Power For USA

Fracking Indictment

March 2, 2012

tags: Casper, Drilling, ENCANA, EPA, Fracking, natural gas, oil, Pavillion, Wyoming

On December 8, the EPA issued a draft report on fracking in Pavillion, Wyoming.

The report said:

“Data indicates likely impact to ground water that can be explained by hydraulic fracturing.”

The media immediately proclaimed that fracking was responsible for contaminating water supplies.

But is the media correct in jumping to that conclusion?

The IPAA and AXPC, industry groups, quickly raised questions about the EPA’s report.

Questions were also raised by Wyoming state officials about the quality of the EPA report.

Briefly here are some of the issues raised about the EPA report.

There were improperly tested samples from six drinking water wells (admitted to by the EPA).
Contamination was found in pure water control samples (cited by Wyoming Water Development Commission).
Test wells were not properly purged before taking samples (cited by Wyoming Water Development Commission).
Insufficient number of samples (cited by Wyoming Water Development Commission program manager and professional geologist).
The pH value used by the EPA as proof of fracking contamination could easily have come from dense soda ash or cement used by the EPA when drilling the test wells, while the materials used by Encana had a near neutral pH level.
The assertion by Encana, that it “never used a peroxide breaker or gasoline in the Pavillion field”, rebuts the EPA assertion that “Tert-butyl-alcohol” found in the tests are attributed to Encana’s fracking.
Ketones found in test samples by the EPA are “not used in hydraulic fracturing.”
According to Encana, “the majority of man-made organic compounds detected by the EPA are not used in hydraulic fracturing and were introduced by the EPA in the process of sampling or construction of the deep wells.”

There are several other, ever more complicated issues that undermine the EPA’s assertion that, “ground water [impacts] can be explained by hydraulic fracturing” or the more radical media assertions that fracking caused contamination of water supplies.

Many wells in the Pavillion area have been contaminated for many years. Complaints about contamination resulted in the EPA conducting the tests that are now under scrutiny. It’s not known whether the contamination has been a natural result of the local geology or because of the drilling of gas wells in the area.

The comment period for the EPA report ends on March 12^th, so it will be awhile before a peer review of the report will be completed.

We can, however, reach two, possibly three, conclusions.

Whatever the outcome of the Pavillion report, it will have virtually no bearing on fracking elsewhere in the United States. Geologic conditions in the Pavillion area are unique and not generally found elsewhere, so results cannot automatically be extrapolated to other areas.
That there was contamination from surface water storage or due to defective cementing of casings, which would exonerate fracking.
Environmentalists, and possibly the EPA, will continue to condemn fracking, no matter the outcome of the peer review of the EPA report.

Additional information is available at:

For EPA draft report, go to http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/wy/pavillion/EPA_ReportOnPavillion_Dec-8-2011.pdf

For Encana technical briefing, go to http://www.encana.com/pdf/news-stories/encana-pavillion-technical-briefing.pdf

For Casper Wyoming Tribune Editorial, go to http://trib.com/opinion/editorial/epa-document-barrage-adds-nothing-to-fracking-debate/article_9224dc98-81c9-5050-ae07-8d0496ade2ba.html

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Geomagnetic Storm

February 28, 2012

tags: Canada, Carrington, GPS, grid, Satellites, Sun Spots, Svensmark

A recent report by Homeland Security establishes that a rare Geomagnetic Storm could cause substantial damage to the grid in North America and Northern Europe.

The science behind the threat is that eruptions on the sun (solar storms, seen as sunspots) could induce ground currents (GICs) in the Earth capable of damaging extra-high-voltage transformers and other elements of the grid.

The largest known geomagnetic storm occurred in1859. Known as the Carrington Event, the storm was “three times as intense as the most severe geomagnetic storm of the past thirty years.”

The Carrington storm took 17 hours, 40 minutes to reach the Earth, and it produced auroras seen around the world.

The Carrington Event is vividly described in the book: The Sun Kings, The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington & the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began, by Stuart Clark.

A geomagnetic storm in 1989 caused the grid in Quebec, Canada to fail.

The report says, “GICs can overload the grid, causing severe voltage regulation problems and, potentially, widespread power outages. Moreover, GICs can cause intense internal heating in extra-high-voltage transformers, putting them at risk of failure or even permanent damage.” And, there are “300 EHV transformers in the United States” that are at risk.

Satellites, GPS and all communication systems are also at risk with a severe geomagnetic storm.

