should remain in public hands while they are old and polluting until we complete dealing with the problem they are creating," he said. "Before leasing the power station assets in NSW we should actually bulldoze them."

The sites could then be leased to private investors who could buy permits to carry on generating electricity, but only if their operations were cleaner gas-powered stations or used "clean coal technology", when it was finally available. The phase-out might take between 10 and 20 years, Professor Outhred said. "We don't do it all at once. That would be illogical."

The old coal-fired station at Tallawarra was bought in 2003 by TRUenergy, which is building one of the nation's most energy-efficient gas-generation power stations on the site.

The Premier, Morris Iemma, and Treasurer, Michael Costa, are firmly committed to the privatisation. Mr Costa said this week he hoped the Federal Government would decide soon on the permit system for power generators under the greenhouse emissions trading scheme to begin in 2010.

The permits will put a price on the emissions produced by the generators. Just how much they will be charged could determine whether the Iemma Government will reap the $15 billion it hopes to raise by privatising the power industry. But Professor Outhred said the push to get cheap permits for the heavily polluting generators was "totally inappropriate behaviour". "That is not rising to the problem we now face. It's just not good enough."

Posted by Big Gav at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments

Via World Front Page:

Posted by Big Gav at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments

Energy Current has a brief report about an enormous (but highly theoretical at this stage) oil and gas find offshore from Indonesia's semi-autonomous Aceh province. The only other source with a report on this seems to be the Jakarta Post.

I vaguely recall some of the (very dodgy) tinfoil theories that washed ashore in the wake of the 2004 tsunami claimed that it was deliberately triggered as part of a grab for the regions' resources. I wonder if any of the foreign forces that landed to help in the clean up and reconstruction are still there ?

Indonesian and German research agencies claimed a massive find of subsea hydrocarbons holding between 107 billion to 320 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in a basin off the western shore of Aceh Nangroe Darussalam, Indonesia, according to a Jakarta Post report.

Research vessel Sonne encountered the underwater basin while performing a survey to map the geological construction of the surrounding sea in Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Indonesia's Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) and Germany's Bundesanstalt fur Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR) said in a statement.

The research and preliminary finding remains subject to further tests to determine the actual reserve size of the basin. Further information is required before energy companies would be able to feasibly explore for oil or gas. If the hydrocarbon potential of the basin is proven, the area may well be among the largest oil and gas reservoirs in the world.

The Wall Street Journal has a look at the Matt Simmons vs Aramco debate in "Peak Oil: Simmons v. Saudis, Round Two". I'll note the comments thread has more kooks than most tinfoil sites could muster - where do these people come from - isn't the WSJ supposed to be for respectable people...

Both Nansen Saleri, former chief of reservoir management at Saudi Aramco, and Houston-based investment banker Matthew Simmons are feeling good these days about the famous–and weighty–debate they held four years ago at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. Are Saudi Arabia’s massive oil fields in great shape—or falling apart? Can Saudi Aramco help slake the globe’s soaring energy thirst far into the century—or has that ability already peaked?

Simmons, in his book “Twilight in the Desert” argued that several big Saudi fields, including the massive Ghawar field, were showing signs of serious strain. Their debate before a packed house at CSIS marked an unprecedented moment of openness for the secretive Aramco.

Saleri now says in an interview that time has proven Aramco right. Simmons “was saying four years ago that Ghawar was going to collapse and that Saudi Aramco was going to go into decline….[But] that precipitous decline never occurred,” he says. Saleri, who left Aramco last year to create his own Houston-based reservoir-management company, insists Ghawar will keep pumping five million barrels a day far into the future. Aramco also managed to revive some other behemoths, like Abqaiq. “Abqaiq became a renaissance story for Aramco,” he says, insisting that the field’s pressure remains strong and its water content is going down even after more than 60 years in production. Abqaiq “is doing fantastically,” Saleri says.

Simmons, reached by phone in Houston, says he feels equally vindicated—and increasingly alarmed. He based his book largely on information dug up in old technical journals. In recent weeks he has hit the archives again, with thoughts of writing a second book. What he has found, he says, “is so unbelievably scary you can’t believe it.” He claims that there is mounting technical evidence that Aramco is struggling to deal with increasing volumes of water at its hugest fields. With water production going up, he says, oil production is going down. “It is absolutely clear as a bell now that all of those fields are heading toward being another Cantarell,” referring to the massive Mexican offshore field, which is now in rapid decline.

More on Simmons at The Rude Awakening, looking at "Empty Holes and Black Swans".

It may be blasphemous to ponder in a region that produces a good deal of the world's hydrocarbon-based energy, but what if Peak Oil has already occurred?

"My opinion is that it's increasingly likely that we actually set an all-time record in May 2005 of 74,252,000 barrels per day," states Matt Simmons, founder and chairman of the world's largest energy investment banking company, Simmons & Co. International.

"And for the first three months of 2007," Simmons continues, "we were almost a million barrels per day behind that, and we're dropping fast. If that record still holds a year from now, I'll bet someone ten-to-one that we set peak oil in May 2005 and it's now past tense."

Not one to shy away from a bet, Bud Conrad, chief economist at Casey Energy Speculator and fellow Peak Oil enthusiast, plotted the following slightly more inclusive chart to give us an idea of where we stand today.

As the graph clearly illustrates, world production has been on a rather unimpressive plateau for the past couple of years. Part of this stagnation in global output growth stems from the coughing, spluttering "chokepoints" that we read about in the news every other day.

Just this past weekend we saw crude shoot up about four bucks on the back of threats made by Venezuela's head honcho, Hugo Chavez, that he may sever export lines to the thirsty U.S. Then there was a decline in production in Nigeria...troubles in the North Sea...ongoing issues in Iran...the "problem with Putin"...the list goes on.

The thumbscrews are tightening for net oil importers. As we explained in yesterday's Rude, "The American SUV driver was a tad sluggish in his gait this morning. Once again his pocketbook has been pinched. The hefty drive from his suburban McMansion to work in the city and the heating in his Connecticut vacation home just became a little more expensive."

But the issues that face net-importing nations around the world may soon be felt by the net-exporting nations too. Oil, as a finite commodity, will one day dry up. The impetus for economies with a heavy oil hand to diversify, therefore, is rather serious.

Consider that Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE and one of the Middle East's largest crude exporters, has just pumped $15 billion into their Masdar Green City initiative and one begins to understand just how seriously even the crude rich nations are taking the issue of ultimate depletion.

In the following column, Bud sits down with Matt Simmons to root out some of the grim realities emerging at the tail end of our petroleum age. This may hurt a little...but we hope it also helps. Enjoy...

Energy Bulletin has an interesting article on the "Pakistan problem: Washington's perspective", outlining a theory that the US would like to see Pakistan broken up and then merged back into India. The idea of merging Pakistan into India seems pretty far-fetched (I really can't imagine it being possible under any circumstances) but the idea that US policy involves making sure there are no functioning states within the middle east that could pose any threat to US control of the oil seems more plausible.

The Bush administration has persistently supported Pakistan’s military dictator, General Musharraf, despite widespread criticism of this policy at home and abroad. With the likely induction of the Democrats in to the White House, should one anticipate a different U.S policy towards Pakistan? This question is best answered when placed within the framework of Washington’s long term objectives in South Asia.

The neocon vision of national security is described by President Bush in the 2006 edition of the official document titled the “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” in the following words:

“We seek to shape the world, not merely be shaped by it; to influence events for the better, instead of being at their mercy”.

This preemptive foreign policy is driven by “Peak Oil” related anxiety. Cognizant of the fact that the world is headed towards a new type of international rivalry that will entail a scramble for world’s diminishing supply of fossil fuel, and encouraged by the U.S’s unrivaled status, the necocons embarked upon a policy to establish greater control over the world’s energy resources. As a functional prerequisite of this control, Washington has set out to establish alliances that will strengthen its created “energy order”, prevent China from emerging as a competitor of the U.S, and prevent major Asian countries from forming a multi polar power bloc against the U.S.

The Middle East is at the heart of this policy, where Washington is pursuing the following objectives.

1. Middle Eastern countries that produce fossil fuel and those through which vital pipelines transit (called the “strategic core” of the Middle East), should not be allowed to develop or retain, state-of-the-art military. U.S protected Gulf kingdoms are deemed harmless and therefore allowed the purchase of military hardware.
2. No Middle Eastern state (except Israel) should be allowed to develop or retain nuclear weapons.
3. The concept of modern “nationhood” encompassing large states overriding ethnic loyalties should be discouraged in the “strategic core” of the Middle East as a preemptive strategy against pan-Islamic revolutions such as the '79 revolution in Iran.

U.S policy in these areas is aimed at scuttling the “sources” of modern nationalism, i.e. a large, multiethnic nation state equipped with an equally large military. (These two ingredients serve simultaneously as the symbol and the source of modern nationalism as it evolved in Europe out of the Napoleonic wars). This explains the Bush administration’s bid to petrol the high seas under the “Proliferation Security Initiative”, its itch to attack Iran, the result of its engagement in Iraq, its post Cold War policy in Afghanistan and its current policy in Pakistan.

The imperatives of the above objectives negate the institutional strengthening of Pakistani state and society and require, above all, the dismantling of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, for reasons elaborated below, an altogether end to Pakistan as an entity, rather then its continuity, serves long term interests of the U.S better. Events in Pakistan, it seems, are being influenced in that direction.

For Washington, the strategic importance of Pakistan has been replaced by India and Afghanistan, in that order. Afghanistan’s long term relevance to U.S energy policy lies in its proximity to resource rich Central Asian republics and Russia. Its short term importance lies in its 800 mile long border with Pakistan, a proximity which is being utilized for destabilizing the latter. The fact that Pakistan is a nuclear Islamic state is a significant negativity in the neocons’ envisaged world order. Pakistan’s size and its nuclear arsenal discourages overt military engagement to neutralize this negativity. The long standing, entrenched CIA presence in the country, on the other hand, facilitates the deployment of covert means, pivotal to which is the spill over into Pakistan of terrorism caused by U.S invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. As a “terror inflicted, failed state”, Pakistan becomes vulnerable to international pressure to disarm its nuclear arsenal.

As a transit route for Central Asian fossil fuel, Afghanistan circumvents Russia, China and Iran. It establishes an alternative route which passes through the Afghan-Pakistan territory to the Indian Ocean. To stabilize this route, the neocons plan to break Afghanistan into smaller, ethnically contiguous states capable of ensuring the safety of pipelines as they transit through the area into India. Washington does not envisage a unified Afghanistan, otherwise it would have used King Zahir Shah and his family to rally disparate Afghans, instead of the ineffective Hamid Karzai. That is why in the 2003 budget proposal, the Bush administration did not request any reconstruction aid for Afghanistan, a state it declared central to the war on terror. The Bush administration slashed reconstruction aid to Afghanistan from one billion dollars in 2005 to $623 million in 2006. Washington’s monetary commitment to the reconstruction of Afghanistan is paltry and is executed with blatant insincerity. Similarly, Washington did not engage in de-radicalization of Pakistan after the end of Soviet Afghan war, like its post Camp David engagement with Egypt. Pakistan, the only nuclear Islamic state, is too important a country to have suffered such neglect simply due to policy oversight. Washington did not commit its resources to de-radicalizing Pakistan because it does not envision a stable Pakistan as a long term U.S ally. ...

During the 1971 Indo-Pak war, when Pakistan’s defeat in the Eastern sector became imminent and the fear that New Delhi would invade West Pakistan increased, U.S sent its nuclear armed USS Enterprise to the Indian Ocean to prevent India from dismembering Pakistan. In response, the Soviet navy dispatched its nuclear submarines to ward off the U.S threat to India. The imperatives of the Cold War, thus, saved Pakistan. The new alignment of international political forces and the imperatives of Peak Oil politics are both fatefully arrayed against Pakistan. The forces with a plausible interest in destabilizing Pakistan include groups as diverse as the Indian RAW, the American CIA, the global Al Qaeda and the regional Taliban. Pakistani military dictators have failed to enter into a system of alliance that would serve Pakistan well in the post Cold War era. Their continued alliance with the U.S has enriched them personally, but it has augured ill for their country. Under the current circumstances, Pakistan’s nukes, instead of serving as its strategic asset, have become a liability. Instead of being able to dyke the flood of instability that is engulfing Pakistan, Musharraf is drowning in it more and more by the day. This, above all, explains why the neocons are so pleased with him.

The above analysis by no means entails that Washington’s policy in Pakistan will alter radically with the induction of the Democrats in to the White House. Although the current U.S energy policy, and its offshoot “the new South Asia policy” was “envisioned” by the neocons, the Democrats have already embraced it publicly during Bill Clinton’s historic visit to India in March 2000. Pakistan is not only of no use to Washington any more, it is a thorn in its side. Washington hopes to manipulate a new military rivalry in Asia to its advantage. It wants the Indo-Pak rivalry replaced by the Sino-Indian rivalry. With India as its ally, Washington hopes to gain much out of this rivalry. There is every likelihood, therefore, that the neocon policy of covertly engineering Pakistan’s dismemberment will continue under the Democrats till such time as the policy objectives have been met.

Idleworm also points to a story (what it calls "a socialist analysis of Obama") that mentions the goal of dominating the middle east and central asia.

Obama is not, however, the product of the civil rights struggles against racial oppression, nor is he associated with any popular movement from below. His career has far more in common with those of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, individuals selected and groomed by the American ruling class to carry out its policies. Like them, he is being used to put a new face on fundamentally reactionary policies and institutions...

Important sections of the ruling elite have concluded that, particularly for the overseas interests of American imperialism, a President Obama would provided important advantages. He would at one stroke put a “new face” on American foreign policy, and make it more likely that Washington could overcome the international isolation and global hostility created by the arrogant unilateralism of the Bush White House and its failed intervention in Iraq. And it may well require a Democrat in the White House to reinstate the draft and provide the manpower required to sustain and expand the US drive for military domination of the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia...

An Obama presidency (or a Clinton presidency, should her campaign ultimately prevail), would thus represent a fine-tuning or adjustment in American foreign policy, but no let-up in American imperialism’s drive to war and conquest, which arises not out of the brains of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, but out of the historical crisis of American and world capitalism.

Heading back to the fringes of the Indonesian archipelago, Crikey has some comments ("More questions than answers in East Timor") on the recent assassination attempts on the East Timorese Prime Minister and President. There's something very fishy about this whole affair, though not as obviously dodgy as the original set of events kicked off by the now-deceased Major Reinado that resulted in the downfall of previous Prime Minster Mari Alkatiri, who I suspect paid the price for trying to be too assertive about East Timorese independence. For what its worth, the Green Left Weekly probably had the most accurate take on that one.

The power plays in East Timor (with Australia, Indonesia, China and Portugal all jostling for control of the country's energy resources) are murky, and whowever who was behind this latest outbreak of violence is beyond me.

