Scientists develop low-lignin eucalyptus trees that store more CO2, provide more cellulose for biofuels:

A team of Taiwanese and U.S. scientists has succeeded in developing eucalyptus trees capable of ingesting up to three times more carbon dioxide than normal strains, indicating a new path to reducing greenhouse gases and global warming. The new trees also have properties that make them more suitable for the production of cellulosic ethanol. In this sense, they can be seen as part of third-generation biofuels. This generation is based on crops modified in such a way that they allow the application of a particular bioconversion technology (previous post). Analyses show that there is a very large potential for the production of sustainable biomass from Eucalyptus in Central Africa and South America.

Again, the two fields that will have the greatest impact on our e+e future are nanotech (batteries, lighter, stronger materials, etc.) and genetic engineering (biofuel crops).

See Environmental Science Seminar Series for the American Meteorological Society’s archives of climate change material. Lots of presentations in HTML and PDF format that date to the middle of 2005.

EWEA Says European Commission’s Energy Plan Needs More Work:

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) says the European Commission’s proposal on a Strategic Energy Technology plan still needs better focus, greater clarity and to set priorities.

According to a statement released by the EWEA, the Commission’s proposal should be complemented by additional measures and policies as suggested by the Portuguese presidency in its vision paper. These include a clearer distinction between the technologies already available today or in the final stages of development. The wind energy sector would have liked to see a more detailed and clear financial strategy and priority-setting that takes into account past allocations of R&D funds between the different energy technologies.

“The Commission’s Plan is a good basis for discussion at the Energy Council on 3 December. If complemented by the visions and additional measures presented by the Portuguese Presidency, there is hope for a positive outcome,” said EWEA Chief Executive Christian Kjaer. “Achieving the 20% renewable target depends on this, as does Europe’s future welfare. Europe has to prioritize investments now in efficiency, renewable energy technologies and infrastructure if we are to emerge successfully from the looming climate and energy crisis while reaping the commercial benefits of technology exports.”

To view the Vision Paper from the Portuguese Presidency for EU Strategic Energy Technology Plan: Click here [PDF]

To view the European Commission’s Proposal on the Strategic Energy Technology Plan: Click here

See State Electricity Profiles for more state-level statistics (from the US Dept. of Energy) about electricity than you can shake a lump of coal at.

Study challenges global warming fix:

Scientists have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to global warming. Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

However, this process, which is analogous to adding fertilizer to a lawn to help the grass grow, only reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if the carbon incorporated into the algae sinks to deeper waters. This process, which scientists call the “Biological Pump”, has been thought to be dependent on the abundance of algae in the top layers of the ocean. The more algae in a bloom, the more carbon is transported, or “pumped”, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean.

To test this theory, researchers compared the abundance of algae in the surface waters of the world’s oceans with the amount of carbon actually sinking to deep water. They found clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance and carbon sinking rates. However, the relationship between the two was surprising: less carbon was transported to deep water during a summertime bloom than during the rest of the year. This analysis has never been done before and required designing specialized mathematical algorithms.

Oops.

In a bit more detail: This is precisely why I’m so nervous about geoengineering “solutions”. We can’t even figure out why the CO2 we’ve emitted is causing warming so much faster than expected, and we’re thinking about overtly screwing with the environment on this scale?

The only type of geoengineering that I would feel even vaguely good about (aside from a major cut in CO2 emissions) would be a ground-based reflector system–floating mylar mirrors on the ocean surface, perhaps–assuming it could be rapidly undone if we found out we dropped a decimal place and we doing a Really Bad Thing. (Anyone here remember the lost Mars probe caused by a metric/English unit error?) Messing with the biosphere, using orbiting mirrors, etc.? No thanks.

More on the explosion and aftermath that killed two workers and put a couple of Canada-to-US oil pipelines out of commission early this morning (emphasis added):

Enbridge Says Pipeline Fire Put Out, Two Links Open (Update3):

Enbridge Inc., Canada’s largest pipeline company, said a fire that killed two workers and disrupted crude supplies to the U.S. was extinguished and two of four links were reopened.

The blaze near the Clearbrook terminal in Minnesota was put out at about 5:45 a.m. local time and lines No. 1 and No. 2 on Enbridge’s Lakehead system resumed shipments, Blake Olson, terminal supervisor, said in a telephone interview. The system’s No. 3 pipeline exploded as it was being refilled after maintenance, Olson said. Pipelines No. 3 and No. 4 remain closed while an investigation into the incident continues.

Oil futures in New York jumped as much as 5 percent, their biggest intraday gain this month, after the explosion disrupted pipelines carrying about 15 percent of U.S. crude imports. The Lakehead system carries an average of 1.5 million barrels of oil a day to refineries in the U.S. Midwest and eastern Canada. Crude supplies to some refineries may be affected, Olson said.

U.S. `Reaching Out’ to Refiners After Pipeline Blast (Update1) :

The U.S. Energy Department said it’s “reaching out” to refiners in the Midwest after a pipeline explosion in Minnesota disrupted imports of Canadian oil.

Crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve “is available to alleviate a severe supply disruption and remains available,” Megan Barnett, a spokeswoman for the department, said today in a telephone interview. She declined to say whether the department has received any requests to tap the reserve.

…

“The Department of Energy is currently reaching out to refiners in the Midwest, Enbridge officials and individuals across the federal government to further assess the situation and offer assistance,” Barnett said.

The reserve currently holds 695 million barrels of oil in salt caverns along the U.S. Gulf Coast. President George W. Bush is seeking to expand the size of the reserve to 1.5 billion barrels by 2027.

This is a big hint that the government is taking this seriously. The current administration has made it very clear that it does not see the value in using the SPR merely to ease price fluctuations; they want it used only for emergencies. For them to “reach out” like this and make the offer so quickly is quite revealing.

One other SPR detail: While it has 695 million barrels of oil, no one knows exactly how quickly it could be tapped in an all-out emergency. I’ve seen estimates that we could use at a rate of no more than four million barrels/day, which is only about 20% of US consumption, and, more important, only about 30% of US imports.

ConocoPhillips Illinois Plant Expects Adequate Supply (Update1):

ConocoPhillips said production at its Wood River refinery in Illinois won’t be affected by an explosion yesterday that disrupted crude oil imports from Canada on a pipeline run by Enbridge Inc.

The refinery, which can process 306,000 barrels of crude oil a day, doesn’t rely on the Enbridge line, spokesman Bill Graham said today in an interview from ConocoPhillips headquarters in Houston. The refinery is the largest for ConocoPhillips.

…

Midwest crude oil prices probably will rise as processors that use more Canadian oil, such as BP Plc’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery, try to replace lost supply, Graham said.

“It’ll make the whole central U.S. crude market a bit tight right now, whether you get it directly off of Enbridge or not,” Graham said.

Enbridge pipeline explosion prompts oil price jump

Explosion At A US-Canadian Pipeline Sends Oil Prices To $95.17 A Barrel, 5pct High

IEA monitors Canada-U.S. oil pipeline outage

Oil falls back after surge on pipeline explosion

Time To Tap The Strategic Petroleum Reserve As Pipeline Explosion Cuts U.S. Supplies

As always with such events, the two key oil questions are: How large is the disruption, and how long will it last? Right now, it seems that this won’t be that big a deal in the energy markets; as I type this oil is up $1.61/barrel, and gasoline is up 3.58 cents/gallon on the day.

