Giles Parkinson at The Climate Spectator has a look at geothermal energy company Petratherm’s proposal for a renewable energy complex to power BHP’s Olympic Dam mine (the world’s largest if / when the expansion project is completed) - Cheap and green energy for miners.

It may seem somewhat audacious for a company with a market value of $16 million to propose a world-leading energy project nearly one hundred times its value. But, says Petratherm managing director Terry Kallis, if you don’t dream, you don’t get. And he just happens to think he’s sitting on a unique opportunity.

Kallis, on Wednesday, outlined his vision for a $1.5 billion clean energy precinct in the outback of South Australia that would take advantage of the unique combination of geothermal, solar and wind energy resources, the intersection of major gas pipelines, and the proximity of the world’s largest mine and other major developments.

The big opportunity is, of course, to service the massive energy demands of BHP Billiton’s proposed Olympic Dam expansion – which could be more than 700MW at that site alone – as well as other mine proposals or expansions such as Prominent Hill and Carrapateena. Mine managers do not normally think along the lines that Kallis has proposed – they will simply build a new transmission line if a connection is close enough, or build enough gas or diesel to ensure the operations keep going 24/7.

However, BHP Billiton have shown that they are willing to consider all options. As we reported in May, the world’s biggest mining company is effectively hedging its bets around the supply of energy and, after conducting a detailed analysis, is willing to concede that geothermal and solar power have the potential to offer the cheapest form of emissions reductions by the end of the decade, if not earlier, and the cheapest form of energy.

Kallis’ idea is to show BHP the path to get there, and to keep their options open as long as possible, so that they can take advantage of the opportunities when the new technologies are bankable, and can deliver at the costs anticipated. Kallis, of course, has great interest in this, because his company proposes to supply the geothermal energy – and Olympic Dam is too good an opportunity to let slide. "We want to make sure we don’t lose the opportunity to get geothermal into that market," he says.

Kallis proposes to create a clean energy precinct on the Moolawatana cattle station around 50km north of Petratherm’s Paralana geothermal prospect, and just over 200km from Olympic Dam. The plan calls for an initial 300MW of capacity – mostly gas sourcing fuel from the passing Moomba-Adelaide gas pipeline, and wind – and have that ready by 2016, around the time Olympic Dam would need it. The wind resource is not officially documented, but the cattle station’s name comes from the local indigenous word for “windy place", so Kallis expects that should not be a problem.

The idea is then to add another 300MW or so of geothermal and solar energy as those technologies mature by the end of the decade, and around the time Olympic Dam would be contemplating its next stage of expansion. The mixture of those four energy sources should provide the miner with the confidence of a secure supply. Kallis says they will be able to deliver attractive hybrid products that lower electricity costs and improve reliability, while also reducing carbon emissions.

Kallis has aligned himself with some unnamed parties – presumably gas, transmission and technology people – and plans to open formal talks with BHP with the view to obtaining a power purchase agreement. Failing that, they will talk to the local utility. Petratherm is, of course, in no position to fund this project, but as it has done by bringing in TruEnergy and Beach Petroleum to partner in its geothermal development, Kallis anticipates there will be no shortage of potential partners.

Of course, Kallis is not the only one to dream of creating a new energy precinct based around the needs of a large mining operation. The so-called “green grid" proposal to unlock huge wind resources in South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is still awaiting the opportunity to proceed and will rely mostly on an upgraded connection to the eastern seaboard and the Copperstring project in Queensland, a project that was noisily supported by local member Bob Katter and hoped to link Townsville and Mt Isa and open up a string of renewable energy plays in wind, solar and biomass along the way.

However, such was the length of the transmission line that the fate of Cooperstring rested on the support of a single end user in Mt Isa, in this case Xstrata. Despite support from the Queensland state government, the Swiss-based Xstrata board plumped for the easy, not necessarily cheaper, option of a gas fired power station, and Copperstring is now dead. BHP, at least, is alert to the options, and as the country's biggest company with the world's biggest mine, would be aware of strong signal it would send to the broader economy.

The Wall Street Journal reports that entry into the gas age is not without pain fopr would be exporters of Australian natural gas - Australia's Gas Pains.

Seven LNG projects now under construction in Australia are expected to cost 140 billion Australian dollars (US$144 billion). By 2020, Australia could produce as much as one quarter of the world's LNG—up from less than a tenth today—making it one of the world's top two producers alongside Qatar.

The price of such rapid growth will be high. Resource workers are expensive and will become more so as the market for labor remains tight. Woodside Petroleum has already seen cost overruns of US$3 billion at its giant Pluto LNG project in Western Australia, partly because of labor shortages.

The soaring Australian dollar, up 65% against the U.S. dollar since the worst of the financial crisis, is also pushing up the cost of business for resources companies.

Australia-listed Oil Search said last month the dollar's rise has pushed up the budget on its Papua New Guinea project, operated by Exxon Mobil, by US$700 million, or nearly 5%.

BernsteinResearch says the cost per ton of Australian LNG could average as much as US$4,000, compared with about US$1,000 at Apache's Kitimat project in western Canada.

For Australia's LNG projects, politics are an unwelcome obstacle. There are moves at federal and state levels that could limit gas extraction on vast tracts of land deemed critical to the country's agricultural production. That shouldn't affect existing projects, though it could temper expansion—which actually could help Australia avoid the worst labor shortages.

Meanwhile, pressure is building to get the Australian projects up and running soon. Qatar—which produces some of the world's lowest-cost LNG—has a moratorium on further development of its gigantic North field in order to preserve its longevity. But the self-imposed ban ends in 2013.

The ABC reports that Inpex are optimistic about their project going ahead - Inpex LNG venture tipped to attract investors.

A senior economist says he expects Inpex will have no trouble in securing investors for its planned multi-billion dollar gas project in Darwin. The Japanese company announced yesterday that it had already sold its total projected liquefied natural gas output from the proposed operation.

A final investment decision on the project, to pump gas from the Timor Sea to Darwin via a 900 kilometre pipeline, is yet to be announced. But it is believed Inpex hopes initial construction work will begin in March.

