The Energy Thread

Don't knock yourself, you are the guys who are going to make my stuff a success.

yeah I don't have an engineering degree either - I kinda fell into this work after endless temp gigs at the local utility (PG&E)

(altho that was a long time ago - I've been working for my current company for almost 10 years now)

I imagine wanting to change the world with an English Literature BA must be pretty frustrating

dude for real

I'm not ragging on those without technical qualifications and realise the importance of advocacy, we wouldn't be this far along the road without it, I just favour a more directly practical approach.

Yeah, good point: literature has never changed people's lives.

^^^^butthurt

:D

;)

(i totally get yr point, by the way Ed, I just had to stick up for my peoples.)

Like I say the importance of everything from Thoreau through Rachel Carson right up to the day after tomorrow but I was thinking of a particular unemployed semi-professional activist I know.

Trust me when I say I don't think he is going to bust out the next Silent Spring.

LOL. I know who you are ragging on but until you learn to spell, engineer boy, don't even go there! World will be unsaved due to some typo-related glitch in yr masterplan.

discovering that mil was means 1/1000th of an inch in american and not a handy abbreviation for millimetres yesterday was a more likely cause of failure. (I am working with someone who was involved with the "whoops those were metric dimensions mars mission", we are hopefully quite alive to this). ;-P

Besides they are getting me a harvard MBA to take care of things like spelling for me.

Harvard MBA probably cannot spell either, claims to have minion for such things as well. I am beginning to think bad spelling in whatever language will be the downfall of everyone as it highlights lack of observational skills (you're surrounded by correct examples to look at and still FAIL).

Your clue about 'mil' is that it ain't 'mm'. DUHHHHHH.

This was a verbal, rather than written things. NB I don't write professionally in ILX style.

I am working with someone who was involved with the "whoops those were metric dimensions mars mission"

lolz I remember that - that was some funny (and very expensive) shit

OK then you have an out, but whenever I've seen yr pro writing you have to be led gently through 'corrections' before you can get that sucker out there. BTW the best and worst thing that could have ever happened to crown me Spelling Bitch was acing MENSA spelling test given by bored English teacher when I was 15/16ish, which is prob not unique on ILX.

Be sure and drop N a line, letting her know how you're getting on. She'll be tickled about factory news.

Anyway, groping back towards topic:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/10/oil-price-increase

"Nobody has solved the issue of the '2012 supply gap' which may emerge later than thought but which will be deeper. It means prices may even jump over the $250 hurdle we have forecast a year ago," said Miller.

2012 comes from the IEA report from a few years back, but I'd say the "supply gap" will most likely occur when the economy "recovers" from the recession. Global oil production peaked in the 1st quarter of 2008 (declining slightly in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2008, before the recession), indicating that there was already the beginning of a supply crunch in 2008, because prices during 2nd and 3rd quarters were at record highs yet production declined.

WRT peak resources this work is really interesting:

http://rutledge.caltech.edu/

Joe Romm has a good post discussing Waxman-Markey, and in particular, the idea that if it fails to gain passage the EPA would easily take up the slack. The key part is here:

Many people, including some commenters here, are under the misimpression that absent passage of this bill, the EPA can and will use the endangerment finding to achieve comparable regulation of CO2 under the Clean Air Act. That view has several flaws.

First, whatever Obama might do with the EPA — and it would take many, many years to put in place a program that could substantially reduce existing emissions (see below) — could be undone by a subsequent administration, which is not true of climate legislation. Politically, it would be quite easy for a future President to simply stop the EPA process in its tracks or allow the myriad lawsuits against it that will inevitably occur to delay the process to death. What political cost could their be if the forces of denial and delay had already triumphed and stopped the US political system from embracing comparable legislative action? Undoing a law that was passed by Congress, however, and then used as the basis for international negotiations, would be hard even for a President Palin to do.

Second, whatever Obama might do with the EPA, the rest of the world would know that the United States political system is incapable of agreeing to binding targets, so that would certainly be all-but fatal to the international negotiation process or a bilateral deal with China.

Third, if Congress rejects this bill, then, domestically, legislative action on greenhouse gas emissions will be dead for a long time. How long did it take before we got a chance to take up serious health care legislation after it died? How long since we reconsidered an energy tax after the BTU tax died? How long since we have passed major legislation to strengthen the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act to deal with obvious dangers to public health? Still waiting!

Fourth, the EPA authority is most easily translated into regulating emissions from new sources. Obama has already announced the strongest regulations ever for tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions. That mostly leaves new coal, which was already starting to collapse, thanks in part to the renewables and efficiency in the stimulus package

Waxman-Markey set to pass the House

Is there a handy guide to what is actually in Waxman-Markey, I am assuming it is substantially different from what was originally presented and pretty watered down.

seems like its changing daily

http://i39.tinypic.com/245khao.jpg

What's sad about the GOP talking point about Waxman-Markey being too complicated and long to understand is that its complexity is at least partly a consequence of near-total incompetence and inaction on climate and energy over the past (GOP dominated) decade.

this also seems to be getting rushed because the Dems fear 1994 all over again and want to cram as much in before the summer in Obama's first year in office. I'm sure something will come out of this but I am sure it will be a mess riddled with loopholes, exemptions and boondoggles.

that GOP thing is hilarious (I like how energy companies, utilities, and oil companies aren't even on there lolz)

but also what Ed said.

nonetheless I'm absolutely convinced its better than the alternative, which is nothing

What's also frustrating is that several of the points highlighted at the top of that chart can be so easily refuted.