By the way–Canada is the leading source of US oil imports at about 2.3 million barrels/day, according to the Annual Energy Review, Table 5.4. For those keeping score at home, Mexico is second at 1.7 mb/day, Saudi Arabia is third at 1.461 mb/day, and in fourth place is Venezuela at 1.409 mb/day.

From an e-mail alert:

Energy Information Administration
EIA Reports
U.S. Department of Energy
Washington, DC 20585

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOVEMBER 28, 2007

U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Declined 1.5 Percent in 2006

Total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 7,075.6 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2006, a decrease of 1.5 percent from the 2005 level according to “Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2006″, a report released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Since 1990, U.S. GHG emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 0.9 percent. The 2006 emissions decrease is only the third decline in annual emissions since 1990.

U.S. GHG emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or “U.S. GHG-intensity,” fell from 653 metric tons per million 2000 constant dollars of GDP (MTCO2e/$Million GDP) in 2005 to 625 MTCO2e /$Million GDP in 2006, a decline of 4.2 percent. Since 1990, the annual average decline in GHG-intensity has been 2.0 percent.

Total estimated U.S. GHG emissions in 2006 consisted of 5,934.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (83.8 percent of total emissions), 605.1 MMTCO2e of methane (8.6 percent of total emissions), 378.6 MMTCO2e of nitrous oxide (5.4 percent of total emissions), and 157.6 MMTCO2e of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) (2.2 percent of total emissions).

Emissions of carbon dioxide from energy consumption and industrial processes, which had risen at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent per year from 1990 to 2005, declined by 1.8 percent in 2006. The decline in carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 to 2006 can be attributed to a one-half percent decline in overall energy demand and a decrease in the carbon intensity of electricity generation. Favorable weather patterns, where both heating and cooling degree-days were lower in 2006 than 2005, and higher energy prices, were the primary causes of lower total energy consumption. The decline in carbon intensity of electricity generation was driven by increased use of natural gas, the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and greater reliance on non-fossil fuel energy sources. Methane emissions, meanwhile, decreased by 0.4 percent, while nitrous oxide emissions rose by 2.9 percent. Emissions of HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, a group labeled collectively as “high-GWP gases” because their high heat trapping capabilities, fell by 2.2 percent.

The full report can be found on EIA’s web site at:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/index.html

You can directly download the report here (62 page, 1.25MB PDF).

Analyst sees oil prices between $75, $85 a barrel:

Crude-oil prices aren’t fundamentally sustainable at $90 a barrel, said Thomas Petrie, vice chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Petrie, in an interview Wednesday, responded to comments made earlier by Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who said there is “no relationship” between today’s price and fundamental supply and demand.

“Is there enough oil produced to meet demand today, and I think the answer is fundamentally yes,” Petrie said. “It is fair to say on a pure supply-and-demand calculation, it would not be unreasonable to expect prices to reach equilibrium at a lower price.”

Petrie said oil prices are at better equilibrium between $75 and $85 a barrel.

OK, I’ll ask: What leads this analyst to a price of “between $75 and $85 a barrel”? Aside from, you know, a gut feeling, or perhaps a fear of what $100, $150, or more could lead to?

In all seriousness, I hate these kinds of pronouncements. First, there is virtually always someone priced out of a market. At $100/barrel, there is some conservation. Drop the price to $80/barrel, and there’s less, the difference being the consumption squeezed out by that extra $20/barrel. Supply and demand doesn’t get much simpler than that, even for a commodity with a highly inelastic demand, like oil.

And as for the related issue we hear so often, that there’s this “security premium” of $X/barrel on oil in addition to “fundamentals”, that’s splitting another hair. There is always an uncertainty factor in the price of goods. When the good is a critical one, like oil, and there’s reason to believe that we might have a new war in the Persian Gulf region (as in the US attacking Iran), or a pipeline that brings oil from Canada to the US blowing up, the uncertainty factor and the price jump.

More on the Coal Campaign in Kansas:

In true journalistic fashion, Andy Revkin of the New York Times dug deeper into the controversial coal campaign run in Kansas after the state rejected a new coal-plant. Curiously, he surfaced with some interesting investment numbers with regards to Venezuelan coal.

…

In more recent news, Revkin has posted his correspondence with Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest private coal company. Ends up, they’ve a 25.5 stake in a Venezuelan coal mine.

Honestly, do some companies have teams of people working around the clock to try to find as many ways as possible to spend money to make themselves look dumber than a sack of rocks?

‘Averting Our Eyes’: James Hansen’s New Call for Climate Action:

James E. Hansen of NASA, brushing off coal-industry criticisms but acknowledging the need to be sensitive to people still haunted by the Holocaust, has elaborated on what he meant when he recently described continued coal burning as akin to sending untold species to their destruction in “death trains” and crematoria.

He posted a long note on the matter, titled “Averting Our Eyes,” on his Columbia University home page tonight.

…

Dr. Hansen, like many who commented on Dot Earth after I wrote about his statements, insists that the parallels hold between the denial and passivity that allowed a human cataclysm to sweep Europe in plain sight and the denial and inaction now as the world prepares to build hundreds of conventional coal-burning power plants. In his recent statements and the new one, he warns that the tens of billions of tons of resulting emissions of carbon dioxide, if not captured and stored, will disrupt climate patterns, ecosystems and sea levels that have been remarkably stable through most of modern human history. The result will be an end to “creation” as we have grown to love it, he says.

…

A related alternative metaphor, perhaps less objectionable while still making the most basic point, comes to mind in connection with an image of crashing of massive ice sheets fronts into the sea — an image of relevance to both climate tipping points and consequences (sea level rise). Can these crashing glaciers serve as a Krystal Nacht, and wake us up to the inhumane consequences of averting our eyes?

Alas, that metaphor probably would be greeted with the same reaction from the people who objected to the first. That reaction may have been spurred by the clever mischaracterization of the CEO, aiming to achieve just such a reaction. So far that seems to have been the story: the special interests have been cleverer than us, preventing the public from seeing the crisis that should be in view. It is hard for me to think of a different equally poignant example of the foreseeable consequence faced by fellow creatures on the planet. Suggestions are welcome.

I don’t want to waste a lot of time and energy (no pun intended) by wading too far into this issue. As best I can tell as this has unfolded, Hansen screwed up with a wildly bad piece of imagery, but is guilty of nothing more than having a tin ear. On the facts of global warming and how serious it could be, as well as how we’re still, incredibly, not taking that issue (or peak oil, I would add) nearly as seriously as warranted, he’s right.

And yes, if I come up with a better metaphor, I will send it directly to him and post it here.

Bite of high oil prices only beginning:

Think oil prices are high now? According to geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, we should be thankful for low oil prices. The really high prices are yet to come.

Deffeyes, author of “Hubbert’s Peak,” predicted that Thanksgiving Day 2005 would mark the peak in world oil production. When he made the prediction, in January the year before, his tongue was only slightly in his cheek. And he wasn’t far off. Current data put the peak (so far, at least) 6 months earlier or 8 months later, depending on how you measure it.

A peak in world oil production means that about half the recoverable oil has been used, and the rest will be harder (and more expensive) to extract. Oil fields don’t run out of oil the way a car runs out of gas, chugging along at 55 mph one moment, coasting to a stop with a stalled engine the next. Oil production in fields or sets of fields reaches a peak, often when about half the recoverable oil has been pumped up, and then declines.

…

In the end, though, it’s our oil bills that matter to us, not how much oil costs. We cannot control oil supply, but we can control how much each of us demands. If you want to lower your gasoline bill, drive a more efficient car and drive less (carpool, walk, take the bus, consolidate trips, etc.). If you want to lower your heating bill, put on a sweater, keep the thermostat down, and get your house better insulated.