EHV transformers take at least a year to build and there are only a few manufacturers in the world capable of building these units; possibly none in the United States.

It should be noted that all services that depend on electricity, such as lighting, elevators, gasoline station pumps, refrigeration, etc. won’t function when the grid goes down.

There is the potential for extended outages, weeks or months, that could cause severe unrest in affected populations.

These storms are virtually impossible to predict. Fortunately, storms of sufficient intensity to bring down electric grids are rare. In North America, a severe storm would probably only affect the northern parts of the United States and the major cities of Canada, but these are intensely populated areas.

The report indicates that hardening all grids, by using capacitors, etc., is probably economically prohibitive.

No matter how small the probability, a Carrington-like event is bound to occur in the future.

While there is no immediate solution to the threat, it spotlights how the sun affects the Earth. Could Svensmark be right in his assertion that solar storms, or the lack thereof, affect the climate?

The book, The Sun Kings, provides an historic perspective on the sun’s relationship with the Earth.

Notes:

I first became aware of the report from Anthony Watt’s, Watts Up With That, Web Site at http://wattsupwiththat.com/

The “Geomagnetic Storms” report is available at, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/57/25/46891645.pdf

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Rio+20 Alert

February 24, 2012

tags: Carbon, CO2, energy, GDP, Hurricane, Katrina, Rice, Rio+20, Sustainability, UN

The UN’s Rio+20 meeting will take place in June of this year, and already the propaganda machine is at work.

The UN’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, has just issued its report on sustainability.

A single line in the report establishes its intent:

“Achieving sustainability requires us to transform the global economy.”

The word government(s) was repeated 193 times in the 99-page report.

While issues such as social justice and inequality are continuously mentioned in the report, energy is central to what the report requires governments to do.

Two of the goals in the report are:

Incorporating social and environmental costs in regulating and pricing of goods and services.
Expanding how we measure progress in sustainable development by creating a sustainable development index.

Both of these goals are to allow governments to manipulate the free market economy by establishing costs and indexes relying on people’s opinions. GDP is no longer an appropriate measure. Both goals have their greatest effect on energy development and use.

For example, the report says, in two locations, “A tax on the most important energy-related greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, would be another economically efficient means of addressing externalities.”

The report says:

“Integrating environmental and social issues into economic decisions is vital to success.” And

“[It’s time] to bring the sustainable development paradigm into mainstream economics.” And for “a new political economy”

Incorporating the concept of externalities into cost structures has been the dream of environmentalists for decades.

Externalities are theoretical costs that aren’t included in a financially based, cost structure. CO2 emissions are one such fabricated cost, as is damage to the landscape from mining. But, one wonders whether eye-sores created by wind turbines will be included as an externality cost?

Obviously, attempting to include externalities in a cost structure is speculative, largely based on opinions and prone to abuse.

Stopping CO2 emissions and preventing climate change is a major part of the sustainability report.

The old idea of resource scarcity is also a central part of the report … in spite of the fact that we have always found more resources, or developed alternatives when needed. The Malthusian doctrine is alive and well in the eyes of the United Nations, though now it is referred to as the framework of “planetary boundaries” designed to define a “safe operating space for humanity”.

The report seems to cast a very wide net in so far as to what issues are included in sustainability.

They include:

Universal health care
Social assistance
Fighting corruption
Employment guarantees
Equal rights

The report also raises the old canard that increased extreme weather has caused increased financial losses, even mentioning Katrina. It’s well documented that increased financial losses are due, not to increased extreme weather events, but, rather, to growing populations, building in areas subject to threats, such as next to the ocean, and the increased cost of construction.

It also repeats the need for developed countries to contribute $100 billion annually to a development fund.

Prerequisites for sustainable growth are identified in the report as:

“Democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and equality for women and men, as well as access to information, justice and political participation.”

But the UN report omits a key prerequisite for economic development: Property rights. Without property rights, people cannot benefit from their efforts.

Why does the report omit Property Rights, an essential prerequisite for economic growth?

It’s interesting to look at the authors of the report.

Out of 20 members of the UN Panel that prepared the report, only one was from the United States … and she was Susan Rice, a member of the current president’s cabinet.

Seven of the 20 were at some time, environmental ministers or proponents of green growth.

Only one, James Laurence Balsillie, former Co-Chief Executive Officer of Research in Motion, had any connection to business.