FAMILIES > Higher Prices > Power Bills & Heating and Cooling Bills
- An analysis of Waxman-Markey recently released by the EPA found that by 2020 electricity bills would be LOWER (7%, to be exact), even if electricity prices were higher. Why? The energy efficiency provisions in the bill would help to lower household demand enough to more than offset the rise in rates, resulting in a lower overall monthly bill for the average American.

FARMERS > Higher Prices > Food Prices
- Unless GMO crops miraculously save the day (and I don't think they will), we've got an impending global food crisis, which is bound to drive up food prices even without climate legislation. The combination of rapidly growing populations, rising affluence, a lack of additional suitable cropland, water scarcity and erosion have already made the prospects of feeding 3 billion more people by 2050 bleak. Climate change, while possibly marginally increasing crop yields for the part of the world that shifts into more favorable temperature range, will almost certainly be a huge net loss for farmers because of increased drought, severe weather events, disruption of summer mountain meltwater than many farmers depend on, desertification, and on and on and on. Attempting to halt climate legislation to "help" the farmers if fucking absurd.

DRIVERS > Higher Prices > Gasoline Prices

Again, the writing on the wall about gasoline prices has been evident for many years. We are likely at peak oil already, with only a global economic crisis to temporarily dampen gas prices. Options: Vastly revamp public transportation systems so that owning a car isn't mandatory in most of the United States at it is now, improve fuel economies of vehicles to match those of Europe and Japan, invest heavily in electric powered vehicles and electric battery storage capabilities. Or...be like the GOP and pretend that the Earth's resources aren't finite.

WORKERS > Lost Jobs
- uuuuugh. Can anyone point me to a credible source that DOESN'T think that clean energy jobs will one of the most important industries of this century? If this was 1902, the GOP would be attacking the idea that automobiles would ever gain traction and pushing for more investment in stagecoaches instead.

Also, this from the ACEEE:

June 24, 2009

Washington, D.C.—The federal energy efficiency provisions included in H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka Waxman-Markey), could save approximately $1,050 per household by 2020 and $4,400 per household by 2030, according to an updated analysis by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Changes to ACEEE’s analysis come from an updated assessment of savings from a number of provisions, as well as changes to the bill made in a Rule’s Committee version of the bill released yesterday.

If this was 1902, the GOP would be attacking the idea that automobiles would ever gain traction and pushing for more investment in stagecoaches instead.

this newfangled contraption is going to completely decimate the horseshoe industry!

Watching this House debate on C-SPAN is absolutely tearing my stomach up. Take me to the hospital, fuck.

Livebloggin' the appearance of Boehner's awesome chart at the ACES debate

http://i43.tinypic.com/nx0qxt.jpg

he is a complete douchebag.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24232.html

so irritated at the Republicans' refusing to satisfy my twisted, radical environmentalist desires

Can anyone explain what exactly they are voting on?

I don't think most of the people voting could even explain it

I mean, I can guess it is a bad thing judging by how the votes are breaking down, however the text on the CSPAN screen is barely a coherent sentence.

ON PASSAGE means the final vote, right?

hurrah?

I was out for the last few hours, just got back. Passed 219-212? What are these "Special Order Speeches" going on at C-SPAN right now then? Souder (R-Indiana) is going on about how democrats must have been smoking "marijuana cigarettes" when they came up with ACES.

Man, some serious sour grapes and imbecility there.

Energy thread peeps,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2708219489770693816

Mr. Shirky seems to believe that there is a yet-unmodeled economic force, what he calls a "social lubricant" in this keynote, which is required by the human phenotype at large whenever a massive transformation takes place (apparently by way of general-purpose-technologies) in how the most developed economies accomplish work.

What, if anything, do you think might be the "social lubricant" for sustainable (ok semi-sustainable) energy? It seems clear to me that there is no fucking way on the whole of goddamned earth that we will make any kind of switch to non-carboniferous power in the near term, but if we do, how is the pop going to deal? What is the interstitial soiled-pants solution for all the human beings who are going to be taken by surprise?

I'm thinking it's nintendo games. I'm not even sure if I'm joking, which is a pretty good indication that I'm so right it hurts.

I think you are not far off the mark, El T. We'd adapt voluntarily for something that pleases or amuses or delights us. Except of course then the religious zealots will start yammering about how whatever-it-is is perniciously destroying family values/etc, so we'll have to put up with that too.

That was a cool video, and I kind of want to read Shirky's book now.