Not much new here for readers of this site (see how much I think of youse guys?), but it nicely addresses the supply/demand interaction in ways seldom seen (except for this site; see how much I think of myself?). Still, a good item to forward to your willfully ignorant brother-in-law.

Renewables and Tax Provisions Likely Dropped From Energy Bill:

More details on the likely energy bill compromise are emerging. It appears that the renewable electricity standard and oil subsidy rollback provisions of the energy bill (H.R. 6/H.R. 3221), are being dropped. (The fate of the renewable production tax credit is unclear.)

See the article for much more detail, assuming you have the stomach for it.

In all seriousness, I have no bloody idea what to make of this. I thought at minimum we would see a barely acceptable energy bill, not this slow-motion train wreck that destroys every hint of progress, one step at a time.

Nothing, and I mean Not One Freakin’ Thing could better illustrate than this energy bill debacle the desperate need in this country for campaign finance reform. Kill the influence of special interest groups in US politics and we’ll see the end of the lock incumbents have on their offices, as well as the end of legislative assaults like this, where politicians vote for the short-term interests of corporations and not the long term interests of the country as a whole.

Hey Canada–you got room for me and my wife??? I’m only a few miles away, and we’re nice people, really.

OK, I know it’s not exactly news that Matt Simmons is speaking out yet again on peak oil. Honestly, that boy flaps his gums on oil more than I do, which is saying a hell of a lot.

But this is an example of Matt at his finest, and it’s worth your time. It’s a chat he had with Jim Puplava over on Financial Sense Newshour. You want part 3B of the show, which can download directly here (27.3MB MP3) or stream from the link above. Matt’s portion of that recording runs from about the 12 minute, 40 second mark to roughly 35:30. (The whole file is over 95 minutes.)

This time around, Matt talks about peaks, production plateaus, getting the attention of people outside our little circle of energy geeks, the specter of “minimum operating levels”, that point where we don’t have enough gasoline in the system to keep the 170,000 gas stations in the US supplied, and more.

Questioning Peak Oil Economic Assumptions:

There is a large and expanding economic literature that seeks to explain why the steep oil price rise since 2003 has not led to a recession. The common conclusion, arrived at by different models and analysis methods, is that the U.S. economy is now mostly immune to oil prices hikes and has been so since the mid-80’s. Peak oil proponents assume a simple model of the relation between oil supply or price shocks and economic performance. Economists have called into question some aspects of that model. Those studying peak oil need to make cogent responses to ensure that their view is taken seriously. It is beyond the scope of this column to do a detailed analysis, but it is possible to lay out some of the current debate and the issues that need to be addressed.

…

Many of those concerned about peak oil take their economic assumptions—naively, peak followed by collapse—as axiomatic. So-called “doomers” assume the worst, but they have not done all of their homework. Peak oil theorists or commentators often ignore the economic literature that discusses the complex relationship between GDP growth and the oil markets. They do so at their peril. By default, the oil supply and price is seen as the single overwhelming determinant of economic performance. This simple model is belied by the demand-driven price shock of the 2003-2007 period. Many economists have also been taken by surprise, and they are scrambling around to come up with explanations.

Many of those studying peak oil need to develop well thought-out scenarios that include models of future economic activity based on their oil supply projections instead of running around telling everybody the sky is falling. The good news is that there may be time to develop such scenarios and implement solutions, like a robust national railroad system, that make sense. Time will tell.

First and foremost: Dave Cohen writes, you stop whatever the heck it is you’re doing (or supposed to be doing when you’re goofing off and reading this site) and go read.

Second, I can’t possibly do justice to Dave’s whole column with a couple of quotes; there’s a lot of detail in between the snippets above, including several links to oil economics papers.

Third, I agree completely with his basic assertion that both economists and peakers in general have to be much more diligent in knowing the theory and history relevant to what we’re facing, or they risk spending a lot of time and keystrokes making themselves look like chimps playing with a flashlight. This is why I keep howling here about why I think some of the most well known “conclusions” regarding peak oil, e.g. the suburbs will disappear, we won’t have the oil needed to maintain wind turbines, we won’t be able to make fertilizer for crops, etc., assume a far worse situation than the people who parrot them (seem to) believe.

Crossovers not providing the MPGs people want, so they’re going back to SUVs:

Hm, this is an interesting little twist. BusinessWeek’s David Welch has written an article about SUVs that might come across as slightly counter-intuitive. It seems that many used-vehicle buyers are once again in the market for large SUVs, even though gas prices and crude oil prices are steadily increasing. Overall, SUV sales are still suffering, but Welch has found that people who shunned SUVs a year or so ago now miss the carrying capacity they once had. The smaller crossovers many turned to just aren’t cutting it and don’t provide enough of an improvement in the miles-per-gallon category to convince drivers to stay with the mid-sized CUVs.

What’s that you say? You wonder if this is a prime example of why I dearly hope we have much higher gasoline prices in the US? Why, yes! Yes it is!

Cleaner Nuclear Power?:

Senators representing several Western states, including Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, are working on legislation to promote thorium. They say it’s a cleaner-burning fuel for nuclear-power plants, with the potential to cut high-level nuclear-waste volumes in half.

See the article for much more technical detail.

I must confess, thorium is one of those topics that I hear about occasionally, but never find the time to read about in depth. So much geekery, so little time, and all that.

But if we converted every nuclear plant in the US over to thorium, as described in this article, we would still create over a ton of nuclear waste every day (the number now is about 2.2 tons/day). Is that “good enough”? Or would 1 ton/day, on top of the 55,000 tons already piled up that we don’t know what to do with, only make the mess even worse, albeit less quickly?

Exxon says film may lead to car battery like laptop’s:

Exxon Mobil Corp. believes it has found an answer to a problem that has bedeviled the auto industry in recent years: using rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, like those found in cell phones and laptops, to power cars and trucks.

This weekend, at a conference in Anaheim, Calif., Exxon Mobil will unveil a super-thin plastic sheeting the company says can improve the power, safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries for use in automobiles.

Exxon Mobil considers the film a breakthrough because it allows battery makers to build smaller and cheaper battery systems — removing key obstacles that have kept automakers from building hybrid and electric vehicles on a wide scale.

Wait a minute–ExxonMobil, as in the ExxonMobil, the company that has repeatedly dismissed alternative energy as bad business and not worth investing in?

Excuse me while I lie down on my fainting couch. I suddenly have the vapors.

Virtual Antarctica revealed in high definition:

An international science team unveiled a new high-definition, interactive map of Antarctica on Tuesday, capping an eight-year satellite mapping project.

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica, or LIMA, is the most geographically accurate depiction of the full continent ever made — and it’s being made freely available over the Web.

Researchers can use the true-color map to plot their expeditions, geologists can get a better fix on remote rock formations, and the general public can get its best view yet of a continent that looms large in the imagination as well as real-world climate science.

OK, now this is cool. I haven’t had a chance to play with this online toy yet, but as soon as I hack through the worst of my work backlog (around the time the Chevy Volt is on sale), I will.

Study finds 2002 dry weather left extra carbon in atmosphere:

A new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder shows that millions of extra tons of carbon dioxide were left in the Earth’s atmosphere as a result of the 2002 drought across North America.

The findings, the first from NOAA’s atmospheric monitoring and modeling system called CarbonTracker, show that the amount of carbon dioxide absorbedby vegetation and soil dropped from an annual average of 650 million metric tons to 330 million metric tons. The excess amount of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas remaining in the atmosphere that year was equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 200 million U.S. automobiles.