The report says that a “new global sustainable development council” should be established under the UN General Assembly.” Its duties will include having the United States explain its Policies.

The United States has only one vote in the General Assembly, and is repeatedly outvoted there.

Rio+20 could result in actions that severely restrict the ability of the United States to develop and use its energy resources.

The 1992 Rio conference created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty that WAS ratified by the United States, and where the UN holds UNFCCC meetings every year at which the United States is consistently outvoted.

It’s not certain what will evolve from Rio+20.

There is more, much more in the UN report. It’s available at http://www.un.org/gsp/sites/default/files/attachments/GSPReport_unformatted_30Jan.pdf

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Keystone is all about Global Warming

February 21, 2012

tags: Canada, Carbon, CO2, Colbert Report, GHG, global warming, oil, oil sands

Now that Congress may consider legislation to authorize construction of the Keystone pipeline, it becomes crystal clear that the real reason behind efforts to stop the Keystone pipeline is global warming.

There has been talk about pipeline leaks and threats to the Ogallala aquifer, but that has all been noise for public consumption.

The real reason for stopping the Keystone pipeline was made clear by Al Gore.

In a plea (Tuesday, February 13) to his supporters on the Climate Reality Project web site, he asks them to sign a petition to stop the pipeline: He said:

“If approved and built, this pipeline, Keystone XL, would carry the most carbon-intensive source of oil on the planet.”

And,

“Join me in telling the U.S. Senate to say NO to one of the most carbon-intensive oils on the planet.”

His message went on to say:

“The EPA estimates that annual carbon pollution from the Keystone XL pipeline could be at least 82% higher than average crude refined in America – if not more.”

He didn’t mention leaks or contamination of an aquifer. He only mentions CO2 emissions from oil from Canada.

Apparently, a supporter of this effort is to be on The Colbert Report to push for signatures for this petition.

It’s been my view that global warming has been distorting energy markets, and this is proof of that.

And, distorting energy markets results in higher prices for electricity and gasoline.

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Proponents of EVs and PHEVs are Worried

February 17, 2012

tags: BCG, Carbon, CO2, EV, Gasoline, GM, Leaf, Media Matters, Nissan, Nuclear, oil, PHEV, Volt

Last week, Media Matters for America (MMA) published a 6,667-word article, replete with charts and graphs, defending EVs and PHEVs.

The article was framed with the headline, Myths And Facts About Electric Cars. The topics, i.e., myths, covered were:

Denying That EVs Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Downplaying EV Sales
Misleading About EV Distance Range
Distorting Volt Safety
Feigning Concern About Battery Disposal
Spinning Consumer Tax Credits
Fear mongering About The Electric Grid
Overstating Subsidies For Volt

It seems that backers of EVs and PHEVs are worried about the future of EVs and PHEVs.

Without touching on all these subjects, here are a few highlights that caught my attention.

Using CO2 emissions as the lead item is interesting.

Is this really the main reason for developing EVs and PHEVs? If so, it demonstrates once again how the fear of global warming is distorting energy policy.

The group’s claim that EVs and PHEVs emit less CO2 than Internal Combustion vehicles is true … but irrelevant, since these vehicles can’t cut CO2 emissions enough to meet the demands of the UN for cutting our CO2 emissions 80% by 2050.

In Carbon Folly, I show that if 75% of all vehicles in 2050 were PHEVs, CO2 emissions would be cut to 959 million metric tons (MMT) … however, they would have to be cut to 191 MMT to meet the required 80% reduction. Therefore, EVs and PHEVs are irrelevant when it comes to global warming.

Since EVs and PHEVs use electricity from the grid to recharge batteries, the only way they could possibly cut CO2 emissions 80% is to cut the use of coal and natural gas for generating electricity by 80% … and this is impossible without tripling the number of nuclear plants.

The second item was interesting in that it included a chart of Volt sales in 2011 that suddenly peaked at around 1450 units in December.

While this is interesting, it fails to reflect the hype the Volt received before its introduction.

The hype said there would be 60,000 Volts sold in 2012. Now GM says it will be 45,000. With only 603 sold in January it will require a miraculous reversal of fortune to achieve the new target.

The Nissan Leaf didn’t fare much better, with sales of only 676 Leafs in January.

Then there is the issue of subsidies.

The purported reason for subsidizing EVs and PHEVs are to, (1) cut CO2 emissions, and (2) reduce our dependence on foreign oil, specifically from the Mideast and Venezuela.

