I’ve had a few discussions lately with people I know, all with more than a passing interest in and knowledge of peak oil. One particular point I’ve brought up with them is the notion of who knows that peak oil is real and imminent. In this context, the “who” is national politicians and the heads of very large corporations. (For the sake of those discussions and this one I’m limiting the possible date of the global production peak to 2011 +/- 1 year.)
The responses I got were interesting, to say the least, and pretty evenly split between two schools of thought:
“They don’t know jack!” This camp thinks that the power players (including the businesspeople) are all as dumb as most Republicans think anyone in government is. Personally, I have a very hard time believing that, especially since there are a few (albeit very few) politicians speaking openly about peak oil at the national and state levels. How could there be this much discussion and dozens of oil books on the shelf right now, without politicians and corporate heads asking a lot of very pointed questions of independent sources? I think it’s entirely possible that they could ask those questions and run screaming from the answers, but even as they lied to the public they would still know.
“Of course they know! How could they not???” This is where I fall, for the most part. I’m not by any means convinced that every single member of the US Congress or the Bush Administration thinks peak oil is about to knock on our door. I’m sure a good portion of our elected officials are as naive as a puppy (even if nowhere as cute), and they really and truly believe Exxon and the USGS projections that peak oil will come after 2030. But I know for a fact that at least some of them, like Roscoe Bartlett in the US House of Representatives and some state-level politicians in Connecticut, know the score. And as for the heads of big corporations–they would have to have their heads in some very deep sand not to see what’s coming. Which is a polite way of saying that some know and some are just as naive as the worst of our politicians.
I think that the public pronouncements of government and corporate officials supports the “of course they know” model. They know we’re getting close enough to the peak that they have no choice but to start changing their tune, at least a little. As I’ve said before, they’ll likely continue to “split the difference” between their most recent pronouncement and what they really think will happen for some time, and asymptotically approach accuracy.
What do you think they know?
Air Travelers Association Names the Top Ten Airline Passenger Trends and Issues for 2008:
David Stempler, President of the Air Travelers Association, today provided the Association’s assessment of the top ten airline passenger trends and issues for 2008.
1. The Battle with the Government over Delayed Flights versus High Fares will Continue.
2. The Airline System will Continue to Operate at or Near Capacity.
3. The Start of the Next Generation Air Traffic Control System will continue to be Delayed.
4. There will be More Reports of Near Collisions in the Air and On the Ground.
5. The Battle Over the Passengers’ Bill of Rights versus Passengers Rights to Get to Their Destination Will Continue.
6. Watch for Domestic Airlines to Merge or Accept Foreign Carrier Investments.
7. Expect More Regional Jets in Our Future.
8. There will be Continued Service Problems with Airlines with Labor Problems.
9. The Competition Between the Super-Jumbo Airbus A380 versus Super-Nonstop Boeing 787 will begin in 2009.
10. The Battle Between Residents on the Ground over Noise and Airline Passengers in the Air will Continue.
And higher fuel cost is where, exactly, on that list…?
Parting company with McKibben and, maybe, Hansen:
The nation’s top climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen, apparently now believes “the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 ppm,” according to an op-ed by the the great environmental writer Bill McKibben. Yet while preindustrial levels were 280, we’re now already at more than 380 and rising 2 ppm a year!
Like many people, in the 1990s I believed 550 was the target needed to avoid climate catastrophe — but now it’s clear that
1. 550 ppm would lead to the greatest disaster ever experienced by human civilization — returning us to temperatures last seen when sea levels were some 80 feet higher. This is especially true because….
2. Long before we hit 550, major carbon cycle feedbacks — the loss of carbon from the tundra and the Amazon, the saturation of the ocean sink (already beginning) would almost certainly kick in to high gear, inevitably pushing us to much, much higher CO2 levels (see here and here and my book).
Exactly when those feedbacks seriously kick in is the rub. No one knows for sure, but based on my review of the literature and interviews of leading climate scientists, somewhere between 400 and 500 ppm seems most likely. It could be lower, but it probably couldn’t be much higher.
…
But at least we’re homing in on the right number. Three hundred and fifty is the number every person needs to know.I part company with him here. I haven’t talked to Hansen yet and I’ll reserve further judgment until I see a paper or PPT by him.
Since beating 450 ppm is doable and certainly necessary — that’s where I draw the line. One advantage of pursuing 450 is that if we do get some sort of unexpected breakthrough — a cheap and practical way to draw CO2 out of the air (that doesn’t use a lot of land, water, or energy) and stick it someplace permanent — then we would have a system in place to deploy it fast enough to perhaps get to below 400 ppm. And even if turns out 450 doesn’t avert catastrophe, it will surely slow down the impacts enough to make adaptation more viable.
The author of the above text is Joe Romm, writing at Climate Progress. I have a lot of respect for Joe and his work (as in the countless times I’ve referred to and plugged his book The Hype About Hydrogen), but this time around I think I have to part company with him.
Please don’t misunderstand my position: I’m most definitely not saying that I think the 350 ppm CO2 number is correct and 450 is wrong, merely that there’s a very strong possibility that the actual number is much closer to 350 than it is to 450. (And for the record, we’re currently at approximately 382 ppm.)
My point, as I’ve said here before (and on Joe’s blog just minutes ago) is that the CO2 we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere for over 100 years has been far ahead of the science all along. The climate scientists are doing a heroic job of closing that coceptual gap, but considering the terrifying surprises we keep seeing (many documented in Joe’s current book, Hell and High Water), it’s clear we have a distinctly imperfect understanding of what the hell’s going on out there in the real world.
Specifically, the problem is positive feedback loops. As Joe points out, there are several potentially game changing feedbacks in nature, such as the possibility of massive CO2 and/or methane releases from melting tundra and no-longer-permafrost and the thermal stratification of the oceans, which would significantly reduce their ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. I’m not even sure it’s fair to say that scientists have a reasonably complete and accurate view of how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets respond to a given level of warming, another source of scary surprises, as Joe points out in H&HW.
As long as we’re still discovering new feedbacks or further quantifying known feedbacks (both sources of nasty surprises), the only prudent thing we can assume is that the conventional wisdom–the conclusion that the magic number is 450 ppm–is wrong. It’s entirely possible that we’ll find some negative feedbacks that mitigate the situation, beginning at, perhaps, 400 or 420 ppm. Or maybe we’ll find that the effects of the warming that does occur won’t be as bad as predicted. But I’ve seen no serious discussions of our catching that kind of break.
Until we know more, my view of this will be: The number the scientists feel confident in, today, is 450, but it’s very likely lower than that, possibly much lower.
One last thing on Joe’s post above: He says, “Since beating 450 ppm is doable and certainly necessary — that’s where I draw the line.” That sounds eerily reminiscent of the scene in Apollo 13 where a frustrated engineer says, “You’re telling me what you need, and I’m telling you what you’ve got.” In other words, “doable” has zip to do with what the real number is, and it shouldn’t even be brought into the discussion. Reality doesn’t give a flying fig about what is or isn’t within our capabilities, and the less convenient we think the truth is the more urgently we should be working to determine the number.
By the way, I plan to write a review of H&HW as soon as I finish it. So far, it’s shaping up to be a must-read title for anyone interested in e+e issues.