“Everyone here has been surprised about how big an impact the drought had on the variability of the carbon cycle,” said Andy Jacobson, a University of Colorado research scientist working with NOAA and a co-author of the study. “This is the first time we’ve been able to get a picture of year-to-year variability and also spatial variability within the continent.”

Oops.

Movement on Energy Bill Compromise:

According to a report in the National Journal’s subscription-only Congress Daily, Congress is nearing a compromise to resolve the differences between the Senate (HR 6) and House (HR 3221) versions of the comprehensive energy package. Major sticking points have been CAFE standards, renewable fuels mandate, a federal renewable energy standard, and renewable energy tax incentives (the renewable production tax credit (PTC)).

…

The draft compromise, according to Congress Daily and Hill Heat sources, incorporates suggestions from Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.)’s November 13 letter to Speaker Pelosi.

CAFE

• By 2020, 35 mpg average standard for cars, light trucks and SUVs (in line with HR 6)
• Separate fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks
• Distinctions between domestic and foreign-made vehicles in standards

Renewable Fuels Mandate

• By 2015, required production of 20.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels, with as much as 15 billion gallons coming from corn-based ethanol (HR 6 had 36 billion by 2022)
• By 2015, required production of 5.5 billion gallons of advanced biofuels—fuel not derived from sugar or starch and that can cut lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions in half
• National Academy of Sciences study within 18 months of mandate impact, followed by periodic reviews authorized by the Clean Air Act of technologies and the feasibility of complying with the mandate

PTC

• According to Hill Heat sources, the extension of the PTC is likely, though perhaps for as little as one year.

Holy crap. I can only hope that the actual compromise that emerges on this bill doesn’t have some of this garbage. Only 35 MPG by 2020? Separate CAFE standards for domestics vs. imported cars? A PTC extension for possibly only a single year?

If it indeed turns out that this is the best these morons can do, then a lot of us here in the US need to march to the ballot box next November and elect some representatives with working brains. And, where needed, get involved before that in the primaries.

This just makes me want to scream…

Yes, I’m obsessed with hydrogen fuel cells and the onslaught of private and governmental efforts to somehow, someway, force this technology to be a major part of our transportation future.

One resource I can’t recommend highly enough is the European Fuel Cell Forum, and their page of reports. While you’ll find more hard facts and analysis in those reports than you can shake an empty gasoline can at, the best single item is paper E21, “Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense?” (12 pages, 459KB PDF), which was published in Proceedings of the IEEE, October 2006. In particular, the hydrogen vs. electrons flow chart on page 10 (page 1835 in the original publication and the PDF) presents as simple and dramatic an argument as one could imagine for why hydrogen is a techno-boondoggle of massive proportions, even if the the author, Ulf Bossel, doesn’t stoop to using such expressions.

Another critical paper comes from Michael E. Webber, “The water intensity of the transitional hydrogen economy”, which is packed with analysis I’ve seen nowhere else and makes the widespread use of hydrogen for transportation seem all the more ridiculous. (Just to be unmistakably clear, the “ridiculous” part is my own interpretation of the numbers, not Webber’s.)

For a short treatment of the Webber paper, see this summary on PhysOrg.com.

And let me not forget one of the seminal works in this area, Joe Romm’s book, The Hype About Hydrogen, which very clearly makes the point that we can’t afford to use vast amounts of electricity generated with renewable sources to make hydrogen when we will so desperately need those electrons to displace as much coal-fired generation as possible. One of the primary battlegrounds between peak oil and global warming will be electricity generation, once we begin to electrify transportation and look for other, non-petroleum, ways to gas up.

So, if hydrogen for transportation is an absurdity wrapped in an inanity, masquerading as a boondoggle, why give it any more attention?

First, as long as policy makers insist on throwing money at this pipe dream, it’s in everyone’s best interest to understand what’s going on and try to influence elected representatives to stop doing that. Those funds can be much better spent somewhere else, as in battery or renewable energy research.

Second, there’s the whole question of electrohydrogenesis. “The what?”, you ask? Isn’t that some kind of thing Scotty made with transparent aluminum? No, it’s the breakthrough that’s been widely talked about recently in which a professor, Bruce Logan, and his team at Penn State University figured out a way to use a trickle of electricity and some bacteria to generate hydrogen from cellulose and other materials.

On this front, see:

• Bruce Logan’s page at Penn State University
• Hydrogen and electricity production using microbial fuel cell-based technologies (37 page, 1.1MB PDF presentation)
• Sustainable and Efficient Biohydrogen Production via Electrohydrogenesis by Shaoan Cheng and Bruce E. Logan

So, wait–has someone found a way to use biology to make a loophole in the economics of hydrogen as a transportation fuel?

The key point here is that I said “economics”, not “energy”. As I never tire of pointing out, the economy allocates resources based on relative prices–this car is cheaper than that comparable one, so customers flow toward the cheaper alternative, etc. This is why we continue to manufacture, use, and dispose of a truly breathtaking number of batteries in the US every year. Each one of those penlight, C, or D size cells delivers an amount of electrical energy that is only a very tiny fraction of the amount of energy needed to make and distribute it. From a purely energy flow standpoint, this product is an abysmal failure. But they’re an economic success simply because people are willing to pay this exorbitant fee for a tiny amount of portable, convenient electricity.

Could the same thing happen with hydrogen? Could we find a way to leverage some nearly free resource, like sunlight + bacterial action, to make hydrogen make sense? As best I can tell from reading the above material: No. Or at least not yet.

Check the second page of the Cheng/Logan paper above, and you’ll see that the best efficiency they report is 82%, when using lactic acid as a feedstock. Plug that percentage into the Bossel flow chart mentioned above, beginning at the “Electrolysis” step, and you see that you still get killed by the compression, transportation/transfer, fuel cell, and vehicle efficiencies. (In the original Bossel analysis, 100 kWh of energy turns into a mere 23 kWh at the wheel. Using the Cheng/Logan efficiency value (82%) only gets you up to about 25 kWh at the wheel, compared to 69 kWh for an EV. Ouch. And that’s not even taking into account all the energy needed to deliver the feedstock to the hydrogen plant.)

The problem that I have with all of this, and the reason why the hydrogen dream will likely die a very protracted death, is that it’s such an enticing proposition. You make this gas, which people think of as being “kinda like natural gas”, something they have considerable familiarity with, and you run your car on it and it emits only water. For most mainstreamers that’s about one step short of commuting to work with your very own personal jet pack.

But… won’t governments, like California and their “hydrogen highway” initiative, and car companies “force” the matter? Won’t they keep rolling out fueling stations and vehicles until people just use them, even if it make no sense economically? Only if there’s a colossal failure to develop cheaper batteries for EV’s or longish (> 30 miles) battery-only ranges in plug-in hybrids. If the battery guys can accomplish even a fraction of what the hydrogen guys are saying they must do to make hydrogen viable, then hydrogen will be ridiculously out-competed in the marketplace. As Ulf Bossel points out, hydrogen is competing with the energy sources needed to make hydrogen, and will therefore always be more expensive.

Faced with such a challenge, I do what any self-respecting economist and contrarian would do: I try to conjure up a scenario that everyone else has overlooked that could conceivably make sense. And you know what? I can’t find one. Generate the hydrogen inside a wind turbine, at the gas station, or in your home, as long as you’re making it with electrolysis (which is the only acceptable answer for sustainability reasons), you’re cooked. The cost to split water, handle the hydrogen before you use it, and then use it in a 50% efficient fuel cell in a car are too high a hurdle to get over, when you can move and use electrons vastly cheaper.