Macquarie Bank senior economist Brian Redican says investors are likely to view the project as a low-risk venture. He says a surge in oil prices in recent years means Inpex is in a strong position to secure investors. "Because petrol prices and energy prices are so high, they are actually extraordinarily profitable at the moment," he said.

The Australian has yet another report on the prospect of the US exporting LNG from shale gas - US to enter LNG export market amid domestic supply glut. It will interesting to see the reaction in the US if local gas prices converge with those in Asian export markets (the same unpleasant adjustment that is beginning in Australia already).

AUSTRALIAN gas exporters had better watch out - there's a new kid on the block. The US could emerge as a major competitor to Australia’s burgeoning gas-export market, challenging the viability or expansion plans of close to a dozen Australian liquefied natural gas projects, according to Noel Tomnay, the head of global gas at UK-based energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

Traditionally an importer of gas, the US is experiencing a domestic supply glut owing to heavy investment in the production of shale gas in states like Texas. That’s depressing US gas prices and prompting some companies to investigate the potential of terminals on the US coast geared for export to take advantage of higher prices abroad.

Cheniere Energy recently signed two long-term gas supply deals with offtakers, including with BG Group, as it presses ahead with plans to build the first LNG export terminal in the US. Last month, Cheniere said it has enough supply locked into long-term contracts to start construction of a proposed LNG export terminal in Sabine Pass, Louisiana, in 2012.

Tomnay told Deal Journal Australia: "We’re of the view that North America will have 20 million tonnes of LNG capacity maybe as early as 2018. Consequently, that will remove potential market share for Australian LNG projects."

Investment totalling more than $140 billion has been earmarked for new Australian LNG terminals focused mainly on Asia since 2007, which could catapult Australia ahead of Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter within a decade. In the latest development yesterday, Japan’s Inpex signed 15-year deals to supply five Japanese utilities with $US70 billion ($68.3bn) worth of LNG from its proposed Ichthys project in the Northern Territory.

The other risk facing would be LNG exporters to Asia is China taking its first steps towards producing shale gas - Chinese shale gas find may cut LNG demand
.

ROYAL Dutch Shell has found shale gas in China, prompting fears that the country could develop enough domestic supply to limit imports of liquefied natural gas. An official at PetroChina, Shell's partner in the region, told Reuters that results from two wells had been positive.

In less than a decade shale gas has transformed the US from gas shortage to a point where companies are planning to export LNG, fundamentally altering the dynamics of the international gas market. Existing LNG producers had hoped that higher demand from China would offset the decline in imports to the US.

Shale gas is obtained by hydraulically fracturing rock, which requires large quantities of water and chemicals. There is concern among environmentalists that the process can contaminate groundwater supplies.

Analysts have predicted shale gas could supply up to half the natural gas produced in North America by the end of this decade.

Totally off-topic, but I like this photo sharing / exhibition site - 1X

Phil at TOD ANZ has a chart showing Australia's widening oil import gap - Chart of Australian Oil Consumption and Production.

This graph of Australian oil consumption and production is based on the BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2011. I prepared it for a local government workshop later this week and thought I'd post it here for others to use.

Australia is one of very few OECD countries where oil consumption is still rising in this high oil price environment, albeit slowly. You can thank the resource economy for that (and the related strength of the Australian dollar).

Ugo at Cassandra's Legacy has some thoughts about this presentation (PDF) from ASPO Australia's Ian Dunlop - Recognizing good science when you see it: climate change seen by depletion scientists.

One of the most interesting talks at the recent meeting on Energy organized by the Club of Rome in Basel, was the one given by Ian Dunlop, of ASPO Australia (photo on the right). It was not so much on energy, but on the interconnection of energy with climate change. It was up to date and saying the things that needed to be said. That is, Ian Dunlop didn't shy away from saying that climate change is threatening the very existence of our civilization and that we must do something quick about it. It was an excellent talk, give a look to the slides if you have a moment, here is the link.

What I found surprising were the several comments that I heard later on from people attending the meeting. Some of those who didn't have a specific background in climate science seemed to be shocked. They didn't know, it seems, that the climate situation is so bad and that it is so urgent to act - but they now recognized the problem. This experience of mine in Basel parallels very well the one I had in Brussels for the ASPO-9 conference, when climate scientist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele gave a good talk on climate change. Also there, the reaction of some of the people attending the conference was of surprise; they never had a chance, apparently, to hear a comprehensive report on the climate situation.

Of course, I have no statistics about the average competence in climate science of the people who work with peak oil and similar subjects (let's call them "depletion scientists"). But my experience with this issue has been often disheartening: many depletion scientists are badly outdated in what they know about climate science. A few (just a few, fortunately!) make a banner of their ignorance and they fall for the most obvious propaganda tricks diffused by denialists or scoff at the whole idea with the simplistic statement "not enough oil for climate change". Alas, things are much more complex than that!

That doesn't mean that depletion scientists are not smart people; by all means they are. And it doesn't mean that there doesn't exist a parallel bias on the part of climate scientists who, often, appear to be totally oblivious of the situation in terms of resource depletion. The point is that we all suffer of narrow vision. The Internet is vast and we tend to go in depth only in the areas that we know well; the rest of our information often comes by a haphazard mix of what we read in the media. In this, we all suffer of "confirmation bias." (see below)

So, what you get from the media about climate change is that it is all a question of small details: did we see a warming during the past 10 years? What is the meaning of "hide the decline"? Didn't scientists fear "global cooling" in the 1970s? And so on. Even people who are on the side of climate science often seem to engage in the debate worrying about minor details. How many tons of CO2 can we save if we install double paned glasses in public buildings? Should we use public transportation instead of a private car for commuting? So, the general impression that you can get is that climate change is a minor issue affected by great uncertainties.