If you'd heard that East Timor president Jose Ramos Horta had been shot, and Prime Minister Gusmao shot at, you'd immediately suspect the hand of rebel leader Alfredo Reinado. Ipso facto.

But there's muddying of the waters in the press and across blogs today, as people try to come to grips with what's happened. Reinado himself was killed in the shoot-out at the President's residence.

Timor-Leste radio has been reporting that Reinado was actually staying with Ramos Horta, according to one blogger. This is directly contradicted by Gusmao in today's Australian: "Some people have said that President Ramos Horta had called Alfredo Reinado to come to Dili. But this is not true. Before taking any action, the President always contacts me and the President of the national parliament to co-ordinate activities. I would have known if he had contacted Alfredo."

What does seem clear is that the threat wasn't taken seriously enough, either by East Timor's leaders or the ADF and the UN. (In fact, UN forces apparently stayed 300 metres away from Ramos Horta after he was shot, ABC's PM was told last night.)

Tough questions must be asked over the security role of the ADF in East Timor, writes Patrick Walters in today's Australian:

Why, amid renewed threats last week from Reinado against East Timor's leaders, did the ADF and the UN-sponsored International Stabilisation Force not lift security around Jose Ramos Horta and Xanana Gusmao? While both leaders have declined the offer of Australian personal bodyguards in recent months, why, given the heightened threats, did the ADF and UN authorities not move to lift the overall level of surveillance protection and perimeter security provided to both men?

And if yesterday's attacks really were an attempted coup, some are asking why security hasn't been more significantly stepped up since.

Conspicuous by their absence yesterday were "extra security at the TV and radio station (if this was a coup attempt these places should both have extra guards)", writes Xanana Republic's English blogger.

Perhaps it's just with Reinado gone, the threat seems diminished. As Tom Allard writes in today's SMH, "there is no-one to replace him".

Below are a couple of the blog posts that digest the situation, trying to untangle the half-based truths and jumbled facts. In East Timor, unconfirmed stories need to be taken with a grain of salt. As one of the bloggers says, they're "about 90% correct but that 10% error can affect conclusions by 100%. Some local media were reporting that the President had died which everyone seems to agree is not the case. It is rarely straightforward here."

Eyewitness report and some unanswered questions. I received an email this afternoon from a mate who is the de-facto head of the Dili surf life saving club. This is the 3rd person I know who was in the area at the time but this one is a bit closer to the bone. In fact, TS has had the nervous sh-ts all day - I can understand why. He writes :

I went out for my morning exercise at 0630, and got to the intersection to The President’s house when it all went pear shaped.

I had turned up the road for the hill ride, stopped and started when I heard the gunfire. There was a vehicle straddling the road, some rubbish as well, and I could see what looked like uniformed personnel running around the area. Lots of gunfire, then three rounds went off just beside me, but in the bush. I was still about 400 metres from the house so hopefully they were only shooting quail and not me. But I don’t think so. It was still around dawn, so I couldn’t see exactly what the vehicle was, but it looked familiar.

I turned back, and headed east, and bumped into the President who was with two of his guards. One was on the road, the other with the President on the beach. All this was about 6.40am.

I stopped them and told them what had happened … he said no to the offer of a ride, saying it should be OK...

My old mate FOS over at xananarepublic.blogspot.com also has his acquaintances down the eastern end of town and all I can suggest is you read what his take is. So if Radio Timor-Leste is correct and Alfredo really was staying at the President’s place, which group of people dressed as soldiers attempted to simultaneously (give or take 5 minutes) take out Alfredo, the President and the Prime Minister who lives some 10 kms away? -- Dili-gence

Was Reinado staying with Ramos-Horta? As speculated earlier, it seems that the attack was carried out during JRH's normal morning walk/run. A friend who lives about 300 metres away reported a fire-fight occurring at about 0650 this morning. From various wires/radio sources it appears that two vehicles drove by and then opened fire. Radio Timor Leste is reporting that Alfredo Reinado was indeed killed in the shootout but rather than being an attacker he was in fact a guest at JRH's house and had been there for up to a week and ran out of the house during the attack to try and stop it and was killed in the crossfire. A contact at Dili hospital confirms two dead were brought to the hospital, neither of whom whas Alfredo. The Deputy PM is saying that three people were killed in the attack so maybe Alfredo was among them and not taken to Dili hospital. We are also hearing about an attack on a convoy containing Prime Minister Gusmao roughly 30 minutes after the attack on JRH. I have had a bit of a trawl around Dili in the past few hours and here are some observations:

Conspicuous by their absence: UN police cars outside Castaways and Dili Beach Hotel.

Conspicuous by their absence: Extra security at the TV and radio station (if this was a coup attempt these places should both have extra guards).

Conspicuous by their absence: Malae in Dili centre, apart from security forces.

Conspicuous by the non-absence: Many Timorese on the streets, especially in central Dili but not many people on the street in my area. Maybe the news hasn't filtered down yet. -- Xanana Republic

Labels: aceh, east timor, geopolitics, indonesia, matthew simmons, oil, pakistan, peak oil

Posted by Big Gav at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

In a story not dissimilar to the plot of "Happy Feet", The Age reports that the King Penguin is under threat from global warming. A decade ago a friend of mine spent some time down on the ice studying the diet of these penguins. This involved chasing the birds and then squeezing them to make them regurgitate whatever it was they'd just caught. Apparently they got pretty cranky about this (and an angry Emperor penguin can be quite fierce it seems). The impact on the penguin population of this research wasn't measured.

CLIMATE change may threaten the survival of king penguins — one of the most iconic creatures of the Antarctic, researchers warn.

A long-term study of the penguins, known for their distinctive yellow feather "ear muffs", reveals just a slight ocean warming had a significant effect on their breeding success.

International researchers behind the project say that under current predictions for global warming, the penguins face the risk of being wiped out.

King penguins — the second largest penguin after the emperor penguin — live in the sub-Antarctic islands, including Macquarie Island, south-east of Tasmania. There are about 2 million breeding pairs worldwide.

Their diet consists mainly of small fish and squid, and because of their one-year breeding cycle they are considered sensitive to any seasonal change in food supply.

Over nine years, researchers studied the birds on an island in the Crozet Archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean, marking 456 penguins with electronic tags.

They found that high sea-surface temperatures reduced the amount of marine prey available to the king penguins, forcing them to travel further in search of food.

According to their calculations, a sea-surface warming of 0.26 degrees would lead to a 9% decline in the adult penguin population.

Labels: antarctica, global warming, penguins

Posted by Big Gav at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Australian has a WSJ article on the ripple effect of rising Chinese coal consumption (and that of other countries) as energy demand grows and countries turn to the cheapest and dirtiest energy source available.

CHINA is doing for coal what it once did for oil: helping push prices to new highs, adding more pressure to the creaking global economy.

The east Asian giant has long been a huge supplier of coal to itself and the rest of the world. But in the first half of last year, it imported more than it exported for the first time, setting off a near doubling of most coal prices around the world.

The surging prices were given a further boost late last month when a winter of punishing snowstorms and power shortages led Beijing to suspend coal exports for at least two months.

Since then Asian prices have shot up a further 34 per cent. Last week, coal benchmarks hit all-time highs in the US, Europe and Asia.

"The velocity of the change has been remarkable," says Tom Hoffman, senior vice-president for external affairs for US-based coal supplier Consol Energy, which he says is considering holding off on some commitments to supply coal to see if prices rise even further.

The result is similar to what happened after China became a net importer of oil in 1993 but the Chinese factor is unfolding much faster with coal. It wasn't until China's industrial development shifted into overdrive this decade that the nation began to shake global petroleum markets.

Oil's big price surge came after widespread brownouts in China in 2004 forced factories there to buy diesel fuel for backup generators, increasing the country's foreign oil demand.

China's need for coal is rising as other factors around the world are putting severe strain on supply. Flooding at major mines in Australia since mid-January has dramatically stunted a major coal producer's exports to Asian markets. Power shortages and blackouts in South Africa amid rising demand there have curtailed exports to Europe. In Russia, another major coal producer, rail-car shortages have frustrated attempts to meet growing world demand.

Demand is rising quickly elsewhere. Japan, one of the world's biggest importers, is burning even more coal since an earthquake damaged a nuclear reactor last year, doubling one utility's coal intake.

Longer-term pressure comes from India, which has mounted a major expansion of coal-fired electricity plants that is driving up the country's coal imports despite its large reserves.

Indonesia has been moving during the past year or so to divert more of its coal stores to domestic use, as the coal industry there has been depleting its higher-quality coal reserves.

Even US coal producers are increasing exports to Europe, as buyers who for years were uninterested in American coal are now scrounging for supply. ...

To be sure, some of the factors boosting coal's price are temporary. China's worst snowstorms in 50 years have both increased demand and hampered delivery from coal mines in northern China to power plants across its southern and western regions.

China has been closing down unsafe and inefficient coal mines, restricting supply until enough new or refurbished mines can be opened. And China has freed domestic coal prices to rise with demand but has capped electricity rates. That led power plants to order less coal - leaving them short when the storms hit.

But it isn't clear how long Beijing could take to reopen more mines or correct its market imbalances. Other factors driving up prices aren't likely to change soon. Chinese coal demand grew nearly 9 per cent last year, raising the nation's share to a quarter of the world's consumption. Its coal industry roughly doubled output from 2001 to 2006, but growth slowed to about 6 per cent last year, not enough to keep pace with demand. Five years ago, China exported 83 million more tonnes of coal than it took in. Last year, that surplus fell to 2 million.

The rapid loss of more than 80 million tonnes in exports amounts to about 12 per cent of the internationally traded market. This year will be worse, predicts Gerard Burg, minerals and energy economist at National Australia Bank, who calculates China will become a net importer of 15 million tonnes.

Coal was assumed by many in the energy industry to be immune to worries about the stability of supply that have helped push oil to record highs. Reserves are more evenly distributed around the world, and most of the world's coal is consumed where it is mined. Coal prices enjoyed a bull run in 2004 and 2005, but today's boom is bigger and is causing more concern, as the possibility of a global recession looms and oil trades at around $US90 a barrel.

Coal reserves are still relatively plentiful worldwide. But expanding the infrastructure to mine and transport them in developing countries is slow and expensive - and those countries' consumption is rising. India increased production by a third from the late 1990s to 2005, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, while its consumption rose by roughly 40 per cent. Russia plans to double its coal consumption, says US Global Investors, in part to free up natural gas for lucrative export to Europe.

As recently as 2003, China was a critical coal supplier to many Asian neighbours such as Japan. But around that time, China's economic expansion began to accelerate sharply, especially in heavy industries that guzzle electricity. Coal exports began to dwindle and imports rose.

Labels: china, coal

Posted by Big Gav at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments

George Monbiot is having an "I told you so" moment about biofuels, but notes correctly that the solution to peak oil is reducing dependence on liquid fuels. He's pretty bearish on second generation biofuels as well as burning food, but doesn't get into solution mode (ie. electric transport, clean energy and a smart grid).

Now they might start sitting up. They wouldn't listen to the environmentalists or even the geologists. Can governments ignore the capitalists? A report published last week by Citibank, and so far unremarked on by the media, proposes "genuine difficulties" in increasing the production of crude oil, "particularly after 2012". Though 175 big drilling projects will start in the next four years, "the fear remains that most of this supply will be offset by high levels of decline". The oil industry has scoffed at the notion that oil supplies might peak, but "recent evidence of failed production growth would tend to shift the burden of proof on to the producers", as they have been unable to respond to the massive rise in prices. "Total global liquid hydrocarbon production has essentially flatlined since mid 2005 at just north of 85m barrels per day."

The issue is complicated, as ever, by the refusal of the Opec cartel to raise production. What has changed, Citibank says, is that the non-Opec countries can no longer answer the price signal. Does this mean that oil production in these nations has already peaked? If so, what do our governments intend to do?

Nine months ago, I asked the British government to send me its assessments of global oil supply. The results astonished me: there weren't any. Instead it relied exclusively on one external source: a book published by the International Energy Agency. The omission became stranger still when I read this book and discovered that it was a crude polemic, dismissing those who questioned future oil supplies as "doomsayers" without providing robust evidence to support its conclusions. Though the members of Opec have a powerful interest in exaggerating their reserves in order to boost their quotas, the IEA relied on their own assessments of future supply.

Last week I tried again, and I received the same response: "The government agrees with IEA analysis that global oil (and gas) reserves are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future." Perhaps it hasn't noticed that the IEA is now backtracking. The Financial Times says the agency "has admitted that it has been paying insufficient attention to supply bottlenecks as evidence mounts that oil is being discovered more slowly than once expected ... natural decline rates for discovered fields are a closely guarded secret in the oil industry, and the IEA is concerned that the data it currently holds is not accurate." What if the data turns out to be wrong? What if Opec's stated reserves are a pack of lies? What contingency plans has the government made? Answer comes there none.

The European commission, by contrast, does have a plan, and it's a disaster. It recognises that "the oil dependence of the transport sector ... is one of the most serious problems of insecurity in energy supply that the EU faces". Partly in order to diversify fuel supplies, partly to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it has ordered the member states to ensure that by 2020 10% of the petroleum our cars burn must be replaced with biofuels. This won't solve peak oil, but it might at least put it into perspective by causing an even bigger problem.

To be fair to the commission, it has now acknowledged that biofuels are not a green panacea. Its draft directive rules that they shouldn't be produced by destroying primary forest, ancient grasslands or wetlands, as this could cause a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Nor should any biodiverse ecosystem be damaged to grow biofuels.

It sounds good, but there are three problems. If biofuels can't be produced in virgin habitats, they must be confined to existing agricultural land, which means that every time we fill up the car we snatch food from people's mouths. This, in turn, raises the price of food, which encourages farmers to destroy pristine habitats - primary forests, ancient grasslands, wetlands and the rest - in order to grow it. We can congratulate ourselves on remaining morally pure, but the impacts are the same. There is no way out of this: on a finite planet with tight food supplies, you either compete with the hungry or clear new land.

The third problem is that the commission's methodology has just been blown apart by two new papers. Published in Science magazine, they calculate the total carbon costs of biofuel production. When land clearance (caused either directly or by the displacement of food crops) is taken into account, all the major biofuels cause a massive increase in emissions.

Even the most productive source - sugar cane grown in the scrubby savannahs of central Brazil - creates a carbon debt which takes 17 years to repay. As the major carbon reductions must be made now, the net effect of this crop is to exacerbate climate change. The worst source - palm oil displacing tropical rainforest growing in peat - invokes a carbon debt of some 840 years. Even when you produce ethanol from maize grown on "rested" arable land (which in the EU is called set-aside and in the United States is called conservation reserve), it takes 48 years to repay the carbon debt. The facts have changed. Will the policy follow?