Once again, I think we’re on a path to plug-in series hybrids, which will immediately and dramatically reduce the oil consumed by any one driver. A shift in the liquid fuels provided to such vehicles–cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel made from bacteria fed on coal plant CO2 emissions, etc.–further reduces the petroleum consumption and CO2 emissions needed to move vehicles. As battery technology improves, the plug-in range gets longer, and we transition to ever greater electrification of transportation.

So, let me ask you all one simple question: What have I overlooked? If you see a loophole for hydrogen to work, tell me.

Oil Falls More Than $3 on Increased Saudi Arabian Production:

Crude oil fell more than $3 a barrel in New York after Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, said the country has increased production to the highest this year.

Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is pumping 9 million barrels a day, al-Naimi said in Singapore today. Prices also fell on speculation that slower economic growth in the U.S. and Europe will cut fuel consumption.

…

“The bigger issue as far as the oil market is concerned is the economy, as opposed to supplies,” said Bill O’Grady, director of fundamental futures research at A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. “OPEC said they were going to increase production in November, so it shouldn’t be surprise.”

Let the speculating about [insert dramatic organ music here] What This Really Means begin!

Assuming that this increase is real and comes from actual, sustainable (for months) production and is not just a short-term spurt and/or the result of tapping above-ground storage in Saudi Arabia, then this news does tell us just a little.

First, the notion the Saudi Arabia was producing flat-out and had no spare capacity to spare, a position I never accepted, was clearly wrong.

Second, this is an increase of only 250,000 barrels/days (about 2.9%) for Saudi Arabia, so it’s pretty hard to get excited over the size of the increase. The oil market is understandably in full bacchanalia mode, given how tight the supply and demand situation has been there for many months. This is the other side to that “oil demand is inelastic” thing–when tight market conditions ease the price will tend to drop a lot. Plus, there’s news that the US is seeking to solidify its oil gains.

Third, until it’s independently verified, I’m not 100% convinced it’s real. The oil numbers coming out of the Middle East have been so, shall we say, reality challenged, for decades that their claims of even this relatively small bump in output is suspect.

WMO: CO2 levels hit new record in 2006:

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in its new 2006 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, reports:

In 2006, globally averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere reached their highest levels ever recorded … 381.2 parts per million (ppm), up 0.53 per cent from 379.2 ppm in 2005.

Note this is a one-year rise of 2.0 ppm, continuing the accelerated trend of the past decade, which is due to increases in global economic activity and carbon intensity, together with decreased efficiency of natural sinks, like the ocean.

No surprise here–more CO2 emitted + less absorbed by nature = more in the atmosphere.

Expect to see pretty much this story, with slightly updated numbers and ever more urgent wording, run next year, and the year after, and…

Sorry for the pessimistic tone, but the world is emitting something like 27 billion metric tons of CO2/year, just from energy consumption (Annual Energy Review, Table 11.19). Given the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, it will take very significant cuts in our emissions before we see that ppm figure level off or decline.

Global Wind Power Base to More Than Triple by 2015:

According to recently-released global wind energy country forecasts from Emerging Energy Research (EER), global wind power capacity is predicted to more than triple by 2015, with cumulative installed base expected to rise from approximately 91 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2007 to over 290 GW by the end of 2015.

“The global wind power market continues to diversify geographically from Europe to North America and Asia Pacific, with short-term supply bottlenecks giving way to longer term sustained growth,” according to Senior Analyst Joshua Magee.

Significant new supply chain capacity is coming online, while Texas and California are preparing for additional massive wind build-out as transmission expansion projects move through permitting. Canada is also set for an RFP-driven boom in the coming years mainly in Ontario and Quebec, according to EER. And China is also expected to surpass its goal of 5 GW before 2009.

Europe will remain the world’s largest regional market in terms of annual growth, according to EER, transitioning from established markets such as Spain and Germany to new, growing regions, the UK, France, Portugal, and Italy. Significant wind expansion is expected to occur in Eastern European markets as well, with larger markets in Poland and Turkey poised to average over 500 Megawatts of production capacity installed annually.

You know the drill:

• Wind is good. Do more of it, now.
• This increase in the production capacity for turbines is part of the economy doing its “seeking a new equilibrium in response to a shift in the relative prices of energy sources” thing. Yes, it happens at a maddeningly slow pace, but it is happening, and it will likely accelerate for another five to ten years.
• We’ve been doing utility-scale wind for decades, but we’re still learning how to do it better, from finding more efficient ways to build and erect turbines, to overcoming intermittentcy issues by linking wind farms spread over larger areas, the “wind is always blowing somewhere” tactic.
• While not mentioned in this article, one factor of growing importance in many areas will be the lack of water consumption by wind (or wave, tidal, and solar) power. As climate change continues to make rain fall in places other than where it has traditionally (and where we’d prefer), this will increasingly influence how we choose to push electrons.

Years of living dangerously: the wild, wild world (emphasis added):

It has been unmistakable to the millions caught up in the biblical downpours that cut off an entire region of Mexico this year. Many Australians have been sufficiently convinced of it to change the way they vote. It has been obvious to the home owners of middle England who have stood knee deep in their flooded sitting rooms. And it can’t have escaped the notice of the millionaire’s on Malibu beach who have watched their luxury beach homes burn like matchsticks.

Weather related disasters are increasing in both frequency and savagery and the expansion of human communities into vulnerable habitats along with the increasingly apparent effects of climate change are to blame. A leading British charity has discovered that there has been a fourfold increase in catastrophes such as the floods that swept through South Asia this year affecting more than 250m people.

In a new report, Oxfam says that from an average of 120 such annual disasters in the early 1980s, there are now as many as 500 every year. It called on governments to take more convincing steps to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that a consensus of scientists blame for the temperature increases.

Oops.

I saw a T-shirt for sale recently that says, “Sorry about global warming. It’s my fault… I’ll take care of it.” Can we get a few billion of those printed up and distributed?

Bring back the electric car:

Californians are being taken for a ride by state clean-air regulators, who arebringing the rest of the country along. Decisions made by the California Air Resources Board early next year will determine whether we get the option of driving zero-emission, non-polluting cars soon, or whether we’ll see smoggy business as usual from the car companies for another decade.

Many consumers would love to drive cars that reduce greenhouse gases and our addiction to oil, but the auomakers resist. Fortunately, the Air Resources Board has the power to compel them to make the clean cars society needs. Progress through regulation is nothing new: It took laws to get seatbelts, airbags and catalytic converters. It took laws to get average mileage standards up from 12 mpg to 27 mpg. It will take regulations to get clean cars.

…

A few major automakers are trotting out their hydrogen hardware this week at the Los Angeles Auto Show, claiming they’ll lease small numbers of them to handpicked drivers in the next few years. In a deja vu to 2003, automakers are hyping the promise of hydrogen just as the air board is again revising the zero-emission-vehicle mandate. Behind the scenes, car companies have convinced the board’s staff that they can’t meet the goal of producing 25,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles after 2012, so the staff is suggesting that the board ease that requirement.

There are signs, however, that the bloom may be fading from the hydrogen rose. This month, one of the biggest fuel cell companies, Ballard Power Systems, bailed out after pouring millions of dollars into fuel cell vehicles. A Toyota official predicted that fuel cell cars won’t be mass commercialized until after 2030.

That’s not soon enough to avoid global warming, thousands of deaths from air pollution and wars over oil.