We’ve already described why it’s impossible to cut CO2 emissions 80% by 2050.

With respect to cutting imports from Venezuela and Mideast countries, there is enough oil in North America to cover all our needs for decades, so that reason is also bogus.

The MMA article also said that the cost of batteries can be offset by savings on gasoline usage. The article refers to a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) that indicates it will take 15 to 19 years to break even without subsidies and 3 to 5 years with subsidies.

Even assuming the 3 to 5 years is accurate; does this infer that these vehicles will have to be subsidized forever?

But, according to the article, the cost of batteries will come down so that subsidies won’t be needed. The BCG said, “Some 25 percent of current battery costs – primarily the cost of raw materials and standard, commoditized parts – are likely to remain relatively independent of production volumes and to change over time.”

Therefore, the remaining $7,500 of the battery’s total $10,000 cost must come down as the result of experience … also known as the learning curve.

If the total battery cost is to be cut in half, which still results in a $5,000 premium for the car, the $7,500 portion of the cost, which benefits from the learning curve, has to be cut by $5,000 to reach a cost of $2,500.

This requires a remarkably high learning curve of over 15% (every time production doubles) and an annual production of over 400,000 units. Achieving an annual production of 400,000 Volts by 2020 seems ambitious.

It would appear that the Volt won’t be economically justifiable for years to come, if ever, given that ICE vehicles are rapidly increasing their gas mileage.

While time will tell whether EVs and PHEVs will ever become a significant part of our vehicle fleet, the proponents appear very worried.

Notes:

See www.carbonfolly.com for more information.
From its website: “Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”

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Are Subsidies a legitimate use of Tax Dollars?

February 14, 2012

tags: Intelliget Utility, Pony Express, renewable, RPS, solar, Subsidies, wind

Here is one of the arguments posted by a media publication, Intelligent Utility, which was submitted by a reader explaining why there should be government subsidies for renewables.

“Without subsidies, the wind farms would not have been built, one wrote. On the other hand, without subsidies, there would be no national railroad network, no national defense highway (interstate system), no sewage treatment plants, few hospitals of any size, no drinking water systems, [and] no large hydro-electric dams to speak of. In short, the country has invested (and that is the key here) in almost every large infrastructure project in history … this is one of the reasons we have governments and taxes, to move the ball forward where large infrastructure investments need to be made.”

While this is the argument used to support government subsidies for renewables, and to have government force renewables onto the public with renewable portfolio standards (RPS or RES), it is specious. The argument also claims there is a “need” for government subsidies to build large infrastructure projects.

It’s specious because it ignores the reasons why these infrastructure projects were built with government support. The argument’s claim that there is a “need” for wind etc. is also fallacious.

Taking the later point first; renewables would be built with private money if they were efficient. Unfortunately, wind and solar are both very inefficient. Investors couldn’t earn a return on their investment without subsidies because they would not be able to sell the electricity generated by wind and solar because it costs more than electricity produced by natural gas or coal-fired power plants. There is no “need” for renewables because there are huge reserves of natural gas and coal and they can generate electricity very efficiently.

I suspect that the person making the comment was referring to a “need” to cut CO2 emissions, but for reasons covered in earlier articles, this is a false premise.

Giving free land to companies so that railroads could be built across the United States was a subsidy, but there was a genuine need for transportation to carry goods and services across the continent. Without railroads it would have been impossible to develop the vast expanse of the United States. There was a genuine need, there was no alternative to railroads and the risks were too great for private investment alone.

The New York Subway system was originally built with private money because the investors could charge a fare and earn a return on their investment.

Dams were largely built as a flood control measure, which also incorporated power generation that produced cheap electricity. There was a need for flood control, which is a legitimate function of government. Whether the dams could have been built as public private partnerships is, at this late date, an imponderable.

The issue of drinking water is interesting since many environmentalists object to privatization of drinking water supplies.

The Interstate system was built by government as a national defense measure, with defense clearly a government responsibility. Even if that rationale is suspect, private builders would have had to charge tolls in order to obtain a return on their investment. At the time, it was thought that the use of highways should be free, ergo, the term Freeway. Times have changed, and tolls are now collected by the government. When private companies have tried to build toll roads, people have objected, saying it was a function of government.

I don’t believe it was really a subsidy, but the U.S. postal service paid airlines to carry mail. The airlines, and mail carriers, were private entities that did benefit from their contracts with the postal service.