Many people believe there's a way of avoiding these problems: by making biofuels not from the crops themselves but from crop wastes - if transport fuel can be manufactured from straw or grass or wood chips, there are no implications for land use, and no danger of spreading hunger. Until recently I believed this myself.

Unfortunately most agricultural "waste" is nothing of the kind. It is the organic material that maintains the soil's structure, nutrients and store of carbon. A paper commissioned by the US government proposes that, to help meet its biofuel targets, 75% of annual crop residues should be harvested. According to a letter published in Science last year, removing crop residues can increase the rate of soil erosion a hundredfold. Our addiction to the car, in other words, could lead to peak soil as well as peak oil.

Removing crop wastes means replacing the nutrients they contain with fertiliser, which causes further greenhouse gas emissions. A recent paper by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggests that emissions of nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful than CO2) from nitrogen fertilisers wipe out all the carbon savings biofuels produce, even before you take the changes in land use into account.

Growing special second-generation crops, such as trees or switchgrass, doesn't solve the problem either: like other energy crops, they displace both food production and carbon emissions. Growing switchgrass, one of the new papers in Science shows, creates a carbon debt of 52 years. Some people propose making second-generation fuels from grass harvested in natural meadows or from municipal waste, but it's hard enough to produce them from single feedstocks; far harder to manufacture them from a mixture. Apart from used chip fat, there is no such thing as a sustainable biofuel.

All these convoluted solutions are designed to avoid a simpler one: reducing the consumption of transport fuel. But that requires the use of a different commodity. Global supplies of political courage appear, unfortunately, to have peaked some time ago.

Labels: biofuel

Posted by Big Gav at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

I liked Alex Steffen's post at WorldChanging about the recently released "Climate Code Red Report" and the appropriateness of the singularity metaphor to global warming - "The Atmospheric Singularity".

The argument of the new Climate Code Red report is much the same [as Jim Hansen's slideshow], though made at greater length and with a more direct advocacy appeal:

Climate policy is characterized by the habituation of low expectations and a culture of failure. There is an urgent need to understand global warming and the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we have already crossed as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We are now in a race between climate tipping points and political tipping points.

There are moments that I believe that it might be better to shelve discussion of tipping points for the moment, and pick up that hoary old late-90s metaphor of singularities.

(A singularity, in this usage, is a turning point in human affairs that is so radical it is almost impossible for those who live before it to imagine life after it. Most commonly, the term is used by old-school science fiction writers to describe a future in which evolving artificial intelligences hurtle humanity into a technological maelstrom of innovation. But increasingly, people describe historical moments -- the dawn of agriculture, the "discovery" of the New World, the Industrial Revolution -- as social singularities.)

I increasingly suspect that we are at a shearing point on either side of which a singularity looms.

If we fail to tackle our sustainability crisis, an, most pressingly, our climate crisis, we will with increasing rapidity find ourselves in a world which is not only unthinkable to most people in the developed world, but literally beyond the ability of scientists to confidently predict. If we get things under control, our odds of things staying somewhat the same increase dramatically. But if we can't, we enter a world where nothing we've taken for granted for 10,000 years can be relied upon. Think of it as the Atmospheric Singularity.

On the other hand, if we do come to grips with our challenges, I'm more and more convinced that it will be because we recognize that "small steps" and "swap out" technologies (think Hummer-to-Prius) are not even vaguely sufficient, and we proceed to embrace really radical rethinking of the best ways to deliver prosperity in a sustainable manner. And I'm pretty sure that the end result of that process will be a world which is pretty difficult to even imagine for most people at the moment. Think of this as the Sustainability Singularity

The point is, either way we go, the future will work by its own rules, not the rules we are used to living within today.

Labels: climate code red, global warming

Posted by Big Gav at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

Erick Schonfeld at TechChrunch has a post on solar energy company Infinia and their Stirling Engine based technology.

If you thought clean energy financings were hot last year, 2008 promises to be scorching. Case in point: Infinia today raised a $50 million series B, led by British hedge fund GLG partners. Existing investors Equus, Khosla Ventures, Bill Gross’ Idealab, and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital also participated in the round (after putting in $9.5 million just last June).

Infinia has developed utility-scale renewable energy technology that combines a Stirling engine with a large solar collector. The Stirling engine, a technology that’s been around since the 19th century, converts the heat into electricity. Infinia used to be called Stirling Cycles, and has been around for more than two decades. It has designed Stirling engines as power sources for NASA missions, implantable artificial hearts, and cooling devices that the army uses in Iraq. Now, it is focussed exclusively on using the technology to create 14-foot diameter solar collectors that can generate 3.5 kilowatts of energy apiece. Gang together 50 or 100 (at about $20,000 a pop) and you have the energy producing capacity of a small power plant.

Infinia’s Stirling engine is powered by a free-moving piston that requires no lubricants, and thus no maintenance. “What makes this unique is the no-maintenance profile,” says chief financial officer, Gregg Clevenger, “the ability to deploy a Stirling engine out in the desert and it is engineered to run for 20 years without you having to do anything.” It is also designed to be assembled with common mass-produced parts that an auto-parts supplier could manufacture. Getting the cost down is the key to creating a technology that is competitive with other forms of energy.

Using its Stirling engine technology, Inifnia thinks it can eventually produce electricity 20 to 30 percent cheaper than today’s existing solar panels. And in times of peak energy demand—on a hot summer day, for instance—it could even be competitive with electricity from gas-powered or coal-fired plants.

Greentech Media has some notes on competition in the solar thermal market (good to see Gunther Portfolio getting a plug there).

When it comes to providing solar system technology on mass scale, Infinia is far from alone.

Companies like Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ausra, also are in the race. In December, Ausra said it was building the world's largest factory for solar-thermal power systems in Las Vegas (see Ausra to Build World's Largest Solar-Thermal Factory).

Unlike Infinia, Ausra's technology uses fields of mirrors to heat water into steam, which is then converted into electricity using a standard steam turbine.

And others have turned to a type of concentrating solar that takes sunlight from a larger area and uses lenses or glass to direct and concentrate it onto smaller solar cells.

In January, Mountain View, Calif.-based SolFocus installed its first array of solar cells in what will be a 3-megawatt project in Spain. And Germany's Concentrix Solar installed 12 of its solar-tracking systems for a Spanish project, according to Gunther Portfolio.

But despite the slew of companies gunning to deliver concentrating solar technologies, few have been able to deliver the goods on a large scale and at an economical price.

Among the challenges concentrating solar faces are issues of durability because it has more parts than traditional solar systems. For example, Clevenger said each Stirling solar system unit is comprised of several hundred parts.

Infinia plans on contracting with manufacturers around the world to make the individual parts and assemble them in U.S.-based facilities.

But is Infinia's piston-driving approach just one more moving part to worry about? Clevenger said no. "We have developed this engine to be zero maintenance," he said explaining the encapsulating cylinder won't ever have to be opened for such things like adding more lubricant of which there is none.

Keith Johnson at the WSJ notes Venture Capital Still Likes Solar.

One of the biggest obstacles to full-scale rollout of alternative energy sources—beyond the fact that they cost more than traditional power sources—is getting the things built. Solar power’s development has been hampered in part by a lack of super-pure silicon. The wind power industry is just shaking off supply-chain bottlenecks that have crimped production.

One solar upstart hopes to sidestep production problems—before it even starts producing.

Infinia Corp., based in Kennewick, Wash., which makes a concentrated solar-power device, today landed $50 million in Series B financing that the company says will pave the way for commercial-scale production of the as-yet unproven solar thermal technology. ...

A big part of the cash will be used to help re-tool Infinia’s prospective component suppliers in the automotive parts industry, says chief executive J. D. Sitton. Infinia’s devices combine a small engine with a concentrating dish that directs sunlight onto the motor, which converts it into electricity more efficiently than regular photovoltaic solar panels. Its 250-odd components were purposely designed, Mr. Sitton says, so that auto parts manufacturers could use their space capacity to produce them. ...

Infinia hopes to start production in November this year and within a few years reach annual production of about 200 megawatts—that is, a few hundred thousand of the 3.5 kilowatt devices—with an eye to selling to utilities.

Labels: infinia, solar, solar thermal, stirling engine

Posted by Big Gav at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

My "Limits To Scenario Planning" post was originally prompted by some chatter amongst the TOD editors about the Limits To Growth book.

Ugo Bardi's article on "Peak oil and The Limits to Growth: two parallel stories" is now up at TOD Europe, comparing Hubbert style oil depletion modelling and the systems dynamics style modelling used by the LTG authors.



TOD Europe also had a recent post on "Understanding the current energy crisis in South Africa" which looked at the impact electricity shortages are having on the country and putting this into the context of the limits to growth.

The era of very cheap electricity in South Africa is now over. Consumers will face price hikes of between 14 and 20% per annum for at least the next few years. This will encourage necessary conservation and efficiency measures, but will be especially hard on poorer consumers. Thus the government will come under pressure to increase its expenditure on social support programmes and grants. What has happened, has happened, and cannot be changed. We are here, now, in the present situation and faced with the choices of which route to follow going forward. The question we need to ask is, “Will our solutions make us more or less dependent on fossil fuels? Will they take us closer to sustainability or further from it? Are we seeking long-term solutions or short-term quick fixes? What price will we pay in the future if we make the wrong choices now?”

Idleworm has a post looking at the impact these shortages are having on the South African mining industry, and the implications for the rest of us.

Amazing find on Survival Acres - a letter from a citizen in South Africa, describing the energy crisis, and the continuing breakdown in the nation's physical infrastructure. From the comments section on the page, South Africa's neighbours won't be in a position to send any juice south, as they're reliant on that country's energy exports.

Approximately 80% of the world's Platinum, Palladium and Rhodium is mined in South Africa, not to mention gold.

Platinum is used in catalytic converters, catalysts in fuel cells, chemotherapy, thermometers, electrodes in electrolysis and electrochemical measurements, jewelry, silicone elastomers, glow plugs, crucibles for high temperature melting of glass, archival printmaking and watchmaking.

Palladium is used in dentistry, watch making, blood sugar test strips, aircraft spark plugs, surgical instruments, multilayer ceramic capacitors, electrodes in multi-layer ceramic capacitors, platings in consumer electronics, plating of electronic components, soldering materials, hydrogen purification, carbon monoxide detectors, hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions, petroleum cracking, catalytic converters, homogeneous catalysis, hydrogen storage, jewelry, photography and manuscript illumination.

Rhodium is used in optical instruments, jewelry, catalytic converters, catalytic carbonylation of methanol, silicone rubbers, chiral synthesis and mammography.

Whew.

Make of that what you will.

Labels: limits to growth, south africa

Posted by Big Gav at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments

CNet's Green Tech Blog has a post on a venture capitalist who believes that commercial power generation using nuclear fusion will be available in the not too distant future. The article says that the process uses lithium - "a fairly inexpensive and plentiful metal" - though that may not remain the case indefinitely if lithium-ion battery production continues to accelerate ("peak lithium" is a concept that has already been broached),

Nuclear fusion will move from the lab to reality in a few years, a noted venture capitalist says.

"Within five years, large companies will start to think about building fusion reactors," Wal van Lierop, CEO of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, said in an interview at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place here this week. In three to four years, scientists will demonstrate results that show that fusion has a 60 percent chance of success, he said.

If van Lierop were some crazy guy off the street with an old stack of Omni magazines, you could dismiss him. Fusion--which extracts energy from nuclear reactions without the dangers associated with nuclear fission--has been studied for decades, but has yet to go commercial. Van Lierop, however, isn't a random individual. He is one of the earliest and more active investors in clean tech: Chrysalix started investing in clean energy in 2001. The firm's limited partners include BASF, Shell, and Rabobank.

Chrysalix's optimism is pinned on an angel investment the company made in General Fusion, a Canadian company that says it has found a way to hurdle many of the technical problems surrounding fusion. The company's ultimate plan is to build small fusion reactors that can produce around 100 megawatts of power. The plants would cost around $50 million. That could allow the company to generate electricity at about 4 cents per kilowatt hour, making it competitive with conventional electricity.

The company uses a technique called Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) model. In this scenario, an electric current is generated in a conductive cavity containing lithium and a plasma. The electric current produces a magnetic field and the cavity is collapsed, which results in a massive temperature spike.

The lithium breaks down into helium and tritium. Tritium, an unstable form of hydrogen, is separated and then mixed with deuterium, another form of hydrogen. The two fuse and make helium, a reaction that releases energy that can be harvested. So in short, lithium, a fairly inexpensive and plentiful metal, gets converted to helium in a reaction that generates lots of power and leaves only a harmless gas as a byproduct. MTF has an advantage over other fusion techniques in that the plasma only has to stay at thermonuclear temperatures (150 million degrees Celsius) for a microsecond for a reaction to occur, according to the General Fusion's Web site. General Fusion has also filed for several patents.

Labels: fusion, lithium

Posted by Big Gav at 1:16 AM | Permalink | Comments

Metaefficient has a post on a household wind turbine called the "Windspire".

n the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of mini-wind turbines that haven’t turned out to be very useful. But the Windspire turbine from Mariah Power sounds interesting. The Windspire has a propeller-free vertical-axis design, and is expected to produce about 1800 kilowatt hours per year in 11 mph average wind conditions. That amount of wind power is roughly 25% of a typical household’s energy (or much more if you are particularly energy efficient).

The Windspire is 30 feet tall with a two foot radius, sized below typical residential zoning restrictions. Guidelines for installation sites are generally half an acre of land and relatively windy locations. The Winspire has just passed the ETL safety certification, which means it’s ready to go to market. It is expected to be released this spring, and priced at $3,995.

On the other end of the scale, Metaefficient also has a post on the world's most powerful wind turbine - the 7MW Enercon E-126.

The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade length of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. A quick US calculation would be 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.

The turbine being installed in Emden, Germany by Enercon. They will be testing several types of storage systems in combination with the multi-megawatt wind turbines.

Labels: wind power

Posted by Big Gav at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments

With John McCain looking the likely Republican nominee after his Super Tuesday wins and Mitt "nice hair" Romney's exit from the race, the SMH was suggesting that a Republican win is still on the cards, in spite of the abject failure of the Bush administration.

WITH George Bush as the most unpopular president since the invention of the opinion poll, it may seem perverse. But America is now at least as likely to vote another Republican into the White House as it is to vote for a Democrat. That's right. In spite of everything that has gone so wrong - the misadventure in Iraq, the looming downturn in the economy, sharpening inequality, the dreadful state of American health care - the Republicans are at least even money to win. Again.

Now McCain isn't as loathsome as most of the other Republican candidates were, but unfortunately he is still a crazed warmonger apparently itching to attack Iran and claiming he is content to occupy Iraq for another 100 years (which based on the rate of attrition over the past 5 years would leave the country completely depopulated), which had Ron Paul noting this had him out of step with most Americans and that his comments recklessly put Americans at risk.

