The Energy Thread

^mea. Ulpa on typos. Posting from ipad in sickbed.

Yep, agreed that RFK Jr.'s opposition to offshore wind is/was impossibly frustrating. And yeah, agree that the PRB coal terminals to China are just as likely to push us over the tipping point than the exploitation of tar sands, if not more so. but the presence of other energy/climate debacles doesn't mean that protests against Keystone XL are pointless or misguided. you have to go to where the energy is (no pun intended), and if a bunch of prominent environmental leaders, activists, organizations and danny glover are rallying around the largest display of green civil disobedience in 20 years and putting pressure on the Obama administration to exhibit a hint of global leadership on this cause, that's worth supporting.

I was under the impression that opposition to offshore wind power was largely the result of astroturfing by oil companies.

would like to setup a script so that whenever anyone on the internet posts something similar to "if only obama would support domestic drilling, THEN we'd have lower gas prices!!!", this image is automatically posted in response:

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/298734_10150284423800959_638030958_7862025_1975161_n.jpg

He or whomever succeeds him needs to say "enough is known about the geology of the US to say with some confidence, that all the "easy" oil, save a few spots around Alaska, is gone. All that's left is low flow rate shale beds, small satellite deposits, and very deep water, none of which are economic at <$3/gal gas. The throughput possible if all of these were put into production isn't enough to budge global supply by more than a few percent a year, a supply that will be rapidly absorbed by developing market demand in a couple of years even at current prices. The east coast and west coast north of Los Angeles haven't been drilled not because they've been off limits, but because oil companies found them to be non-prospective (source rocks hadn't been buried deep enough for maturation) before the Federal Government put them off limits. All of the oil with positive energy return on energy invested will be produced someday, including ANWR, but its best for our grandchildren to keep some in reserve till later this century when it will be deperately needed as a chemical feedstock, rather than to be merely blow it out the exhaust of present day commuter's SUVs."

tl, dr

lol sanpaku, presidential speechwriting is not your thing.

also dude, a few environmental purists who care (too much) about the desert tortoise /= "progressives"

none of which are economic at <$3/gal gas

This is the key point that needs to be made. The fact that far from reducing gas prices, building the infrastructure for unconventional oil actually locks us into a dependency on a source of fuel that MUST be expensive.

I made a very similar point in a facebook note I posted a few hours ago (the ultimate tl;dr) explaining my arrest this coming Saturday at the Tar Sands action.

For all the effort that Obama apparently makes toward being perceived as the Adult in the Room, he needs to speak honestly about our energy options.

posting this on a friday night probably guarantees zero response, but this seems big

A study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research finds that models the impact of replacing the use of coal with natural gas and takes into account the leakage of methane during production finds that the conception of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" to mitigate climate change is wrong.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/coal-v-methane.jpg

We consider a scenario where a fraction of coal usage is replaced by natural gas (i.e., methane, CH4) over a given time period, and where a percentage of the gas production is assumed to leak into the atmosphere. The additional CH4 from leakage adds to the radiative forcing of the climate system, offsetting the reduction in CO2 forcing that accompanies the transition from coal to gas. We also consider the effects of methane leakage from coal mining; changes in radiative forcing due to changes in the emissions of sulfur dioxide and carbonaceous aerosols; and differences in the efficiency of electricity production between coal- and gas-fired power generation. On balance, these factors more than offset the reduction in warming due to reduced CO2 emissions.

any reactions? if this is true, this is very, very very important.

important caption to the chart that I neglected to include:

Note this is a figure of temperature change relative to baseline warming of roughly 3°C (5.4°F) in 2100.

bumping this because it was the middle of night last night and i'm curious to hear feedback.

If I'm reading it correctly, current methane leakage from natural gas production is quoted as 2.4% in the article, which makes the 2.5 orange line applicable. So substitution of gas for coal would lead to worse than baseline outcomes till 2055, but better outcomes thereafter for the next 145 years of the model. Forr the unitiated, uncombusted methane/natural gas is about 20x more potent a greenhouse gas, but has a much shorter atmospheric residence time, a few decades rather than the centuries for carbon dioxide.

