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Posts from the ‘Opinion’ Category

Aug 23

Don’t Count on Revolution in Oil Supply

*** Editors Note: One of the most thoughtful and profound articles written recently – particularly coming from an Aramco executive***

Leonardo Maugeri’s recent paper Oil: The Next Revolution on the presumed future abundance of oil supplies rejects the pessimistic outlook of limited increases in oil capacity over the next decade. It suggests global oil capacity will exceed 110 million barrels per day by the end of the decade, putting an immediate end to concerns regarding constrained long-term oil supplies. This conclusion is based on an assessment of new projects with a reported capacity of 49 million b/d before a downward adjustment to 29 million b/d to allow for completion risks and reserves depletion. Maugeri holds two PhDs, one in Political Science and one in Economics, and has extensive executive experience with ENI in strategies and developments and in petrochemicals.

In putting forth this optimistic thesis, Maugeri apparently sets aside a variety of technical realities, including the difference between natural gas liquids (NGLs) and conventional oil, reserves depletion versus capacity declines, and proven reserves as opposed to speculative resources.

via The Oil Drum | Don’t Count on Revolution in Oil Supply.

May 6

Solar’s Net Metering Under Attack

Net metering allows solar system owners to reduce their bills by sending the excess electricity they generate, usually at periods of peak demand, to the grid. Their utility bills are credited at the average retail electricity rate.

And, as noted by Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development Founder, President and Director Travis Bradford, “utilities are actually getting something of the highest value for an average price.”

But there is more to an electricity bill than that, explained Greentech Media Research Managing Director Shayle Kann as he was serving as moderator of a debate about net metering between Bradford and Westinghouse Solar CEO Barry Cinnamon at the GTM Phoenix solar summit.

A utility bill has a fixed component covering the transmission-distribution infrastructure, he said, and a charge for electricity generation. When solar system owners spin their meters backward at the full retail rate, they pay neither the generation component nor the transmission-distribution component, shifting those costs to “everybody else.”

via Solar’s Net Metering Under Attack : Greentech Media.

Mar 31

Can Wind and Solar Compete Against Natural Gas?

[ED Note: Rhetoric without solid analytic tools, masquerading as economics...  Herman is right to question it.]

The wind industry is not likely to save its production tax credit (PTC) in time to sustain continued growth into 2013. The solar industry has lost its 1603 cash grant provision. The geothermal industry’s federal PTC expires at the end of 2013.

Some in renewables are planning a retreat until a better economy and a less contentious, more supportive Congress offer a chance at stable, long-term federal supports like those enjoyed by the fossil and nuclear industries.

PA Consulting Group renewable energy expert Barbara Sands has begun thinking about “things that need to be looked at closer” and “things that may have to happen” for renewables to compete, in the absence of federal incentives, with natural gas at $4.50/MMBtu (million British thermal units) which, Sands said, is “the current forward market for natural gas prices.”

via Can Wind and Solar Compete Against Natural Gas? : Greentech Media.

Mar 23

20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won’t Lower Gas Prices

In a pretty impressive act of journalism, the Associated Press recently conducted a “statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production.” The result: “No statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.” It’s neat to see math cut through the talking points and get straight to the truth of the matter — which is that expanding drilling is a fundamentally ineffectual response to gas price spikes.

Given that changes in U.S. oil production don’t move gasoline prices, it should be clear that U.S. government policies related to drilling are of even smaller consequence. Indeed, 92 percent of economists surveyed by the Chicago Booth School of Business agreed this week that “changes in U.S. gasoline prices over the past 10 years have predominantly been due to market factors rather than U.S. federal economic or energy policies.”

Still not convinced? How about another 20 economists and analysts from across the political spectrum who will tell you the same thing:

  • Ken Green, American Enterprise Institute, “If the U.S. produced more of its own oil, it would probably reduce imports, but it’s not likely that it would reduce prices … We probably cannot produce so much oil to exert downward pressure on prices compared to the world market.”

via 20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won’t Lower Gas Prices | ThinkProgress.

Mar 23

Swear Off Subsidies To Achieve A Clean Energy Future

Green tech conferences are big on big pronouncements about paving the way to the clean energy future and Bloomberg’s confab is no different. But Liebreich seven-point plan is likely to strike some in the biz as heretical in part.

  • “You will not achieve systemic change by asking for more subsidies. You’ve got to change the message to talk about affordability. Costs are coming down and will continue to come down.”
  • Talk about productivity, security and health, not green jobs. “In a productive and healthy economy, every job is a green job.”
  • “You cannot regulate your way to innovation. You cannot suppress price signals and expect innovation.” Policy: deregulation not regulation.
  • Reach out to other sectors – automobiles, real estate, telecom. “If everything else in our economy remains the same but energy, we will not achieve systemic change.”
  • Stop preaching to the converted. “Fifteen percent of the population will sacrifice to do something green or eco. You’ve got to reach out to the mainstream.”
  • “Own the airwaves, own the politicians. You can’t soar like an eagle and poop like a canary.”
  • Focus on developing countries. “It’s about a market that’s out there. It will create billionaires among the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

Concluded Liebreich, “In a clean energy system, billions are not cool. Trillions are cool.”

via Swear Off Subsidies To Achieve A Clean Energy Future – Forbes.

