Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

[free spirit]

ok, I'll accept that GDP is a crap measure of actual quality of life or whatever it is that actually matters about the numbers, and you could be right on that score.

I'm not going to attempt a defence of GDP as a measure of economic development, I tend to take it as read that it's badly flawed, but slip into using it as shorthand for the economic development of a country in the absense of any other commonly understood term.

 

[elbows]

I think its dangerous to slip into that when we are still in an era where the god of growth is being worshipped.

To make simple positive claims that renewable technologies will enable growth is to pay lip service to this god, to dodge the necessary but generally unthinkable implications of a transition to a less energy intensive world.

There are some ways that growth or something resembling growth will be possible at various points, but sustained growth from levels we have now is something hard to contemplate unless we manage to change what we are measuring or how we are measuring it.

 

[free spirit]

The transition to a low carbon economy necessitates economic growth.

the rest of the economy would have to be incredibly badly managed for it not to, given the scale of the infrastructure programme needed.

to be clear on something though, a no growth scenario that resulted in faster carbon reduction would still be less sustainable than a scenario that led to widespread employment growth, and slightly lower carbon reductions. A situations where we've got 21% youth unemployment, and rising isn't sustainable.

Anyone arguing for a no growth situation needs to have a word with themselves IMO.

ps I'm using the internationally recognised definition of sustainable development here, not tony blairs bastardised version

 

[free spirit]

What we do need to do is to decouple economic growth from energy consumption, which is possible, but won't just magically happen.

If the question is 'will it happen?' I'd have to say probably not, at least not in the immediate future unless someone who understands the situation and solutions makes it into power, which seems pretty unlikely.

My point in all this is that it actually could happen if we as a country and internationally adopted the right mix of policies to make it happen. This is what anyone concerned with these issues needs to be campaigning for IMO - action now while we actually do have sufficient energy available to make the transition, instead of waiting until we don't.

 

[elbows]

I'll get back to you on that, was hoping to have heard other voices in the meantime but I guess not.

Anyways Al Jazeera have an opinion piece from Michael Klare about the 'new golden age' for oil being a load of cobblers.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210792539521312.html

 

[Dr Jon]

Interesting interview with Gail "the actuary" Tverberg on oilprice.com:

Forget Renewables, We Need Cheap Oil

All renewables depend heavily on our fossil fuel system. For example, it takes fossil fuels to make new wind turbines and solar panels, to maintain the electrical grid, and to repair roads needed for maintaining the grid system. Biofuels depend on our fossil fuel based agricultural system.

 

[free spirit]

they may as well title that article

forget steak, we need unicorn burgers.

It doesn't matter how much anyone stamps their feet and demands we return to the era of cheap fossil fuels and no renewables, as it ain't going to happen.

 

[Dr Jon]

True enough.

I would've preferred "Forget Renewables, We Need Thorium" but like she says, that is going to be at least 15 years away.
Ho hum.

 

[free spirit]

Much as I want Thorium to be a major part of our energy mix, it can't do it all, and won;t be doing anything at all until at least 2030, whereas renewables could well be upwards of 30% of our electricity supply by then if we got our act together. We could even have built the severn barrage before any commercial scale thorium reactors could possibly go .

so why would you forget renewables?

 

[Crispy]

so why would you forget renewables?

The article's answer is "because they can't provide base load"

 

[Dr Jon]

The article's answer is "because they can't provide base load"

It is probably not such a smart move to devote dwindling resources to build and support them either.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The article's answer is "because they can't provide base load"

They can help provide some of the base load, particularly ones such as geothermal or tidal or hydroelectric, which produce constant supplies. That's a simple logic fail - 'these on their own don't solve the problem, therefore they're not worth bothering with'. Once you've built the Severn Barrier, for instance, it then becomes approx 5 percent of the UK's baseload.

Every fossil fuel power station now in use providing the base load was itself made using the energy produced by the power sources available at the time. Replacing this generation of fossil fuel power stations with other sources will be done using the energy made by those stations. That's both rather obvious and not necessarily problematic.

 

[Nylock]

It is probably not such a smart move to devote dwindling resources to build and support them either.

So what is the smart move regarding dwindling resources?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It is probably not such a smart move to devote dwindling resources to build and support them either.

Rubbish. The exact opposite is true of the first part - devoting dwindling resources to the manufacture of the systems that can replace them wholly or partly is very smart. The second part is a misunderstanding - once the renewable infrastructure is in place, it more than pays its way in terms of supporting itself. It becomes part of the solution, not only supporting itself but providing support to other systems. It would be a rather rubbish energy production system that needed more energy to sustain it than it itself produces.