That the results of more than half a century of work in climate science have been reduced to such narrow terms in the media is a victory for denial: it is a way to keep people in the dark about what is really happening. But climate change is not something that can be stopped by double paned windows. It is a major upheaval of the whole earth ecosystem and it has the potential to do to us immense damage. The problem must be faced for what it is, in its complexity, and with the risks that come with it. Uncertainty is not an excuse for doing nothing: what we don't know is what is most dangerous for us.


So, it is very good to see that a good scientist can always recognize good science when he sees it. It has been the case of Colin Campbell (left), founder and honorary chairman of ASPO, who stated to the audience "I am convinced" after having heard the talk by Van Ypersele at the ASPO-9 Brussels conference. It was the same for several colleagues at the Basel meeting after the heard the talk by Ian Dunlop. I also noticed in other occasions that climate scientists can understand the depletion message when they hear it presented for what it is. They are good scientists, too.

So, it is time to recognize good science when we see it. And it is time to tell everyone how things stand, just as Ian Dunlop did in Basel.

The Star reports that a geothermal power plant is to be built in Malaysia - Geothermal power plant soon.

The country's first environmental-friendly geother- mal power generation plant will begin operating in Tawau in three years.

The 30mW plant costing some RM400mil would be built and operated by Sabah-based Tawau Green Energy Sdn Bhd (TGE) with the electricity being channelled to the Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) power grid.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun witnessed the signing of a 21-year renewable energy power purchase agreement between TGE and SESB yesterday.

TGE project director Andrew Amaladoss said the geothermal plant would be built on a 20ha site about 20km from Tawau town and adjacent to the Tawau Hills Park.

Amaladoss said TGE would tap geothermal energy by drilling 12 wells to a depth of between 1.8km and 2km.

The NYT has a look at the techniques used to prevent reporting of the break up of the Occupy Wall Street protest site - Reporters Meet the Fists of the Law.

In the aftermath of the Occupy Wall Street eviction from Zuccotti Park, a mayoral aide e-mailed reporters.

The aide, Stu Loeser, said that he had heard of journalists “supposedly” wearing police press badges who “allegedly encountered problems on the streets of New York.”

As I sling nouns and verbs for a living, I almost admired his artful euphemisms. A less refined sort might phrase it this way:

Over several days, New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers.

Reporters with The Associated Press and The Daily News were arrested while taking notes. A radio reporter was arrested as she recorded several blocks from the park.

All of this behavior “allegedly” occurred “on the streets of New York.”

This is the point in articles where it is customary to aver: the Police Department has done a fine, historic job battling crime. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly is a brilliant tactician, and he deserves much credit. That is true.

Another truth co-exists. At least since the Republican National Convention of 2004, our police have grown accustomed to forcibly penning, arresting, and sometimes spraying and whacking protesters and reporters. On Monday, The New York Times and 12 other organizations sent a letter of protest to the Police Department. “The police actions of last week,” the authors said, “have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory.”

Their letter offered five examples. I’ll mention one: As the police carried off a young protester whose head was covered in a crown of blood, a photographer stood behind a metal barricade and raised his camera. Two officers ran at him, grabbed the barrier and struck him in the chest, knees and shins. You are not permitted, the police yelled, to photograph on the sidewalk.

Covering New York can be a contact sport. We grunt, curse and toss elbows. I’ve run across the Brooklyn Bridge as protesters tossed bottles at cops, stood inside illegal squats on the Lower East Side as police massed outside, and walked through Crown Heights as communal tensions exploded. The rough rule was this: Treat cops reasonably and you can go about your business of recording and bearing witness.

Those feel like ancient days. ...

Last week, Mr. Loeser instructed his staff to compare the names of those arrested against the roster of reporters with police press passes. His resulting e-mail suggested Captain Renault discovering gambling in Casablanca.

“Imagine my surprise,” he wrote, “when we found that only five of the 26 arrested reporters actually have valid NYPD-issued press credentials.”

Here’s the rub. A majority of the city’s working reporters do not possess police passes. Leonard Levitt is a veteran reporter who writes the prodigiously well-sourced NYPD Confidential. “The police want to accredit as few reporters as possible, and they make it exceedingly hard for nonmainstream reporters to get press passes,” he said.

Mr. Levitt has tried to renew his pass for a year. “Needless to say,” he noted, “they are resisting.”

There is another problem: a police pass has become a ticket for a quick removal. My Times colleague Colin Moynihan stood on that darkened square last Tuesday morning when a police spokesman shouted, “Who has press credentials?”

Many reporters and photographers dutifully raised their hands. With that, the police removed the “credentialed” reporters, under threat of arrest, to a press pen, out of sight of the square. Only shouts and yells could be heard.

NineMSN reports that a biomimicry inspired wave power project will be piloted in Victoria soon - Wave energy to power 300 Victorian homes. The Warrnambool Standard has more - Port Fairy on a $14m ocean power wave.

A world-first wave energy project which mimics the movement of seaweed and kelp through the water will power hundreds of homes in Victoria's southwest.

The $14 million BioWAVE project is a single wave energy unit that will be anchored to the sea floor 30 metres underwater and about 800 metres from the shore at a site four kilometres west of Port Fairy.

The 450kW unit will be connected to the energy grid and power 300 homes by early 2013.
The project is an example of biomimicry, in which biological traits are used in engineered systems.

The Victorian government has put $5 million towards the project and other partners include AGL Energy Bluescope Steel, Lend Lease, Swinburne University, the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney.

The Australian has a report on the unfolding gas age with Woodside now being tipped to process natural gas from the Browse field at the North West Shelf LNG plant to replace declining gas reserves rather than a new LNG development at James Price Point in the Kimberly - Woodside's $30bn Browse LNG plant in doubt . There is also more speculation about LNG exports of shale gas from North America to Asia.

Woodside Petroleum's plans to build the $30 billion-plus Browse liquefied natural gas plant near Broome appear to have become less appealing against the alternative of piping the gas 1000km for processing at the North West Shelf plant near Karratha when reserves there run low.
After recent industry developments here and in the US, analysts now put a greater probability on the Browse project's offshore gas fields being turned into LNG at the North West Shelf and say this would give the project a greater value. ...