What? Yet another excuse for Lou to climb on his soap box and prattle on about private activism and how our choices can reduce our resource consumption and CO2 production, and also send market signals? No, not this time, although I’m sure you won’t have to wait too long before I come back to that particular hot button with a cartoonishly large mallet and start wailing away at it yet again.
This time I’m talking about a higher level of abstraction and in a more philosophical way; not how you spend your money, but how you spend yourself.
I’ve mentioned many times how inspiring it is to be around all the kids in my neighborhood or to visit with our three nieces, two of which are college sophomores, and the third is a senior in high school just making a final decision on a college. Yes, I know, it’s the oldest cliche in the toolbox of any would be do-gooder: It’s all about the kids. The nasty problem with cliches is that they tend to become cliches by being true in the first place. For me it really is all about our kids (and as I say in my Oil Crunch presentation, they’re all our kids, whether they share our DNA or not). If those of us alive today were the last ones ever to be born, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about peak oil or global warming or any of it. In a matter of decades human beings would be gone, and nature would take back the planet and begin to erase the evidence of our existence. Nothing we could do would alter that significantly.
But it’s not that simple. We do have all these kids to worry about and to whom we owe much more than we’re delivering (as in a more livable world), and we’ve painted ourselves into one hell of a tight, ugly corner, thanks to the serial horrors triggered by global warming, plus the added joy of the one-two punch of peak oil and peak natural gas. (Yes, I’m intentionally ignoring other peaks we could drag onto stage here; those I’ve mentioned are more than enough for my taste.)
And all this means what, exactly? It means that every one of us has to make a fundamental decision about our own life: How will we spend our one token, our one trip on this planet? Will we happily put on the drone’s blinders, worry about nothing of more substance than where we can get the best price on beer or which politician is promising the lowest taxes? Will we choose to wallow in a toxic stew of our own ignorance and arrogance, deride those who seek to understand the world and make it a better (or simply less bad) place? Or will we choose to act like thoughtful, caring, even, dare I say it, loving adults, and do everything we can to give all our children a cleaner, more sustainable world, one governed by compassion for others?
How will we choose to spend ourselves?
And if we choose the high, and difficult, road, what are we each willing to do to follow that path? What sacrifices of time and money and ego and effort will we make in order to transform ourselves, in this whisper of time we’re alive, to pursue those higher goals?
For each of us, the answer is different, of course, which is how it should be. The right answer for me or any of you dear readers who come to this site so often shouldn’t be imposed on anyone else. But as a practical matter, some of the collective decisions we make do impose the will of the majority on the minority, and sometimes what’s best for humanity in the long run is militantly opposed by a minority with a financial or ideological interest to do so. Such is the nature of humanity, I suppose–there are always battles within battles, and hidden agendas virtually never remain completely hidden in the long run.
All of which reminds me of something I rarely mention on this site. I became convinced years ago that I know the answer to one of “the” questions: What is the meaning of life. The answer is simply that it’s a trick question. The meaning of life isn’t a single, universal constant carved in the sky by the finger of God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whomever. The meaning of life is defined by each of us. For the person who’s dedicated his life to being a NASCAR fan, that’s where it begins and ends, whether or not he thinks of it in such terms, at least until he changes his mind. Others among us have distinctly different views of the universe and our role in it, to put it mildly, but that’s our choice.
So what’s the freakin’ point? Simple: I’m literally begging you, every single one of you who normally read this site or get a link to this post from someone in e-mail, to stop what you’re doing, sit in a quiet room for ten minutes and think about how you’re spending yourself. The worst thing we can do is engage in mindless consumption, whether it’s of goods or services or most especially ourselves. I’m pleading with you to reject that impulse, lead an examined life, and engage in mindful consumption at all levels. Read everything your time allows on energy and environmental issues, think, engage with others, and then act.
Bush and Global Warming in 2008:
For anyone interested in the state of the Washington debate over responding to global warming, Peter Baker’s front-page story in today’s Washington Post is a must-read. The article chronicles the evolution in President Bush’s thinking (if not his policy positions) on global warming as Bush starts considering his Administration’s legacy. Here’s the nutgraph:
The coming year offers a final test of whether Bush is willing to move beyond the policies of the past seven years and embrace more aggressive measures, including a mandatory limit on carbon emissions with pollution credits that can be bought and sold — a system known as cap-and-trade. If presented such legislation by Sens. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Warner (R-Va.), supporters hope, Bush might sign it.
We here at Warming Law would be delighted, of course, if President Bush wants to make leadership on global warming the hallmark achievement of his final year in office. But last week’s waiver decision makes us deeply skeptical that this is what’s likely to happen. Indeed, Baker notes (without fully developing) the less altruistic motivation behind Bush’s “leadership” in 2007:
By 2006, though, something had begun to change. A host of governors, including Republicans such as California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, moved to impose their own plans to curb greenhouse gases. Major corporations, nervous about a patchwork-quilt approach, started agitating for a single national policy.
In other words, as we explained here, the state leadership on global warming has brought polluting industries (Bush’s most loyal base) to the federal regulation table, seeking federal action that displaces state experimentation.
The WaPo article is here, via the MSNBC site.
Let me be less polite than Warming Law in assessing this situation: Any notion that Bush is having a change of heart about global warming, driven by his exposure to science, is so laughably naive that it’s pathetic.
Bush will do as little as he possibly can on this issue. And the only reason he took any steps whatsoever, as in the ridiculous energy bill that was just passed, was to head off more aggressive action at the state-level, as mentioned above. Remember how quickly the EPA refused to grant California a waiver so they could regulate CO2 emissions? And remember the rationale? They claimed that the new CAFE standards in the energy bill took precedence.
I can’t make it any clearer: This is a president who cares far more about keeping businesses happy than doing anything to reduce the impact of global warming.
But now Bush is concerned about his precious legacy, so we’re seeing articles about how he’s having a slow-motion epiphany on environmental issues, all triggered by the purest of actions–listening to scientists. It took this long for Bush, the all-time champion of “voluntary” CO2 cuts, to realize what a mess we were in? Really? Really???
The good news is that January 20, 2009 isn’t that far off, and the US will very likely have a far more enlightened president on that day.
Surprisingly Strong SUV Sales:
Thought sales of big, expensive SUVs and pickups were on life support? It would seem that reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated as sales for some of the largest, thirstiest luxury models, including the Cadillac Escalade ESV, Mercedes-Benz GL, and Toyota Tundra have shown a surprising resurgence.
“There are buyers for whom, that’s the vehicle they still want, for what their needs are, and gas prices won’t deter everyone,” says Stephanie Brinley, senior manager for product analysis at Tustin (Calif.)-based AutoPacific.
For the entire U.S. auto industry, light trucks still constitute more than 50% of sales, and the vehicles are on track to regain in 2007 the market share that was lost in 2005 and 2006. That share growth includes, but is not limited to, a growing number of car-based crossover vehicles that look like trucks but drive more like cars.
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This year’s sales results show that many shoppers never stopped wanting big SUVs. With high gas prices, some of them may have needed an extra push in the form of incentives, while others can simply afford it.And after all, says Brinley, people wouldn’t buy big trucks at all if the only thing they wanted was good gas mileage. “People who have chosen to buy those vehicles understand higher gas prices,” she says. “They know that going into it.”