Paleo-con Pat Buchanan reckons that McCain "Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi", while Dave Roberts is wondering if the media is going to give him a free pass on his lukewarm attitude towards action on global warming.

Back to the Iraq topic (which seemed to be of interest to a few readers this week - the best summary of my evolving view of Iraq is probably "Iraq, Oil, Law and Order" rather than the "Honest John" post which has been so popular lately), The Australian reports that Iraqi oil production is now at its highest level since the war began.

OIL production in Iraq is at its highest level since the US-led invasion of 2003, reaching 2.4 million barrels a day, thanks largely to improved security measures in the north.

The country’s Oil Ministry will shortly invite international oil companies to bid for contracts to help Iraq to boost output at its investment-starved “super-giant” oilfields. Production is expected to pass the prewar level of 2.6 million barrels by the end of the year, and Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Oil Minister, told The Times that he expected production to reach six million barrels a day within four years. ...

A new report from the US Inspector-General says that the Iraqi Government will receive a $US15 billion windfall to help its reconstruction efforts thanks to soaring oil prices.

Mr al-Shahristani said that the Government would not wait for Iraq’s fractious parliament to approve long-delayed legislation providing a legal framework for foreign investment in the oil industry. The Government is to invite foreign companies to help Iraq to develop new fields.

Jeroen van de Veer, the chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell, confirmed yesterday that it was “very interested” in new opportunities in Iraq, which sits on the world’s third largest proven oil reserves. “We have made various proposals to the Government,” he said.

Now obviously there is a lot more oil yet to pump from Iraq - which by my reckoning, has likely the largest oil reserves in the world rather than third largest.

The fact that the Iraqi administration seems to have given up on passing the hugely unpopular oil law (which hands over Iraq's "undiscovered" oil - or perhaps not so undiscovered, to those will a little knowledge of Iraqi history - to international oil companies) is interesting - apparently the 'democracy" thing is only going to be taken so far after all, which doesn't augur well for future stability in the country.

There is more spin at the FT, who note Shahristani's speech was at Chatham House in London, and trying to lay the blame on the Kurds.

The Iraqi government is inviting major oil multinationals to participate for the first time in the development of the oil industry, without waiting for the passage of crucial but controversial hydrocarbons legislation.

In a sign that the oil law the US has been pressing for is unlikely to be agreed by parliament any time soon, Hussain Shahristani, Iraq’s oil minister, said in an interview with the Financial Times that Iraq was now determined to push ahead with plans to raise production from a current 2.5m barrels per day to 6m bpd in five years.
Kirkuk crude from the north.

Speaking on the sidelines of a conference at Chatham House in London, he said major companies were registering to pre-qualify for oil development licences before the February 18 deadline. The process, he said, should lead next year to the award of the first contracts to develop oil fields across the country.

Meanwhile AFP reports that Baghdad is drowning in sewage. Apparently they haven't been told what a success "the surge" has been and how reconstruction is going swimmingly...

Baghdad is drowning in sewage, thirsty for water and largely powerless, an Iraqi official said on Sunday in a grim assessment of services in the capital five years after the US-led invasion.

One of three sewage treatment plants is out of commission, one is working at stuttering capacity while a pipe blockage in the third means sewage is forming a foul lake so large it can be seen "as a big black spot on Google Earth," said Tahseen Sheikhly, civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.

Sheikhly told a news conference in the capital that water pipes, where they exist, are so old that it is not possible to pump water at a sufficient rate to meet demands -- leaving many neighbourhoods parched. A sharp deficit of 3,000 megawatts of electricity adds to the woes of residents, who are forced to rely on neighbourhood generators to light up their lives and heat their homes. "Sewerage, water and electricity are our three main problems," said Sheikhly, adding that many of these problems date back to the Saddam Hussein regime when not enough attention was paid to basic infrastructure.

Insurgency, sectarian violence and vandalism since the US-led invasion in March 2003 had further ravaged services in the capital, he added.

Alternet reports that while McCain might want to stay in Iraq for another 3 or 4 generations, some Americans are trying to bring National Guard troops home right now.

Five years ago, George Bush called the Guard into national service pursuant to the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) against Iraq. The AUMF, passed by Congress in its rush to war, established a limited mission: First, the removal of Saddam Hussein from power; second, enforcement of preceding United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding the elimination of alleged Iraqi WMDs and ballistic missiles. The Vermont bill recognizes that those two mission objectives are complete and that the national service of the Vermont Guard is over; the bill recalls the Guard to state control.

And Vermont is not alone. State legislators in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island plan to sponsor similar legislation. And legislators in several other states, including Maryland, Maine and Wisconsin, have openly declared that they are examining the issue and considering following suit.

This latest chapter in Democracy v. Empire illustrates one of the most significant and perhaps most underreported aspects of the tragedy which is the occupation of Iraq: The wisdom of the American people. For a public that has all but given up hope for congressional action to end the war, this new state-based legal approach takes advantage of a surge of another kind ...

In the runup to the ill-fated U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, nearly 200 municipalities passed symbolic resolutions stating all of the reasons that the United States should not invade: The war would be too costly; it was the wrong priority for federal funds that could be better spent in our own crumbling communities; there was no evidence of an imminent threat from Iraq; there was insufficient evidence of WMDs; U.N. weapons inspectors needed time to finish doing their job; hope lay with multilateralism, not unilateralism; and above all, the potential was great for devastating and unnecessary loss of life on all sides.

Unfortunately, the wisdom from Main Street U.S.A. proved vastly better than the "intelligence" propagated by 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In these last five years of occupation, we have seen estimates of the war cost rise to between $500 billion and $3.5 trillion, depending on the source. Four thousand U.S. soldiers and over half a million innocent Iraqi civilians -- men, women and children -- have lost their lives; hundreds of thousands of others have been seriously wounded. Iraq no longer exists as an independent or intact nation.

In the face of the horrific war toll, world and domestic public opinion have turned sharply against both the foolish presidency and the cowardly Congress. Over 300 cities, towns, counties and states have expressed opposition to continuing the war. Fully half of the U.S. population either affirmatively voted in popular referenda for withdrawal from Iraq, or are represented by elected city councils, town boards or state legislatures that voted for withdrawal. The wisdom of the American people continues unabated.

Now, with the Vermont legislation, the public wisdom may become a reality. Those same legislators who passed anti-war resolutions can now cast votes recalling the Guard from Iraq. Vermont has, once again, led the way.

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stones has a disgruntled look at "The Chicken Doves" of the Democratic party - "Elected to end the war, Democrats have surrendered to Bush on Iraq and betrayed the peace movement for their own political ends".

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party's energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn't fit Iraq into his busy schedule. "We have the presidential election," Reid said recently. "Our time is really squeezed."

There was much public shedding of tears among the Democratic leadership, as Reid, Pelosi and other congressional heavyweights expressed deep sadness that their valiant charge up the hill of change had been thwarted by circumstances beyond their control — that, as much as they would love to continue trying to end the catastrophic Iraq deal, they would now have to wait until, oh, 2009 to try again. "We'll have a new president," said Pelosi. "And I do think at that time we'll take a fresh look at it."

Pelosi seemed especially broken up about having to surrender on Iraq, sounding like an NFL coach in a postgame presser, trying with a straight face to explain why he punted on first-and-goal. "We just didn't have any plays we liked down there," said the coach of the 0-15 Dems. "Sometimes you just have to play the field-position game...."

In reality, though, Pelosi and the Democrats were actually engaged in some serious point-shaving. Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation's leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. "Our focus is on the Republicans," one Democratic apparatchik in charge of the anti-war coalition declared. "How can we juice up attacks on them?"

The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what's to come if they win the White House. And if we don't pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there's still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame. ...

While almost all the Iraq related news is bleak, TreeHugger has managed to find one positive glimmer, reporting on an "Intrepid Group Sowing Seeds of Environmental Awareness Among Iraqi Youth".

With all of the chaos going on in Iraq it’s a surprise to learn that somehow there is someone thinking about the education of Iraqi children when it comes to environmental issues. And while it’s just a start, the truth is that the longest journey begins with a single step.

Which sounds like precisely the reasoning behind the “Children’s Bird Guide of Iraq” a new book being released by BirdLife International to introduce Iraq’s children to their local birds using their own language.

In total, the book provides enough information to enable kids to properly identify more than 35 species of birds in Iraq that can be commonly seen in wetlands, deserts and arid lands, mountainous areas, towns and gardens.

As Mike Rands, the CEO of BirdLife points out, “This is a major step in developing the future of nature conservation in Iraq. Once you know and can identify the biodiversity you coexist with, you are far more likely to care about its fate.”

And while it’s probably going to be a long road for a lot of things in Iraq, I think this tiny positive step in the right direction is definitely worth celebrating.

Labels: iraq, john mccain, oil

Posted by Big Gav at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

TreeHugger has a post on the gigantic meal of rubbish soup being prepared by eddies in the Pacific ocean - slowly collecting the vast torrents of rubbish we discard. Luckily it isn't all wasted - fish eat some of it, then we eat them...

Deep Sea News' Kevin Zilnio points us to a great piece in The Independent describing what has become known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," or "trash vortex" - essentially a floating expanse of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean now covering an area twice the size of the continental U.S. Believed to hold almost 100m tons of flotsam, this vast "plastic soup" stretches 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan:

"The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land."

David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, believes the "plastic soup" may actually represent a new habitat; he plans on organizing a research expedition later this year to examine its size and nature. Plastic waste is one of the most significant sources of marine pollution: According to UNEP, plastic accounts for 90% of all debris floating in the oceans - with every square mile containing close to 46,000 pieces.

The pernicious effects of this "trash vortex" aren't just limited to the marine ecosystem either. Every year, hundreds of millions of nurdles, tiny pieces of plastic, are dumped into or lost at sea, where they eventually make their way into the food chain by acting as sponges for a variety of anthropogenic chemicals (e.g. hydrocarbons and DDT).

Marcus Eriksen, research director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, put is thusly: "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple."

Labels: fish, garbage, pacific ocean, rubbish

Posted by Big Gav at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Guardian has a good column from Simon Jenkins, pointing out that "Britain is slithering down the road towards a police state". It refers to a great quote from George Orwell (patron saint of surveillance states) - "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink".

The machine is out of control. Personal surveillance in Britain is so extensive that no democratic oversight is remotely plausible. Some 800 organisations, including the police, the revenue, local and central government, demanded (and almost always got) 253,000 intrusions on citizen privacy in the last recorded year, 2006. This is way beyond that of any other country in the free world.

The Sadiq Khan affair has killed stone dead the thesis, beloved of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, that any accretion of power to the state is sustainable because ministers are in control. Whether this applies to phone tapping, bugging devices, ID cards, NHS records, childcare computer systems, video surveillance or detention without trial, it is simply a lie. Nobody can control this torrent of intrusion. Nobody can oversee a burst dam.

Khan, an MP and government whip, was allegedly targeted by the police for having been a "civil rights lawyer" and thus a nuisance, though the recording of his meetings with a constituent in prison was supposedly directed at the inmate. Either way, the bugging destroyed the "Wilson doctrine", that MPs cannot be bugged. It appears that they can if ministers, or the police, so decide.

Security machismo claims that in the "age of terrorism", real men bug everyone and everything. The former flying squad chief and BBC dial-a-quote, John O'Connor, implied this week that it would be negligent of the police not to bug anyone they - repeat they - thought a threat. The Blair thesis that "9/11 changes everything" has been a green light to every security consultant, surveillance salesman and Labour minister wanting to flex his - or her- muscles in the tabloids.

Years ago a lawyer gave me unassailable evidence that a call with a client had been tapped by the police and handed to the prosecution. Such tapping allegedly required a personal warrant from the home secretary who, when tackled on the subject, flatly denied it could have happened without his approval, which he would never give in such a case. I checked back with a police chief, who roared with laughter. "The home secretary is absolutely right. He must authorise all taps sent to him for authorisation. But not, of course, the rest." Orwell's cuttlefish were squirting ink.

The grim reality of the past week alone is that it has seen a substantial section of the British establishment allowing itself to believe that private dealings between lawyer and client, and between MP and constituent, should no longer be considered immune from state surveillance. A cardinal principle of a free democracy is thus coolly abandoned. It is not a victory for national security. It is a victory for terrorism.

The monitoring organisation Privacy International now gives Britain the worst record in Europe for such intrusion, indeed the worst among the so-called democratic world and on a par with "endemic surveillance societies", such as Russia and Singapore. The Thames Valley policeman, Mark Kearney, who bugged Khan's conversation in Woodhill prison, claims to have protested that it was "unethical" but was overruled and placed under "significant pressure" from the Metropolitan police. He has since had to leave the force. The saga reads like a script from the film about East German espionage, The Lives of Others.

Britain's poor record is the result of government weakness towards the security apparat. Even among supposed liberals, the response is to demand not less surveillance but more oversight. David Davis, the Tory spokesman, said yesterday: "It's got to be controlled; it's got to be accountable." Civil rights champion Liberty wants "simpler and stronger surveillance laws, with warrants issued by judges, not policemen nor politicians". ...

To claim that Britain is a police state insults those who are victims of real ones. But I have no doubt that feeble ministers are slithering down just this road, pushed by the security/industrial complex. It is not oversight that must be increased, but rather the categories and boundaries of surveillance that must be drastically curbed.

Of course there are people who want to explode bombs in Britain. Taxpayers spend a fortune trying to stop them. But how often must we remind ourselves that the bomber need not kill to achieve his end when we appease his yearning for the martyrdom of repression? The amount of surveillance in Britain is grotesque. It is a sign of the corruption of power, and nothing else.

Labels: george orwell

Posted by Big Gav at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Canberra Times recently published an article, rather misleadingly entitled "Generating solar energy in the dark", which looked at the use of purified graphite for thermal energy storage.

The company developing the technology is called Lloyd Energy Systems, which is prototyping solar energy storage, a wind-to-heat plant and a small-scale plant that combines water treatment, energy storage and steam turbine generation.

The company has received a $5 million Federal Government grant as part of its advanced energy storage technology program in the western NSW town of Lake Cargelligo, with Country Energy agreeing to purchase the power generated. Lloyd Energy also has an agreement with Ergon Energy in Queensland to build a $30million plant at Cloncurry in Queensland, partially funded by the Queensland state government, which the Sydney Morning Herald reported on last year.

[Lloyd Energy CEO] Mr Hollis said large amounts of coal-fired energy were lost during long transmission to remote areas. As power loads built up over time, mainly because of demand for air-conditioners, the grid could no longer cope in peak periods. Towns at the end of the line suffered the most from power shortages.

"We're putting environmentally friendly generation out at the end of the branches of the tree if you like, so it can pump energy back in when the branches are in trouble," he said. "It actually serves three purposes. Firstly, it is a renewable energy replacement for coal. Secondly, it avoids the country energy authorities having to upgrade their transmission lines so they can get more power out in the peak." The third benefit was having an energy source at the end of the line that could return power into the grid.