An interesting event that demonstrates how the free market system is constantly developing new products and services, often with the demise of existing companies, is what happened to the Pony Express, a glamorized, historic icon of American history.

The Pony Express lasted for only about one year, and was put out of business by the telegraph.

There are a number of statues idolizing the Pony Express scattered around the West, but I have seen none extolling a telegraph operator.

The tax code is replete with subsidies of all kinds. For example, there is the mortgage deduction that subsidizes home ownership.

While it’s not possible to argue about every subsidy, there should be agreement that government subsidies are inappropriate when they are used to compete with private investment, or produce products or services that are inherently uneconomic and for which there is no need.

Wind and solar, for which there is no need, are both inherently uneconomic.

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Canadian Oil For China

February 10, 2012

tags: Alberta, Canada, China, Dogwood Initiative, Enbridge, Harper, Keystone, Kitimat, oil, oil sands, Oliver, Sinopec, Tides

About 99% of Canadian oil exports are to the United States, but current U.S. policies are forcing Canada to build a $5.5 billion pipeline to Kitimat in British Columbia so that it can ship its oil to China.

Environmentalists are trying to kill the Canadian oil sands industry because it produces CO2 emissions. They are doing everything they can to stop the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. and the Kitimat pipeline, to be built by Enbridge as the Northern Gateway pipeline, in Canada.

Canada’s government, however, is saying it won’t be deterred from building the Kitimat pipeline because Canada can no longer rely on the U.S. as a good customer for its oil. The government says the pipeline would help “diversify energy exports away from the United States and more towards Asia”.

The Kitimat pipeline would carry 525,000 barrels of Alberta crude a day across the Rocky Mountains to the port of Kitimat, where it would be loaded onto supertankers for shipment to China. The Keystone XL pipeline was to carry 700,000 barrels of oil per day to the refineries located on the Gulf coast.

Canadian oil sands production is forecast to increase from 1.5 million barrels per day to 3.0 million by 2020.

Unlike our government, the Canadian government is hitting back against the environmentalists by saying, “These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda … They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest.” The Financial Post said, the “government is standing up to the growth-killing professional green movement.”

Canadian Natural Resource Minister Oliver said, “These groups seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interests to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources.”

The Financial Post reported, “One of the major recipients of U.S. foundation backing is the Dogwood Initiative, a leading anti-pipeline group that has received funding from the U.S. Tides foundation and the Hewlett and Packard foundations. They’ve poured more than $50 million into the Dogwood’s Great Bear Rain Forest program, which aims to shut down oil tanker traffic to the B.C. coast, and hence block access to any Gateway pipeline.”

The outcome of the Kitimat and Keystone pipelines will have a profound effect on America’s oil supply.

The Canadian oil sands hold143 billion barrels of oil, right next door to the United States, compared with Saudi Arabia where there are 264 billion barrels of oil.

Canadian Prime Minister Harper has said he’ll make exports to Asia a government priority, while China has been the largest single investor in Canadian oil sands in the past few years. Sinopec has already made an initial $10 million investment in the Kitimat pipeline. Chinese oil companies have also invested $17 billion in the oil sands over the past two years.

Continued delay of the Keystone XL pipeline will exacerbate the ill will that’s being generated in Canada by the delay of the pipeline.

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Solar Dreams

February 7, 2012

tags: Aldrin, electricity, energy, oil, solar

It’s always interesting to think outside the box – perhaps even to think about futuristic concepts.

There’s little doubt that current efforts to harness the sun to generate electricity are expensive and largely unproductive.

But, what if there was a way to really harness sunlight to generate electricity?

This came up recently with a discussion of sustainability and an elevator to the sky using ultra-light weight buckyball-carbon structures.

Interestingly, the National Security Space Office issued a report in October 2007 that proposed Space Based Solar Power (SBSP), using satellites.

The report said:

“Place very large solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit (1,366 watts/m²), collect gigawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to Earth, and receive it on the surface for use either as baseload power via direct connection to the existing electrical grid, conversion into manufactured synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, or as low‐intensity broadcast power beamed directly to consumers.”

“A single kilometer‐wide band of geosynchronous Earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today.”

At the time, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, chairman of the spaceflight advocacy group ShareSpace Foundation, said, “This is a solution for all mankind.”

Not much has happened since the report was issued, other than some attempts to involve the public and raise money for prototypes, but the idea is an intriguing vision.