Feb 26

The Quest for ‘Hydricity’

In the 1980s and ’90s, hydrogen fuel cell technology seemed like a strong candidate for use in cars and stationary applications, converting hydrogen to electricity with no emissions beyond a puff of antiseptic water vapor.

Geoffrey Ballard, founder of Ballard Power Systems, coined a term to describe the new system, “hydricity,” a fusion of hydrogen and electricity. Surplus electricity could be used to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, with the hydrogen stored for reconversion into electricity.

Such a reversible system would be especially useful in cars, or in an electric system that was saturated with renewable power sources that ran only intermittently, like wind machines or solar cells.

In 2008, the possibilities for fuel cells looked better than ever, when the nation elected a president who called for an 80 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by midcentury, with strong interim goals and reductions to start “immediately.”

But the Obama administration’s energy research effort, led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics who became secretary of energy, took a long hard look at all the possibilities, including conventional batteries, and liquid fuels that would have smaller “carbon footprints” because they were made from renewable sources. And it decided that fuel cells did not look promising, compared with other new technologies, and that funding should be cut.

In a newly revised encyclopedic book on fuel cells, “Tomorrow’s Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet,” Peter Hoffmann traces the more recent twists and turns in the quest for hydricity. Initially, the Obama administration’s effort to cut funding for fuel cell research was reversed by Congress, partly through the efforts of Byron Dorgan, a Democratic senator from North Dakota until his retirement last year. Senator Dorgan, in a foreword to the new edition, explained that the administration was “just flat wrong.”

via The Quest for ‘Hydricity’ – NYTimes.com.

Jan 18

Leading Global Investors Call the False Dichotomy Between Economy and Environment “Nonsense”

A top GE executive is calling the political battle between economy and environment “nonsense.”

In a video interview (featured below) at an international clean energy investment conference last week, Mark Vachon, vice president of GE’s successful Ecomagination program, hailed “environmental performance” as a key driver for business.

“There’s this theory that you have to pick one: economics or environmental performance. That’s nonsense. Innovation is the way you can have both,” said Vachon.

via Leading Global Investors Call the False Dichotomy Between Economy and Environment “Nonsense” | ThinkProgress.

Jan 9

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Federal Tax Credits May Handcuff Clean Energy Development

Clean energy advocates should cast aside their worries about increasing Republican scrutiny of energy subsidies.  The clean energy industry’s foolish reliance on tax incentives has already handcuffed its expansion.

Unlike the leading nations in the clean energy race, the United States has no coherent energy policy.  Rather, its energy market is balkanized by 50 distinct state policies and overlaid with poorly conceived federal tax incentives.  Federal tax incentives have one redeeming feature.  To get a tax incentive only takes one vote of Congress while getting any other kind of monetary subsidy requires two votes, an authorization and then an appropriations bill.

via Federal Tax Credits May Handcuff Clean Energy Development | john-farrell-ilsr.

Jan 5

The 2011 Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards

via The 2011 Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards | ThinkProgress

[*B.S. means “Bad Science.” What did you think it meant?]

by Peter Gleick

The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011 – a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world. The scientific evidence for the accelerating human influence on climate further strengthened, as it has for decades now. Yet on the policy front, once again, national leaders did little to stem the growing emissions of greenhouse gases or to help societies prepare for increasingly severe consequences of climate changes, including rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, rising sea-levels, loss of snowpack and glaciers, disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and much more.

.Why the failure to act? In part because climate change is a truly difficult challenge. But in part because of a concerted, well-funded, and aggressive anti-science campaign by climate change deniers and contrarians. These are mostly groups focused on protecting narrow financial interests, ideologues fearful of any government regulation, or scientific contrarians who cling to outdated, long-refuted interpretations of science. While much of the opposition to addressing the issue of climate change is political, it often hides behind pseudo-scientific claims, with persistent efforts to intentionally mislead the public and policymakers with bad science about climate change. Much of this effort is based on intentional falsehoods, misrepresentations, inflated uncertainties, or pure and utter B.S. – the same tactics that delayed efforts to tackle tobacco’s health risks long after the science was understood (as documented in Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s book, Merchants of Doubt)…

Jan 5

My New Year¹s resolution

My New Year’s resolution

via Grist.org – the latest from Grist on 1/4/12

by David Roberts.

What follows is a navel-gazey personal essay. If that’s not your thing, move along.

By nature, I am an introverted, thinky person — in the Myers-Briggs personality schema, an INTP, if that means anything to you. Or a Virgo, if that’s your cup of tea. An analyzer, dissector, chopper-upper, drawn to flaws and inconsistencies like itches that need scratching. I like to take ideas apart and put them into new configurations, like Legos. It’s fun! Nonetheless, for me, one of the notable aspects of 2011 has been a growing awareness of the limits of that sort of thing.

Obviously, I’m a fan of reason and opposed to error or deception. But there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are captured by this rational vs. irrational dichotomy…

 

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