State [California] may see $4 gasoline in ‘08 (emphasis added):
Gasoline could average $3.75 a gallon across the U.S. in a few months, pushing the price in California up and over the $4 mark, energy analysts said Wednesday.
Several factors point toward a nightmarish spring for motorists, they said, including persistently strong crude oil costs and the fact that the traditional December drop in pump prices didn’t materialize.
“If anyone expects gas to be less than a new record, they are not thinking,” said Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst for Oppenheimer & Co. “There is no question it will be much higher than last year.”
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Pump prices usually fall between Labor Day and the end of the year, in recent years dropping about 17% in California.This year they did the reverse, gaining 17%.
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Kloza said that nationally for the last 25 years, the difference in the price of gas from the winter low to the spring high has been about 59%.“I don’t think we will see a typical surge, and we don’t have to,” Kloza said. With an increase of just 30%, he said, “you’re talking about 75 cents a gallon more from where they are now.”
I tell people incessantly, whether on this site or in person, that if they own a newish vehicle, the chances are very good that they’ll be putting $5 or $6 gasoline into it. The looks of disbelief, sometimes edging into that “are you out of your bloody mind???” expression, I get are something to behold.
People may be buying unnecessarily large and inefficient vehicles now because they think they can handle filling them with $3 gasoline, but that’s stupefyingly short sighted, on par with the Federal Reserve, the lenders, and the borrowers who effectively conspired to create the subprime mortgage debacle that’s still playing out.
I’ve reached the point where I’m openly wishing for much higher gasoline prices in the US–something in the $5 to $6 range for at least six months, as a start. And yes, I’m quite aware of the economic pain that would cause many people in the US who are just barely able to pay for their transportation to work and/or school. But the nasty reality is that nothing else but a huge economic incentive will force people to change enough to make a serious dent in our oil consumption–we’re certainly not going get any help from policymakers.
I hope you’ll excuse me now–I have an appointment to go open a vein.
Remember This: 350 Parts Per Million (emphasis added):
This month may have been the most important yet in the two-decade history of the fight against global warming. Al Gore got his Nobel in Stockholm; international negotiators made real progress on a treaty in Bali; and in Washington, Congress actually worked up the nerve to raise gas mileage standards for cars.
But what may turn out to be the most crucial development went largely unnoticed. It happened at an academic conclave in San Francisco. A NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s a number that may make what happened in Washington and Bali seem quaint and nearly irrelevant. It’s the number that may define our future.
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In the past five years, though, scientists began to worry that the planet was reacting more quickly than they had expected to the relatively small temperature increases we’ve already seen. The rapid melt of most glacial systems, for instance, convinced many that 450 parts per million was a more prudent target [compared to the prior estimate of 550 ppm]. That’s what the European Union and many of the big environmental groups have been proposing in recent years, and the economic modeling makes clear that achieving it is still possible, though the chances diminish with every new coal-fired power plant.But the data just keep getting worse. The news this fall that Arctic sea ice was melting at an off-the-charts pace and data from Greenland suggesting that its giant ice sheet was starting to slide into the ocean make even 450 look too high. Consider: We’re already at 383 parts per million, and it’s knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways. So, what does that mean?
It means, Hansen says, that we’ve gone too far. “The evidence indicates we’ve aimed too high — that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2is no more than 350 ppm,” he said after his presentation. Hansen has reams of paleo-climatic data to support his statements (as do other scientists who presented papers at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco this month). The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius — which is what 450 parts per million implies — sea levels rose by tens of meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again.
And we’re already past 350. Does that mean we’re doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2each year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage.
That “just,” of course, hides the biggest political and economic task we’ve ever faced: weaning ourselves from coal, gas and oil. The difference between 550 and 350 is that the weaning has to happen now, and everywhere. No more passing the buck. The gentle measures bandied about at Bali, themselves way too much for the Bush administration, don’t come close. Hansen called for an immediate ban on new coal-fired power plants that don’t capture carbon, the phaseout of old coal-fired generators, and a tax on carbon high enough to make sure that we leave tar sands and oil shale in the ground. To use the medical analogy, we’re not talking statins to drop your cholesterol; we’re talking huge changes in every aspect of your daily life.
Maybe too huge. The problems of global equity alone may be too much — the Chinese aren’t going to stop burning coal unless we give them some other way to pull people out of poverty. And we simply may have waited too long.
But at least we’re homing in on the right number. Three hundred and fifty is the number every person needs to know.
The author is Bill McKibben, a long-time writer on the topic of global warming, and one of the people featured in the excellent movie Everything’s Cool. He’s also on my short list of people I wish everyone would listen to more closely.
Speaking as someone who is on statins and has had to make those huge changes to every aspect of my life, I think the metaphor McKibben uses understates the situation. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time–the number I hear quoted frequently is that it’s about a century, on average. That means we would have to cut our emissions a lot, and right now, and hope that all those signs of accelerating climate change we’re seeing, from Arctic sea ice extent to growing drought conditions to a rise in freakish weather patterns, will somehow take a time out until we bring down CO2 levels. There is no climate equivalent of a heart stent, another thing I know a thing or three about, a brute force way to buy yourself a lot of time while the diet (consumption) and life style (efficiency, economic organization) changes are put into practice.
Or is there? Isn’t geoengineering, with all its uncertainties about effectiveness and side effects, and the growing likelihood that we’ll resort to it out of desperation, very much like an emergency angioplasty and stent insertion? It’s not an analogy I’m entirely comfortable making, but it increasingly seems to be accurate.
Leaving imagery aside, the real problem, as McKibben points out, is China. Depending on which set of numbers you believe, China is either the leading emitter of CO2 in the world or just barely behind the US and ready to overtake us soon. With 1.3 billion people, many of whom are just beginning to move into a Western-style consumer economy (and another 1.1 billion, and growing, in India making a similar transition, lest we forget), nothing can be done about global warming without their (and India’s) full cooperation.
How do we get there from here? Honestly, I have no freakin’ idea.
Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the Week Ending December 21, 2007:
U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 15.2 million barrels per day during the week ending December 21, down 22,000 barrels per day from the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 88.1 percent of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production moved lower compared to the previous week, averaging 9.0 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production fell last week, averaging nearly 4.3 million barrels per day.
U.S. crude oil imports averaged 9.8 million barrels per day last week, up 694,000 barrels per day from the previous week. Over the last four weeks, crude oil imports have averaged nearly 9.6 million barrels per day, or 62,000 barrels per day less than averaged over the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 1.0 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel imports averaged 143,000 barrels per day last week.
U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) dropped by 3.3 million barrels compared to the previous week. At 293.6 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are in the lower half of the average range for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 0.7 million barrels last week, but are in the lower half of the average range. Finished gasoline inventories fell last week while gasoline blending components inventories increased during this same period. Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 2.8 million barrels, and are near the lower limit of the average range for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 1.8 million barrels last week. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 10.5 million barrels last week, and are in the middle of the average range for this time of year.
