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2006: The year of renewable energy?

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from… oil-rig225.jpg to… solar-panels225.jpg

In September Chevron announced the discovery of a field containing up to 15 billion barrels of oil beneath the Gulf of Mexico, touting it as “a platform for growth for years to come.” Read the fine print, though, and you get a different story. To recover the first samples of oil there in 2004, engineers floating 175 miles off the Louisiana coast had to send drill gear into 7,000-foot-deep water and penetrate four miles of rock. The company spent tens of millions of dollars on computer modeling, cutting-edge seismological tools, and exploratory drilling; just renting the drill rig cost Chevron and its partners more than $200,000 a day. The results suggest that oil from the new reservoir, called Jack 2, could cost three to four times as much to extract as oil from traditional locations

The upside of stratospheric oil prices is reflected in what is happening on the other side of the balance sheet. The past year looks like the turning point when alternatives to fossil fuels—everything from solar energy, wind turbines, ethanol, and the hybrid car—finally hit the mainstream. “We’ll look back and say this is the year where people rallied together to start down the irreversible path of becoming less dependent on oil,” says Samir Kaul, a partner in venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, which invests in energy and other tech startups.

Meanwhile, the markets are voting with their dollars. By the summer, the stock market value of all renewable energy firms larger than $40 million doubled, to total $50 billion. Venture capitalists, big banks, and even old-school bond peddlers jumped in. This past year, 39 French and German wind farms bought nearly $600 million in bonds in May from Italian Bank UniCredit’s HVB Group—a deal that would have been unheard of even two years ago…

Even Big Oil is jumping headlong into the renewables market.

More at the link below:
[DiscoverMagazine]

Green Energy Enthusiasts Are Also Betting on Fossil Fuels

A chief champion of the cause has been Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the marquee venture capital firms. Its principals, John Doerr in particular, have passionately advocated development of alternative energies as a way to create energy independence and clean up the carbon-saturated atmosphere.  But Kleiner has also poured millions of dollars into Terralliance, a company that makes technology to enable more efficient drilling of oil and gas.

The investment underscores a fact that is much less bragged about in the valley: For all the boasting in the region about investing in clean technologies, there have also been a smaller number of bets in companies set up to promote the development of fossil fuels — the source of many of the problems their other investments are meant to fix…

In Silicon Valley, there’s a word for that kind of investment.

“It’s called browntech,” said Erik Straser, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. One of that venture firm’s investments is in a start-up called Panasas, which has developed computer storage technology to help oil companies become hyperefficient at finding new places to explore.

Mohr Davidow invests in energy markets, he said, because they are big, and have big profit potential, not foremost because they offer an opportunity to help the environment.

“I’m here to make the kind of green my limited partners can spend,” Mr. Straser said.

[NYTimes]

‘The Precarious Future of Coal’

Energy experts from MIT have released a long-awaited report on the future of coal. The report recommends that much more be done to develop technology for decreasing the impact of burning coal on global warming. The report also challenges some conventional thinking about the best way forward. It criticizes current efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) and calls for an approximately $5 billion, 10-year program to demonstrate technology for capturing and storing carbon dioxide released by coal-fired power plants.

The report, based on a study by 13 MIT faculty members, comes at a time when growing concerns about global warming are making it increasingly likely that governments worldwide will impose a price on carbon-dioxide emissions to force a cut in the release of this important greenhouse gas. Nevertheless, coal, the leading source of carbon-dioxide emissions from electricity generation, will continue to be a major source of electricity, say the authors of the report. That’s because even with a high price on carbon, coal is abundant and probably necessary to meet fast-growing demand for energy worldwide.

Reducing the impact of continued coal use on global warming will require a massive effort to collect carbon dioxide from power plants and bury it underground, the experts say. The volume of compressed carbon dioxide that will need to be captured and transported is similar in scale to the amount of oil consumed in the United States, the report says.

[Technology Review]

Related Article: Burying Greenhouse Gases will be Key (CSMonitor)

UK’s Channel 4 global warming ‘documentary’ (update)

You may remember our earlier post on this so-called documentary, Climate scientist ‘duped to deny global warming – well, the UK paper The Independent has recently published a whole host of factual issues with the film.  Turns out that the film-makers used out of date information, had graphic designers modify diagrams, and even falsely attributed information to NASA when it actually came from well funded right-wing think tanks.
When asked why he didn’t use current data (that would have undermined his arguments), the director responded, “The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find.”

