Amory Lovins is chair of the Rocky Mountain Institute and has been serially – and incorrectly – predicting the end of fossil fuels for the better part of four decades. He has been reliably wrong on the big picture issue of energy for nearly his entire career, but that does not prevent major organizations like Time Magazine from naming him one of the 100 most influential people in the world (to be fair, nobody says you have to be correct to be influential). This month, the journal Foreign Affairs offers him a platform for his essay A Farewell to Fossil Fuels. I could not possibly disagree more with Lovins – I have repeatedly called the 21st Century the “Shale Age” or the “Second Age of Oil” – but readers interested in balance should read Lovins’ opposing view. Our view is simple: Fossil fuels are simply too cheap, too abundant and too powerful to be moved from their place at the top of the energy hierarchy any time soon. They have the advantage of being ready for the built infrastructure and the ability to be easily transported. The Three Ps – Price, Portability, and Potency – are all heavily in favor of fossil fuels over any other current alternative. Other energy sources such as solar and wind will incrementally increase their share where suitable (and EGP remains a strong proponent of micropower -local, distributed and unsubsidized), but the heavy lifting will be done by King Carbon for the rest of my life and probably all of my son’s life as well.
Archive for the ‘energy security’ Category
BP projects North American energy self-sufficiency by 2030
January 25, 2012BP has published its second version of Energy Outlook 2030. It presents a very favorable global energy picture over the next few decades – despite a continued reliance on fossil fuels. While BP does foresee a growing use of renewable resources, the biggest changes in the future energy outlook are (1) increasing efficiencies in energy use and (2) the massive reserves of unconventional resources that new technology has made economically feasible. At first glance, this might seem to be a repudiation of the very rationale for this blog – the singular importance of energy as a geopolitical driver over the next quarter century. However, I contend that is quite the opposite. It is likely that only the US and Canada among developed and rapidly developing nations will enjoy security of supply (an argument that I have been making since before I began this blog), and that security combined with the relative insecurity of other nations will allow the United States to use both its resources and its growing geostrategic military reach to maintain its lead position on the world stage for the foreseeable future.
However, there is a glaring omission in BP’s projections: there is little attention paid to the impact of growing (even if decelerating) fossil fuel use on global warming. However, it is my belief that growing supply could very well outstrip growing demand over this time frame, which would cause prices to fall. That would leave room for carbon taxes, the revenues from which should be diverted to mitigation efforts. The latter will be a hard sell – there are entrenched interests on both sides that will fight it (from the right, carbon taxes are anathema while forces on the green left are hostile to a geo-engineering approach), but as water seeks its own level, so, too, do obvious policy choices.
Obama administration poised to kill Keystone XL
November 10, 2011The US State Department has demanded changes to the route of the Keystone XL pipeline that will delay the pipeline for at least another year:
The State Department is ordering the developer of a pipeline that would carry oil from western Canada to Texas to reroute the project away from environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska.
That decision could delay a final U.S. decision on the project until after the 2012 election.
The decision will require an environmental review — and that could take at least a year.
TransCanada Corp. is seeking to build the $7 billion pipeline. Part of the 1,700-mile pipeline would pass through Nebraska’s Sandhills region and an aquifer that supplies water to eight states
Two senior State Department officials who are familiar with the project described the decision to The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the decision before an official announcement.
Petroleum Economist states that this is more than a mere delay – that the pipeline is now “all but dead.” This means that the oil from the Alberta tar sands will instead flow west, through a vastly more sensitive ecosystem, and be shipped via tanker to Chinese markets rather than to US markets. I wrote yesterday that Obama is poised to run as a Warrior President; however, for all those victories, it is difficult to paint any of them as beneficial to US energy security, which I believe is our most vital foreign policy concern for the next half century. This decision further weakens the president on that front ahead of the election campaign, even as he tries to defer a formal decision until after the election.
North American oil production could reach 22.5 million bpd by 2035
September 15, 2011With the right mix of regulatory reform and technical advancement, the combined production of oil from conventional, unconventional and offshore oil could reach 22.5 million barrels per day, according to a report prepared for the Department of Energy from National Petroleum Council (pdf of the report here). Given that 22.5m bpd is the current US daily usage, the NPC does not believe oil shale or oil sands will be enough to wean the US from non-North American imports.