Total products supplied over the last four-week period has averaged 21.1 million barrels per day, up by 1.6 percent compared to the similar period last year. Over the last four weeks, motor gasoline demand has averaged 9.3 million barrels per day, or 0.3 percent above the same period last year. Distillate fuel demand has averaged 4.5 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, up 5.7 percent compared to the same period last year. Jet fuel demand is 1.9 percent lower over the last four weeks compared to the same four-week period last year.
The tables that follow display the latest U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet and the most recent 4 weeks of Weekly Petroleum Status Report data.
VC Khosla blows his credibility dissing plug-ins:
He may be a “venture-capital star” who is now putting a lot of money into biofuels — but he is no clean tech expert, as he proved during a keynote address at ThinkEquity Partners’ ThinkGreen conference in San Francisco. In remarks that should worry anybody relying on his judgment, Khosla said:
Forget plug-ins. They are nice toys. But they will not be material to climate change.
Very, very wrong. Plug ins are likely to be a central strategy for dealing with climate change, as readers of Climate Progress know (see below). I hope cellulosic ethanol will be, but that still remains to be seen.
I couldn’t agree with the speaker (Joe Romm) more strongly. Eve if the only thing that plug-ins do is let us keep vehicles rolling without having to resort to the CO2-intensive step of turning cvoal into motor fuel, they’ll play a huge roll. And the sooner you think peak oil is coming, the more important plug-ins will be. Why do you all think I talk endlessly about them and how new battery technology will be such a huge game changer?
Panasonic EV Energy Co. Starting Studies Geared to Mass Production of Li-Ion Cells for Toyota:
Panasonic EV Energy Co., the battery-making joint venture between Toyota and Matsushita, has begun studies at its Omori factory geared to the mass production of lithium-ion batteries, said Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe in his end-of-year press conference. The Omori factory currently produces NiMH cells.
Lithium-ion batteries are better suited than NiMH cells for use in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, Watanabe said. Toyota, Matsushita, and Panasonic EV are currently conducting development on the cells and systems. Toyota’s current prototype plug-in hybrid uses a NiMH battery pack. (Earlier post.)
In the press conference, Watanabe briefly described Toyota’s three-pronged approach to sustainability: R&D into technology in pursuit of sustainable mobility; sustainable manufacturing and social contributions.
Hybrid technology will play a central role in achieving sustainable mobility, according to Watanabe, who noted that Toyota has now sold a cumulative 1.25 million hybrid vehicles worldwide. As previously stated, Toyota is targeting annual hybrid sales of 1 million units as early as possible in the 2010s, and will have a hybrid model in all Toyota series vehicles.
Watanabe referenced the ongoing testing of the plug-in hybrid prototypes in Japan and the US, saying that the company is making steady progress toward the commercialization of the plug-in vehicles.
As I was just saying about batteries…
From the trenches of the datacenter to the corner office, from the eco-minded citizen’s living room to the Senate floor, it seemed that just about everyone had green on the brain this past year.
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But the impetus to be eco-friendly wasn’t just tied to concern for our little blue-green planet. One of the obvious benefits for reducing energy waste is saving cash, be it in the form of lower electric bills or fewer dollars pumped into the gas tank.In the world of business IT, however, lower power bills alone weren’t the inspiration for organizations to green up their acts. From coast to coast, companies have been struggling with a power crisis: They’ve outgrown their datacenter facilities, yet have need for more computing power — or the local utility can’t consistently provide them the juice they need to keep their operations flowing and their business growing.
In response, companies have embraced technologies and practices in the name of sustainability to wring as much performance as possible out of their existing datacenter infrastructure. The opportunity to highlight their technologies as part of the datacenter-refurbishing process was icing on the cake.
What follows are some of the highlights that made 2007 the year of green tech.
[Longish list follows in original article]
One minor note on this: From an economist’s viewpoint, a lack of space/power in a data center is no different from a higher electricity price. Economists typically consider the extreme case–no availability of a good or service at all–to be equivalent to an infinitely high price.
In less econo-wonky terms, much of what’s in this article is good news–many companies are taking aggressive steps to use less electricity in their own operations, as well as developing products and services to help others do the same.
NYPD to road test electric scooters:
Police working to keep the city safer will be trying to keep it greener too — by testing an electric, ultra-quiet scooter.
Four plug-in Vectrix scooters will be road tested starting early next month as the New York Police Department tries to become more environmentally friendly and reduce gasoline use in its massive motor fleet.
The nation’s largest police department already uses a handful of hybrid cars and so-called flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on both gasoline and ethanol.
[insert here Lou’s shtick about the value of large consumers making mass purchases of more efficient technology]
See the article for a photo of an officer riding a Vectrix with the NYPD color scheme and markings.
All I really need now is a way to justify buying one of these bad boys. (The scooter, not the police officer.) I drive so little that it would be an extravagance and a “statement vehicle”, and I’m not into spending that much money for either purpose.
Inhofe recycles unscientific attacks on global warming, NYT’s Revkin gives him a pass:
So Sen. James “global warming is a hoax” Inhofe (R-OK) issues a report in which he claims:
Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming.
“Padded” would be an extremely generous description of this list of “prominent scientists.” Some would use the word “laughable” (though not the N.Y. Times‘ Andy Revkin, see below). For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?
I’m not certain a dozen on the list would qualify as “prominent scientists,” and many of those, like Freeman Dyson — a theoretical physicist — have no expertise in climate science whatsoever. I have previously debunked his spurious and uninformed claims, although I’m not sure why one has to debunk someone who seriously pushed the idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs! Seriously.
First of all, Joe Romm is right about this pathetic, shallow, and extremely disingenuous Inhofe publicity stunt. This is no more respectable than when Inhofe called global warming “the greatest hoax” ever perpetrated on the American public.
But as for Joe’s cheap shot at economists–hey Joe–I gotcha concerned economist right here!
If you have the stomach, check the article and the 97(!) comments that more resembles an N-way slap fight between drunks than a debate. Honestly, if that kind of bullshit happened on this site I would disable comments on all posts.
Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, which has the lead role in DOE efforts to evaluate plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and PHEV technology, recently compared US near term (to ~ 2015) alternative pathways for converting energy to light-duty vehicle kilometers of travel (VKT) in plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), hybrids (HEVs), a simulated fuel cell HEV and PHEV, and conventional vehicles (CVs).
Among the findings of the study were:
- More kilometers of service from coal are obtained by the use of coal-generated power to support PHEV CD mode than by converting coal to synthetic diesel (CTL) for use in diesel engines.
- More kilometers of service from farmed trees are obtained by the conversion of the biomass to power to support the PHEV CD mode than by converting trees to ethanol for use in HEVs or PHEVs in charge sustaining mode.
- For wind and solar, PHEV CD mode provides far more kilometers of service than the use of the renewable electricity in electrolysis to create hydrogen.
- Biofuels do not look significantly better than coal-based options on a total energy basis, but do for greenhouse has emissions. Renewable energy options reduce GHG emissions by a factor of three or more, compared to the fossil-based options.
Not too many surprises here, especially for the exceptionally astute (and stunningly good looking) TCoE readers. I found the result about using tress to move electrons instead of as biomass for ethanol interesting–that’s one detail I hadn’t seen addressed before.
You can grab the paper with the study’s results here (32 page, 471K PDF).