I think before you can begin to answer what sort of social lubricant will accompany sustainable energy systems, you have to guess at how much lube will be needed in the first place (lol). The shock created from the transition to clean energy depends on the nature of the new system, along with the way we view our present system, right? Currently, at least in the West, we plug appliances into outlets, water magically comes out of the faucet, gasoline flows out of pumps, etc. If you choose to you can think about the crazy process it takes to get these materials into your hands, but you certainly don't have to. Energy and water is easily and readily available, and incredibly cheap at that. And so we take it for granted.

The ease of access to energy in the future depends on whose vision you believe the most. First, take the optimistic outlook. If wind, CSP and solar PV, geothermal, etc are ramped up quickly enough, there's a possibility that not that much would change from the perspective of the consumer. You'd still have outlets, with the only difference being the supply of electricity in the first place, far out of sight, along with improved transmission lines. With energy efficiency, if utility profits were decoupled electricity consumption so that they had an incentive to save energy, utilities could actually come to houses and put up much of the front end investment for homeowners, like new windows, insulation, and so on. So on that end, things could end up looking the same as well. From the perspective of the consumer, they would just have a more efficient house and an extra section on the utility bill that states how much money was saved from efficiency, how much of that savings goes to the utility, and how much of it goes in their pocket.

I'm not sure if that kind of smooth transition is possible in the near term, and even if it was, it would only apply to the industrialized West. If we had meaningfully committed to clean energy and efficiency a decade ago or earlier, it certainly would have been easier. But I'm trying to force myself not to be such a cynical pessimistic bastard all of the time, so I'm acknowledging that there is a possibility of a transition more smooth than bumpy.

I think it's much more likely that there is going to be a serious wake up call very soon. I hate to pinpoint 2012 for my doomsday prediction, but it would not surprise me. That was the year that the IEA, traditionally very conservative and optimistic (and RONG) with their oil predictions, highlighted as the likely year of the energy crunch. If and when the global economy recovers and begins to move back into the heavy positive growth of the mid-00's, we'll be butting our heads against the resource constraints that we were dealing with before the recession. The oil crises in the 70s were caused by embargos, wars and revolutions. Wars still pose a threat to our oil supplies, obviously, but the main driver of price increases are supply and demand. Demand was dampened by the global economic fiasco, but supply hasn't increased, and it won't significantly increase.

Somehow I got off on a tangent there. I think we face similar problems with electricity. Regardless of the idiotic GOP arguments I witnessed last night during the "debate", I think eventually the U.S. will wake up and realize that we probably shouldn't be powering half of our country with coal. A price on carbon will maybe help push that realization a few years ahead, along with the conspicuous absence of the North Pole (or maybe not). The question is if clean energies can be ramped up quickly enough to match the decrease that is needed from coal. If we would have started years ago, maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it now. Rather than voluntarily changing our energy consumption habits, we're about to be forced by constraints. Oops!

What is the social lubricant? Well, I've put myself back into pessimistic mode now so I'm just going to roll with it. The lubricants that Shirky talked about in his lecture (gin during the industrial revolution, tv during the 20th century) were responses to seemingly positive changes (reliable food supply, better health, more free time, etc). For much of the population, the lubricant for widespread negative change is fingerpointing, denial, and violence. I don't doubt that there will be tons and tons of people working as hard as they can to peacefully complete the transition to clean energy, but I also don't doubt that the people who did everything they could to delay a response to climate change will continue to fuck up the world. When there are millions of environmental refugees floating across boundaries, I don't see James Inhofe, Joe Barton and Dick Cheney opening up their arms. I see them in a grab for the remaining energy supplies (ie, power).

Uuuugh, I disgust myself sometimes. What the hell, I'll just agree and say nintendo games. We're all going to play nintendo games.

tl;dr

everybody wants everything to be electric from clean energy sources (sucks to be you SoCal Gas!)

I want nearly all energy to be electric so I can keep burning natural gas to cook

otmfm

though if the utility figures out how to harvest biogas and pipe it to my house at sufficient scale I'll happily burn that too. Anyway the electricity mix in my state is like 80%+ hydro 😎

where are you... Colorado?

Seattle iirc

here's an overview of the new CA legislation:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/on-to-the-governors-desk-what-100-clean-energy-means-for-california#gs.U3FXrJs

It makes more sense to use methane/natural gas for space heating and cooking heating over electricity on efficiency grounds, but in the future the methane will be provided by excess renewable energy.

I fully expect a much worse case scenario for global warming than most, but should society recover, there's a high likelihood it will be with a methane infrastructure providing energy storage/generation/end-user heat production.

I haven't probed deeply into it, but I expect that there are already feasible and demonstrated solutions to every one of the technical problems associated with stopping fossil fuel use completely.

The biggest and most intractable problems are that such solutions would require a massive recapitalization of our energy infrastructure, coupled with removing many trillions of dollars worth of assets from financial markets. I fear that won't happen until the disaster is already so far advanced that the collapse of society is already well underway.

I fear that won't happen until the disaster is already so far advanced that the collapse of society is already well underway.

no need to fear, we're likely already past the tipping point

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609642/the-year-climate-change-began-to-spin-out-of-control/

there are a lot of ways to collapse, though. the task now is to mitigate it as much as possible.