Credit Suisse analyst Sandra McCullagh said she was now using a North West Shelf option as a base-case scenario. "Woodside maintains a preference for James Price Point, but we expect that competition for skilled labour and recent LNG sales from the US at prices linked to Henry Hub (domestic US gas prices) could see a shift in the company," Ms McCullagh said.

On top of this, development cost pressure, competition for scarce labour from eight other regional LNG plants under construction, no certain gas to extend the life of the Woodside-operated North West Shelf and LNG buyers' preference for expanding existing plants rather than building new ones make a James Price Point plant less likely, according to Credit Suisse.

Credit Suisse has boosted its expected Browse development cost to $US36bn, compared to a development cost of $US26bn to use the gas to backfill the North West Shelf. …

One of the game changers in Credit Suisse's analysis has been a plan to export US shale gas.
Even at US domestic gas prices of $US7 a gigajoule, which is double current prices, it would be profitable to export to Asia at current Asian spot LNG prices.

"Less than 12 months ago, most commentators didn't see much of a threat from North America, but within the space of one month, 7 million tonnes of LNG a year has been sold from Louisiana, earmarked for Asian and European markets," Ms McCullagh said. "We expect unsanctioned Australian LNG projects will struggle to stack up against North American imports."

The Economist has an update on the rapidly evolving 3D printing market - Difference Engine: Making it .

In a monthly column he writes about his motoring passion for Popular Mechanics, Mr Leno recently described how his “Big Dog Garage Team” fabricated a feedwater heater for his 1907 White Steamer. The aluminium part had become so porous with age that steam could be seen seeping through. Being heavily impregnated with oil, patching it up by welding a plate in place was impossible. The answer was to fabricate the part anew.

First, they used a 3D scanner to create a detailed digital model of the part at 160,000 dots per inch. Next, they fed that model to a 3D printer, which used the file to print, layer by layer, an exact copy of the part in plastic. Finally, the replica part made of plastic was used to make a mould for casting the finished component in aluminium. The scanning was a breeze, but printing the part took 33 hours. Still, having the item sent out for drawings to be made and then the part machined from solid metal would have taken weeks.

As might be expected, Mr Leno’s tools are among the best available—a $3,000 scanner from NextEngine and a $15,000 printer from Dimension, not to mention a Fadel CNC machining centre, which must have cost upwards of $100,000. Apart from a hydraulic lift and a plentiful supply of compressed air, your correspondent’s humble workshop has nothing to compare. But his three old cars present similar problems.

The good news is that the kind of rapid-prototyping technology used in the motor, aerospace and medical industries (not to mention Mr Leno’s garage) has fallen in price dramatically over the past few years. While an industrial 3D printer (also known as a fabricator or a rapid prototyper) would once have cost over $100,000, a perfectly adequate machine for home use can now be had for less than $2,000. Those prepared to assemble their own can buy kits for $500 or so.

There are drawbacks, of course. The size of products that can be made using a desktop 3D printer is usually limited to something that can fit within a five-inch (12.7cm) cube. Industrial fabrication machines can make parts six times larger. Even so, a desktop 3D printer will suffice for a surprising number of components used in cars and around the home.

As a manufacturing process, 3D printing is what is known as an “additive” technology. Instead of removing material wastefully (by milling, boring, grinding and cutting), 3D printing uses what is effectively a modified ink-jet printer to deposit successive layers of material until the three-dimensional object is built up completely, with very little scrap. The material used is usually a thermoplastic such as ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), polylactic acid or polycarbonate, though metallic powders, clays and even living cells can be employed, depending on the application.

While some hobbyists download ready-made designs to fabricate, many users create their own engineering drawings by taking advantage of free software like Google’s SketchUp or Blender from the Blender Foundation in the Netherlands. For a price, professional packages can be had from Alibre Design, Autodesk and SolidWorks. Once the drawing is finished, the file is saved in a format the 3D printer recognises. On being loaded into the printer, the device's built in software analyses the digital design and works out the optimal way to trace the successive layers of the product being fabricated.

The grandaddy of all desktop 3D-printers is the open-source RepRap project conceived in 2005 by Adrian Bowyer and colleagues at the University of Bath, in Britain. The RepRap (short for Replicating Rapid Prototyper) concept’s main purpose is to make a machine that can replicate itself and evolve in the process. To date, three generations of reference designs have been released into the wild, each named after a famous biologist (Darwin, Mendel and Huxley). RepRaps are now reproducing around the world like rabbits.

The aim is to enable people—especially those in poorer parts of the planet—to make complex products for themselves without the need for industrial infrastructure and heavy capital investment. As an open-source project, anyone is free to use the design and improve it, so long as they make their additions freely available to others.

The personal-manufacturing movement—exemplified by Thingiverse for sharing user-created 3D files and Fab@Home to exchange ideas about hardware and software—resembles nothing so much as the era when the MITS Altair 8800 kit, with its eight-bit Intel processor and S-100 bus, prepared the ground for the PC revolution that was to follow.

Bre Pettis, one of the founders of MakerBot Industries, which runs Thingiverse on the side, believes personal manufacturing is currently going through much the same phase as personal computing did in the 1970s. In many ways, that makes MakerBot the MITS of today. It has sold over 5,000 of its Thing-O-Matic 3D printers, which retail for $2,500 fully assembled or $1,299 in kit-form. Meanwhile, a newcomer from the Netherlands called Ultimaker, which costs $1,700 as a kit, is winning fans for its raw speed and ability to handle larger jobs. Some wonder whether the Ultimaker could be personal manufacturing's Apple II.

Over the past week, Brook Drumm, an internet entrepreneur and workshop tinkerer in Lincoln, California, raised more than $155,000 in “kickstarter" funding on the internet from people who pledged money in exchange for one of his clever little Printrbot machines. Mr Drumm offers everything needed to assemble his basic 3D-printer for $500. Could that be today's equivalent of the Sinclair ZX81, the world's most popular PC in the early 1980s?