Administrative note: As I shift the focus and/or implementation of this site slightly in the coming weeks and months, please feel free to use any post, Linkage or otherwise, as an open thread. If you see something online that I haven’t talked about but you think people here should see, drop a comment in the most recent post. A few of you have done this recently, and I would love to see more of it.
UPC Wind Signs PPA for City of Los Angeles:
UPC Wind announced the approval of a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) to supply the City of Los Angeles with wind power from its Utah-based Milford Wind Corridor project. Approved by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A. City Council, the PPA was made with the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA).
As part of the long-term power purchase agreement, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) will receive 185 megawatts (MW) from Phase I of UPC’s Milford Wind Corridor with the cities of Burbank and Pasadena getting 10 MW and 5 MW from the project respectively.
“The approval of this power purchase agreement by the Mayor and the L.A. City Council is a major milestone for our Utah-based Milford Wind Corridor project,” said Paul Gaynor, President and CEO of UPC Wind. “In addition to the clean, wind energy that the project will produce for The City of Los Angeles, it will be a source of revenue and new jobs to the Utah region where it will be built.”
Once more, with feeling: PPA’s are the business world equivalent of a major reduction in the cost of solar PV or wind hardware. But, since something as arcane and abstract as a (gasp!) business model isn’t nearly as sexy as factories or thin film solar panels or Pelamis wave thingies, it doesn’t get the love it deserves.
SPI to Power 10 Schools in Santa Rosa City:
Solar Power, Inc. (SPI), and its joint venture partner Solar Power Integrators, have received approval from the Santa Rosa City School District Board of Directors to install photovoltaic solar electric systems at 10 of the district’s schools, a project worth approximately $23 million.
SPI will design and install the systems. Solar Power Integrators will act as the project construction manager. Individual systems within the district will range from 20 kilowatts (kW) to 687 kW. Preliminary work on the project is to begin immediately with a targeted completion date of October 2008.
“This is our first contract with the state education system and we view this as a large market opportunity going forward. Additionally, the size of this project gives us enhanced visibility into revenues for the next year, as such, we are issuing guidance for our 2008 fiscal year of at least $60 million in expected revenue and reiterating our guidance for profitability for the 2008 fiscal year,” said Steve Kircher, CEO of SPI.
And also let me drag one of my other favorite topics into the discussion, aside from PPA’s: The benefits of middle-out change. The concentrated decision making in school districts, local governments, large businesses, etc. can have a tremendous, positive effect on our evolving situation.
This is where all you little shoots in the grass roots movement come into play: The more forcefully you insist that the companies you buy from, the institutions in your community, and the governments you vote for take such steps, the more of them we’ll see. It really is that simple. Sit on your butt and bitch about how nothing happens, and you’re literally doing your part to prevent progress. (The people who are deeply emotionally invested in disaster, the Apocalypticons, are happy to do nothing except type at each other online and wallow in their doomer wet dreams. Screw them, and screw their crappy attitude.) Get involved, whether through sending market signals with your own consumption or more explicit steps like writing letters to decision makers, and you have a chance to make a major contribution.
An Unbiased Approach to Evaluating Transportation Fuels:
For the past thirty years our country has become increasingly more aware of the effects our energy use has on the environment. At the same time, it is clear that our dependence on foreign oil is having significant consequences to our economy and our national security. Yet despite alternative technologies, we still get most of our energy from the fossil fuels. We know we have a problem, but the challenges of moving away from the established technologies and infrastructure are monumental.
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The use of ethanol is the best example. …
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Hydrogen has also received significant funding recently, but the hydrogen economy has many flaws that need to be considered. …
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Electric vehicles are not without their share of difficulties. …
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Solutions to our energy problems do exist, but it will take a variety of technologies to reach our goals. Of the alternative transportation options, electric vehicles coupled with increased use of renewables and other clean sources of energy will be the most efficient way to reduce pollution and eliminate dependence on foreign oil. We need to look at all of the issues to concentrate funding on the solutions that make sense.
Yep.
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Little Surprise: Oil Prices Will Rise:
Oil-price prognosticators, bruised after an unusually volatile spell in the oil patch, have reached a rough consensus on next year: Oil will be even costlier, even if the economy cools.
Consumers are likely to pay a lot more at the pump, too. The Energy Department predicts that far higher average oil prices will force gasoline prices to even out at $3.11 next year, up 10% from the average price of $2.81 this year.
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Forecasters are notching other lessons from 2007 in looking toward next year. One is that the almost irrational uncertainty that sent prices soaring to more than $98 in November from $69 in late August will last well into 2008.“If I had to describe [2007] in one image, it would be dancing on thin ice,” says Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, which serves as an energy watchdog for rich countries. Global spare capacity is so thin, he says, “that any little thing now can influence price.”
A year ago, almost no one in the oil business — from producers and Energy Department analysts to Wall Street traders — foresaw crude prices careening toward $100 a barrel this year. Some big investment houses, Morgan Stanley foremost among them, even predicted prices would fall. Instead, prices went on an unprecedented roller-coaster ride, rising to a nominal record of $98.18 last month from the low of roughly $50 a barrel in mid-January.
Most of the industry’s leading lights now are predicting the U.S. benchmark crude, as traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, will average around $80 a barrel next year, up from $71.89 this year. The benchmark Friday closed at $93.31.
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The market has become so unpredictable lately that many forecasters are recalibrating their forecasts every few weeks — and rarely are they lowering them.Goldman Sachs Group a month ago expected benchmark crude prices averaging $85 a barrel next year. Then economists there took note of some bullish trends, including signs of robust demand growth in much of the world, and this month raised their forecast to a startling $95 a barrel. For that price to hold, crude prices would have to spend much of the year above $100 a barrel.
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A recent study by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, of Munich, Germany, found that in making its annual price assumptions, the rich countries’ own energy think tank, the IEA, of Paris, missed the actual price by 27% on average since 1999, mostly underestimating how high prices would go. The U.S. Energy Department’s Energy Information Agency fared only slightly better, with forecasts that on average came in 22% off the actual price.
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If prices do continue to climb, economists may finally get an answer to one the lingering riddles of the decade: At what price will oil consumers begin to recoil? Many thought it would happen at $50 a barrel, then $60, then $70.Until there is a clear answer, and demand begins to taper off, Deutsche Bank’s Mr. Sieminski says the best forecasting method may be the one that’s ruled for much of the decade. “Take the average of everyone’s best guess,” he says, “and add 30%.”
Perhaps I’m just cynical, but it’s hard for me to feel good about the analysts finally getting in the same zip code as the actual prices. (And yes, I’m assuming for the moment–but not predicting–that these projections above $80 and $90/barrel for 2008 will be pretty close to the mark, which is, in turn, a prediction of no new war or terrorism attack or hurricane in the wrong part of the Gulf of Mexico.) Their consistent underestimation of the price of oil has only slowed our response and transition away from that particular fossil fuel. While I’m not accusing them of doing that on purpose, the fact remains that that’s been the net effect of their inadvertent bias.
This article and the whole “what did they know, and when did they know it” issue is particularly interesting today, as just 24 hours ago I was at a party and spent several hours talking to someone with amazing contacts in the world of energy and US politics. I had just met this person, an out-of-town relative of a good friend, who told me directly that the view in Places That Matter is that the worldwide oil peak is coming in 2012. (Note to Chris Skrebowski: Neener, neener–missed it by a year.)