More from the article:

The Great Global Warming Swindle, was based on graphs that were distorted, mislabelled or just plain wrong. The graphs were nevertheless used to attack the credibility and honesty of climate scientists.

A graph central to the programme’s thesis, purporting to show variations in global temperatures over the past century, claimed to show that global warming was not linked with industrial emissions of carbon dioxide. Yet the graph was not what it seemed.

Other graphs used out-of-date information or data that was shown some years ago to be wrong. Yet the programme makers claimed the graphs demonstrated that orthodox climate science was a conspiratorial “lie” foisted on the public.

Channel 4 yesterday distanced itself from the programme, referring this newspaper’s inquiries to a public relations consultant working on behalf of Wag TV, the production company behind the documentary….

….
The programme failed to point out that scientists had now explained the period of “global cooling” between 1940 and 1970. It was caused by industrial emissions of sulphate pollutants, which tend to reflect sunlight. Subsequent clean-air laws have cleared up some of this pollution, revealing the true scale of global warming – a point that the film failed to mention.

Other graphs used in the film contained known errors, notably the graph of sunspot activity. Mr Durkin used data on solar cycle lengths which were first published in 1991 despite a corrected version being available – but again the corrected version would not have supported his argument. Mr Durkin also used a schematic graph of temperatures over the past 1,000 years that was at least 16 years old, which gave the impression that today’s temperatures are cooler than during the medieval warm period. If he had used a more recent, and widely available, composite graph it would have shown average temperatures far exceed the past 1,000 years.

[TheIndependent]

Is a Prius really worse than a Hummer? Nope.


Well the internet is buzzing again with an article that supposedly shows how a Prius has a more significant environmental impact than a Hummer. The article, an editorial from Central Connecticut University’s paper, has surely been emailed to quite a few inboxes, but many remain understandably skeptical (it’s on digg, but with a very low number of diggs for being a week old). Deja vu? A study released last year by CNW, asserted similar findings, but was debunked and even called ‘Recycled Rubbish’ by Toyota.

Thankfully, the folks over at AutoBlogGreen, have taken a moment to review this editorial. Guess what? Its author, Chris Demorro, didn’t exactly do his homework:

The main evidence he references are the now debunked CNW research article that came out in 2006, that contained plenty of factual errors in their analysis of the manufacturing costs of the nickel metal hydride batteries and information about nickel producer Inco. The information on Inco is just plain outdated and wrong. Yes, Inco did a lot of probably irreparable damage to the area around Sudbury, Ontario over the many decades, and I will not defend them. The 1,247 foot tall Inco superstack definitely spread acid rain far and wide over eastern Canada for nearly two decades. However a major pollution control program was put in place in the late 1980s and since 1994, the stack has emitted almost nothing but water vapor. Most of the Ontario lakes that were damaged by acid rain in the 1970s and 1980s have since recovered and are now doing well.

Finally, the author references the changes to the EPA fuel economy ratings this year, and the fact that Prius ratings fall about 25 percent from 2007 to 2008. What he neglects to mention is that every vehicle for sale in the United States suffers a significant drop in the sticker fuel efficiency, including his precious Hummer. Admittedly, hybrids are not a panacea for our problems and they create problems of their own. But this article is just silly.

Mr. Demorro, some advice: 1) Make sure whenever you cite a study or a quotation that it hasn’t since been shown to be false, and 2) I wouldn’t use your aforementioned ‘editorial’ as a writing sample in your applications to journalism school.

[AutoBlogGreen]

Community Supported Energy Offers a Third Way

When applied to wind power for example, this strategy falls in between the large-scale commercial wind farm and the small-scale residential wind turbine, and has been described as “The Third Way.” This middle strategy, also referred to as Community Supported Wind, relies on somewhat smaller scale projects that are developed, sited and owned by members of the local community rather than out-of-state corporate entities.

Community Supported Wind could fill a huge gap in the present wind power sector. And this approach is not limited to wind power, but can be applied to virtually any type of local renewable energy project such as solar thermal or photovoltaic panels, biogas digesters, a variety of biofuels production facilities, geothermal or geoelectric projects, and small-scale hydro.