Sixteen full-scale models would go to Lake Cargelligo and 54 to Cloncurry. The system's mobility and flexibility had caught the attention of key Australian mining companies, which use diesel and gas generators.

Mr Hollis said making renewable energy available when it was required added to the system's value. ... "You can store thermal energy in a lot of things, but high-purity graphite is an extremely efficient way of storing it it doesn't have any losses. You can move the heat in and out very quickly."

Graphite based storage does not seem to have been used anywhere else in the world thus far. Storage for renewable energy has usually been limited to compressing air underground (Compress Air Energy Storage or CAES), where it can later be released under pressure, or pumped hydro, where the power is used to pump water back up into dams that can generate hydro-electricity. While both techniques are effective, they require suitable locations and complex infrastructure to be put in place.

The Queensland project will make Cloncurry the first town in Australia to rely exclusively on solar power, produced by a concentrated solar power (CSP) system. The system contains almost 7200 mirrors, which will guide the sun's rays into holes in the bottoms of 54 elevated graphite cubes, heating them to 1800 degrees (C). The stored heat is then used to generate steam for turbines on demand. The company claims the turbine will use less water than falls in an average year on the power station's roof.




Wind to Heat on King Island

A third system using the graphite system is being planned by CBD Energy, which has licensed the Lloyd technology and will build a wind-powered version of the system on King Island. The island, in the Bass Strait north-west of Tasmania, currently relies primarily on diesel to generate power for its 1800 residents.

The joint venture with Hydro Tasmania is not expected to make the island wholly powered by renewable energy, but it will eliminate the need for 1.25 megalitres of diesel fuel a year, says CBD's chief engineer, John Giannasca.

CBD plans to install two megawatts of wind turbines to supplement existing systems along with six graphite blocks. The blocks are each the size of a standard shipping container, and will be heated to 800 degrees (C).



Some solar panels will be also be installed for periods when the island is without wind, and there are ongoing investigations into harnessing ocean current and tidal energy in the region.

CBD Energy is run by ex-Impulse Airlines chief Gerry McGowan, with the company partly owned by German clean energy company Solon. CBD is also looking to develop solar energy projects in Australia, with plans for the first operation to be set up in the northern NSW town of Moree.

Graphite energy storage in context

King Island received a lot of press attention for an earlier project to store energy using Vanadium Redox flow batteries that began in 2003.



The company involved in that initiative, Pinnacle VRB, has since changed name to Cougar Energy and doesn't seem to have any active VRB projects going.

Another Australian company developing a slightly different form of Vanadium based batteries (Vanadium Bromide) is VFuel, though there hasn't been much news from them in some time either. Both VFuel and Pinnacle/Cougar are using technology pioneered at the University of NSW.



What will happen to the flow battery installation isn't clear, though a visiting parliamentarian (pdf) reported in 2004 that "The vanadium batteries would appear to best suit the ironing out of the wind fluctuations rather than holding larger quantities of power. The battery is expensive and takes up considerable space" and that graphite was being considered as an alternative.

TreeHugger noted last year that the advantage the Lloyd Energy graphite system has is that they have apparently managed to figure out how to refine low grade graphite into high quality crystalline graphite, and the storage capacity “ranges from around 300kWh (thermal) per tonne at a storage temperature of 750°C to around 1000kWh (thermal) per tonne at 1800°C.”.

The Australian Greenhouse Office has a review paper on Energy Storage Technologies (pdf), published in 2005, which includes a brief look at graphite in a section on thermal energy storage.

Thermal energy storage systems use material that can be kept at high temperatures in insulated containments. Heat recovered can then be applied for electricity generation using steam Rankine cycle or other heat engine cycles. Energy input can, in principle, be provided by electrical resistance heating but the overall round trip efficiency will be low. However, as with thermochemical energy storage, thermal systems have considerable advantages when integrated with Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies (ie parabolic troughs or dishes, central receiver/heliostat systems and Linear Fresnel systems).

Integration of thermal storage for several full load hours, together with new storage materials and advanced charging/discharging concepts, would allow for increased solar thermal electricity production without changing the power block size (ECOSTAR, Nov 2004). Provided that the storage is sufficiently inexpensive, this would lower the levelised energy cost, and additionally increase the dispatchability of the electricity generation.

The kind of storage system used for solar energy storage depends on the Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology, the heat transfer medium used and the required temperature of operation. In general, high-temperature thermal storage development will need several scale-up steps over an extended development time before market acceptance will be achieved.

Storage systems for thermal energy storage need to:
• be efficient in terms of energy loss and temperature drops
• have low cost
• have a long service life
• have low parasitic power requirements.

The development of storage systems for high pressure steam and pressurized, high temperature air, is especially challenging. If or when developed, such storage systems would lead to a significant drop in CSP electricity costs. The high-temperature thermal storage technologies utilised or under development now are (ECOSTAR, Nov 2004):

Molten salt storage and Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs)

• State of the art is the 2-tank molten salt storage tested in the “Solar Two” Central Receiver Solar Power Plant demonstration project in California, combined with using molten salt as heat transfer fluid. The use of new, so called Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs) has recently been proposed. RTILs are organic salts with negligible vapour pressure in the relevant temperature range and a melting temperature below 25°C. Room temperature ionic liquids are new materials that have the potential to be stored at temperatures of many 100s of degrees without decomposing. It is not yet clear whether they are stable up to the temperature level required for CSP and also whether they may be produced at reasonable costs.

Concrete Storage

• The concept of using concrete or castable ceramics to store energy at high temperatures for parabolic trough power plants with synthetic oil as the heat transfer fluid (HTF) has been investigated in European projects. The implementation of a concrete storage system is claimed (ECOSTAR, Nov 2004) to be able to be realised within less than 5 years.

Phase Change Materials (PCM)

• Phase change materials are materials selected to have a phase change (usually solid to liquid) at a temperature matching the thermal input source. The high “latent heat” in a phase change offers the potential for higher energy storage densities than storage of non phase change high temperature materials. Because a solid/liquid phase change is involved, a heat transfer fluid is needed to move heat from source to PCM. At present, two principle approaches are being investigated:
- encapsulation of small amounts of PCM
- embedding of PCM in a matrix made of another solid material with high heat conduction.
• The first measure is based on the reduction of distances inside the PCM and the second one uses the enhancement of heat conduction by other materials (e.g. graphite). Storages based on PCM are in an early stage of development but the cost target is to stay below A$34/kWh based on the thermal capacity. Although the uncertainties and risks of the PCM storage technology are in a medium range, the technology time required for full development and commercial implementation is likely to be more than 10 years (ECOSTAR, Nov 2004).

Storage for air receivers using solid materials

• Storage types using solid material for sensible heat are normally used together with volumetric atmospheric or pressurized air systems. The heat has to be transferred to another medium, which may be any kind of solid with high density and heat capacity. Another innovation is to develop for pressurised closed-air receivers a storage container that has to be pressure resistant up to about 16-20 bar depending on the gas turbine pressure ratio.
• For both cases the time for development and implementation is considered to be between 5 to 10 years and the risks and uncertainties are in the medium range (ECOSTAR, Nov 2004).

Storage for saturated water/steam

• The steam drum, which is a common part in many steam generators, is often used to provide process heat storage in industry. The main problem is the size of the steam vessel for larger storage capacity and the degradation of steam quality during discharging. However, this storage type is ideal as buffer storage for short time periods of several minutes, to compensate shading of the solar field by fast moving small clouds. Using appropriate encapsulated PCM inside the storage could enhance the storage capacity because the latent heat content can be used to slow down the temperature and pressure decrease and enable smaller storage vessels for the same thermal capacity.
• Recently, underground thermal energy storage has been proposed again as a lowcost solution to high-temperature, low-loss thermal storage for CSP systems (Mills et al, Nov 2004). It involves storage of water under pressure in deep metal lined caverns where the pressure is contained by the surrounding rock and the overburden weight.

High-purity graphite.

• This readily available material has the attractive property of increasing its heat storage capacity as the temperature of storage rises. However, the relatively low temperatures of solar thermal systems are not optimal for this storage medium unless the graphite storage blocks could be positioned at the very high temperature focus of a concentrating solar collector.

For another good description of a range of energy storage technologies, try Richard Baxter's book "Energy Storage: A Nontechnical Guide".

One obvious advantage for graphite is that carbon is extremely common, unlike some of the minerals used in various battery technologies and so there will be no meaningful material "limits" to the creation of these. Perhaps one day we'll see CO2 being sequestered in the form of graphite blocks, ready to be installed into CSP power stations.

On semi-related news, energy storage has also been getting some attention in The Economist lately, courtesy of EEStor's ultracapacitor technology.

Labels: australia, cloncurry, energy storage, flow battery, graphite, king island, lloyd energy systems, vanadium

Posted by Big Gav at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Times has an interesting article on underground coal fires in China, with one effort to extinguish a fire succeeding after 3 years of effort. These aren't just a Chinese problem - they occur around the world - the oldest known example being Burning Mountain in Australia.

After a three-year effort and untold quantities of water, Chinese firefighters have extinguished a fire that had been burning underground in a coalmine for more than 50 years.

Firefighters finally beat the fire by boring into the coal seam and flooding it with water and slurry. They then capped the mine shafts to starve the flames of oxygen. As well as staving off further environmental damage, they have saved more than 651 million tonnes of coal, which will be mined to fuel the Chinese economic and industrial juggernaut.

Miao Pu, head of the firefighting team at the Terak mine in Xinjiang, a sparsely populated, mainly Muslim region in northwestern China that is rich in resources, said: “First, we drilled into the burning coal bed and then poured water and slurry into it to lower the temperature. After the temperature dropped we covered the surface to starve the fire of oxygen.” Officials plan to monitor the coal seam for several years in case the fire reignites.

The smouldering furnace 100 metres (330ft) underground at the second-largest coalfield in Xinjiang had released more than 70,000 tonnes of toxic gases annually since the 1950s. Two years ago firefighters in the area put out a similar fire that had been burning for more than 50 years, but there is much more to do.

Thousands of underground coalmine fires are believed to cover an area of 720sq km (280sq miles) in China. They consume as much as 20 million tonnes of high-quality coal and another 200 million tonnes of coal storage each year. ... The fires, often smouldering in coal seams on or just below the surface, have shaped the landscape of coal-rich regions in China for millenniums. The layers of coal can go on for miles underground, with fuel to burn for decades or centuries.

The smoke darkens already polluted skies. The fires emit poisonous gases and can even make the earth cave in — swallowing roads, homes, animals and humans — when weak ash replaces firm coal underground. The are also wasting resources in a rapidly developing country that relies on coal for about three quarters of its energy requirements, and the Government wants them extinguished.

The fires can start spontaneously. The oldest is believed to be at Baijigou, northwest China, and has been burning since the Qing Dynasty, a century before the mine opened in 1965.

Labels: burning mountain, coal, fire, underground

Posted by Big Gav at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments

John Dvorak at MarketWatch (an unlikely source of tinfoil) has some more on the severed communication cable story and the Iranian oil bourse link, saying that "something looks fishy" and linking to the Energy Bulletin roundup. Cryptogon also did a follow up post and came up with a good "magic anchor" map showing the choke points into the middle east - most of which where damaged.

Nobody knows what caused the cut cables in the Mediterranean that interrupted Internet service to parts of the Middle East last week, but there are now conspiracy theories galore written by bloggers and pundits.

Some say it will benefit terrorists and Iran somehow. In fact, the cut cables -- originally blamed on ships dragging anchors -- look more like a ploy by some intelligence agency to disrupt Iranian commerce, specifically an emerging oil bourse that the Iranians have been quietly establishing and hoped to roll out fully in the next 60 days.

There has always been talk about disrupting commerce by screwing up the Internet. We've just seen a proof of concept, whether done on purpose or by accident.

This concept seems a little farfetched until you look at the details which were provided to me by one of my readers, Martin Kuplens-Ewart who has been following the story from the outset. He notes: "there is a substantial event that has effectively been killed by the loss of connectivity: the launch of the Iranian Oil Bourse. A marketplace for oil, gas, and various petrochemicals, the Iranian Oil Bourse would trade exclusively in non-dollars and probably substantial negative impact to the U.S. economy and financial system. The bourse was scheduled for launch this week (between Feb. 1 and 11. With complete elimination of Internet connectivity to the country, this launch is now impossible and unlikely to be achievable before month's end (given the estimate 10-14 days for repairs to fiber-optic cables)."

He cites various articles expressing the mystery behind the cut cables and describing the bourse and its overall threat to the U.S. economy, as well as how the thing could backfire, ruining the Iranian economy. The second bourse article, written in 2005, discusses the early planning for the bourse and suggests or wonders if someone might take some covert actions against it.

In most instances Internet connectivity can be rerouted, and much of the Middle East has already done this. But what makes this situation unique is that the bourse was being established on Kish Island, a free-trade zone set up by the Iranians in hopes of creating a cool tourist destination. ...

This sort of telecom and Internet failure/collapse, no matter what the cause, is unlikely to give anyone confidence in an international oil trading system on Kish Island. Too much money is at risk. The island obviously needs satellite access or some form of connectivity back up that is foolproof.

There has always been talk about disrupting commerce by screwing up the Internet. We've just seen a proof of concept, whether done on purpose or by accident. It doesn't make a lot of difference how it happened if we want to learn a lesson as to how delicate the Internet mechanism can be.

Labels: internet

Posted by Big Gav at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments

The New York Times has an article on some recent reports that current generation biofuels usually add to greenhouse emissions (biofuels produced from waste streams excepted of course), with the worst impact being felt when rainforest is cleared so that crops for biofuels can be planted. Hmmm - wasn't this obvious years ago ? Maybe they should have used my "From Rainforest to Biodiesel" tagline.

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.” ...

The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.”

The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change has said that the world has to reverse the increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to avert disastrous environment consequences. ...

The European Union and a number of European countries have recently tried to address the land use issue with proposals stipulating that imported biofuels cannot come from land that was previously rain forest. But even with such restrictions in place, Dr. Searchinger’s study shows, the purchase of biofuels in Europe and the United States leads indirectly to the destruction of natural habitats far afield.

For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have because of increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is inevitably cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits. So crops from old plantations go to Europe for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.

Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land that was previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it,” he said.

Labels: biodiesel, biofuel, brazil, ethanol, rainforest, soy

Posted by Big Gav at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments

Jospeh Romm at grist has a look at the bleak future for some of our legacy (sunset) energy industries which he calls the "finite four".

It has not been a good year so far for King Coal, Big Oil, and whatever nickname we give to the nuclear energy industry.

Two weeks ago, TIME reported that nuclear plants in the southeastern U.S. may be forced to cut power production or temporarily shut down later this year because the year-long drought has left too little water to cool the reactors.