Meanwhile, the battery electric cars produced until 2003 have shown that they can do the job. Some have passed 100,000 miles on the odometer, and the batteries are still going strong. A few hybrid owners have added batteries and converted their cars to plug-in hybrids that drive mostly on electricity but retain a gas engine for long-distance trips. Building a network of fast-charging stations would cost a fraction of the tab for building hydrogen fueling stations.

First, everyone should forget about hydrogen for transportation. You’ve heard the arguments from me many times, and I’ll have even more to say on the topic soon.

Second, the author is 100% right about the need for a big EV push. How about a feebate system along these lines: For non-EV, non-plug-in-hybrid vehicle’s, you pay an escalating fee based on the MPG. Put the pivot point, the value where you pay no tax and get no rebate, at, say, 35 MPG. For vehicles under that figure you pay a tax that rises non-linearly. At 30 MPG, you might pay only $500, at 25 MPG you’d pay $1,500, at 20 MPG you’d pay $3,000, etc. HUMMERS would require the removal of at least body part, plus a sack of gold coins. Plug-ins and EV’s would get special treatment, based on the range of the battery. The goal would be to make something like Mitsubishi’s $25K i MiEV, due in 2009, cost the buyers about $15,000.

Would this be favoring one technology over others, something I always say we should never do? To some extent, yes. I think the situation is such, in both peak oil and global warming terms, that it’s in our best interest to declare electrons to be so superior to gasoline that it’s time to break that rule.

Reaching our peak oil supply:

And ConocoPhilips CEO James Mulva told a financial conference earlier this month: “Demand will be going up, but it will be constrained by supply. I don’t think we are going to see the supply going over 100 million barrels a day, and the reason is: Where is all that going to come from?”

That’s the question adherents to peak-oil theory ask. They argue that the world either has or soon will have reached the maximum output level of its oil reserves and that supply can only decline from here on out – even as demand skyrockets.

Though some dismiss them as crude-oil Cassandras, the peak-oilers are not wild-eyed pessimists. Their number includes men like T. Boone Pickens, the Dallas oil tycoon, and Houston’s Matt Simmons, who founded the world’s largest energy investment banking company. They point to hard data indicating that the world is quite simply running out of oil and doing so quickly (www.theoildrum.com and www.energybulletin.net are two good Web sites compiling peak-oil news, analysis and information). [Presumably the part where he says that the king of all energy sites is TCoE was deleted by his editor. Stupid editors!]

…

What would life after peak oil mean for Dallas and its surrounding suburbs, a metropolis created by the availability of cheap energy?

Cars would be an unaffordable luxury for most, making life in suburbia difficult, perhaps impossible, to sustain. Likewise, air travel and shipping likely would be sharply curtailed as too costly, causing Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, a major regional economic engine, to slow substantially.

Truck transport, too, would diminish, causing a sharp slowdown in the consumer economy and, crucially, making the kind of grocery-store bounty we now enjoy a thing of the past. And with a general rise in energy costs blasting electric bills into the stratosphere, we may all have to get used to – wait for it – life without air conditioning.

Jeffrey Brown, a Richardson geologist who has been active in the peak-oil debate, advises far-sighted folks to abandon the outlying suburbs and exurbs and move closer to the city center. “The smart money has been moving in,” he said. “The closer you are to job centers, the more stable the property values have been. That will continue.”

I’m always glad to see peak oil being discussed seriously in the mainstream press, even at the cost of some of the “the ‘burbs are dying” nonsense. And life “without air conditioning”? Really? That’s one hell of a linear extrapolation, and one that I’d never endorse.

As with so many other predictions, these grossly underestimate the degree of impact that would be needed to make them plausible, as well as our responses to conditions between now and the state predicted, e.g. no air conditioning at all. Does anyone think we would not find much more efficient ways to cool or heat buildings? And how much will higher oil prices impact electricity rates? In 2006, the share of US electricity generated via oil dropped to 1.6%. Peak oil will have an impact on electricity rates, as we electrify our transportation, but the claim that in general “energy costs [will blast] electric bills into the stratosphere” is overreaching and claiming, as the lawyers say, facts not in evidence.

Administrivia: Just a reminder that if you have any questions about any of the book or movie reviews I post, e.g. “Does the author say anything about US oil company practices in South America?”, please feel free to ask in the comments. It’s very easy to overlook details that readers might find of interest when condensing an entire book or film into a few hundred words.

Directors Dan Gold and Judith Helfand have delivered a delightful oddity in Everything’s Cool: A Toxic Comedy About Global Warming!. It’s not an environment-themed documentary in the more traditional, serious, hammer-points-home mode of An Inconvenient Truth, but neither is it a comedy as claimed. The content ranges from infuriating (thank you, Senator Inhofe, et al.) to genuinely inspiring.

If you wanted to be overly cute and reduce this entire 89-minute film to a Hollywood logline, you would call it “Fahrenheit 9/11 meets An Inconvenient Truth meets Inside the Actor’s Studio”. But that would be a very unfair way to treat an excellent, must-see film for anyone interested in environmental issues and the ongoing infowar between science on one hand and the deniers and delayers on the other, so I won’t do that.

What makes EC so fascinating is that it gives the viewer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most influential people in the effort to educate and activate (my terms, not the film’s) people on the issue of global warming. Instead of focusing on parts per million of CO2 and degrees of temperature rise and extent of sea ice coverage in the Arctic summer, we focus on Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who’s long covered global warming; Dr. Heidi Cullen, the climate scientist from The Weather Channel; Rick Piltz, who quit his job over the Bush Administration’s endless bastardization of science to fit their policy goals and continues the battle for truth; Bill McKibben, a long-time writer in the global warming field who likely need no introduction here; and Bish Neuhauser, a snow groomer at a Utah ski resort.

We see Gelbspan and McKibben wrestling with something you’ve seen me comment on (read: bitch about) endlessly here, the frustrations of breaking through the noise thrown up by the paid delayers and deniers (who make brief, but all too maddening appearances). We see Cullen go from having a scant three minutes to talk about global warming to having a 30-minute show on the topic, all the while wrestling with her own learning curve as she comes to grips with “fitting her PhD into a sound bite”. We see the heroic public servant, Rick Piltz, and the mind-blowing degree to which the Bush Administration blatantly edited and corrupted scientific reports to make them better serve their political interests.

Perhaps the most interesting person of the group is Neuhauser, we we revisit a few times on his quest to make biodiesel fuel to run his 1975 Mercedes. After one destroyed blender and an encounter with “the de-glopificatin process”, we see him and two friends triumph–they make biodiesel from used french fry oil, put it into Neuhauser’s car, and drive away, giddy. The real kicker, and the thing that makes this subplot-within-a-documentary worthwhile, is the revelation that biodiesel is now available commercially, so Neuhauser and the resort he used to work for are able to buy it like any other mass-market fuel. This arc, tracing one man’s determined quest for a better fuel from do-it-yourself status to market acceptance, is a perfect metaphor for our larger transition away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner, better ways of doing things.

We also get a dose of Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordaus, they of “The Death of Environmentalism—Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World”, and their effort to teach environmentalists to use better tactics to change the world. (I confess to being agnostic on S&N; while I’m willing to embrace anything that wakes up the mainstream consumer and voter and moves us in the right direction, I find their incredibly, and needlessly abrasive manner so off-putting that I can’t listen to or read them for more than a few moments.)

But wait–where’s Al Gore? He makes a couple of very brief appearances, one with James Hansen after his famous 1988 Congressional testimony. And this is another excellent choice by the filmmakers. We already have Gore’s movie, and he’s (quite deservedly) shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC. This is a different movie with a different focus, although we do see respectful, appropriate treatments of some of the kind of material you’d expect Gore to include, such as the tragedies of Katrina and homes lost in Alaska because of warming.