Two recent developments make your correspondent believe that personal manufacturing is about to go mainstream. One is the arrival of much cheaper printing goop. Thermoplastics like ABS and polylactic acid cost around $30 a pound. Metal powders can cost even more. Now a group at the University of Washington, in Seattle, has come up with a concoction based on artists’ ceramic powder blended with sugar and maltodextrin. The material costs less than $1 a pound.

The Bottom Line has some commentary on recent reports of battery fires in Chevy Volts during testing - Volt is drivers' favorite, topping even Porsche.

The Volt is the overall winner of the owner satisfaction survey, with the announcement coming at a time when the Volt is in the news for a less-good reason: fires in crash-tested vehicles days or weeks after the crash. Ninety-three percent of owners surveyed said they would buy the Volt again, compared with 91 percent of 911 and Challenger buyers. ...

The combination of engaged owners and continuous discussion between GM and Volt owners has stemmed any rush to the exits even since the reports of post-crash-test fires. For the record, these fires took place days or weeks after extreme crash testing in which the Volt successfully protected occupants and earned the highest possible safety scores.
advertisement

Following the tests, the cars’ batteries were left fully charged, and because the car were also rolled over and because the battery coolant system was damaged in the tests, coolant leaked onto the charged batteries and eventually sparked fires.

The lesson here is to get out of a crashed car within a few days, and be sure to turn off the lights when exiting. A gasoline car might not be as obliging in providing an opportunity to climb out before combusting.

The Climate Spectator has a look at the state of the geoengineering debate - Who's watching the weather makers?.

With expectations lower than a snake's armpit for the climate talks currently underway in Durban, there are likely to be renewed calls for geoengineering to be taken seriously as a "Plan B" for avoiding dangerous climate change.

Geoengineering – or, more accurately, climate engineering – was defined by the IPCC in 2009 as "the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment." The three main types are solar radiation management (SRM), carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and weather modification (WM).

The scientists involved in geoengineering research mostly profess to be reluctant converts to the cause, and protest that research does not mean deployment, but rare are the new technologies that have not been eventually applied in the real world. So who will watch those mucking about with our climate?

In last week's article on geoengineering by climate scientist David Karoly, he referred to the importance of "ethical and governance considerations" and the need for "urgent, well-informed, high-level international discussions."

This is already happening. In 2010, scientists working in this field proposed five "Oxford Principles" to govern research: geoengineering to be regulated as a public good; public participation in geoengineering decision-making; disclosure of geoengineering research and open publication of results; independent assessment of impacts; and governance before deployment.

This is all well and good, but these principles carry no legal weight. Fortunately, there are more formal moves afoot to regulate an industry that could turn the skies white and the oceans green, if attempts to produce an artificial "volcano effect" in the atmosphere or for phytoplankton to store carbon on the seabed go horribly wrong.

In Nagoya last year, countries party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (that is, most of the world, with the notable exception of the United States) adopted a de facto moratorium on all geoengineering activities. However, this decision is qualified and open to interpretation, and the legal force of decisions made at COPs (Conventions of Parties) is debatable.

The CBD parties are now involved in a process to determine whether that treaty or other existing or new treaties might be the best way to regulate research and projects. Its secretariat has produced draft studies on the impacts of geoengineering on biological diversity and the regulatory framework, and is inviting public comment.

Led by the Canada-based ETC Group, there are also moves afoot to ensure that geoengineering is on the table at the Rio+20 global environment summit next June. In September, a meeting of the European Parliament adopted a resolution expressing “opposition to proposals for large-scale geoengineering” and aiming to develop a common EU position ahead of Rio+20.

ETC has already had success in stopping a proposed ocean fertilisation experiment by US company Planktos Inc near the Galapagos Islands in 2007. In October, pressure by ETC and other groups led to the suspension of plans by a British scientific consortium called SPICE to erect a one kilometre long hose. Dubbed the "Trojan hose" by opponents, the aim was to test the feasibility of constructing a much longer hose that would pump sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect solar radiation.

The ETC Group has also proposed a new International Convention for the Evaluation of New Technologies. But (with the notable exception of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer) new global treaties are usually lengthy to negotiate and only apply directly to countries that choose to sign onto them.

To date, neither the Australian government nor any major Australian environmental group other than Friends of the Earth appears to have expressed any view on geoengineering research. But in 2007, the ABC reported that a small Australian company with research links to the University of Sydney, Ocean Nourishment Corporation, did an ocean fertilisation trial in the Sulu Sea off Philippines in 2007, involving one tonne of nitrogen-rich urea. Although a growing body of research has cast doubt on the potential efficacy of ocean fertilisation, the company is pursuing "ecosystem based modelling" and says it is interested in validating its findings "through third party independent open ocean experimentation." ...

There is, however, one obvious ground rule that could apply while the world works out how best to regulate this emerging plethora of technologies. The International Energy Agency's latest World Energy Outlook gives the world until 2017, at the latest, to start reducing emissions under its most plausible "New Policies" scenario; after this time it becomes prohibitively expensive to keep warming under the 2°C threshold. In view of this, no real world experiments should occur before then that could undermine efforts to reduce global emissions. This would most notably preclude any research ultimately aimed at injecting sulphides into the atmosphere or any form of ocean fertilisation.

On the other hand, purely biological methods of geoengineering that would also assist climate change mitigation efforts, such as reforestation, avoiding deforestation and improving soil health, should be encouraged.

In between these extremes, things get tricky. Recent research suggests that even some of the more benign and promising ideas, like painting rooves white to increase surface albedo and thereby reduce atmospheric heating, may be ineffective. And despite all the money thrown at carbon capture and storage, its prospects for large-scale carbon sequestration look unpromising to date. There are also serious concerns about the side effects of biochar production, which has been widely spruiked as an effective means of terrestrial carbon storage (including, according to Friends of the Earth, the production of "phytotoxic and possible carcinogenic materials... during pyrolysis").

On current indications, after 2017 we may have to reconsider our options. But so far, silver bullets there are none.