There already has been one drought-related shutdown in Alabama. And while officials aren't yet predicting brownouts, utilities will be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other places, leading to "shockingly high electric bills for millions of southerners."

Unfortunately, the Southeast is precisely where the nuclear energy industry has been looking as the best location for new power plants, in part because they believe there is less public resistance there. We'll see how the public feels when those "shockingly high electric bills" arrive in the mail.

The South's problems are not unique. The Associated Press reports that 24 of the nation's 104 nukes are in areas experiencing the most severe drought.

Then came an email from the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell to his staff, predicting that the production of conventional oil supplies won't be able to keep pace with world demand after 2015 -- a mere seven years from now.

That's very bad news for oil-dependent economies, including ours. Five of the last seven recessions in the U.S. economy have been preceded by big increases in the price of oil (PDF), and today's oil prices are one of the factors being blamed for the economic slowdown and possible recession we're experiencing now. The email from Shell's Jeroen van der Veer suggests that unless we figure out how to replace conventional oil or how to stop economic development and population growth around the world, high oil prices are here to stay. It's the old law of supply and demand.

Next came word from the U.S. Department of Energy that it has cancelled plans to build the country's first clean-coal plant in Illinois. The DOE cited economics -- the cost to taxpayers has gone from $800 million when the project was announced five years ago to $1.33 billion today -- and said it wasn't ready to find the plant environmentally acceptable.

To make matters worse, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that three of the nation's biggest investment banks are going to make it harder to build coal-fired power plants in the United States. Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Morgan Stanley anticipate that the federal government will cap greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants before long. Investors don't want to loan money to a new power plant whose debt could go bad under the additional expense of carbon allowances.

What does all this bad news mean? For those who have the courage to look, the end of the era of finite fuels is in sight. The end always was inevitable, of course. That's what finite is all about. But I believe that oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy -- let's call them the Finite Four -- are entering their end game.

Like prisoners on the way to the gallows, they're bargaining desperately for a reprieve. Van der Veer recommends more effort to harvest unconventional oil from tar sands and more environmentally sensitive and harder-to-reach places. But tar sands, oil shale, liquid fuels from coal, and other unconventional fossil fuels promise nothing but more problems. They are filthy. They accelerate global warming. They use a lot of energy and water.

And water may be their biggest problem of all. Water already is considered a global crisis by some experts, and it seems to be reaching that status in the United States. A new study shows that the water crisis already underway in the far West is due to global warming. Snow pack is the source for 75 percent of the West's water -- and snow pack is declining. ...

Declining supplies, rising prices, worsening water problems ... it is time for the big, entrenched, troubled Finite Four to recognize that the end is near. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the well-known expert on dying, identified five stages through which patients pass when they discover they have a terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

The Finite Four have entered Stage 3. Perhaps when they progress to State 5 -- acceptance -- they will grasp the new reality the world faces today: If they want life, they must end their own addiction to finite resources and join in a transition to sustainable, renewable energy.

Grist also has an interview with Google's "green energy czar", Bill Weihl about his RE<C initiative.

Question What exactly are your responsibilities?

Answer Narrowly speaking, my job is to make Google's energy supplies much cleaner, particularly focused on our data centers, which make up the bulk of our energy consumption.

But my boss and the founders have made clear that the goal isn't just to make Google green. We could green our operations completely tomorrow, but if we just did that, the world wouldn't care, the climate certainly wouldn't care -- we're not that big.

The real goal is to do this in a way that has a much broader impact. So it really gets into how we might invest in both renewable energy companies and internal R&D to help advance the state of technology and renewable markets -- to make renewable energy truly mainstream, not just a tiny fraction of the energy supply.

Question Your mandate, specifically, is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity more cheaply than coal-generated energy within years, not decades. That's an immense challenge. What's your plan of action?

Answer We're going to invest tens of millions of dollars each year over the next few years in our own people, lab space, building prototypes, and investing in start-up companies. All of this will be aimed at developing technologies that are proved at least at a pilot scale, and then ready to be manufactured and deployed at gigawatt-and-beyond scales in, say, five years.

There are lots of companies and research groups doing work on technologies that have a reasonable chance of getting to the price point we're talking about in 15 or 20 years, but we feel that there's both an urgent problem as well as an opportunity that demands getting there much faster, if at all possible. From a climate point of view, we can't afford to wait 15 or 20 years to really start to curb global emissions in a big way.

Question What renewable technologies are you focusing on -- far-out concepts, or proven technologies like solar panels and wind turbines?

Answer We are not at the moment focused on solar panels and traditional wind turbines. We are looking quite generally at solar, wind, and geothermal because those are pretty large resources that could potentially, any one of them, supply a very large fraction of the world's energy needs.

But there are technology problems that need to be solved, including cost and the fact that solar and wind are intermittent resources, they're not there all the time, which means if you want to have them be a large fraction of your electricity supply, you need to figure out how to store that kind of energy on a very large scale. There's also the issue of transmission, because the best solar and wind resources are in regions of the country where there aren't a lot of people and a lot of demand. So we need better high-voltage lines to allow you to move more power long distances.

Question What's an example of something you are working on?

answer In the realm of solar, we're concentrating on solar thermal technologies that capture the sun's energy as heat and use that to make steam, which then drives a steam turbine -- just as a coal plant might burn coal and use steam. (Photovoltaic panels, by contrast, convert the sun's light directly into electricity.) It's actually relatively cheap and easy to store the heat for a few hours, which makes this thermal plant one of most promising options for making solar a constant, base-load power source.

Question Many argue that coal's price advantage over renewables is an illusion, that the real costs of coal are not represented in its market price. So effectively you're fighting on a tilted playing field. Would Google lobby for regulatory measures that would level the playing field, like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system?

Answer We might. We've been talking about that. I think generally we are supportive of internalizing those externalities.

At the same time, if you realistically look at the price differential between renewables and nonrenewables today, even with, say, a $30-per-ton price on carbon -- which is pretty high compared to what's been seen in the European trading system so far, or what's been proposed as a likely target of a carbon cap or tax in this country -- that might still not quite narrow the gap between renewables and coal. So we need the technology side, too.

At Google, our focus for the moment is on driving the cost of renewables down as much as possible. And if society manages to raise the cost of coal, then that will help renewables compete.

But remember, this is a global problem, it's not just a U.S. problem. China and India are rapidly increasing their use of coal. It strikes me as unlikely that they will put a substantial price on carbon anytime soon. So even if we make renewables competitive with coal in the U.S. with a carbon price, that still won't be cheap enough to really matter in China and India -- in which case the climate is still in deep trouble. ...

Question You are also charged with the task of making Google carbon neutral. What strategies are you implementing to this end?

Answer There are three pieces. The first is energy efficiency, and that really should be the first on anybody's list. For a number of years, we've been designing our own servers and data centers. Our computing facilities use less than half the energy of a typical industry facility for the same amount of useful computing. That is a huge competitive advantage for us.

Second thing is to deploy renewables as widely as you can, and the major step we've taken to date on that is the 1.6-megawatt photovoltaic array here on our Mountain View campus. We committed in June to deploy a minimum of 50 megawatts of renewables by 2012; I would expect that we'll do more than that.

Third, once we've done everything we can around energy efficiency and renewables to reduce our emissions, we're investing in offset projects that, for example, eliminate methane emissions from landfills, coal mines, or agricultural waste.

Grist notes that a move to clean energy will create jobs, jobs, jobs.

Right on the heels of Tappergate, The New York Times comes out with a couple of articles exploring the economic benefits of fighting global warming. As is evident to anyone but a Taphole, the energy business is the largest business there ever is or was or will be, and therein lies not only enormous money-making opportunities but jobs, jobs, jobs. These things, we hear, are good for the economy.

So, take California, which decided to get serious about developing a solar industry. The state committed $3 billion in declining incentives over a 10-year period, and in return leveraged a lot more than that in private equity. Venture capitalists have put $625 million into California solar companies in 2007 alone. Manufacturers are feverishly commercializing new technologies, and if you can spell solar you can get a job out here.

So, how does an enterprising young state get a piece of that action? I'm glad you asked. Last Wednesday, in Denver, with Governor Ritter on hand, we released a report that we developed with the Center for American Progress titled "Developing State Photovoltaic Markets" (PDF). It's a blueprint for making a solar market work. The premise here is that the key to lowering solar's costs -- and generating good jobs while you are at it -- is creating markets. The folks at NREL have done a great job in developing the technology; photovoltaics work great. Government R&D efforts should be redoubled, but using policy to open markets will leverage orders of magnitude more in private equity and further accelerate solar's entry into the mainstream.

Continuing on the theme, one more from Grist, this time from Jon Rynn on "converting the permanent military economy to a green economy".

The way I see it, we need to understand three things: the nature of the military budget, the needs of the current infrastructure, and how infrastructure renewal could be used to create a green economy.

First, how much of the military budget could theoretically be transferred to civilian work? According to Chalmers Johnson, quoting other experts, in fiscal year 2009 the Department of Defense wants to spend $766.5 billion for "salaries, operations ... and equipment" ($481.4 billion), as well as to fight "the two on-going wars" in Iraq and Afganistan ($141.7 billion), "hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007" ($93.4 billion), and an "allowance" ($50 billion).

Then there's the "$23.4 billion for the Department of Energy [that] goes toward developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3 billion in the Department of State budget" for "foreign military assistance." There's a couple of extra billions for various expenses (why count those?), and another $7.6 billion "for the military-related activities of NASA."

Thus, there is about $825 billion in direct expenses, and also another $230-billion-plus that is used to repay interest on past military expenditures and payments to veterans, and also the $46 billion for Homeland Security; but let's use the $825 billion as the available pot of money.

The second area to understand is the current needs of the infrastructure. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to spend $1.6 trillion in the next five years in order to bring the infrastructure up to an adequate level. So that's $320 billion a year for five years, or about 39 percent of the available military budget.

Now, Johnson quotes Thomas Woods, to the effect that between 1947 and 1987, the U.S. military had spent enough money that the entire network of factories and infrastructure could have been rebuilt instead. Woods is a libertarian economist who once contacted me concerning the work of the late Professor Seymour Melman, a friend of mine.

Melman was, according to Johnson, "The pioneer in analyzing what has been lost as a result of military Keynesianism," that is, the use of military spending to try to keep the economy moving; Melman wrote several books and many articles backing up his assertions with in-depth research and analysis, and published several op-ed pieces in The New York Times showing the trade-offs between expensive military programs and critical infrastructure needs in the U.S., such as education and housing.

At the rate we're going, then, the military budgets will preempt the building of a green infrastructure and economy. Unless the military budget is reined in, it will be very difficult to find the resources to create the "green engine," to quote Barack Obama, that "can drive growth for many years to come."

As Miriam Pemberton showed in a recent report for the Institute for Policy Studies, there is an enormous gulf between spending for the military and spending to reverse global warming.

The third major consideration I proposed was greening the economy. Including the $320 billion that the ASCE advocates spending on infrastructure, what could the $825 billion military budget be used to for? Here are a few ideas, which I will grandly call the National Program of Economic Reconstruction and Environmental Restoration:

1. A high-speed rail network among all of the bigger cities;
2. Light rail networks within most cities
3. Bus rapid transit between cities and near suburbs
4. Bike lanes with physical barriers along most city streets
5. A program to put solar panels on most rooftops
6. A program to put geothermal exchange units under most buildings (for heating and cooling)
7. A federally owned, or at least regulated, national high-voltage DC electrical grid, hooking up to:
* Environmentally sensitive wind farms
* Environmentally sensitive solar thermal farms, and
* Environmentally sensitive deep geothermal plants
8. A policy of encouraging organic, permaculture-like farm belts around most cities;
9. A policy of encouraging the building of walkable communities in cities and near suburbs
10. A national policy of no more than 15 students per classroom, with:
* Universal pre-kindergarten, starting with one-year-olds, and
* Universal health insurance, of course
11. Contribution to Lester R. Brown's global plan for alleviating poverty and environmental destruction, as laid out in his book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civiliation

In other news :

Reuters also reports on Google's clean energy investment plans, announced at the Cleantech investor summit.

Triple Pundit has a post looking at the question "has world oil supply peaked" ?



The Wall Street Journal has a post on ASPO USA's offer of a wager on the peak date to CERA.

The Wall Street Journal is also wondering Siberia will be Solar Power's Next Heartland, looking at Russian company nitol solar's plans to join Wacker Chemie and Hemlock Semiconductor in producing high purity silicon for solar panel manufacturers.

Cleantech.com has an article on China-based Yingli Green Energy Holding which says it has trimmed the thickness of its solar wafers by 10 percent, cutting the amount of polysilicon needed and reducing the cost of production. The company plans to expand its capacity to 400 MW by the end of 2008 and to 600 MW by the end of 2009.

Cleantech.com also reports that iceland's Glitnir Bank looking to invest in geothermal projects in India.

Cleantech.com also has an article on the Earth-1 tire from Yokohama, which they claim reduces rolling resistance by 21 percent (and thus is more fuel efficient) by using a proprietary compound they call Super Nanopower Rubber made from orange oil and natural rubber.

Renewable Energy Access reports that the Ontario government has had a change of policy and the Great Lakes May Soon be Home to Offshore Wind.

Grist reports that wind power technicians are in high demand.

The Energy Blog notes that the National Geographic Special on Global Warming, "Six Degrees Could Change the World", starts on Sunday.

The Energy Blog also reports that MIT and TI have teamed up to develop a chip that is up to 10 times more energy-efficient than current chips.

After Gutenberg notes Google isn't the only tech giant going green - Intel is purchasing 1.3 Billion kWh of Renewable Energy.

Popular Science has a look at wireless electricity transmission - also known as "WiTricity" (one of Nicola Tesla's old ideas).

Tom at EE/RE Investing has a post on another reason to drive a hybrid - you never need to replace your brake pads (thanks to regenerative braking).

Technology Review has a post on generative-braking power system that converts energy expended while a person is walking into electricity, without adding any extra drag.

Inhabitat also has a couple of posts on human power, looking at a "Energy-Generating Green Microgym in Seattle" and an energy generating revolving door from Fluxxlab, seeking to help us all empathise with hamsters.



There is plenty more at Inhabitat including a Tesla Motors have announced a hybrid car as well as their pure electric vehicle and some guerilla gardening strategies.

One final image from Inhabitat, this one from a post noting the plans for Norman Foster’s Masdar carbon neutral city have made their debut.



I'll close with Tyler Hamilton from Clean Break, looking at "Harnessing Back EMF to create "free" energy?". Yes - this is the first time Tyler has made it to the tinfoil slot - but its worth a read - the free energy memeworld has endless energy and refuses to admit defeat...