The two most uplifting parts of the film, at least for me, come near the end, when we see an obviously moved McKibben thanking the participants in a five-day walk that was held in 2006 in support of the cause, and Gelbspan speaking to a high school class near his home in Boston.

Of course, it’s not a neat, simple issue, with a sappy, made-for-TV happy ending. The battle goes on, as the film makes clear in its closing minutes. Politicians promised action, but have delivered more talk than anything else.

Everything’s Cool, is a terrific piece of work, comedy or not. It’s currently in limited release, including house parties (which you can find through the film’s web site), and the DVD street date is December 11.

GM Calls the Volt an E-REV:

We have had spirited discussion along the way about exactly what the Volt is. Common misrepresentations have included calling it a hybrid or series hybrid, or more commonly a plug-in hybrid. Bob Lutz has specifically said the Volt is not a hybrid (see post).

Calling a car a hybrid signifies that it’s driveshaft can be turned both by an electric motor and a combustion engine. A plug-in hybrid is a car that has extended electrical capacity supplied from the grid allowing for extended driving in all-electric mode. Modified Priuses and the upcoming Plug-in Saturn VUE are examples of those.

EVs and BEVs are cars that only have an electric motor and a rechargeable battery. They usually have overall limited ranges. The Tesla and EV-1 are examples.

GM toyed with different terms to describe the Volt. They have decided on the term E-REV (with the dash, pronounced ee-rehv), which stands for extended-range electric vehicle. They like the marketing opportunities of “REV” (i.e. E-REVolution)

The graphic above is a screenshot from a lecture just given by Tony Posawatz and Denise Gray on the current state of Volt development. You will soon see the video here in it’s entirety (24 minutes long).

So this nomenclature issue is now settled.

Oh brother. Here we go again with marketing bullshit.

[insert 7 or 8 Dilbert strips here making fun of marketeers]

As pointed out by at least one person in the voluminous comments attached to the above post, this is silly and, did I forget to mention–just plain incorrect.

Says Mike756:

If they want to change the name of the architcture, fine. But please don’t pretend like people are mistaken for calling it a hybrid. The fact is this the E-Flex design was being called series hybrid for a long time.

http://www.hybridcenter.org/hybrid-center-how-hybrid-cars-work-under-the-hood-2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Vehicle_Drivetrains

I think the whole discussion is silly, but I never have understood marketing.

Needless to say, I think we already had at least as many terms as we needed for all these new subspecies of car coming our way, and “series hybrid” is an accurate and perfectly acceptable way to categorize the Volt. Perhaps GM was so far out of their comfort zone by being so right with the general direction of this vehicle’s design that they felt compelled to something boneheaded just to preserve their identity.

It is Friday, May 23, 2008, and you’re heading to work. The office isn’t far–about 15 miles away, most of it a quick jaunt on a local expressway. You’re running a little late, so you don’t have time for the morning paper, and you don’t really pay much attention to the radio droning on in the background as you head out in your mid-size sedan. Probably nothing interesting, just more reports of the price of gas going up yet again (last you remember the national average was closing in on $4 a gallon or some ridiculously high price), and how people still driving despite the higher prices, as if everyone is supposed to walk.

In the few blocks between your house and the highway, you notice that the gas station you always fill up at has “NO GAS” signs up. You look at your fuel gauge, and see you have plenty left, about half a tank, which should be good for about 200 miles in your car. Two blocks later you see another gas station, this one with the name of a different oil company out front, and they’re also out of gas.

You tune the radio to an all-news station just in time to catch a report saying that there are spot shortages in your part of the country, lots of angry people, and state and local governments scrambling to make sure there’s enough fuel for police, fire, and ambulance services.

What the hell is going on?

That’s when you remember the relentless stream of e-mail you’ve received from your slightly off-center brother-in-law, the one with the energy obsession. He’s sent you links to dozens of articles and web site over the last couple of years, and he always winds up in the middle of an energy “discussion” at every family gathering. He was insufferable when you bought your current car last year, sending you links to reviews of smaller models that got better mileage and telling you over and over how much more gasoline you’d use in the five or six years you normally keep a car, and how much more carbon dioxide you’d spew into the air. But you really liked the style of the larger car, and even though it cost a little more, it seemed like a no-brainer. Besides, how much worse was all that peak oil and global warming stuff going to be because of which car you buy?

Even before you bought your car, your brother-in-law was really annoying. He kept warning you what that one guy–Simon? Simpson?–was saying about how OPEC wasn’t going to ship enough oil, and the price was going to go up a lot by the end of 2007. It did, and then the e-mail from your brother-in-law got even more annoying. All he did was bitch about your new car and warn you that we were headed for a “train wreck” in the gas market in a few months. You don’t even want to think about what’s in your in-box from him when you check your e-mail next time.

You’ve barely pulled onto the highway, and there’s trouble. Traffic is completely gridlocked, even though it normal flows right along. Must be an accident ahead. Sitting in your idling car, you keep looking at the fuel gauge and wondering exactly when the local stations will have gas again. It can’t be long–there has to be gas soon, even if they charge an arm and leg for it.

After a few minutes, you think about the hundreds of cars around you, all idling and going nowhere, and how much you’d like to have a chance to buy even a tiny portion of that wasted gasoline. Hell, if the local stations were going to be dry for a week or more, you’d gladly pay $5 or $6 a gallon to top off your tank and the five-gallon gas can in the garage. Gas will have to be available soon at the local stations. But if the dry spell lasts longer, you could cut back on driving, stick to the speed limit, not hot rod as much coming out of stops, maybe get your boss to let you work from home a couple of days this week. That should get you through this mess.

You can’t see it or smell it, but you know all these cars going nowhere are pumping out a lot of bad stuff. What’s that number your brother-in-law and your daughter are always yammering on about? Twenty pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon of gas? That can’t be right–a gallon of gas doesn’t even weight that much, so how can it make that much carbon dioxide? Whatever the number, it stays around in the atmosphere for a really long time, until your kids will be grandparents. They’ll have to live with it long after you’re gone. And oil prices won’t be any better thanks to your car and all those people gridlocked right around you. How many people need those SUV’s to get to work, anyway? Couldn’t they have bought a normal car, like you did? You have to be reasonable about these things.

Finally, you get a break. The traffic has started creeping forward, a few dozen cars ahead. You might not even be late for work, if you drive a little faster than normal.

Drought affecting US hydroelectric production:

Drought conditions are affecting hydroelectric production in the U.S., according to the latest figures provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Close to 50 percent of the nation’s electricity in the August 2006 - August 2007 period was produced in coal-fired plants.

In a report, the EIA noted that of the big four sources of net generation (coal, nuclear, natural gas, and conventional hydroelectric), only hydroelectric generation showed a decrease from August 2006 to August 2007, as it was down by 7.9 percent.

At the same time, according to NOAA, “severe to extreme drought” affected about 29 percent of the contiguous United States and approximately 44 percent of the contiguous United States fell in the “moderate to extreme drought” category.

Again, in most of the world we’re seeing just the beginning of the interaction between water issues and electricity generation. Whether it’s water turning turbines directly or water used in thermoelectric plants, its supply will become highly problematic in some locations such as part of the US west coast or the southeast.

This creates an even bigger incentive to promote wind, solar, wave, and tidal power–push electrons without consuming fuel or water.