So, if the quality of environment for every future generation is equally weighted, AND the choice is just btween natural gas and coal, then natural gas seems to come out ahead. If only the lifetimes of the currently living is considered, than coal has a slight advantage in climate (though not particulate and heavy metals) emissions.

The real problem with natural gas is that after the shale land rush, drillers were forced by lease stipulations to drill leases in order to retain them. This has forced natural gas below economic break-even for shale resources (around $6/mcf), and also below the $8/mcf at which some renewables (wind, geothermal, but probably not ev or thermal solar) become competitive. Ideally, government would tax / credit, or set quotas (as the Texas Railroad commission did to support crude oil prices when Texas was the world's marginal producer pre-1970), so that renewables could exist without fickle subsidies.

2.4% methane leakage seemed to be the rock bottom conservative estimate, with a strong possibility of much higher figures (2 to 3 times higher).

So, if the quality of environment for every future generation is equally weighted, AND the choice is just btween natural gas and coal, then natural gas seems to come out ahead. If only the lifetimes of the currently living is considered, than coal has a slight advantage in climate (though not particulate and heavy metals) emissions.

heh, if the well-being of future generations was equally weighted with the well-being of today's population (effectively, a 0% discount rate), today's policies would be quite different! of course, we heavily weight toward ourselves, which is natural i suppose. i don't think the researchers intent was to make people see coal as the "winner" between natural gas and coal, but rather that they're both losers. coal consumption is the greatest driver of the mess we're in, and natural gas, far from being a "bridge fuel" to some sort of sustainable future, is actually worse over the next 100 years. that's a significant finding, if it's true. to me, the conclusion isn't "we have to choose between coal or natural gas, so let's go with coal i guess" but "coal and natural gas are BOTH terrible, so we need to ramp up clean energy, conservation and energy efficiency as quickly as humanly possible".

meanwhile, Exxon is heavily investing in drilling sites that are opening up because of global warming.

Despite the varying accounts of the overall potential value of the agreement, a fact sheet released by the companies indicated an initial commitment to invest $3.2 billion in exploration in the Kara Sea, the body of water between the northern coast of European Russia and the Novaya Zemlya island chain.

Once seen as a useless, ice-clogged backwater, the Kara Sea now has the attention of oil companies. That is partly because the sea ice is apparently receding — possibly a result of global warming — which would ease exploration and drilling.

...the United States Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds one-fifth of the world’s undiscovered, recoverable oil and natural gas.

"possibly a result of global warming"? fucking new york times. anyway, $3.2 billion is just the investment they've already committed to. Exxon itself expects to spend at least "tens of billions", and the initial Russian reports quoted Putin as stating figures up to the insane FIVE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS.

in some slightly more upbeat news:

http://www.itworld.com/data-centerservers/202221/softbank-founder-backs-japans-shift-renewable-energy

Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Softbank, spoke at the launch of his Japan Renewable Energy Foundation. He said Japan could shift to renewable energy sources for 60 percent of its electricity requirements over the next two decades, calling for a 2 trillion yen (US$26 billion) "super grid" across the country, and underwater off the coast, that would zip electricity around cheaply and efficiently to meet demand.

no idea how realizable this plan is but it's good to see that it's at least on the table, with a wealthy backer

http://climaterealityproject.org/

xpost to dayo,

very realisable. Japan is current world leader in grid scale energy storage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/world/asia/chinese-protesters-accuse-solar-panel-plant-of-pollution.html

darker side of solar panel production

I heard a 'stat' a long time ago that claimed it takes much more energy to produce a solar panel than the solar panel will make in its lifetime. how true is that?

also depressed that once again, china is the dumping ground of the_west

I heard a 'stat' a long time ago that claimed it takes much more energy to produce a solar panel than the solar panel will make in its lifetime. how true is that?

not true for either of the two primary solar power systems, Photovoltaic (PV) or Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)

for solar PV, the Dept. of Energy says:

Energy payback estimates for rooftop PV systems are 4, 3, 2, and 1 years: 4 years for systems using current multicrystalline-silicon PV modules, 3 years for current thin-film modules, 2 years for anticipated multicrystalline modules, and 1 year for anticipated thin-film modules (see Figure 1).