TreeHugger has a look at a use for the glut of timber from trees killed by pine beetles - Interlocking Cross Laminated Timber Could Use Up Square Miles Of Beetle-Killed Lumber, and Look Gorgeous, Too.

The Mountain Pine Beetle is killing trees across North America, including up to 44% of Colorado's forests. If there was any infrastructure investment to be made right now, I would have thought it would be to set up a pile of cross laminated timber factories fast, and put people to work churning out panels at a standard size and stockpiling them; CLT is strong, fire resistant, it sequesters carbon dioxide and it makes very pretty buildings.

At the University of Utah's Integrated Technology in Architecture Center, (ITAC) they are working on a modification of the design of CLT for the American market, namely figuring out how to make it cheaper.

Giles Parkinson at The Climate Spectator has a look at the dark future for coal as an energy source - Why we won't need coal.

Last month, the International Energy Agency released a stunning report that suggested that the future of thermal coal exports could be threatened if the world ever decides to implement the policies to limit global warming to an average 2°C, rather than just merely talking about it, as they are doing in Durban this fortnight.

The coal industry laughed, suggesting such a scenario was highly unlikely. But what if technology took the decision out of the hands of politicians, as seems increasingly likely with the plunging costs of renewables, particularly solar PV, across the globe? And what does that mean also for Australia's energy infrastructure, and the tens of billions of dollars that will be invested in the coming decade on the basis that business will continue as usual?

New forecasts from China suggest the cost of solar PV in that country will fall below that of coal-fired generation within 10 years. From that point, or even before, says Wu Dacheng, the vice chairman and secretary general of the China Photovoltaic Society, the country's energy build out will be dominated by cheaper renewables.

China, which has only just introduced its own feed-in tariff for solar PV, is anticipating massive growth, and has already upgraded its official forecasts to 2020 from 30GW to 50GW. But it concedes that 100GW of PV is possible and may even be overshot. Wu himself said earlier this year that China would reach 5GW in capacity by 2015, but it is now likely to reach that in 2012.

As Abengoa's Scott Frier noted, FiTs are not necessarily the cheapest form of incentive, but they are devastatingly effective in unleashing the forces of greed and pushing down costs as developers try and squeeze as much capacity within those metrics. And the Chinese are not fettered by established industry vested interests trying to hold this back. In China, the government is the vested interest, and they have already been ruthless in their closure of inefficient power stations.

Wu told Climate Spectator in Sydney on Wednesday that solar PV is already cheaper than peaking prices in some areas of China, and will match parity with commercial and industrial supply in 2014, will reach retail parity in 2018 (households pay less for electricity in China than industrial users), and match wholesale price parity by 2021, when prices will be around 0.6 yuan/kWh.

His forecasts were reinforced by Martin Green, the executive research director of the world-leading Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence at UNSW, who says solar PV is likely to fall below the cost of coal in Australia (wholesale grid parity) before the end of the decade. He points out that most studies, and much of government modeling, are based around solar PV having a cost of $3.50 a watt. He says it is already down to just over $1/watt and will likely halve again to 50c/watt by 2020.

This has broader implications for energy grids. Green and other experts say much of the infrastructure spending on poles and wires is based around the assumption of business as usual: that coal will continue to be the cheapest and the central source of power. “I don’t see anyone discussing a national grid centred around renewables, but they should be,” says David Mills, the founder of solar thermal technology firm Ausra, and one of the leading experts in solar technology. “We're about to spend so much money on the grid, shouldn’t we thinking about what we are going to be powering it with?“

Mills last year released the first version of his ground-breaking research that showed that the entire US grid could be powered by just wind and solar thermal, and he provided an update on that research at the Solar 2011 conference on Wednesday. Mills challenges the very concept of baseload power, the sort provided by coal and nuclear.

“People say we need baseload plans, but we don’t,” he says. Instead, grids can work perfectly well with a mixture of inflexible supply (wind that blows whenever it wants), and flexible supply (solar thermal with storage). Mills has yet to release the financial modelling for his scenario, but notes that wind is already cheaper than new-built coal in the US, and solar thermal with storage, and used as a peaking plant, will be competitive with peaking gas.

Mills did not factor in PV in his scenario, but it would have the same impact as wind. As wind and PV fills up the energy stack (they go first because they have the lowest short run marginal cost – wind and solar radiation is free), what is needed to complete the requirements is flexible generation. Coal doesn't fit the bill.

The first impacts of this have already been seen in South Australia, where wind has provided more than 20 per cent of annual output last year and much higher on occasions. In Germany, where wind and PV capacity amounts to 45GW, Statkfraft has announced this week that it may close two gas-fired power stations, amounting to one gigawatt of capacity, because of this impact. And this in a country which has just shut down half its nuclear fleet and will soon close the rest.

A UNSW team of Ben Elliston, Mark Diesendorf and Iain MacGill has just released its own study of how Australia could power its entire grid on renewables. And like Mills, they also see solar with storage as a type of peaking plant. “The whole concept of baseload becomes redundant,” Elliston told Climate Spectator. “It’s worse than redundant, it gets in the way.”

The UNSW study, based on simulations of Australia’s energy needs in 2010, found that the entire supply could be met by a mix of solar thermal with storage, wind, solar PV, existing hydro and peaking gas plants running on biofuels. Only six hours of the year fail to meet the NEM’s reliability standard, all in evening peaks in the winter months.

Elliston says that one of the biggest impediments is the build-out of long-life assets – or the lack of long-term signals. “The business-as-usual market approach, where we plan at the margin, is not going to get us there. We need to start a new strategy now, which means not building new coal-fired power stations, and building transmission lines in the right place to build renewables .”

WA Today reports that natural gas prices in WA are steadily being ratcheted up to international LNG prices - WA's future energy supply still uncertain.

The WA Government says there is still "a way to go" before the state will have enough electricity being produced to meet future demand, despite the signing of two major supply contracts.