The story, published in the Toronto Star today, takes a look at an Ottawa-area inventor who stumbled upon a way of making electric induction motors work, at the very least, more efficiently. At most, he believes he's figured out a way to manipulate magnetic fields so that instead of slowing down a generator (according to Lenz's law in physics) it speeds it up. In fact, it gets caught in a positive feedback loop, resulting in a dramatic acceleration without any change to power input.

The story is divided into two links. The first is more about the inventor's journey, the second is a closer look at what he has found.

Normally I would shy away from covering such stories, but three things convinced me it was worth telling: 1) The University of Ottawa has opened its doors and is currently putting the invention through tests; 2) A respected MIT electromagnetics engineer/professor who recently saw a demonstration admitted to me afterwards that he was stumped, and while he didn't admit (or deny) it broke any laws of physics his reaction was telling: "It's an unusual phenomenon... But I saw it. It's real. I'm just now trying to figure it out."; 3) The inventor, Thane Heins, has conviction and understands that what he has found seems, on the surface, ludicrous. He wants to find out what's going on as much as the next guy. He is no scammer, in my judgement.

As a reporter who isn't an engineer or physicist, I'm in no position to say I believe Heins claims. I'll leave that debate up to people smarter than, but hopefully as open-minded as myself. I will say I believe that Heins believes, and that several well-trained, highly respected academics he has demonstrated it to can't seem to explain it. At least not yet.

Labels: cleantech, coal, energy, gas, jobs, nuclear, oil, power

Posted by Big Gav at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Comments

Triple Pundit reports that the voyage of the Beluga has completed successfully, showing that the SkySails system can work. More at The Times Of Malta.

We’ve been keeping tabs on the progress of the Beluga SkySails, first modern commercial cargo vessel to harness wind power with a deployable computer controlled kite.

The ship arrived in the Venezuelan port of Guanta on Tuesday, leaving from Germany on January 22nd.

SkySails didn’t deploy the high-tech kite system until reaching the Azores, midway in her voyage. Once fully deployed, the system saved between 10 and 15 percent in fuel consumption, or $1000 to $1500 per day, according to Verena Frank, project manager for the SkySails. This was the first time the system had been tested under the difficult conditions of the mid-Atlantic.

As bugs get ironed out and crews gain expertise with the system, the kite can be deployed for up to half of a typical voyage while fuel conservation is expected to increase another 5 to 10 percent.

While some skeptics insist that the kite system isn’t practical for the largest cargo vessels, SkySails’ innovative approach and application of wind power may just prove the skeptics wrong.

Labels: beluga, skysails, wind

Posted by Big Gav at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Engineer Live reports that the First major Kuwaiti gas project has been delayed again.

Production from Kuwait's first non-associated gas field has been delayed once again, to early March; meanwhile, the government will renew attempts to push legislation making investor participation possible in the country's Project Kuwait through parliament, writes Middle East energy analyst Samuel Ciszuk.

Gas production from Kuwait's first non-associated gas field will shortly bring 175 mmcf/d of natural gas and 50,000 b/d of light crude and condensates onstream, in the first out of four development phases.

The second phase — which will be launched almost immediately on the completion of the first — is expected to come onstream in 2011 and will raise production to 600 mmcf/d of natural gas and 165,000 b/d of light oil and condensates.

A third stage should bring gas production to 1 bcf/d, and has been revised to allow for 350,000 b/d production of light oil and condensates in 2015 — up from 275,000 b/d in previous plans —and a fourth phase has now been added. This fourth-phase development will aim to take the field's production to 1.5 bcf/d of gas, although according to Agence France Presse (AFP) Hashem Hashem, deputy director of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), declined to reveal a time-frame for the completion of the final phase.

Meanwhile Turkish Daily News reports that Kuwait is to start importing LNG by ship from Qatar next year as they struggle to produce enough gas to run their power generation facilities.

Kuwait will start importing between 500 million and 750 million cubic feet of LNG daily from Qatar by sea next year, a top oil official said yesterday. "In 2009 we will definitely import LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) by ships which will operate in summer," the chief executive officer of national oil firm Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC) Saad al-Shuwaib said.

Import facilities will be ready by the end of the year, Shuwaib told a two-day conference organized by MEED magazine. He said most of the imports will be used to supply power and water desalination plants when demand rises sharply during the summer months in the desert state. The two Gulf states had been planning to have the gas piped through Saudi Arabia but the kingdom refused to allow this because of political differences with Qatar.

Kuwait, the fourth largest OPEC producer, is rich in oil but short on natural gas despite a huge discovery in 2006. The emirate currently produces around one billion cubic feet of associated natural gas, but that amount is insufficient to meet increased demand for power plants and water desalination. Kuwait in March 2006 announced the discovery for the first time of 35 trillion cubic feet (one trillion cubic meters) of free natural gas and about 10 billion barrels of light oil in its northern oilfields.

AFP reports that Kuwait is to spend $51 bln on oil development - increasing oil output to 4 million bpd (apparently Burgan isn't as far in decline as some people fear, or they have a lot more where that came from) and building new refineries.

he Gulf state of Kuwait plans to spend 51 billion dollars over the next five years to upgrade its vital energy sector which generates 95 percent of its revenue, a top oil executive said Monday. "We plan projects worth 51 billion dollars for upstream and downstream projects in the oil sector... up until early 2013," said Saad al-Shuwaib, chief executive officer of national conglomerate Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC).

The projects include raising Kuwait's oil output capacity from 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) to four million bpd by 2020, besides building a large refinery and upgrading existing refineries, he said. ...

Conference speakers attributed the increase to a surge in the cost of projects in general and the energy sector in particular over the past five years as a result of the spike in crude prices, which hit 100 dollars a barrel earlier this year. The oil output expansion involves the controversial Kuwait Project which seeks the assistance of international oil companies to develop the nation's northern oilfields, Shuwaib said.

The estimated 8.5 billion dollar project aims to double production to 900,000 bpd from four oilfields but has been stalled for more than a decade by the opposition-controlled parliament. Shuwaib said KPC plans to expand its exploration of untapped areas in Kuwait, which is the fourth largest OPEC producer and sits on about 10 percent of global crude reserves. Current output is pumps around 2.5 million bpd. "So far, we have only been working on less than one-third of Kuwait's total area. Now, we plan to start exploration and drilling in other areas," he said.

Labels: gas, kuwait, lng, oil

Posted by Big Gav at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments

Grist has a "green take on Super Tuesday", looking at the contrast between the Democrat and Republican front runners.

Coming out of Super Tuesday's primaries and caucuses in 22 states, the Republicans are looking ever more likely to nominate their most eco-conscious candidate, John McCain, who was the big GOP winner of the day. But green issues don't seem to have played much if any role in the Republican voting, and McCain didn't reference anything environmental in his speech to supporters at the end of the night. In contrast, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- who are still running oh so close -- both made impassioned calls for environmental action in their speeches on Tuesday.

"I see an America where we stand up to the oil companies and the oil-producing countries, where we launch a clean energy revolution and finally confront the climate crisis," said Clinton, who also praised "businesses who are training people for green-collar jobs" and "the auto companies and the auto workers who want higher gas-mileage cars so we can compete with the rest of the world." Said Obama, "[W]e will harness the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all and we will invest in solar and wind and biodiesel, clean energy, green energy that can fuel economic development for generations to come." And the race goes on ..

Crikey's Guy Rundle has also been following the primaries and was mighty impressed with Obama's latest speech.

So far, Obama's taken nine states, some, like Georgia, he could have reasonably banked on, but in some he's absolutely stormed in, like the 73% result in Kansas, and the 67% in Minnesota. But he's also gained a surprisingly strong showing in New York, taking almost 40% from Clinton -- this all matters because of the arcane way in which the delegates are being awarded on the Democratic side.

In fact MSNBC is now saying that delegates could be a 50/50 split, although with 6% of the votes counted in California, Clinton is leading about 2 to 1. But whatever result she gets, it's a win for Obama – and a guarantee that the next months are going to be an absolutely grueling campaign for every last delegate – including the 22 or so to be selected by the Democrats Abroad primary over the next few days. Clinton spoke about half an hour ago, and she sounded wooden and depleted – as she would, having actually taken fewer states than Obama. Obama's speaking now – the networks cut off the end of McCain's speech to get the start of Obama's, which is about as symbolic as it gets – and he sounds like he just cranked it up a notch.

It's a new speech -- not his stump, thank Christ -- and it's expert, effortlessly moving from the general, to the empowering ("This is not about what I'm doing, it is what you are doing – because you are tired of the failure, tired of the lies ..." etc) and then onto the specifics, the mother foreclosed on, the soldier going on another tour in a war that never should have been waged. God it's a good speech, like Bach perfectly played, every part fitting together, every note struck at exactly the right strength.

It feels like you're watching the moment in the race when the second runner hits the front and magically draws out the energy of the leader as they're passed. You can count off every technique outlined by Saul Alinsky, the Chicago activist who was Obama's inspiration – from the particular to the general, the pregnant pause, turning it round from speaker to audience, the parable that leads to the invocation, taking the story through to the call to action – "we are the people we have been waiting for to change the world. The time is unlike any other. Let's go to work!"

The mention of Alinsky reminded me of this MSNBC article from last year on Hillary's "hidden thesis" (the only time I've ever heard of him) - maybe Obama and Clinton aren't all that far apart in their inspirations. That said, both are hard to make out, as their sniping session a while back (about Hillary being an ex-WalMart board member and Obama being backed by a Chicago "slumlord" - and one soon to go on trial at that) demonstrated. Certainly neither seem to have any friends on the far left, who you would think would still admire Alinsky.

The senior thesis of Hillary D. Rodham, Wellesley College class of 1969, has been speculated about, spun, analyzed, debated, criticized and defended. But rarely has it been read, because for the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency it was locked away.

As forbidden fruit, the writings of a 21-year-old college senior, examining the tactics of radical community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, have gained mythic status among her critics — a “Rosetta Stone,” in the words of one, that would allow readers to decode the thinking of the former first lady and 2008 presidential candidate. ...

Rodham’s thesis describes trying to pin him down on his personal philosophy: “Alinsky, cringing at the use of labels, ruefully admitted that he might be called an existentialist,” she wrote. Rodham tried to ask him about his moral relativism — particular ends, he said, often do justify the means — but Alinsky would only concede that “idealism can parallel self-interest.”

In her paper, she accepted Alinsky's view that the problem of the poor isn't so much a lack of money as a lack of power, as well as his view of federal anti-poverty programs as ineffective. (To Alinsky, the War on Poverty was a “prize piece of political pornography,” even though some of its funds flowed through his organizations.) “A cycle of dependency has been created,” she wrote, “which ensnares its victims into resignation and apathy.”

In formal academic language, Rodham offered a “perspective” or muted critique on Alinsky's methods, sometimes leaving unclear whether she was quoting his critics or stating her own opinion. She cited scholars who claimed that Alinsky's small gains actually delayed attainment of bigger goals for the poor and minorities.

In criticizing the “few material gains” that Alinsky engineered — such as pressing Kodak Co. to hire blacks in Rochester, or delaying the University of Chicago's expansion into the Woodlawn neighborhood — Rodham placed part of the blame on demography, the diminishing role of neighborhoods in American life. Another part she laid charitably to an Alinsky character trait: “One of the primary problems of the Alinsky model is that the removal of Alinsky dramatically alters its composition," she wrote. "Alinsky is a born organizer who is not easily duplicated, but, in addition to his skill, he is a man of exceptional charm."

In the end, she judged that Alinsky's “power/conflict model is rendered inapplicable by existing social conflicts” — overriding national issues such as racial tension and segregation. Alinsky had no success in forming an effective national movement, she said, referring dismissively to “the anachronistic nature of small autonomous conflict.”

Putting Alinsky's Rochester symphony threat into academic language, Rodham found that the conflict approach to power is limited. “Alinsky's conclusion that the ‘ventilation’ of hostilities is healthy in certain situations is valid, but across-the-board ‘social catharsis’ cannot be prescribed,” she wrote.

She noted, however, that he was trying to broaden his reach: In 1969, Alinsky was developing an institute in Chicago at his Industrial Arts Foundation, aimed at training organizers to galvanize a surprising target: the middle class. That was the job he offered to Hillary Rodham.

Though some student activists of the 1960s may have idolized Alinsky, he didn't particularly idolize them. At the time Hillary Rodham brought him to Wellesley in January 1969 to speak at a private dinner for a dozen students, he was expressing dissatisfaction with New Left protesters such as the Students for a Democratic Society. One of his criticisms, surprisingly, was their tactical mistake of rejecting middle-class values.

Rodham closed her thesis by emphasizing that she reserved a place for Alinsky in the pantheon of social action — seated next to Martin Luther King, the poet-humanist Walt Whitman, and Eugene Debs, the labor leader now best remembered as the five-time Socialist Party candidate for president.

“In spite of his being featured in the Sunday New York Times," she wrote of Alinsky, "and living a comfortable, expenses-paid life, he considers himself a revolutionary. In a very important way he is. If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared — just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths — democracy.”

Sidebar: ALINSKY's RULES FOR RADICALS - "Personalize it"

Saul Alinsky's rules of power tactics, excerpted from his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals"

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Back to Guy Rundle at Crikey, who also has some comments about global warming policy and tornados.

"If you are Mitt Romney you can't say this is a good night."
"Well, if you're Mitt Romney you've entrenched your vote among conservatives ..."
"Nooooo - if you're Mitt Romney you can say you've got good hair – that's all you can say."
- MSNBC exchange last night.

It tore across the heart of the country, ripping up everything in its path – no, it wasn't the Mike Huckabee express, it was a brace of tornados that the rest of the country barely noticed until all the votes had been counted. When the Super Tuesday storm died down, the death toll of the real storm was 50.

I'm not the type to point to every weird weather episode as evidence of climate change – but an increasing number of Americans are, and that includes the insurance companies. Millions of homes across the west's tornado alley and on the Gulf coast are uninsurable, effectively destroying their value. If anything was likely to remind Americans of the last eight years of torpor and failure, it's this perfect storm, the economy meeting the environment, your sub-prime mortgage home you can't afford the payments on suddenly being unsellable because no one wants to buy a future pile of matchwood.

The increasing perception that the environment is getting up and walking around the joint in great big boots has undoubtedly been great for McCain, who's been the only Republican to really campaign on the issue - although of course he's talked about it a lot more in states with open primaries rather than in the hardcore GOP-only zones. Huckabee has also been leaning on the Biblical notion of stewardship of God's earth to carve a furrow between the evangelicals and a policy they regarded as communism not so long ago.

Only Mitt Romney is giving out that guffawing Chamber of Commerce rhetoric ("Hey – it's global warming! Why should we pay for it all?"), constructing the environment as an add-on, a position as 80s nostalgic as big floppy hair and an interesting Peter Carey novel. That isn't the only reason why Mitt tripped – he pretty much screwed up on everything, and Huckabee's relentless southern barnstorming wore the foundations away.