However, increased use and consumption of the vast natural gas deposits in the US alone could make up the much of the difference. The NPC report demonstrates that North American supplies could meet as much as an 85% increase over current demand:
For that to happen, regulatory reform cannot be limited to enabling the extraction industries. For example, the sort of Open Fuel regulatory mandate championed by Bob Zubrin would be necessary to pave the way for other liquid fuels to fill the gap. Finally, with advances in clean coal and coal-to-liquid technologies, the potential for energy independence is possibly within reach within 25 to 35 years, but that independence will come with a price – we will have to institute some form of carbon pricing (EGP supports a direct carbon tax). A price on carbon has two benefits – on the one hand, it co-opts some of those who would otherwise be opposed to regulatory reforms that enable increased consumption of fossil fuels, while at the same time providing an incentive for investment in cleaner technologies that would enable gas and coal to liquid conversions (which would also ease the exportation of surpluses of these fuels). Indeed, with the correct regulatory mix that is sensitive to both environmental concerns and energy needs, it is conceivable that the US (or, at least, USA/Canada combined) could at once become the world’s largest consumer, producer and exporter of energy before mid century.
China, US sign agreement to spur clean coal research
August 22, 2011From Scientific American:
U.S. and Chinese officials heading up a series of joint advanced coal projects Friday signed an intellectual property agreement meant to ease the sharing of innovative technology while protecting patents and licensing agreements.
Companies collaborating on research and development projects tied to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), a program started in 2009, can enter into regular commercial contracts. But energy technology companies participating in the U.S.-China program must negotiate licenses “in good faith” to ensure both nations benefit.
Inventors of technology can set the terms, according to a description of the agreement, including royalties and limits on the use of an invention. But the terms cannot be so restrictive that they in essence bar the sharing of advanced coal technology by the United States and China.
Clean coal technology would be an energy game changer. Like all fossil fuels, coal is plentiful, (relatively) cheap and energy dense. However, also like all fossil fuels, it is a highly polluting energy source. The key to maximizing the coal resource lies in capturing and either sequestering or utilizing the emissions. The United States has far and away the world’s largest reserves of coal, while China has the third largest, and the two nations are also the world’s largest coal burners. While in the US, coal plants are shutting down due to a combination of environmental and economic pressure (from cheap, abundant natural gas), they remain a major source of electricity. Meanwhile, China is engaged in a 10 year project to build 500 new coal fired plants – about 1 per week.
Coal is a crucial part of the world energy mix. Making it cleaner and more efficient would relieve ecological pressure and turn it into an even more powerful economic resource. US companies would not only license the new technology, others could become energy exporters to the coal hungry developing nations of the world. This agreement can be a very important development, although it is curious that such a pact would be signed in West Virginia instead of China, where the US Vice President Joe Biden is currently touring. Seems like a missed political opportunity to me.
The Geopolitical Impact of Shale Gas
July 29, 2011Major study out this month from the Baker Institute on Shale Gas and US National Security. The report is very detailed and anyone interested in energy and geopolitics (which should be anyone who reads EnerGeoPolitics) should read the whole thing. In summary, the report identifies the following major impacts of the US shale bonanza:
- Eliminates the US need for gas importation
- Reduces pressure on Middle East & Persian Gulf reserves
- Reduces reliance on Russian, Iranian and Venezualan gas and prevents their formation of a GASPEC (gas OPEC) and limits the use of gas as an energy weapon
- Will reduce global gas prices
- As a clean(er) burning fuel, aids in meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals
- Reduces the possibility of Sino-American conflict over gas supplies
Prospects for Iraq meeting oil production targets fading
July 28, 2011Fracking and groundwater contamination: The Data
July 7, 2011The MIT Energy Initiative’s recently released Future of Natural Gas study is a comprehensive and balanced examination of this essential resource. It contains much information that I will be digesting and using in future posts. Today, I want to focus on the report’s analysis of environmental risks associated with natgas fracking. I want to thank Robert Bryce, whose tweets (@pwrhungry) tipped me to this report.