Electricity producer Verve Energy and retailer Synergy have both signed gas supply agreements with the $43 billion Gorgon Project to take the place of their existing contracts when they lapse within the next four years. The deals are for a combined 125 terajoules of domestic gas per day and will run for 20 years.

Verve's plants supply more than 60 per cent of WA's electricity and rely on a combination of Woodside's North West Shelf gas as well as coal to reach their production targets and keep the lights on.

With Verve's gas supply deal with the Woodside-operated North West Shelf expected to lapse in 2016, the Gorgon deal would cover half of the energy producer's gas needs after the end of its existing contracts, a Verve spokesman said. ... However Verve is still shopping around for a supplier for the other half of its gas needs.

Chris Nelder has a post at Smart Planet pondering the woeful state of most mainstream energy journalism - Why energy journalism is so bad.

One of the questions that plagues me constantly is, “Why is energy journalism so bad?” Most mainstream articles about energy will leave you horribly confused at best, or horribly misled at worst. Today I will try to teach you how to read reports on energy without getting lost.

The topic came up again last week when my colleague Christopher Mims pointed up a sharp discrepancy between three recent stories by Reuters, published between November 21 and 24.

The first reported Saudi Aramco’s CEO Khalid al-Falih as saying that unconventional oil (heavy oil, synthetic oil from shale and tar sands, coal-to-liquids and so on) had eliminated global supply concerns, and would rise from 2.3 million barrels per day (mbpd) today to 8.4 mbpd by 2035. This would shift the global balance of power, he said, and reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports. Further, he expected conventional oil supply from Brazil and Iraq to rise. All of this was by way of explaining why Saudi Arabia had recently halted its ongoing $100 billion program to expand production capacity beyond its claimed 12.5 mbpd current capacity, and would not seek to expand it to 15 mbpd (a fact that was already widely assumed by most who follow the energy markets, but apparently was still considered newsworthy).

The second said that oil prices should remain high because global demand had remained strong, and would reach more than 89 mbpd this year according to the IEA. (The International Energy Agency, or IEA, based in Paris and serving at the pleasure of the 28 industrialized countries in the OECD, currently shows 88.7 mbpd for Q3 2011 under a liberal definition of “oil” which includes biofuels and certain types of natural gas liquids. The Energy Information Administration, or EIA, based in Washington D.C. and serving under the U.S. Department of Energy, shows 86.7 mbpd under a more restrictive definition, which excludes biofuels, non-associated natural gas liquids, and other components.) But while demand has been strong, the article noted that supply has been “inconsistent,” citing the loss of 1.6 mbpd from Libya, and various “hiccups in production in Russia, Britain, Norway and Nigeria.”

The third suggested that high oil prices “could strangle economic hopes,” and quoted the IEA’s chief economist Fatih Birol: “I hope that colleagues from the producing countries are also looking at the market indicators carefully, including the diminishing OECD stocks levels and the fragility of the global economic situation.” In his view, too little worldwide investment in oil supply would keep prices high enough to stifle the recovery of the global economy.

So which is it? How can three stories from a single source, published over a five-day span, simultaneously claim that supply is adequate and inadequate; and that prices would remain high due to strong demand, but would be so high that they would destroy demand?

Even worse, how can the IEA simultaneously claim in its new World Energy Outlook 2011 report that by 2035, the world needs to invest $20 trillion in oil and gas supply and infrastructure to add 47 mpbd of new capacity (equivalent to about five times Saudi Arabia’s production, or twice the production of all OPEC countries in the Middle East) to compensate for the decline of mature fields, or else risk “far-reaching consequences for global energy markets”. . . while at the same time asserting that the world must slash subsidies for oil and gas development and transition to renewables quickly in order to arrest climate change, starting now?

Welcome to my hell.

Let’s review a few of the common errors in energy journalism.

Uncritical acceptance of authority

Citing subject matter authorities is a necessary element of journalism, but so is casting a critical eye on what they say. Unfortunately, most journalists repeat what their selected authorities say verbatim, and rarely mention contrary views.

The main authority cited in nearly all articles about energy is Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Prize and an economist with the oil industry consultancy IHS CERA. Journalists love to quote Yergin. He always has an optimistic outlook on the future of oil, forecasting abundant supply and low prices. Editors love him too, and regularly grant him high-profile space in their publications (like this recent Wall Street Journal op-ed) to offer sunny pronouncements and spew invective on those who believe peak oil is a serious issue. The fact that his predictions have been continuously and badly wrong for the last decade straight doesn’t seem to phase them in the least, nor does his cozy (and well-paid) business relationship with oil companies. Hey, he won a Pulitzer, and is regularly described as “one of the world’s foremost energy authorities.” Good enough!

Other authorities often cited are active traders and portfolio managers in the oil market, but it’s a rare day indeed when the authors bother to ask whether those authorities might just be “talking their books.”

The authority problem leaks downstream, too. When a reputable publication makes errors, it often leads to a series of repetitions by even less skilled journalists who cite the original as fact.

The problem isn’t just authority, though. Dozens of serious petroleum geologists and analysts with real bona fides in petroleum forecasted the current oil supply plateau and the price volatility of oil beautifully over the last decade, while economist Yergin missed it. So why don’t journalists consult their views? This brings us to the next problem.

Optimism bias

Consider this recent example in the Financial Times. The author elatedly painted a picture of an impending era of energy independence as unconventional oil from gas shales caused a “U-turn in US oil supply,” even suggesting that, “in the coming decade the US will leapfrog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest producer of liquid hydrocarbons.”

The article went on to cite a jumble of relevant and irrelevant data, along with highly speculative forecasts represented as near-certainties. After sorting it all out, I found that the cited numbers didn’t add up: 10 mbpd currently produced by the U.S. and Canada (including about 1.5 mbpd from Canadian tar sands), plus a projected 2 mbpd of new “tight oil” production from U.S. shales, plus another 1.5 mbpd of projected new production from the tar sands gives me 13.5 mbpd, but the author slid directly from that data to a forecast by the National Petroleum Council (NPC), an oil industry group, projecting that the two countries would produce a whopping 22 mbpd by 2035!

