From Reading Oil’s Tea Leaves:

A recent study from the U.S. National Petroleum Council (NPC), led by former ExxonMobil chairman Lee Raymond, asserts global energy consumption will increase as much as 60 percent by 2030 but assures “the world is not running out of energy resources.” The report says the world is entering an era of tight energy supplies where global oil production could drop to 5 percent below current output by 2030. The Financial Times says the NPC study represents “a defining moment in the history of the global energy industry” crystallizing the “unease about global energy supplies that has been accumulating over the past couple of years.”

Yep, another take on the NPC report.

From Facing the Hard Truths about Energy - the NPC report, commented:

Last week, the National Petroleum Council, i.e. the organisation representing the oil&gas industry, released the report it had prepared over the past 18 months at the request of the Bush administration.

I wrote about it in my last Countdown diary which was based on press articles leaked prior to the publication of the report, and noted that this report appeared to break new ground in the acknowledgement of some hard truths about the sector.

Having now read the Executive Summary (warning, 5MB pdf), I’d like to provide more extensive commentary of what the report actually says.

The author, Jerome a Paris, is someone worth listening to on energy issues. Do yourself a favor and click through to his view on the report.

From Inside the IEA’s Medium Term Oil Market Report:

Peak oil is a sustainability issue. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) watches over the liquid fuels supply, the lifeblood of the economies of its clients, the OECD nations. Without a reliable, growing oil supply, these economies are in jeopardy. The latest Medium Term Oil Market Report (OMR) issues a stern warning in its first sentence. “Despite four years of high oil prices, this report sees increasing market tightness beyond 2010, with OPEC spare capacity declining to minimal levels by 2012.” Has the IEA been converted to the peak oil position? The answer is yes and no.

Another must-read source is Dave Cohen of ASPO-USA.

From Is IBM Going Solar?:

I had a chance recently to visit with one of the individuals responsible for IBM’s (NYSE:IBM) Big Green Innovations strategy – which has made a splash in the cleantech world over the last half year. We were talking on a range of topics, but one that piqued my interest was the description of IBM’s work in photovoltaics – and a few thoughts on where they were going. I did not ask, and he did not offer, any particulars on the work in progress, but he did make mention of a few points that I thought were well worth repeating:

• IBM is expecting to be a player in the solar cell business – likely seeing commercial impact in the next 18 months to two years.
• IBM is developing both advanced crystalline technologies and CIGS processes – relying on their semiconductor manufacturing expertise and nanotech research to make breakthroughs in controlling PV manufacturing processes.
• You will not likely see IBM making branded modules – perhaps instead a cell production business strategy?
• IBM sees the potential for very high efficiency multi-junction cells in foreseeable future.

I know more than a little about IBM, thanks to my own and my wife’s employment history. So I was shocked to hear that they’re getting into solar and equally surprised that it’s taken them this long. IBM has the perfect skill set to go after the PV market, especially thin-film which benefits from chip making technology, something IBM is very good at.

Right now, the solar PV market penetration is a joke in the US, but the coming decline in hardware costs, the Solar Revolution, will change that. Assuming, of course, that there is sufficient supply to keep demand from pulling up prices. With electricity from other sources likely to increase considerably in price, the consumer interest in solar PV is set to go into low earth orbit, even without a major price drop. We’ll need all the big companies cranking out hardware we can get.

From The Future is Solar:

Or more precisely, the future should be electric.

I have done a lot of research lately into various alternative diesel technologies as I was working on my renewable diesel chapter. One thing that became very clear to me is that the world will not be able to displace more than a fraction of our petroleum usage with biofuels. I already knew that this was the case with ethanol, but now I think this will be a general limitation for all liquid biofuels. Consider this sneak preview (still in draft form) from the book:

Robert Rapier, another person always worth reading. Click through and read.