 

[Nylock]

There are some interesting noises being made about developing advanced compressed air storage to act as 'batteries' for large scale renewables so that the stored air can then be used to drive a modified gas turbine generator during periods of low sun/wind intensity. There's info in this article concerning it, but it refers explicitly to offshore wind power. No doubt Falcon will come along and dismiss it as some other 'science project' gimmick but i think that with further development it has potential to make a reasonable contribution to our future energy mix (plus it's cheap!)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Interesting. 85% efficiency is very good. iirc storage systems such as fuel cells are more like 50%. Clever idea.

So potentially, off-shore wind farms could become part of the base load, too.

 

[Dr Jon]

The biggest problem with wind & solar is that they're unreliable: you need backup for calm / cloudy periods. Geothermal, tidal and hydro are obviously sensible, but offshore wind-farms are just a resource sink IMO.

 

[Crispy]

The biggest problem with wind & solar is that they're unreliable: you need backup for calm / cloudy periods

Or sufficient storage to cover said calm periods.
"sufficient" may be an unfeasibly large amount - I don't know.

 

[Nylock]

The biggest problem with wind & solar is that they're unreliable: you need backup for calm / cloudy periods. Geothermal, tidal and hydro are obviously sensible, but offshore wind-farms are just a resource sink IMO.

You may have read it linked from my previous post, but just in case, here is the full URL:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-dep...storage-has-bags-of-potential/1008374.article

The article explores that exact issue you mention: having a backup (and also what to do with surplus power generated as well).

 

[free spirit]

The biggest problem with wind & solar is that they're unreliable: you need backup for calm / cloudy periods. Geothermal, tidal and hydro are obviously sensible, but offshore wind-farms are just a resource sink IMO.

which would be a problem if we didn't have 35GW of CCGT, 3GW of pump storage and about 10GW of coal plants that aren't closing in 2016.

I'll admit that this might start becoming a little problematic around the 50GW mark, but seeing as we're a good couple of decades off that point, I'd suggest we get on with installing the 50GW that's not going to be a problem. If we were being forward thinking about things then by the time we get to 50GW, we could also have added a few GW of biomass, biogass, and most importantly the severn barrage, which could be constructed to allow it to act as additional 10 GW pump storage capacity as well as the tidal side of things.

 

[Dr Jon]

You may have read it linked from my previous post, but just in case, here is the full URL:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-dep...storage-has-bags-of-potential/1008374.article

The article explores that exact issue you mention: having a backup (and also what to do with surplus power generated as well).

Interesting, though the viability of that approach still needs to be proven.

There was quite a lot of interest in compressed-air vehicles a few years ago.
The main problems, as I recall, were the low energy density of compressed air and that energy is lost during compression. The air needs to be heated to get a reasonable amount of the theoretical energy out.

 

[Nylock]

True, although they appear to be trying to iron out that problem as part of the development of the tech. Some mention was made of using supercritical CO2 instead of air but not sure if that itself is going to create a new set of issues to overcome or not...

 

[Dr Jon]

Just spotted this, posted on The Oil Drum in 2010, which shows just how much shit we're in catching up renewables and nuclear have got to do:

There's a more recent graph on page 42 of the 2012 report (PDF) but the story is about the same.

 

[rover07]

The graph is misleading though.

65% of the energy produced by coal is wasted as heat released into the atmosphere.

 

[teqniq]

British engineers produce amazing 'petrol from air' technology

A small company in the north of England has developed the “air capture” technology to create synthetic petrol using only air and electricity.
Experts tonight hailed the astonishing breakthrough as a potential “game-changer” in the battle against climate change and a saviour for the world’s energy crisis.
The technology, presented to a London engineering conference this week, removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide.
Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.

The company, Air Fuel Synthesis, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.

Anyone care to dissect this? it certainly sounds too good to be true to me.

 

[Crispy]

It will take many more times as much energy to make as you actually get in petrol. So if we could just solve the limitless electricity problem, then we could make as much artificial petrol as we want.

 

[teqniq]

lol cheers

 

[Quartz]

It will take many more times as much energy to make as you actually get in petrol.

That's not actually a problem per se as petrol is a very versatile and dense store of energy in a much more usable form. It's more a question of economics and scalability than energy.

So if we could just solve the limitless electricity problem, then we could make as much artificial petrol as we want.

Solar panels or nuclear reactor, your choice. You can imagine places like the coasts of Tunisia or Libya or Angola or Texas or Australia with massive banks of solar panels with Sodium Hydroxide being shipped in and petrol being shipped out.

The real problem is going to be getting all that Sodium Hydroxide. As far as I understand it, they really only need the Sodium Hydroxide to produce pure CO2. They could get that anyway by atmospheric liquefaction.

But it just doesn't ring true. Why go to all the palaver? You can buy cylinders of CO2 and hydrogen, so why faff around with Sodium Hydroxide at all?

 

[Dr Jon]

...and then there's all the energy required (electrolysis of brine) to make the Sodium Hydroxide.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Using renewables to make fossil fuels so that we can burn them and continue to add to global warming is a bit of a idea tbh. Surely we must be looking to stop burning such fuels.