Why $5 Gas Is Good for America:

Yes, a few billion newly motorized citizens of BRIC - that’s economist-speak for Brazil, Russia, India, and China - have turned up unexpectedly at the filling station, pushing prices sharply north. And yes, the oil world has lately endured more than its usual share of ugly headlines: insurgency in Iraq, unrest in Venezuela, mayhem in the Gulf of Mexico. And, OK, all those air-conditioned Cadillac Escalades are thirsty beasts. A million extra barrels a day burned here, a million fewer pumped there, a little geopolitical instability, and suddenly the price of the stuff that makes the wheels go around is flirting with historic peaks.

All of which would be seriously alarming but for one happy fact: We’ve never had more options for keeping those wheels turning. Aramco’s fuzzy logic is just one of a multitude of new tools and fuels - some proven, some in the works, and some wildly speculative. The main thing standing between those possibilities and your gas tank is cheap crude oil that costs Aramco barely $3 a barrel to bring to the surface.

So rising oil prices are more than just an irritant or even an ominous nick out of the GDP. They’re an invitation to corn and coal and hydrogen. For anyone with a fresh idea, expensive oil is as good as a subsidy - with no political strings attached. Indeed, every extra penny you pay at the pump is an incentive for some aspiring energy mogul to find another fuel.

…

Push the long-term price forecast above $40, and more exotic possibilities come into play. Remember Jimmy Carter’s synfuel program, which aimed to turn huge US coal reserves into gasoline? Three billion dollars in federal research money is now committed to making it happen. Corn, sugar, and soybean farmers hope rising prices can do what billions in subsidies and tax-funded research couldn’t: make ethanol and biodiesel cost-effective. Smarter money is betting that using plant waste will prove more economical. These technologies join compressed natural gas, already widely used where it’s worth spending extra money for cleaner exhaust.

Sustained crude prices above $60 would make feasible technologies that today seem too expensive or entirely speculative. It’s hard to see demand for oil surviving long at such a cost. But given a push now, some nascent technologies - hydrogen, most obviously, but also hydrocarbons locked away in methane hydrates - could become viable at the end of a long road. Technology breakthroughs are the key here: For instance, Shell has found a better way to extract oil from shale, reviving a long-abandoned resource. And some seemingly distant options are right under our noses; consider the plug-in version of the hybrid car.

…

So what’s a price-shocked, carbon-afflicted highway jockey to do? Keep driving. In fact, drive more. The longer gas stays expensive, the higher the chance we’ll see alternatives. Put that pedal to the metal. And smile when you see a big black $3 or $4 out in front at the gas pump. Those innovators need all the encouragement they can get. Shale oil, uranium, sunlight - there’s enough energy out there for a dozen planets. Where we’ll all park is another matter.

A blast from the past, as in way, way back in 2005. That’s like so two years ago.

I know this is geekery of the highest order, but I think it’s useful to look back on energy articles from time to time, not so much to see how well various predictions panned out, but to see how attitudes and our value system has evolved.

More Evidence We’ve Entered the End of Oil:

There is growing concern within the petroleum industry that we are approaching a limit to the amount of oil that can be pumped each day, and it might arrive before alternative fuels can be adopted on a large enough scale to avert severe energy shortages, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The story offers what the Journal calls “a significant twist” on the theory of peak oil while underscoring the urgent call to move beyond oil that the International Energy Agency made earlier this month in its annual World Energy Outlook. Taken together, they make a convincing argument that we’ve entered the end of oil and must move quickly, boldly and decisively to supplant oil as our primary source of energy.

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The Jounal notes that oil production may reach its plateau before these alternatives can be adopted on a scale sufficient to head off “energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled competition for fuel.” The time has come to act. The IEA says we’ve got 10 years to figure it out and begin moving, once and for all, beyond oil.

Will it be enough?

Will it be enough? Of course, the answer depends on the meaning of “enough.” If we mean “enough that we can sail on blissfully, continuing to ignore our energy consumption and its side effects”, then the answer is No!, as loudly as I can shout it. If the answer is “enough to prevent the fall of civilization, even at the cost of considerable economic and human pain”, then the answer is an equally enthusiastic Yes!

We still have time to decide which path we’ll take between those two polar extremes, but the window is closing, at least one end of the scale. It’s too late to make a painless transition away from oil, but we can still screw things up royally and destroy entire countries. The longer we wait, the more the window closes, and the further our possibilities get from the painless end of that spectrum.

Climate change driving ‘fourth tech revolution’: Brown:

Climate change is driving the need for a “fourth technological revolution” to cut pollution and save the planet, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday.

In his first major speech on the environment since taking office, Brown said the developing green technology sector could employ 25 million people worldwide and be worth three trillion dollars annually by 2050.

Britain currently produces 654 million tonnes of so-called greenhouse gases per year, and needs to cut that by more than half by 2050 — while its economy is likely to have grown two and half times bigger.

“This means a significant change in our energy economy. Indeed I believe it will require no less than a fourth technological revolution,” Brown said.

Yep. The change is coming, and we can either let it hammer us, or we can seize control of the situation and use it as a tool to build the future we want. Will the economic benefit from green collar jobs exceed the impact of global warming and peak oil? No one knows. If we truly are at the peak, and the oil exporters continue to push for higher oil prices, then the answer is likely no, but more green collar jobs will still leave us better off than we’d be without them in the short run, and in vastly better shape in the long run.

Hey! I can see my house from here!

Administrivia: I’m facing some tough decisions on the work front, and I wanted to let you all know what’s going on and why there might be some changes to this site. This is lot more personal than what I normally post here, but I feel it’s only fair to let you know what’s going on and why.

I’m getting deep into the development of the book, The Oil Crunch. I’m talking with an agent (note: not my agent (yet), but an agent) about shaping the pitch for this book, as well as a possible follow-on book on a different energy topic. He’s an extremely experienced agent in the technical writing field, and he’s concerned that I’m too late with The Oil Crunch (taking into account the time needed to write it and carry it through the production process). He thinks I could do much better, financially speaking, with The Other Book. That makes perfect sense to me, but I’m so invested in The Oil Crunch as a project that it would be quite difficult to walk away from it as a book project.

The problem of greatest concern to all youse guys is what to do about this site. While TCoE loses money, as it always has (even without accounting for the value of my time), and I now have a very good chance of restarting my (paid) writing career in a big way, I’ve become so attached to this site over the years that I won’t give it up unless absolutely forced to by circumstances beyond my control. But I know from experience that when I’m in total immersion mode on a book or other major writing project that I’ll have precious little time to do as much here as I’d like. Right now, it looks like we’re headed for one of the following four possibilities:

• Write The Oil Crunch, make minimal posts here, perhaps three or four per week.
• Write The Other Book, make minimal posts here, update the presentation version of The Oil Crunch on an irregular basis, just to keep it relatively current and give me an excuse for doing a longer, oil-related project.
• Give up on books and look for other ways to make money (see next item).
• Try and fail to sell either book to a publisher, keep posting here while I continue to troll the infosphere for ways to turn time and gray cells into dollars–a regular, paid column, another book project, world-famous lacrosse photographer (I’m the photographer for the Rochester Grey Wolves), etc. OK, this one isn’t a choice, and I don’t see it as having more than a minuscule chance of happening. But in the interest of being accurate I had to include it.

As I type this, I have no idea how this will sort itself out. Mrs. Lou and I will be talking about this at some length over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I suspect I will reach, and then reject, a conclusion several times in the coming days before finally collapsing, face down, and accepting what will seem to be The Inevitable.

I promise to let you all know once the probability wave collapses and I have a chosen path.