In other words, DOE is estimating that it currently takes between 1 to 4 years to recover the energy that went into making the PV systems. DOE is also assuming that the life expectancies of the PV systems are 30 years. If that's the case, a PV system with an energy payback estimate of 2 years would end up generating 15 times as much energy over 30 years as compared to the initial amount invested.

for CSP, estimates vary (as usual), but trade associations have put the energy payback at about 5 months. of course, the Solar Energy Industries Association is likely to be on the optimistic side of things, but generally CSP is seen as a very efficient energy source.

The important thing to keep in mind is that solar technology is developing so rapidly that the energy payback for PV and CSP has substantially improved (for example, in 2000 the estimated energy payback period for Solar PV was about 10 years; now DOE conservatively pegs it at 1 to 4 years) and will continue to improve in the future as more R&D piles on and economies of scale take hold. This is in stark contrast to fossil fuels, which operate very much on a "low-hanging fruit" model - the highest quality (most energy-packed) and easiest to extract (lowest energy investment) fossil fuels were exploited a long, long time ago. nowadays, we're drilling in the fucking arctic and blowing up mountaintops just to get to the stuff. A good example of this is U.S. oil. In the early days (think There Will Be Blood), the Energy Returned Over Energy Invested (EROEI) was around 100:1 - that is, you'd get 100 times as much energy from the easy to extract oil gushers than it would take to extract. Nowadays, that number is anywhere between 5:1 - 15:1, depending on where it's extracted. And that ratio will continue to decline.

aw man thanks for that - will whip those facts out at appropriate times. holy shit @ declining EROEI. gonna take that to the suburbs thread

it's not the prettiest graphic, but:

http://i53.tinypic.com/s15m52.png
Figure 5.5. “Balloon graph” representing quality (y graph) and quantity (x graph) of the United States economy for various fuels at various times. Arrows connect fuels from various times (i.e. domestic oil in 1930, 1970, 2005), and the size of the “balloon” represents part of the uncertainty associated with EROI estimates.
(Source: US EIA, Cutler Cleveland and C. Hall’s own EROI work in preparation)

dude that graph makes me so sad

ha, which part(s) of it?

the lack of effort ... looks like they just made some random-sized circles w/ text in them, c+p'd them into the graph and them resized them all willy-nilly

spend more than ten minutes on the graph OR get an intern who can figure out omnigraffle or whatever

lol

i thought you were going to be all bummed about the difficulty of kicking the coal habit within 20-30 years (which, we pretty much have to do to avoid the worst impacts of climate change) given the relatively high EROEI of coal and the huge chunk of our energy portfolio that it serves.

but yeah, it's very possible that chart was made in MS Paint. the shapes and sizes of the circles have meaning, though - they represent uncertainty on both axes, in terms of the EROEI on the Y axis and the quantity of energy provided on the X axis.

it's not the size/shape of the "circles" that bums me out ... it's the fact that they should have put the text on afterward, not before! also poor choice of font and font size.

obviously what you are talking about is a *gigantic* bummer but i was acquainted with the magnitude of that bummer before i saw that chart

i have a question about that EROI - which externalities does it include?

probably the right ones, those dudes seem like they have pretty good credentials

i have a question about that EROI - which externalities does it include?

the methodology and the availability of good data differs for each energy source, but in general, EROEI can be defined as "the energy that one obtains from an activity compared to the energy it took to generate that energy. The procedures are generally straightforward; simply divide the Energy Gained (Out) by the Energy Used (In), resulting in a unitless ratio."

for externalities, they try to simplify things a bit by calculating EROEI at the extraction stage (for fossil fuels). For example, in one of Cutler Cleveland's studies (a leading EROEI dude, and cited underneath the terrible MS Paint graph), he says:

The EROI for petroleum and coal is calculated at the extraction stage of the resource transformation
process. Only industrial energies are evaluated: the fossil fuel and electricity used directly and indirectly
to extract petroleum. The costs include only those energies used to locate and extract petroleum and
prepare it for shipment from the lease. Transportation and refining costs are excluded from this analysis.

ok so that's a best case scenario

heh, pretty much. one of the terrible aspects of being an energy realist is that even when people are already rolling their eyes at how pessimistic you are, you have that voice in the back of your head that says "and that's the OPTIMISTIC VIEW, actually!"

yeah it's one of those subjects where if you just give people the basic numbers and facts they'll think you're a conspiracy theorist

the other subject being the suburbs

imagine if they included health/environment externalities everything in that graph would be scaled down on the y-axis but how much?

well, i'm with you that the impacts to human health and the environment are the most important externalities of fossil fuels, but it wouldn't affect the Y-axis, which measures the energy return / energy invested. a ton of coal produces about 21 gigajoules of energy, regardless of whether or not it contributes to droughts, hurricanes, rising seas, asthma, etc.

that is gross energy return ... like what if we counted the energy expenditure related to irrigation after a drought?

i realize that is farfetched right now but i have a friend working on a phd measuring the "el nino effect" on flood insurance costs in california

oh, i don't think it's a mistake at all to think about the energy it will require in the future to address climate change! it's definitely a huge factor - The Stern Report is all about the immense costs of climate change (5-20% of global GDP if we do jackshit, which is a likely scenario). The report argues that if we started NOW, stabilizing at 550 ppm would "only" cost about 1% of global GDP. and 1% global GDP entails the investment of a huuuuuuuuge amount of energy. so you're right, there's definitely an amount of energy that will be required in the future to mitigate the consequences of burning fossil fuels, and that's not included in a standard EROEI formula.

But it's difficult to measure or estimate because when considering adaptation to climate change in the future you have to introduce a load of variables and assumptions - how far into the future do you estimate, how high does the GHG ppm get, what's the level of devastation and what's our technological capacity to adapt, and so on. rather than doing that, EROEI just attempts to measure what's happening now. and even with that limitation, estimates can vary widely.

yeah my friend's study is just restricted to looking at flood insurance costs for people who live in california and whose properties abut watersheds, and all he is doing is measuring the extent to which the oscillation in cost between el nino, la nina and regular years is getting bigger (and whether it is at all) due to worse and worse swings in the cycle

another part of his study is whether people are making rational decisions based on knowledge of el nino / la nina / global warming and the unsurprising part is that they're not, they'd rather buy insurance based on ease (buy a policy and forget about it) rather than buy a policy that would allow them to change their coverage depending on weather that year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/world/americas/recent-discoveries-put-americas-back-in-oil-companies-sights.html?_r=1

lol?

The challenges of tapping Brazil’s new offshore fields, located beneath 6,000 feet of water and salt beds formed by the evaporation of ancient oceans, are even greater.

sounds great. a mile under the ocean? no problem!

(sorry - this is kind of a tangent on Daniel Yergin, CERA and IHS)

first expert cited in the NYT article:

“This is an historic shift that’s occurring, recalling the time before World War II when the U.S. and its neighbors in the hemisphere were the world’s main source of oil,” said Daniel Yergin, an American oil historian. “To some degree, we’re going to see a new rebalancing, with the Western Hemisphere moving back to self-sufficiency.”