Further sleuthing revealed the problem: the author had uncritically reported the best-case “2035 High Potential” scenario offered in the NPC’s latest report, in which production from tar sands rises to 6 mbpd; offshore Gulf of Mexico rises to 3 mbpd; “tight shale” (not to be confused with “tight oil”) rises from zero today to 1 mbpd; enhanced oil recovery technology adds another 0.6 mbpd, and Arctic production rises to over 2 mbpd.

The author did not mention that the NPC report also included an alternative, “2035 Limited” scenario, in which North American production actually falls about 1 mbpd from 2010 levels. ...

But a simple reality check should give any author pause before suggesting that some magical array of technologies will somehow double North American oil production over the next two decades, or that within the next decade unconventional supply in the U.S. and Canada, with a production cost in the range of $80 to $90 a barrel, will exceed supply in Saudi Arabia or Russia, where their production costs are half of that or less. And it doesn’t seem too much to ask that journalists bring a modicum of skepticism to their coverage of oil industry propaganda.

Let’s have another look at the chart of historical U.S. oil production, freely available on the EIA’s web site for anyone who cares to look at it:

That little bump at the end is what all the fuss over unconventional oil in the U.S. is about. I suppose if one ignores the production costs and flow rates and takes plenty of antidepressants, one could imagine that bump is a U-turn that could eventually send U.S. production back up and over its 1970 peak. But I assure you that once you spend a few thousand hours gaining literacy in the subject, such that you can read and understand these scenarios, such optimistic visions begin to sound more like whistling past the graveyard than serious forecasting.

Just remember this: In the eyes of most editors, an optimistic take on future supply is just good energy journalism. And a balanced, nuanced article with indeterminate conclusions doesn’t sell papers. But a pessimistic take (no matter how true, or buttressed by facts) is editorializing, which is bad.

Jamais Cascio is pondering what sort of gods humanity are - Pantheon.

"We are as gods and might as well get good at it." -- Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog, 1968.

Stewart Brand's observation has simultaneously enchanted, terrified, and driven me ever since I first heard it (probably some 20-25 years after he wrote it). It's both an admonition (we're not very good at being gods) and encouragement (...but we could be!); Brand saw that our capabilities as humans (when using the tools devised by human minds) equalled or exceeded most of the capabilities of the gods of myth, and even those abilities not yet in our toolkit would likely be right over the horizon. Brand also saw that our sense of ourselves, and our responsibility to the world, remained firmly rooted in simple humanity.

"We have more power than we think we do," he seemed to be saying, "and we can't use it wisely until we acknowledge that fact."

The statement can be critiqued from a number of perspectives, and has been. (My own push-back against it these days is that it has the equation exactly backwards. Gods are just people who can truly see the extent of their power.) But there's one observation about the "We are as gods..." line that I haven't seen elsewhere -- and it requires a little digression. ...

"We are as gods --" okay, but which gods? In our generally monotheistic age, we tend to lump all "gods" and "godlike powers" into a bucket of Almighty Power. But that's not the way humans have thought of gods until relatively recently; for much of human civilization, gods were seen as individuals, with their own personalities, domains, and entries in an AD&D manual.

We are gods, but we're the gods of an earlier age. Powerful, yes, but petulant; wise yet warlike; arrogant and utterly capricious... and also able to create sublime beauty. The Greek gods were the ones that came to mind last week, but really nearly every mythic pantheon followed a similar pattern.

We are as gods, but we have gotten pretty good at it -- as long as we remember that this means we are as likely to be Loki as Athena.

Happy Birthday to TOD ANZ.

Reuters has a report on Denmark's plans to switch to renewable energy - Denmark aims for 100 percent renewable energy in 2050.

Danish government proposals on Friday called for sourcing just over half of its electricity from wind turbines by 2020 and all of its energy from renewable sources in 2050. ...

Denmark will take over the presidency of the European Union for six months from January 1 and aims to promote ambitious climate and energy goals for Europe. It is already the world leader in wind power, getting a fifth of its power from wind turbines. ...

The portion of Denmark's electricity from wind and other renewables would rise to 52 percent by 2020 under the new plan, topping a 50 percent target in a government policy program adopted last month.

Despite Denmark's green credentials in wind energy, the country has virtually no hydropower and no nuclear installations, making it still heavily dependent on coal. In 2010, coal accounted for nearly 44 percent of total Danish power generation and fossil fuels altogether for two thirds, while renewables accounted for one third.

The government's proposal called for coal-fired power plants and oil-fired heating to be phased out by 2030. Coal heating, which now accounts for 11 percent of the total heat supply, would be replaced by biomass.

Forbes reports that solar thermal power developer Brightsource is looking to exploit CSP's primary advantage over solar PV - the ability to store anergy for dispatchable generation - BrightSource Strikes World's Biggest Solar Energy Storage Deal.

BrightSource Energy said Monday that it has struck a deal to add energy storage systems to three massive solar thermal power plants it will build to supply electricity to utility Southern California Edison.

Energy storage will allow the plants to operate into the night, meaning that BrightSource can now forgo building one 200-megawatt solar station that previously was needed to meet its obligation to generate 4 million megawatt-hours of electricity annually for the utility.

“It’s a huge advantage,” John Woolard, BrightSource’s chief executive, said in an interview Monday. “We came out very strongly with what I believe is the largest solar storage deal in the world.”

BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs said in an e-mail that only six of the seven planned solar “power tower” stations will need to be built, saving some 1,280 acres of desert land. If approved by state regulators, the amended contracts with Southern California Edison will also result in lower costs for utility customers, the company said.

Both issues have come to the forefront as some environmentalists increasingly object to industrializing swaths of California’s Mojave Desert for solar power plants. Solar thermal developers, meanwhile, compete against ever-cheaper photovoltaic power plants as the price of solar modules continues to fall.

When four of the nine big solar thermal power plants approved by the California Energy Commission last year changed ownership, the new developers announced they would switch to solar panels like those found on residential rooftops and which convert sunlight directly into electricity.