Obviously there are a large number of technical, financial and risk issues surrounding the vision.

And, it’s a vision that’s not likely to materialize any time soon.

On the other hand, it has nearly as much merit as current efforts to spend money on solar power with equipment based on Earth.

It is, however, the type of vision that captures the imagination, and which could become a reality in the next century.

It’s also a vision that eliminates fear of running out of oil and other natural resources. It squelches Malthusian thinking. It’s also another reason for continuing with space exploration.

The report is available at:

http://spacesolarpower.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf

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Government as Font of Knowledge

February 3, 2012

tags: Fracking, GE, Halliburton, Horizontal Drilling, natural gas, Obama, oil, United Technologies

The idea that government is the font of knowledge is now being promoted with respect to energy development. It’s being claimed that “every significant energy technology [development] since World War II” was due to government support, including gas turbines, nuclear power and fracking.

It’s being claimed that the development of fracking was really due to the government – and not the private sector. This claim was even inferred in the State of the Union Address.

Is the claim true?

While the claim is based on the work of the government in the 1970s, fracking actually dates back, in a crude form, to the late 1800s.

The first fracking used nitroglycerin to literally fracture the rocks and substances that prevented the free flow of oil. Quite a few people were killed when the nitroglycerin exploded unexpectedly.

“In 1864, Colonel E. A. L. Roberts applied for a patent to increase well production using explosives in connection with superincumbent fluid tamping.” (Quote from article by Carollee Michener, available at http://www.oil150.com/essays/2007/04/nitroglycerine-saved-many-wells

This was the beginning of the quest to use pressure and fluids to free hydrocarbons from rock, and happened long before there was a Department of Energy.

In the 1930s, acid was injected into wells to stimulate the flow of oil. Floyd Farris of Amoco performed a study about the pressures used with the various substances and conceived of what we now refer to as hydraulic fracking.

The first experiment of “Hydrafrac” was in 1947.

In 1949, a patent was issued to Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company for the new Hydrafrac process.

By the 1950s, 3,000 fracking jobs were done each month, extending for long periods during the year.

The development of various fluids and propping agents also occurred after WWII. Gelled crude oil and gelled kerosene were used, but then, by the mid-1950s, crude itself was used to achieve less friction.

During these early years, the relationship between the friction of fluids and the amounts of sand used for propping open the fractures became the focus of experimentation. When water was used in 1953 as the fluid of choice, a number of patents were issued for gelling agents.

In 1962, a patent was issued for using guar cross linked by borate to Loyd Kern of Arco.

In 1964, another patent was issued to Tom Perkins for a borate gel breaker.

Innovations continued with the use of surfactants, stabilizing agents, foams and alcohol.

There was also the parallel development of propping agents and high pressure pumps. The larger the quantities of propping agents used in fracking, the higher the required pressure.

There was also the development of programs by the mid-1960s for designing the fracking operation – choosing the right proppant, the right fluids, the right pressures and the right volumes. Khristianovic, and Zheltov (1955), Perkins and Kern (1961), and Geertsma and de Klerk (1969) are mentioned as the early adopters of computers for this purpose.

Subsequently, more powerful computers have allowed highly improved programs for designing a fracking operation.

The history of fracking is replete with the contributions of private companies and individuals.

A similar history can be shown for horizontal drilling, without government involvement.

Early discussions about horizontal drilling occurred in the 1920s. Reportedly, the first horizontal well was drilled in 1929. John Eastman and George Failing performed directional drilling in 1934. Elf Aquitaine, the French Company, began drilling horizontal wells in 1980, and BP used horizontal drilling in Prudhoe Bay in the mid-1980s.

Apparently, there was some work done by the government beginning in the 1970s, long after a century of development by private entities.

Tax breaks may have played a role in the 1980s and ‘90s. Unlike Solyndra (solar) and Ener1 (batteries), tax payers benefitted from any possible tax breaks received by the oil and gas industry for the development of fracking.

It’s true that some fracking pumps after WWII used surplus Allison aircraft engines, and perhaps that can be described as government support.

It’s possible to trace many products in use today to the government, but that doesn’t mean the government was instrumental in their development. Gas Turbines are one such product.

The government was instrumental in developing the jet engine for aircraft usage. GE and United Technologies both produced these engines and then, started improving on the original design.