How credible is this source? I found the discussion very convincing because of the person’s contacts and extremely deep and broad knowledge of sustainability issues, plus the connection to my friend. (There’s no way this person would have made up the business and political anecdotes with a sibling within earshot.) Still, I’m sure you can find people speaking from an equally impressive context who will tell you that Exxon is right and there’s no peak in sight until after 2030. All I can say is that throughout the entire conversation the needle on my journalist-precision bullshit detector never moved off zero.
I’m not about to do anything as insane as making price predictions for oil or any other energy-related commodity, but I will tell you how this all feels to me: Like the deeply disturbing scene in a jungle movie when an immense boa constrictor, already wrapped around its prey, suddenly tightens its grip, the coils of its body just perceptibly sliding past each other.
Perhaps that’s not so much my cynicism as it is the fact that I’m sitting here after 11PM on a Sunday night with a crushing, four-day sinus headache, reading yet another article about what’s headed our way on the oil front with no sign that mainstreamers have any clue whatsoever what’s going on…
Forecasters Converging On 100 Million B/D :
While predictions by Total Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie and others that world oil production is facing a limit of 100 million barrels per day or less have received a lot of attention lately, new long-term energy forecasts from major oil companies and government organizations seem to be quietly converging with that stark assessment. While the latest mainstream energy forecasts don’t predict a peak or plateau, they do see little more than 100 million b/d of conventional oil output by 2030 — the end of the forecast period (PIW Nov.5,p1). Both Exxon Mobil’s new long-term outlook and the latest World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA) project conventional oil production of 105 million-106 million b/d against total liquids supply of 116 million b/d. According to the recent US National Petroleum Council (NPC) study, Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, the average of all the forecasts gathered from international oil companies pointed to an even lower global liquids supply of 107 million b/d by 2030, implying conventional oil of less than 100 million b/d (PIW Dec.10,p1). The pattern in these annual projections has been for gradual reductions in total supply figures in recent years, even at much higher prices, despite signs of unexpectedly durable oil demand from emerging markets.
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Even with the convergence toward 100 million b/d, the mainstream forecasts still involve some admittedly ambitious supply assumptions to get up even to that level. Both Exxon and the IEA see Opec production having to increase by more than 50% from current levels by 2030. The IEA pegs Saudi output at a hefty 17.5 million b/d by then, with big increases from other Mideast producers, too. Exxon projects Opec crude oil production at 47 million b/d, but both stress the obstacles ahead in achieving these kinds of supply increases. While the NPC study highlights the big differences that emerge among supply projections after 2015, the IEA warns that even in the period from now until 2015 balances will be tight, and that even a slight excess of demand or shortfall in supply risks significant upward price pressure.
This, my dear, dear friends, is what happens when large institutions that value saving face or avoiding a panic more than getting the numbers right can no longer avoid the nasty realities of the oil situation.
They can’t suddenly leap to their feet and proclaim, in stentorian tones, “What ho! We’ve been lying (or wrong or simply indulging in recreational chemistry) all this time! Peak oil is real! And it’s about to bite us on the ass! Sorry about not getting the word out sooner and all that.” No, instead they will keep splitting the difference, as my mother used to say, between their current predictions and where they know, in the very deepest recesses of their hearts, we’re headed. So we know have this miraculous consensus that we’ll have a ceiling around 100 million barrels/day, with a secondary view also gaining official support for continued tightness and a “supply crunch” around 2012.
I find this fascinating, as the analysis I trust the most is Chris Skrebowski’s Megafields Project, which predicts a peak of around 92 million barrels/day in roughly the middle of 2011. When I mention his conclusions here, I routinely get e-mail from people saying, “But we’re only producing 86 million barrels/day now–how can we find another 6 million barrels/day beyond that needed to offset the declines from older wells, all in 3 or 4 years?” That’s precisely why I think a bottom-up analysis, such as the Megafields Project, is so valuable: It looks at the fields and wells in production or development, the infrastructure (all those tankers and things), and adds up the additions and the declines. If the new projects coming online now (and there are some big ones) don’t slip too much, then we should expect to see a jump off the current plateau that we’ve been on since early 2005. But it would likely be a leap to the ultimate peak (perhaps in the form of the ultimate production plateau), meaning we would stay there just long enough for all the cornucopians to get chesty and tell the world how this proves that peak oil is a lot of hooie, etc.
Honestly, if peak oil weren’t such a serious and unpleasant situation, I would actually enjoy watching these fools have to eat their words once we’re on the downslope.
The real concern, as always, is not just the supply of oil, taken in isolation, but the interaction of supply and demand, which determines the price and the economic impact of approaching the peak. With oil demand skipping right along in China and many of the (currently) exporting countries, there’s a very strong chance that we could see significantly higher prices in 2011, even if Skrebowski’s magic 6 million barrels/day arrives on time. So far, the impact of near-$100 oil on the US economy has been a fraction of what most people predicted; one can only wonder how much higher it will have to go before things get ugly, to use a technical economics terms.
Just a quick update to let all youse guys know that my schedule for next week will be very fluid. My wife and I will be visiting her mom, brother, and our three nieces, but we’re going to wait until we see how the weather pans out to pick the date and length of the visit.
I expect to be online at least a little before and after our trip, but truth be told, I really need some down time, if only to drive up to Lake Ontario with my sweetheart and try to determine once and for all if you can see Canada from here.
Higher fares don’t deter holiday fliers:
The price of flying home for Christmas has jumped nearly 14% in the last two years, but higher fares haven’t put a dent in robust holiday demand for air travel.
The average price of a domestic round-trip plane ticket this season is $362 before taxes. According to an analysis for USA TODAY by Sabre Airline Solutions, a unit of travel giant Sabre Holdings, that’s up 5.8% from a year ago and 13.8% from two years ago.
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A major reason for higher fares: More passengers will be squeezing into roughly the same number of airplane seats on domestic flights as a year ago. To boost fares and make the most of every tank of jet fuel, U.S. carriers have scheduled the same amount of domestic flying capacity as last holiday season despite stronger passenger demand.
Related: Study shows High Speed Trains emit less carbon than planes
A few things spring to mind in reading these and similar stories:
More broadly, where is airline travel going? This is where the uncertainties really pile up. The biggest one is how much coal can be used to alleviate the impact of higher oil prices. The evidence is growing that we’ll be able to conquer the technical issues with creating and using jet fuel from coal. We might have to limit it to being only a portion, perhaps 50%, of the fuel burned in a plane, but at least that much of a solution seems to be within reach and economically feasible. But how cleanly can we convert coal into jet fuel? And even if we can capture and sequester 100% of the CO2 from the conversion process, how willing can or should we be to keep burning jet fuel, whatever its source, in massive amounts? The key is to find as many ways as possible to keep the carbon in the ground, not find new, better ways to convert it into CO2 in the atmosphere.
As always, there’s the issue of scale. A few test flights using coal-derived fuel is meaningful, in terms of proving the technology, but what will it take to scale up production in an acceptably clean way to replace enough oil to make a difference to commercial aviation in general? That’s a much tougher, and often overlooked, problem.
