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Will the Electric Grid Stay On? Vulnerability of Bio-fuels and More.
Andre Waxes Pessimistic
By: André Angelantoni - Monday, December 10, 2007
Source: Inspiring Green Leadership
Hi, all.
Check this out - Held by the Council on Foreign Relations - worth watching!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mDa81-Fgz8s
Key math from the IEA: mb/d=million barrels/day barrel=42 gallons
* by 2015, need 37.5 mb/d extra oil to meet demand
* there is only 25 mb/d worth of sanctioned projects on the books
* shortfall is 12.5 mb/d
This is with ~4% decline rate; if the rate increases the numbers get much worse much faster (in other words, this scenario is assuming a plateau rather than a decline due to a peak).
Notable quote from Fatih Birol (different interview):
"If the supply turns out to be less than this [25 mb/d], we are in serious trouble. If these projects do not come online, the wheels will fall off our energy system. "
And..................
Ok, I thought the electric grid would likely stay on once we hit peak energy but that is true for states other than California. Since California makes 50% of its electricity from natural gas, they could be in for more blackouts. There are insufficient ports to bring in liquid natural gas and the infrastructure on the other end (where the gas is compressed) doesn't exist in sufficient quantities either.
Also, at last month's Grid conference, when the attendees were asked several questions, here were their replies:
a) Rank the severity of challenges confronting the grid on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being "most severe," the attendees gave responses that averaged at 8.
b) Judge the likelihood of a major power outage in the next five years, with 10 being "most likely," the average of the responses was 8.
c) Regarding America's awareness of the problems facing the grid, with 10 being "most aware," the average of the responses was 3.
That intell came from here:
http://www.energycentral.com/centers/energybiz/ebi_detail.cfm?id=424
For an excellent overview of threats facing electricity, see "US Electricity Supply Vulnerabilities," posted just this morning. It's a brilliant synopsis by the brains over at The Oil Drum.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3316
AND.........................................
Going far beyond explaining the usual problems with biofuels, this video of David Fridley's June 2007 presentation "The Myths of Biofuels" explains why cellulosic ethanol won't come to the rescue anytime soon, how much biomass could possibly be grown in North America and exactly how poor ethanol really is. David is a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory staff scientist specializing on biofuels.
There is lots of science in this but the science is completely accessible.
Even if you think you know everything about the biofuels story, this is HIGHLY worth the hour you'll spend watching it. Now, can anyone get Vinod Khosla to watch this?
Download from this page:
http://www.inspiringgreenleadership.com/extra-file-downloads
AND..................................
The Khazzoom-Brookes postulate says that energy efficiency does not necessarily mean less energy is used because the freed up money often goes to other energy-using actions. One way to keep carbon emissions and energy use down by human means (i.e. not forced on us by peak oil) is by instituting a rationing system.
Last week Jeff Rubin, CIBC World Markets' chief economist, wrote two pieces in which he explains that to handle peak oil and carbon emissions efficiency will not be sufficient to get us where we need to go. He looks at several major sectors of the economy and demonstrates that in all cases he examines greater efficiency did not equal lower energy consumption.
He doesn't actually mention rationing but he does say that reducing overall energy consumption must be the final goal.
"Across a wide spectrum of activity throughout the American economy, there seems ample evidence to debunk the notion that energy-saving technology reduces energy consumption. Instead, energy consumption has grown steadily as efficiency improvements have steadily lowered the cost of consuming energy. "
To address peak oil and climate change, we are likely going to need to institute rationing. For both crises, rationing allows us to stretch out supplies to buy us more time to develop the technologies that move us off of fossil fuels. Rationing on a country level may look like The Oil Depletion Protocol (http://www.oildepletionprotocol.org); rationing on on an individual level may look like Tradable Energy Quotas (http://www.teqs.net).
One last thing for you Prius owners. I attended the San Francisco Electric Vehicle Association meeting, which was held at Luscious Garage (http://www.lusciousgarage.com).
Starting in January they are adding battery packs to Priuses to extend their all-electric range. Call today to put your name on the list and get pricing. Although we don't own Priuses, I am currently looking at moving my wife and me to electric vehicles; we'll rent a car when we need to reach longer distances.
The Efficiency Paradox
http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/snov07.pdf
Does Energy Efficiency Save Energy?
http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/feature1.pdf
The page on which these can be found is:
http://research.cibcwm.com/res/Eco/EcoResearch.html----------------------------------------------------
André Angelantoni
Inspiring Green Leadership
Preparing for a Carbon-Constrained World, Free Weekly Executive Briefing
www.InspiringGreenLeadership.com/preparing-carbon-constrained-world
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