McCain has so far picked up 613 delegates, with Romney on 270 and Huckabee on 190. McCain seems to have been pretty sure it would fall out that way, which is why he spent so much time campaigning in Romney's home state Massachusetts, hoping to land the killer blow. Mitt won that 41 to 30%, but all the pundits have begun the deathwatch. There's not a chance he'd get the VP slot – there'd be a McCain-Noam Chomsky ticket before that happened. Indeed, McCain's in a hell of a dilemma VP-wise, since any choice that might blunt Obamappeal – Condoleeza Rice has been spoken of (though she has such a Bush taint that may be hype) – would simply drive the evangelicals further away. But a McCain-Huckabee ticket would put a man who believes angels guide bullets to their targets, one icy-path-shattered hip away from the nuclear button.

Really I was hoping Romney would get the nomination, because a Clinton/Obama v Romney stoush would be like a grudge match between a real person and a piece of whitebait on a string. If McCain can knock Romney out early, he can start attacking the Democrats and the race will come right in. Unless Huckabee scarfs up Romney's delegates in toto, and really lays a number on him from the Right.

For the Democrats, Obama's performance was very much in the tornado mode, as a glance at the results show. With the exception of her home state, Clinton's victories were all in the 50-60% range. Obama's numbers by contrast were huge, hitting high sixties and seventies in states as diverse as Georgia, Minnesota and Kansas.

The results clearly demonstrate that white Democrats will get behind him – though whether the swinging voters he needs in the mid-west will follow remains to be seen – and Camp Obama is also claiming that they have a lot more scope for fundraising over the next months, saying that Hillary Clinton has tapped out the $2000 maximum on her supporters, while Obama's crowd have been giving in hundred and fifties here and there. Indeed news has just come in that Clinton has put $5 mill of her own cash in (as a "loan") to her campaign, and staff are working for no salary (Bill, it should be noted, has earnt $40 million from speeches over the past few years. Working without pay is like running a garage sale for the Ceaucescus).

The Democrat race is going to go on and on – Hillary wasn't being cute when she tipped her hat to American Samoa in her speech last night. A plurality could easily come down to primaries in Puerto Rico or the currently underway Democrats Abroad primary – although if it gets that close the Convention will be a very ugly fight about credentials, voting irregularities etc etc. That's routine convention behaviour, and not enough to cause a serious rift in the party – unless Clinton, or realistically the Clintons, try to get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated.

Both states were stripped of their delegates for moving their primaries to earlier than Super Tuesday, and all candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. Then on the eve of a South Carolina primary she knew she was going to lose, Hillary started making noises about "ohhhhh it's terrible that all these people are going to be unrepresented" and then bent the rules by flying to Flordia for a "victory" party on the night of the dead primary.

If the Clintons made a real effort to seat these delegates, it will sour the entire run. If they manage to seat them, it would plunge the party into crisis. Are the Clintons that crazed that they would put the party through that. Why that'd be as crazy as ... as ... swapping your second term effectiveness for an executive chair BJ, or sending a 6000-page health care bill to Congress, scorning all tactical advice.

Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle also turns out a few witty phrases from time to time, and he is also pondering the Clinton / Obama matchup - an Exxon's record profits - in "Dead soldiers, peak oil and mind-boggling profits; praise Jesus, the machine's still working".

Surprisingly moving Barack Obama music videos? The potential end of the writer's strike? Cute young deer being saved by helicopters? No no no no no. Here are your most deeply inspiring news stories of the month:

A flurry of pink slips fluttered over the job sector as corporate payrolls were sliced like sour pie. Foreclosures are skyrocketing and new home sales across the nation are plummeting faster than Britney Spears' serotonin levels. A nasty recession is either creeping or flooding in, depending on your perspective and how recently you purchased your home and/or tried to dump your Google stock.

Meanwhile, the largest corporation in the world, the one which has consistently raked in the largest and most appalling profits of any organization on Earth, a company so powerful and deeply influential to the machinations of our own nation, our government, the globe, so ingrained and unstoppable that no president, no administration, no nuclear warhead to its CEO's home planet stands a chance of slowing it down or altering its behavior in any significant way because there is simply far, far too much money involved in its nefarious endeavors, has recently posted the largest profit of any company in American history.

Yes, the Exxon Mobil corporation sucked in a staggering $11.7 billion in a single quarter (more than $40 billion for the year, a new record for an American company) thanks largely to record-breaking prices for a barrel of oil, which are of course only record-breaking because, well, the Bush administration has essentially engineered the economy and launched a bogus war and desiccated the American idea exactly so they would be.

Oh yes, two more trifling stories, buried beneath the nauseating Exxon headlines and the tales of looming economic struggle: More U.S. soldiers are dead in Iraq as a result of Bush's failed war, U.S. military spending in 2009 will reach its highest levels since WWII ($515 billion), insurgents have taken to strapping suicide bombs to mentally retarded women and nearly 100 more civilians are dead in another bombing in Baghdad because the U.S. troop surge is working so well. Oh wait.

Do you feel the righteousness? The inspiration? Can you sense the deep connection between these stories? Because the truth is, they merely add up to the heartwarming conclusion that, without a doubt, American capitalism is still firing on all cylinders. Praise!

Yes, the system is working just exactly as those in control of the nation right now wish it to be working, with the most dominant, ruthless corporations in the world (Exxon joined by Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhilips et al) still making the most money in the most destabilizing and environmentally devastating manner possible, while poor uneducated kids die like chattel in unwinnable wars trying to secure a tiny bit more of the source of their profit.

And somewhere in between, the nation's overall health and well-being are sacrificed like dazed lambs to an ignorant god, with our government offering up only the most meager, desultory efforts to keep it functional so as to not induce all-out fire-and-pitchfork revolt.

Is that too simplistic? Too reductive? Not even close. Hell, you can distill it down even further. For if you understand, as most sentient creatures on the planet now do, that this "war" is merely a particularly bloody chunk of a particularly brutal, fraudulent national energy policy spearheaded by Dick Cheney and beloved by Saudi Arabia and Halliburton and most of Texas, then it is no stretch at all to say that we are sending American kids to their deaths exactly so Exxon can continue to make $3 billion in a single month (or: $100 million per day, $4 million per hour, or more than $1,000 every. Single. Second).

Or how about this for dark math: $40 billion for the year, 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers ... that's a cool $10 million in pure profit for every American soldier BushCo has thrown to the wolves of petroleum, just for 2007 alone. Even if you factor in the 20,000 wounded, paralyzed and brain damaged U.S. soldiers — not to mention the record number of military suicides — on a body-by-body basis, you've still got yourself one hell of a sweet profit margin. See Dick Cheney's vile, crooked little grin? Now you know where it comes from.

This, you might argue, is perhaps the bleakest way to look at American capitalism, as an instrument of war and death and gluttony that serves only the most cretinous corporate masters at the expense of, well, everyone else. This is the capitalism of the hard right, a particularly ruthless type that happily sacrifices quite literally everything — the environment, health, human life, God, national identity, the stability of future generations — for the sake of immediate and unchecked profit.

It is the kind of system, furthermore, that brings with it a huge, nauseating sense of shame for how we have approached the world, pouring a vague disgust over the nation like a cancerous sludge. This is perhaps BushCo's cruelest gift of all: tragically convincing us that this strain of capitalism, a furious weapon of greed and disgrace, inviting all manner of corruption and destruction as it brings out the absolute worst in the human animal, is the only flavor there really is.

But then again, no. Maybe there's something else, a flipside we've forgotten amid the insane oil profits and dead bodies and global mistrust. It's the awkward truism that American capitalism is potentially capable, despite its dark core of profit, despite its frequently poisoned heart, of tremendous creative opportunity and ingenuity. Like porn, like God, like wisdom and plutonium and very, very dark rum, it's all in how you use it.

Here, then, is perhaps the most dominant question surrounding the upcoming big transition, as the nation prepares over the next year to finally rid itself of the cancer of Bush: Are we still capable of reshaping the capitalist demon, injecting it, on a national scale, with something like conscience and compassion and responsibility, sans the need to sell your mother, rape Alaska, or bomb ancient cities and kill pathetic foreign dictators in a pitiable attempt to vindicate your dad? Is such a turnaround even possible anymore?

Because this nasty truth remains: Bush or no, Exxon and its nefarious, insanely powerful ilk are ramming full speed ahead, undertaking more incredibly brutal, land-raping techniques as you read these very words to get at the Earth's remaining supply of oil, sucking up tar sand and coal and anything else possible to maintain profit and power. They are, and will continue to be, utterly relentless and, at least for a number of years to come, quite unstoppable.

There is no eliminating the dark side of capitalism, the gluttony and the greed and the violent underbelly. There is only minimizing, shifting the emphasis, changing the pitch and angle of approach, trying to take what is, at its very heart, a flawed and self-destructive system, and making it into something proud and interesting and vibrant, something actually worth defending.

Can it be done? Is it still possible? No matter how many poetic Barack Obama speeches, no matter how many pragmatic Hillary Clinton promises, it's a question that seems far bigger than both of them. And the truth is, it's really the only question that matters.

Labels: clinton, obama, politics, us

Posted by Big Gav at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Big Gav at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments

Grist reports that new coal fired power plants have been "Mark(et)ed for Death" by Wall Street as concerns about future cap and trade schemes (or even better, carbon taxes) make the financial future of dirty energy infrastructure appear grim.

Three major investment banks, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, will announce new environmental standards today that are expected to make it more difficult for large coal-fired power plants in the United States to get funding. The standards anticipate some form of cap-and-trade program becoming law in the U.S. in coming years and seek to force utilities to plan for the inevitable; coal plants seeking funding would first have to prove they can be financially viable under a cap-and-trade system. The three banks said that they would consider funding energy efficiency measures and renewable-energy projects ahead of coal plants and that when funding coal projects they'll heavily favor plants that can successfully capture and sequester their carbon emissions. The banks maintain that their primary motivation for the standards is financial; Wall Street bigwigs don't want to be stuck with debt when coal plants are forced to pay for at least a portion of their emission allowances under cap and trade. Jeffrey Holzschuh of Morgan Stanley paraphrased Melissa Etheridge, crooning, "We have to wake up some people who are asleep."

In other news:

The Energy Blog has a related post on "Leading Wall Street Banks Establishing The Carbon Principles".

The Energy Blog also points to an interview with Charles Maxwell - summarising it as "Oil Shortages Start in 2010; Peak Oil Hits 2012-2015

In the wake of the cancellation of the FutureGen project, The New York Times asks Is Capturing CO2 a Pipe Dream?, while The Age notes the US move is a blow to Australian clean-coal projects.

TreeHugger has a report on the "The Aerogenerator" - a 9MW Vertical Axis wind turbine from Scottish company WindPower.



Tyler Hamilton has an article in Technology Review, reporting on"Flexible, Nanowire Solar Cells" that use "exotic materials and cheaper substrates" which could lead to better photovoltaics.

Renewable Energy Access has a post on two research projects that are using E. coli to create different types of fuel. In one project, researchers have "tweaked" E. coli so that it will produce hydrogen. In another, E. coli is being used to create higher-chain alcohols that can be used as a petrol substitute.

REA also has an article from Christopher Flavin of WorldWatch, arguing that "there are good reasons to think that the world may be on the verge of a major transformation of energy markets" in "The Final Tipping Point".

The BBC reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has attended the launch of a new high-speed train made by Alstom - the AGV (Automotrice Grande Vitesse) train will travel at up to 360km/h (224mph) with motors placed under each carriage.

Wired reports that MIT has launched a "Pervasive Environmental Sensor Program". This is good news from the point of view that we need good data on environmental changes in order to monitor the state of the world and to measure the effectiveness (or otherwise) of actions to restore it and mitigate negative changes. Wired notes that " the expansion of "global environmental sensor networks" is exactly what Jamais Cascio recommended yesterday in Foreign Policy to prevent the undetectable weaponizing of the climate".

Morgan Spurlock (of "Super Size Me" fame) has been the talk of the town at the Sundance movie festival, with his new film "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?'". Wasn't Dubya supposed to be doing something about catching him ? How many years has it been now ? And how much money has flowed into Saudi coffers (and those of Texas oil companies) during that time ?

Labels: coal

Posted by Big Gav at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments

The New York Times is quoting CERA and Daniel Yergin as saying that global warming will drive large scale investment in clean energy. No mention of peak oil, but global warming serves as a good proxy to encourage the right responses...

The oil shocks of the 1970s produced a flurry of attention to alternative sources of energy, but it faded once prices dropped in the mid-1980s. Now, with oil prices again high and climate change moving up the list of public concerns, interest in alternative energy is once again at fever pitch.

Is history about to repeat itself?

Not likely, according to a leading energy consulting firm. In a report scheduled for release Tuesday, the firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, concludes that multiple factors will continue pushing the world toward greater use of alternative energy sources like sun and wind power, regardless of what happens to oil prices.

“The focus today on clean energy is not a bubble or passing phenomenon,” the report says. “Unconventional clean energy is now poised to cross the divide and move from the fringes of the energy sector to the mainstream.”

What makes today different from the 1970s is growing apprehension about global warming as a threat to political security and the environment, according to the report. That is pushing governments to demand, and subsidize, greater use of alternative energy.

“Climate change and putting a price on carbon will change the dynamics of the energy marketplace,” said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and a leading historian on the oil industry. He noted that with the Chinese and Indian economies growing rapidly, “you need renewables as part of the solution to meet this astonishing demand growth.”

The report notes that renewable fuels will remain small compared with conventional fuels for many years, and their rate of adoption will be determined by the intersection of government policies, economic growth rates and technological breakthroughs.

But the report projects that rising private and public investment in clean energy — including biofuels like ethanol; renewable power, including wind, geothermal and solar generation; nuclear energy; and techniques to capture and store carbon emissions — could surpass $7 trillion by 2030. In 2007, roughly $125 billion was invested in such energy sources worldwide, said Robert LaCount, lead author of the report, about 20 percent more than the year before.

Other analysts say there is no guarantee energy in the future will be cleaner because renewable energy is effectively in a race with other unconventional sources, like liquefied coal, Canadian oil sands and oil shale, which emit higher amounts of carbon dioxide than conventional hydrocarbons. While several major oil companies have joined smaller firms in investing in wind, geothermal and solar energy sources, they are investing far more money at the moment in oil sands.

Environmentalists at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pembina Institute have estimated that at least 20 percent of the pollution reductions coming from the new vehicle fuel economy standards law, which Congress passed in 2007, would be negated by the additional production and refining of oil sands in Canada by 2020.

“Producing more low carbon fuels is all well and good, but their benefits can be washed out if we don’t tackle the threat of high carbon fuels like oil sands at the same time,” said Deron Lovaas, an analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ...

Labels: cera, clean energy, daniel yergin