A second factor and source of uncertainty is the growth of alternatives to flying. Thanks to the Internet, businesses and individuals can use quite acceptable teleconferencing today; the fact that it’s still grossly under utilized makes it yet another piece of low-hanging fruit just waiting to be plucked whenever we get around to it. Will we see expanded use of passenger trains? For some regional travel, I think it’s highly likely, although I doubt it will be a major factor in reducing overall airline traffic.
To be honest, I don’t see anything but contraction the future of airline travel. Cars can, are, and will be made radically cleaner, and trucks of all sizes and even locomotives can use less fuel and emit less CO2 with various forms of hybrid technology. But airplanes will forever be under downward pressure from global warming. Add to that the likelihood of continuing pressure from rising fuel prices, and the entire commercial airline sector looks like it’s stuck between a rock and a hard place with water rising in the middle. It’s entirely possible that in the next 5 to 10 years we’ll see many of the airports that are stretched to the limit today by the volume of flights and passengers dealing with excess capacity.
Or perhaps someone will find a way to teach a horse to sing.
“EPA Likely To Lose Suit.”
So said EPA, or at least EPA’s legal staff, when it briefed Administrator Johnson on the legal ramifications of a waiver denial. The quoted language comes from a powerpoint slide used during that briefing. As the WashPost reports, Johnson’s waiver denial flew in the face of “the unanimous recommendation of the agency’s legal and technical staff.”
California’s legal challenge to the waiver denial will be filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and one large reason for believing EPA will lose can be found in the D.C. Circuit’s opinions in previous waiver cases. Unlike Administrator Johnson, the D.C. Circuit clearly recognizes the special, leading role California plays under the Clean Air Act with respect to controls on tailpipe emissions.
See the article for the details on prior cases.
I find it more than a little interesting, even if not at all surprising, that the career people in the EPA were unanimously for the waiver, and only Bush’s guy, the administrator, was against it.
The article above is from Warming Law, which is described this way on its About page:
The Warming Law blog is a place for people who write about, think about, or wonder about how the third branch of government, the judiciary, is addressing one of the most urgent environmental issues of our time. As one industry lawyer put it, “I think now everybody realizes we’ve moved into the judicial arena” in the fight against global warming.
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We want Warming Law to be a forum for sharing ideas, insights and strategies, and we want to emphasize the “share” part. If you are working on a global warming case and want to post an order or filing, please send it to us at warmingblog@communityrights.org. If you think there’s something else that people who work on global warming litigation should know, send it or raise it in the comments. For our part, we will try to pass on all the information we have or find about global warming cases, whether that is an observation in an original blog post, or a link to a newspaper article, court filing, another blog or some other source. And we’ll try to make it interesting, even fun at times, to read (but we’re lawyers, so keep your expectations in check).“We” are attorneys at Community Rights Counsel (CRC) a public interest law firm that promotes constitutional principles to defend laws that make our communities environmentally sound and socially just. CRC represented local governments as amici in Massachusetts v. EPA, at both the petition for certiorari and merits stages of the case.
Related: President Bush explains why EPA denied California’s waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions
Plan on Airline Emissions Hints at U.S.-Europe Rift:
European Union governments have scaled back a proposed law that would regulate emissions from any airline with takeoffs or landings in Europe. But on Thursday, the ministers still agreed within five years to adopt measures likely to intensify a battle with the United States over global environmental regulation.
Environmental officials regard the airline bill as the centerpiece of a European effort to lead the world in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but the United States government and many airlines have insisted that there should be an international agreement first. Airlines also say the action could cost billions of dollars and drive up ticket prices.
European ministers deemed the measure a victory for the environment despite changes that include delaying its introduction and reducing the number of permits airlines would have to buy.
But environmentalists criticized the decision as hypocritical in the wake of pledges made this month at a United Nations conference in Bali, Indonesia, where governments promised to make deep cuts in emissions.
“It’s a shameful end to a year filled with promise for action on climate change,” said João Vieira of Transport and Environment, an advocacy group based in Brussels that focuses on sustainable transportation. “If environment ministers get their way, the scheme simply won’t cut emissions and will end up being yet another subsidy to the aviation industry.”
Commercial airline travel will be one of the tougher parts of our worldwide activity to regulate if we’re serious about reaching an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. People in the US like to fly long distances, and people in Europe like to fly shorter distances (as in all those stories we hear about people in the UK flying to Hungary or Italy or wherever for a weekend), and any significant reduction in emissions will cause the airline industry to shrink.
We have a minor tradition of doing a climate-related book review in the lead up to the holidays and this year shouldn’t be an exception. So here is a round-up of a number of new books that have crossed our desks, some of which might be interesting to readers here.
Highly recommended.
How Detroit Will Reach 35 mpg:
It’s taken more than two decades of fighting, but the auto industry finally has a new fuel economy standard it can live with. The magic number is 35 mpg, and automakers have 13 years to get there. Now the question is: How?
Meeting that benchmark will require developing new technology, investing billions in new manufacturing and shunning the “bigger is better” mentality that has guided the auto industry for 20 years. It will be an unprecedented challenge and a seismic change for an industry that has never had much interest in either.
“This is the automotive equivalent of the moon shot,” Ron Cogan, the editor and publisher of Green Car Journal and GreenCar.com, told us. “They know they have to reach these goals. They know it won’t be easy. They’ll have to marshal all of their resources, and those of their suppliers, to do this.”
A recent study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found automakers could double fuel economy relatively easily by emphasizing lighter - though not necessarily smaller - cars with more efficient gasoline, diesel and hybrid drivetrains. And that, industry experts told us, is pretty much what the industry will do.
You’ll forgive me, I trust, if I manage not to sit in a corner, wring my hands, and weep for the plight of the poor, poor car companies.
Is it a technological challenge? Yes. Is it an unreasonable goal? No–not even close.
As I point out in my in-person presentations, we’re about to see the kind of explosion of technology and consumer choices in cars that we’ve seen in phones in the last 10 or 15 years. In the short run that will mean some confusion for consumers (fueled, no doubt, by competing and sometimes blatantly false claims by manufacturers and dealers) as the market “sorts itself out”, as economists like to say. But it will sort itself out, and the sooner we reject the old mindset and habits that helped get us into this mess and begin the readjustment process, the better.
IT leaders share green-tech predictions for 2008:
Green tech has flourished in the past year as vendors and customers alike have invested plenty of resources in making their products and practices more energy efficient, less wasteful, and eco-friendlier.
But is this sustainable-tech trend a mere green flash in the pan? Hardly. The flourishing world of green technology is driven by true need. Companies are running out of space and power in their datacenters, not to mention struggling with high energy costs. Business leaders, politicians, and consumers alike are becoming increasingly concerned about their impact on the environment.
Still, one wonders what crop of green-tech changes the year 2008 will yield. What follows are some abridged predictions from some IT experts out there who’ve been immersed in sustainable tech this past year and have a keen eye on the future. I’ve also added some predictions of my own. Predictions are listed in alphabetical order by last name; no favoritism here.
See the article for comments from 14 IT experts. It seems quite clear that the IT crowd “gets it” regarding the need to do more with less energy, and they’re making the very significant changes needed in mindset, tools, and procedures to get there.