[RenewableEnergyAccess]

‘Binding’ carbon targets proposed in the UK

Britain could become the first country to set legally binding carbon reduction targets under plans unveiled by Environment Secretary David Miliband.

The draft Climate Change Bill calls for an independent panel to set ministers a “carbon budget” every five years, in a bid to cut emissions by 60% by 2050.

If they miss the figure, future governments could be taken to court.

The BBC also published an Analysis of the proposed bill:

With the Climate Change Bill, it is not at all clear what happens should a future UK government not meet its legally binding emissions target…This is perhaps the sort of sanction which a future government might decide it can withstand, particularly if elements of the low-carbon economy turn out to be unpopular…

Emissions from electricity generation and heavy industry are the easiest to tackle, because there are relatively few players and because much of the technology is proven. By 2020, assuming everyone plays ball, we would see a spread of renewable energy generation, with perhaps one-fifth of Britain’s electricity coming from onshore and offshore wind turbines and a smaller slice from whichever marine technologies prove the most efficient and economic.

[BBC News]

The new Seven Sisters: oil and gas giants dwarf western rivals

The “new seven sisters”, or the most influential energy companies from countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, have been identified by the Financial Times in consultation with numerous industry executives. They are Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom, CNPC of China, NIOC of Iran, Venezuela’s PDVSA, Brazil’s Petrobras and Petronas of Malaysia.

Overwhelmingly state-owned, they control almost one-third of the world’s oil and gas production and more than one-third of its total oil and gas reserves. In contrast, the old seven sisters – which shrank to four in the industry consolidation of the 1990s – produce about 10 per cent of the world’s oil and gas and hold just 3 per cent of reserves. Even so, their integrated status – which means they sell not only oil and gas, but also gasoline, diesel and petrochemicals – push their revenues notably higher than those of the newcomers.

[FinancialTimes]

Cap, don’t trade.

The shortcomings of current carbon trading systems are clear. As a piece in Newsweek concluded, “So far, the real winners in emissions trading have been polluting factory owners who can sell menial cuts for massive profits and the brokers who pocket fees each time a company buys or sells the right to pollute.”

Currently, the link between the purchase of carbon offsets and the actual reduction of carbon emissions is highly controversial and almost impossible to verify. The process is easily manipulated. Measurement tools are remarkably primitive. Even the most basic calculations are subject to wide variations….In other words, the system is new. As with all new systems, carbon offset trading is working out the kinks. Carbon trading 2.0 will be much better than carbon trading 1.0. Give it a chance.

I disagree. Carbon trading is not a promising strategy. Its costs outweigh its benefits. We don’t need carbon trading to reduce carbon emissions. Indeed, it is likely that we will reduce carbon emissions much more without carbon trading.

Unfortunately, policymakers and environmentalists have all but wielded together the words, “cap” and “trade.” They talk as if a cap cannot exist without a trading mechanism. That’s not true. We can have caps without trade.

We should impose an immediate moratorium on carbon trading while imposing ever-more rigorous carbon caps. And stop the use of long-distance offsets. All offsets should be local or regional.

[Alternet]

Saudi Arabian oil declines 8% in 2006

“At that time, while the conjunction of declining production and rising rig counts was striking, I wasn’t ready to draw firm conclusions on the data through August-October (depending on agency). Recently, Jim Hamilton raised the same questions:

The first possibility is that the Saudis could still pump 10 mbd or more today if they wanted to, but they are cutting back production and exploring like mad because they put an extremely high value on having 2-3 mbd of excess capacity. If so, the recent price behavior suggests that the reason they would seek such capacity is not because they want to stabilize the price, but because it puts them in an incredibly powerful negotiating position. For example, the ability at any time to flood the market could be used at an opportune moment to undercut expensive alternatives such as oil sands that require an oil price over $50.

The second and more natural interpretation is even more disturbing: the mighty Ghawar oil field is already in decline, and the Saudis don’t want anyone to know.

Overall, I feel this data is clear enough that I’m willing to go out on a limb and conclude the following:

  • Saudi Arabian oil production is now in decline.
  • The decline rate during the first year is very high (8%), akin to decline rates in other places developed with modern horizontal drilling techniques such as the North Sea.
  • Declines are rather unlikely to be arrested, and may well accelerate.
  • Matt Simmons appears to be right in Twilight in the Desert, but the warning did not come until after declines had actually begun.”

[TheOilDrum]