YERGIN! Yergin's was a famous asshole in Peak Oil circles during the 2000s because on the rare occasion that a media outlet managed to publish something suggesting that perhaps there might be problems with oil supplies in the future and that oil prices might go up, he would always play the attack dog and publish an op-ed a few days later saying everything will be just fine. He's the head of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a group of consultants who make their money by telling other people with money and power what they want to hear - production will pick up soon, prices will stabilize soon, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

check out CERA's excellent track record over the last decade:

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/cera.h2.jpg

CERA likes to ignore all "below-ground" issues and instead focus on political factors as the primary cause of stalled rise in oil production. the "political factors" - conflicts, oil wars, libya, etc - do play a real role, of course, but it's ludicrous to ignore the underlying (no pun intended) drivers:

http://i54.tinypic.com/aonnrd.jpg

on the production side, most of the output is concentrated in a small number of field, many of which are post-peak and declining:

-*In 2007, just over half the world’s crude oil production came from 110 oil fields, with approximately one quarter from just 13 fields. There are 70,000 smaller oil fields which account for just under half of the world’s conventional crude oil production.

• By 2007, out of the world’s 20 largest producing oil fields, 17 were over 40 years old. The volume of

oil production from 16 of this group of 20 largest fields was below their historical maximum.

• The rate of decline in oilfields can be rapid. By 2007 the average post-peak production rate of decline was 6.7% per year.

`Peak Oil' Backers Don't Have Data to Support Claims, IHS Says

By Edward Klump
Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- IHS Inc., owner of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said those who espouse the theory that the world's oil production has already peaked lack evidence to support their claims. "The only thing that's relevant is our data," Jerre Stead, chief executive officer at Englewood, Colorado-based IHS, said today in an interview in Houston. Believers in the so-called Peal Oil theory "don't have our data".

Stead made his comments at an industry conference hosted by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which is headed by Daniel Yergin, the energy researcher whose Pulitzer Prize-winning book was touted as a bible of the petroleum industry. Yergin has said supposed oil shortages historically have eased as breakthroughs unlock new sources of crude.

if their data is so relevant, how come CERA has repeatedly failed to make a oil forecast that passes the laugh test?

anyway, all of that is a tangent i guess, but everytime the newspaper of record leads a story with a comment from daniel fucking yergin it makes me want to tear my hair out. i'm sure there will be more significant "discoveries" of oil ("discoveries" in scare quotes because frequently it's oil in insane locations that they knew was there but wasn't profitable to extract until they were confident that prices would remain above $80/barrel for the foreseeable future), but the real question is whether the new production can make up for the losses in production in the aforementioned giant oil fields. that is doubtful. it's like we're frantically dumping little measuring cups of water into a draining bathtub in a sisyphean effort to keep it full. and the bathtub is full of BLOOD.

okay that last sentence was a joek

haha

I immediately thought it was suspect when the times gave his title as "oil historian"

well, tbf, he did write the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Prize, which is an exhaustive account of the history of oil production and its intersection with politics. it's really good, actually! *impending wild speculation alert* unfortunately it seems like during all of the interviews with people in the oil industry to write the book he ended up drinking a ton of their kool-aid and turned into a total stooge

drank a ton of their crude-aid

that sweet, sweet crude-aid

To be fair, it's rare that anyone's price speculation is correct about anything.

i will proudly point to my own history of price speculation, as exemplified by a comment i made in early 2003 at a bar, when, just before passing out, i drunkenly slurred to my friend "price of oil...it's only going to go up...peak oil dude, it's going up...*BLURRRGHGG!!*"

in other news, the U.S. Energy Information Administration's new International Energy Outlook (IEO) is out, and yet again, it forecasts massive increases in oil consumption over the next 25 years:

http://i51.tinypic.com/19l45z.jpg

big surprise. and how will we produce enough oil to meet the increased demand? by reversing the trends of the last 40 years, that's how! take the U.S. as an example. The IEO forecasts that we'll increase our production from 9.1 million barrels/day in 2009 to 12.8 million b/d in 2035, an increase of 3.7 million b/d. 1.6 million b/d of that increase would come from conventional sources of oil, and the other 2.1 from unconventional (oil shale, etc).

focusing in on the 1.6 million b/d increase of conventional fuels. U.S. conventional oil production peaked in 1970/71. looking at the trend since then, would anyone in their right mind project an increase of oil production 25 years into the future?

http://i54.tinypic.com/xgft08.jpg