GM: Emission Law May Hamper Muscle Cars:
When General Motors Corp. pulls the cover off a new supercharged version of the Corvette at the Detroit auto show next month, it will unveil a performance car designed to rival or better even the fastest, most expensive exotic cars from Europe.
But the Corvette’s chief engineer says the 2009 Corvette ZR1 may be the last in a long tradition of Detroit performance cars, endangered by stronger federal fuel economy regulations and limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
“High-performance vehicles such as this may actually be legislated out of existence,” Tadge Juechter said at a recent showing of the ZR1, which is designed to have around 620 horsepower.
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Aaron Bragman, an auto analyst with the consulting firm Global Insight, said predicting the death of the muscle car might be premature.The Corvette, he said, is fuel efficient when compared with its competitors. Although fuel economy figures weren’t released for the ZR1, the current 505-horsepower Corvette ZO6 gets an estimated 15 mpg in the city and 24 on the highway, according to GM.
The ZR1, he said, gets around the same mileage as a Chevrolet pickup truck, and GM won’t be getting out of the pickup business because of gas mileage standards.
“I think it’s a little over-dramatization,” Bragman said. “GM wants to sell big, high-performance, fun cars. And typically that’s what Americans want to buy.”
Performance cars of the future may be powered by smaller engines or electric motors, he said, but they won’t die.
I’m going to piss off people no matter how I talk about this one, so let me just shoot from the hip.
I’m a long-time car and motorcycle guy. At various times I’ve owned a BMW 325is, a Toyota Supra (with the pagoda wing that I think only the designers and I liked), and a Honda CB1100F bike that has exactly the same horsepower as my Scion xA. My point is: Honestly, I really, really get the whole adrenalin rush of eyeball-flattening acceleration thing. I once lived for wretched excess in horsepower and cornering G’s, and the whole smash. If you had cut me back then I would have bled 10W-30 oil.
And you know what? I couldn’t care less if high-power sports cars bite the dust in the next few years. It won’t bother me one iota if it comes to that, not that I expect it will.
As the one expert quoted above points out, we don’t have to build sports cars powered by massive numbers of cubic inches of engine displacement. The Tesla Roadster goes from 0 to 60 in “holy crap”, and it’s a pure EV. Imagine what will happen after another five years of battery development.
U.S. solar & wind incentives on the way?:
The new hotly contested U.S. energy bill was signed into law today by President George W. Bush after being stripped of many major incentives for the cleantech industry.
But those incentives may not sit on the cutting room floor for long.
“Although this bill didn’t include an extension of the tax credits, we’re optimistic that we will see another tax title move early in 2008 that’ll include a long-term extension and expansion of tax credits both for solar and for wind,” Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, told Cleantech.com.
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“There’s no opposition from the White House or Republicans to extending the tax credits for solar, it’s just a matter of finding the best way to pay for it,” said Resch.An eight-year extension of the 30 percent business investment tax credit for solar was included in an earlier version of the House bill. The credit program expires at the end of 2008.
“We’re optimistic, with a little more time, and more dedicated focus, we’ll have a bipartisan solution and we’ll see those tax credits extended in the first quarter,” he said.
I sure hope they can find a way to extend the solar rebates and wind production tax credits, and not for just a couple of years, but for long enough to encourage the companies that make the hardware to build more factories here in the US. That’s when a lot of positive things start to happen.
The limits to reserves growth:
Reserves growth in existing oilfields is largely illusory and will not put off the date of peak oil, according to BP’s former Chief Petroleum Engineer. Speaking at an investment conference organized by 13D Research in New York, Jeremy Gilbert argued that although reserves growth has added twice as much oil to reserves than has discovery over the past 25 years, this apparently reassuring historical trend is no guarantee of the future.
In an interview with lastoilshock.com and Global Public Media, Gilbert went on to explain how reserves growth – the tendency for reserves estimates to rise during the lifetime of an oilfield – results largely from distortions created by the conservative reporting rules of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This he says has fostered a “myth” that reserves always grow, whereas proprietary data from major oil companies suggests they are just as likely to be revised downwards.
But even this illusory growth is unlikely to last, says Gilbert, because less and less of the world’s oil is controlled by companies that adhere to the SEC rules. In 1972, 93% of global oil production came from the International Oil Companies (IOCs - publicly traded firms like BP, Shell and Total) from fields where SEC rules were followed. But now that the National Oil Companies in OPEC and other producer nations control so much of the world’s oil, that figure has fallen to about 20%. What’s more, the IOCs are getting better at their initial reserve estimates, which limits the scope for reserves growth later on. “People assume that this [reserves growth] will continue to happen in the future”, says Gilbert, “and it won’t”.
Reserves growth is often claimed to be the result of technological advance, but Gilbert argues that new technology is usually deployed to deal with unforeseen problems, and that productivity gains tend to be cancelled out by the worsening quality of the reservoirs being exploited. Gilbert cites Forties in the North Sea and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska as two fields where the application of large amounts of technology had little lasting effect on production decline rates.
Gilbert is highly critical of a forecast from the United States Geological Survey that reserves growth could add 612 billion barrels to world reserves by 2025. The real figure he says is more likely to be just 200 billion barrels by 2020. That could mean potential annual production gains of some 2 million barrels per day, but since the decline from existing production is much greater, reserves growth can neither significantly defer peak oil nor prevent global production falling thereafter. A private meeting of oil industry experts in 2006 also found the USGS reserves growth estimate was too high, according to one executive who attended.
Honestly, the number of ways we can look at the same basic physical phenomena, and the degree to which the numbers can be spun, is simply astonishing.
I firmly believe that what Gilbert says is correct, and the people who keep pointing to ever-expanding reserves will have some serious explainin’ to do in just a few years.
Where have all the oil optimists gone:
When Chevron hit deepwater pay dirt in the Gulf last year, that was supposed to be the death knell for all this $100-a-barrel hoopla. It wasn’t. When Brazil announced an even bigger discovery just recently — perhaps the closest thing to a new “elephant” find in decades — you would have expected the price of crude to crater. It didn’t.
The biggest problem with Brazil’s good news? Timing. As Tom Petty sang, “The waiting is the hardest part.” It will be years before that new source is tapped, but the world doesn’t have years. We need more oil now.
The same goes for Chevron’s big score 175 miles off the Louisiana coast. It doesn’t matter how many billions of barrels we’re projected to have in the distant future; the pressure is on here and now. A barrel in hand is worth two in the seabed.
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The past few years have been dominated by the peak oil debate. Are we really going to run out of black gold? Is energy conservation the issue of our time? Was M. King Hubbert a prophet, or a fool?And yet all the peak oil hubbub, and the intense debate surrounding it, has turned out to be a distraction from the immediate issue. That issue is a shortage of resources involved in the getting of oil.
Simply put, there aren’t enough engineers. There aren’t enough geologists. There aren’t enough rigs or pumps or service vehicles. There aren’t enough exploration sites. There isn’t enough water, and natural gas to handle the huge processing demands for North American shale and Canadian oil sands. There aren’t even enough truck tires! (The giant ones are truly hard to find.)
The demand for oil is so consistent and so intense that we simply don’t have the means to keep up with it. Globalization has created the biggest bottleneck in the history of mankind. This bot