The authors of the report acknowledge that there are risks associated with natural gas drilling in general, and fracking in particular, just as there are in any resource extraction activity. These risks need to be accounted for and the industry must take steps to mitigate them going forward, especially as drilling expands into regions of the nation that do not have experience with natural gas drilling and where, therefore, the regulatory and oversight functions will be underdeveloped. That being noted, it is also important to examine the actual occurrence rate of environmental problems. Over the past ten years, the authors note, there have been over 20,000 wells drilled and very few incidents of groundwater contamination. In those cases where contamination has occurred, it has usually been gas contamination not, as most commonly feared, contamination with fracking liquids (p. 39). The chart below (reproduced without permission) shows the low frequency of incidents over the 5 year period of 2005-2009.
So, in the thousands of wells drilled in that period, there have been just 20 incidents of groundwater contamination. Thus, while it is a legitimate concern and regulators and drillers alike must be aware of the issue, the fear (sometimes bordering on hysteria) surrounding groundwater contamination is simply not supported by the data. Can it happen? Yes. Is it likely to happen on any given well? Statistically, no. Is the reported level of incidence worth ceasing development of this vast resource? In our opinion, definitely not.
DoD Operational Energy Plan is a fizzle
June 17, 2011Six months late, the Department of Defense delivered its Operational Energy Plan. Although applauded by some environmentalists, the plan has been widely panned as a bumper sticker approach devoid of details. The National Journal tried to be supportive, calling it a “sweeping energy strategy,” but then gave away their real feelings by summing it up thusly: “Right now, the energy strategy consists of a new office, a new way of thinking about energy, and a three-point plan laid out in an 11-point memo that’s full of slogans but short on specifics”
The DoD’s own Dan Nolan’s DOD Energy Blog ripped the plan, saying it landed “with all the impact of a low velocity marshmallow.” Read the whole post, then go to the home page and read their dissections of the individual service plans.
Celebrity pleas for “the end of oil” will go unheeded
May 21, 2010Robert Redford, Ted Turner, Thomas Friedman and others are making pleas to use the Deepwater Horizon disaster as an impetus to “get America over its addiction to oil” and, even more, to begin “the end of oil.”
They are going to be terribly disappointed.
The world is about to embark on what I call The Second Age of Oil. Or, maybe more accurately, The Shale Age. The ability to cheaply harvest natural gas from shale formations is the biggest energy event of the century so far, not Deepwater Horizon. Only the increasing likelihood that we will also be able to begin producing (relatively) cheap shale oil will have a bigger impact on the world energy outlook in the first half of this century.
I fully support research and development of clean, renewable energy sources, but facts are stubborn things, and the fact is that nothing comes close to fossil fuels in terms of the Three Ps: price, portability, and potency.
What will change is the mix. Super cheap crude will run out soon (whether in actuality or due to political peaking), but shale oil and liquid fuels derived from coal and gas will take up the slack. It will be more expensive, but still relatively cheap – think $6 gas. It will also be cleaner due to mandates for and improvements in CCS technology.
And the US will be the world’s largest producer, consumer, and exporter all at the same time.
“Drill, baby, drill” after Deepwater Horizon
May 5, 2010The proponents of large scale offshore oil exploration and production have taken a serious hit with the massive accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Much, maybe all, of the momentum that had been on their side has gone with the spill, or will be gone once the oil makes landfall. Alternative energy proponents are seizing on the disaster to promote their favored play – wind, solar, even nuclear. “Blow, baby blow”; “Shine, baby, shine”; and “Glow, baby, glow.”
But, none of these are the answer. Certainly, each can be part of the answer, but they will all be a small piece of the energy puzzle of the future. Wind is too inconstant and the best places for generation are too far removed from the places of heavy use. Solar, as it stands, is expensive and inefficient. Nuclear is dead – no community wants to store the waste such plants generate, and even the plants that we have online are aging and approaching their planned end of service dates with no plans for building new ones to replace them. Trash is an abundant and renewable resource, and modern facilities that burn trash to generate electricity are very clean and efficient, but they, too, face entrenched opposition from environmentalists not dissimilar to the objections to nuclear plants. And now, for the foreseeable future, we can also write off deep offshore drilling.
No, the answer to the energy crisis is under our feet. The US is sitting on a vast storehouse of energy – coal, natural gas, and oil. Yes, we will have to change the way we use these fuels. Our vehicles have to be more fuel efficient and we have to capture and sequester the carbon that burning these fuels produces. But, even with carbon capture, these fuels are inexpensive relative to the available alternatives.
Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) will allow us to fully embrace the immense reserves of coal, and to turn much of it into a liquid fuel using coal-to-liquid (CTL) technology. Fracking has opened the door to vast reserves of natural gas trapped in shale. Curiously, natgas fracking has also opened the door to finally developing the shale oil resource. Between the three fossil fuels of coal, natgas and oil, the US has enough proven and technically recoverable reserves to fuel the economy for centuries, albeit at a higher price than in the past.
These resources are so vast that, not only would their full exploitation make the US become energy independent, it would make the US a major exporter of energy, its clout growing as the cheap oil from existing sources slowly runs out. The trade deficit, so badly hurt by our massive importation of oil, would benefit twice: first, the flow of dollars outward to pay for fuel would stop and, second, there would be a flow of currency inward from nations purchasing fuel from us. And, they would also be purchasing or licensing CCS and CTL technology to use this resource cleanly and efficiently. It’s a win-win-win situation – solving the energy crisis, reducing carbon emissions, and cleaning up the current account balance at the same time..
“Drill, baby, drill” might be down for some time, so it’s time to embrace “frack, baby, frack”; “capture, baby, capture”; and “sequester, baby, sequester” in its stead.
Navy to launch first biofuel powered jet on Earth Day
April 20, 2010Is the “Green Hornet” just a publicity stunt, or a genuine effort on the part of the DoD?
I think the latter. As I have noted in the past, I believe that making the US military 100% independent of non-North American fuels by the end of the decade should be one of the top goals of the DoD.
The Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas
April 15, 2010Secretary of Energy Chu and Secretary of State Clinton are hosting energy minister from throughout the hemisphere in Washington today at the ministerial meeting of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) that President Obama launched last April at the Summit of the Americas. This could be a necessary first step to ensuring that the energy reserves of the hemisphere are brought to the global market, and not expropriated by extra-hemispheric nations for neo-mercantilist purposes. Of course, this is not on the agenda of the meeting in so many words, but it should be its ultimate goal.
The agenda for the conference includes:
- Advancing Sustainable Energy in the Caribbean
- Strengthening Central American Energy and Environmental Security
- Senior ECPA Fellows
- Advancing Sustainable Biomass Energy
- Peace Corps Renewable Energy and Climate Change Initiative
- Promoting Shale Gas in the Americas
- Cooperating on Sustainable Urban Development and Planning
More details on each at the ECPA home page link, above and, soon, on my link list to the right.
China, Russia, the Gulf of Mexico and the Monroe Doctrine
April 5, 2010In news from the weekend, we note that two of America’s biggest international competitors are establishing or enhancing footholds in the energy geopolitical sphere of the Western Hemisphere.
First, as has been reported by multiple outlets, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez signed agreements that will allow Russian oil companies to begin development of untapped Venezuelan oil fields. Also, the pair laid the groundwork for a joint Russian/Venezuelan nuclear project. Russian arms transfers to Venezuela were also discussed.
Meanwhile, in a less widely reported story, the Chinese national oil company, Sinopec, signed a deal with Cuba to develop an offshore block with oil potential. An Anglolan company also signed a similar deal. Cuba now has development deals with a number of Asian national oil companies – Petronas (Malaysia), PetroVietnam and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).
All of these nations are eager to exploit the potential of the Gulf of Mexico. This would be fine if they were all committed to maintaining the international trade of oil, but they are all to varying degrees national oil companies that pursue policies of petro-mercantilism – negotiating agreements to ensure a direct supply to their home nations, rather than to the international market.
The US has meddled in Latin American politics almost from our inception, even before President Monroe codified his Doctrine. The Doctrine has been used to justify such meddling ever since, often as a post hoc justification. Its application is definitely open to criticism. But, at its core, in its original and stated intent – to prevent outside powers from interfering within our own hemisphere – it certainly has the national interest at heart. The last president to explicitly cite the Monroe Doctrine in his decision to take action was JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As multiple foreign powers circle the Gulf, seeking to expropriate its resources for use elsewhere, it may be time for the current president – who often self consciously seeks to invoke comparisons with JKF – to consider brandishing the Doctrine once again. Opening parts of the Gulf to exploration last week was a step in the right direction. Warning other nations that this resource will not be allowed to be sequestered from the global markets would be another.
EPA to investigate NatGas Fracking
April 2, 2010Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking) is a technique developed over 60 years ago to increase the rate of flow from oil and gas wells. Although it has been in wide use since the middle of the last century, it is gaining increased notice in recent years because of its potential in unlocking vast reserves of natural gas currently trapped in unconventional reservoirs such as shale deposits. Various estimates of US recoverable reserves of natural gas in shale formations range from around 500tcf to 900tcf – tcf is Trillion Cubic Feet. For comparison, the US consumed about 23 billion cubic feet of natural gas last year, so those estimated reserves would be enough for 20,000 to 40,000 years of current use. However, that is for demonstration purposes only, as the demand for natural gas is expected to increase greatly both here and abroad in the coming decades. Still, even with increased demand, this is an incredibly plentiful resource in North America in general and in the United States in particular.
Fracking involves drilling horizontally into the shale formations (fracturing) and then liquid is pumped in (hydraulics) to force the release of trapped gas. The Environmental Protection Agency is concerned that these liquids could contaminate the water table and has initiated a study to determine the environmental impact of fracking. It is important to keep close tabs on this study. Fracking is used in other areas besides natural gas. The shale deposits that hold the majority of untapped gas supplies lie below the water table and as such pose a much lessened risk than coal bed methane (CBM) production, which often lies at water table depth and also makes use of fracking. The EPA should endeavor to study the risk of each fracking use independently, and not lump all uses in together.
House Republican says Obama plan diminishes offshore drilling
April 1, 2010Washington Representative Doc Hastings is the ranking Republican member of the House Natural Resources Committee. Today Yesterday, he released a series of maps that graphically indicate President Obama’s plan for offshore drilling actually takes the nation back to the restrictions put in place 30 years ago. Indeed, if Hastings is correct, the restrictions are even a little greater. “In total,” Hastings claims, “the new Obama OCS plan puts 13.14 billion barrels of oil and 41.49 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under lock and key.” Hastings’ full assessment is here.
Obama’s Oil Exploration Gambit: A Shell Game?
March 31, 2010Utah Senator Robert Bennett charges that President Obama’s bold claim to open vast areas to energy exploration is just a form of three card monte. Speaking to the National Review this afternoon, Bennett claimed that buried within the proposal are myriad new rules and regulations that will, in effect, make actual exploration and drilling in these newly “opened” areas impossible. “Just drawing a new line on the map means nothing unless those areas are actually opened, and not burdened or blocked by new taxes, fees, and red tape,” Bennett said. Instead of moving to unlock the nation’s energy potential, the Senator claims that “they’re clearly moving as strongly as they can in the opposite direction.”
Air Force continues its quest for alternative fuel
March 31, 2010When Barack Obama announced today he was lifting the ban on some offshore oil drilling, he did so standing before a Navy F-18. “This navy fighter jet,” Obama announced, “appropriately called the Green Hornet, will be flown for the first time in just a few days, on Earth Day. If tests go as planned, it will be the first plane ever to fly faster than the speed of sound on a fuel mix that is half biomass.”
Although this test will be with a Navy plane, it has been the Air Force leading the way in the alternative fuel search. In an op-ed that led me to begin this site in the first place, I wrote about the Air Force effort to create jet fuel (specifically, JP-8) from a mix containing half liquefied coal (Coal to Liquid, or CTL). Later that year, the USAF worked with the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota to create a 100% renewable form of JP-8 made from crop oil and waste greases. Last week, an Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt flew a test mission using a 100% synthetic fuel manufactured from camelina oil.
The US Department of Defense is the single largest consumer of petroleum in the world, and the Air Force is the single largest customer within the DoD. Through a combination of CTL and renewable sources, the Air Force hopes to fly half its missions using alternative fuels by mid-decade. This would provide a significant downward price pressure on petroleum worldwide. I would like to see the goal extended. While it might be decades before our nation as a whole can relieve its dependence on foreign oil, we can realistically set a goal of having our military free of dependence on oil imports from outside of North America by no later than 2020.
Obama to deliver speech on energy security tomorrow AM
March 31, 2010Early word is that he will make an announcement about offshore drilling policy
fingers crossed . . . . a move in the affirmative direction would be the best thing his administration has accomplished, IMO.
Energy Security
October 22, 2008A plan proposed by Dr. Hamid Arastoopour of the Illinois Institute of Technology.
More on energy security by Jatin Nathwani.
These are both from the North America 2030: An Environmental Outlook conference hosted this past summer by the Joint Advisory Committee of the Commission on Environmental Cooperation.