GE went further, and developed the land-based gas turbine. Though its technology can be traced to the government through the jet engine, it was GE that invested millions of dollars in developing the gas turbine that’s now used for power generation and other applications, such as pipeline pumping.

To claim that the government was instrumental in the development of fracking, horizontal drilling, or even the land-based gas turbine, is a stretch, to say the least.

Post Script:

The Breakthrough Institute that touts the role of government, and may be the source of the comments in the State of the Union Address, is described in the Washington Post as “an Oakland-based, nonpartisan public policy think tank focused on progressive politics”.

I’m not sure how a think-tank focused on “progressive politics” can be called “non-political”.

Sources: Center for Energy Commerce; Breakthrough Institute; Society of Petroleum Engineers; Middle East Technical University; General Electric Company.

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Religion or Science

January 31, 2012

tags: CO2, EXXON, GHG, global warming, Gore, Heartland, Hudson River, Hurricanes, Lake George, New York

I don’t normally write about global warming, but the energy policy of the United States is being adversely influenced by people who believe that CO2 is causing global warming.

Targeting a cut in CO2 emissions is distorting energy policies, and preventing market forces from selecting the best energy alternatives.

As a boy, I remember the Hudson River freezing and ice chunks accumulating along the river’s banks.

At the same time, the ice on Lake George was thick enough to allow automobiles to race on the lake.

I have seen that there has been warming, and, personally, I know no-one who claims otherwise.

At the same time, it’s clear to me that CO2 isn’t the main cause of warming, and is probably only a small, if not tiny factor in warming.

This is where CO2 becomes part of a religion, because there is considerable scientific evidence that CO2 is not a major cause of global warming.

My motivation in writing articles is to provide Americans with factual information about energy issues, because so much information in the media is factually incorrect – and even worse, distorted by an obsession with CO2.

Think for a moment about the recent major news stories about energy. There is the Keystone pipeline, the EPA’s efforts to close coal-fired power plants, the outcry against fracking because it supposedly releases Methane, a green house gas, the adoption of renewable portfolio standards (RPS or RES) and a push for electric vehicles.

The motivation behind each of these stories is an effort to cut CO2 emissions.

It makes no difference that fracking, the Keystone pipeline, coal-fired power plants and other such activities are good for Americans, by providing low-cost, readily available electricity, natural gas for heating homes and less dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Just so you know, I have never received contributions from any corporation, so I’m not being influenced by any oil or coal company. In fact, I criticize the coal industry for not doing more to inform people about why ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants are a huge improvement over traditional coal-fired plants.

There isn’t enough space to describe all the reasons why I have concluded CO2 emissions are not the main cause of warming, but I will mention a few, and then, hopefully, people will do additional research to reach an informed judgment – relying on science, whichever way it leads them, rather than blindly accepting the global warming religion.

First, temperatures were at least as high as they are today in 1100 AD, when Greenland was settled. This was followed by the Little Ice Age when the river Themes and canals in Holland froze over. The story, Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates can prove to the casual person that there was a Little Ice Age. Similarly, the painting of George Washington Crossing the Delaware shows huge ice flows near the end of the Little Ice Age.

The Little Ice Age ended around the beginning of the industrial revolution, when CO2 emissions became greater. What we have seen since then has been a rise in temperatures as we emerged from the Little Ice Age – and coincidentally, an increase in CO2 emissions, which does not establish a cause and effect relationship.

Next, computer programs predicting global warming from CO2 show a “fingerprint” of higher temperatures over the equator. Satellite readings of atmospheric temperatures over the equator show no such rise in temperatures – in other words, the “fingerprint” for global warming is missing.

Interestingly, temperatures have not increased, and possibly declined, over the past dozen years.

Then, the idea that global warming causes severe weather doesn’t stand the test of research. I have been through a number of hurricanes and typhoons, including the 1938 hurricane on Long Island where the water rose over the bulkhead twenty feet behind our house, but I have seen no increase in the severity of hurricanes during my lifetime. My research of the records showed that more large hurricanes hit the U.S. during the first half of the Twentieth Century, than the last half.

Decade	All Category 1-5	Major Category 3,4,5
1900-1909	15	6
1910-1919	20	8
1920-1929	15	5
1930-1939	17	8
1940-1949	23	8
1950-1959	18	9
1960-1969	15	6
1970-1971	12	4
1980-1989	16	6
1990-1999	14	5
21^st Century
2000- 2009	23	7
Hurricanes that hit mainland U.S. Source for 20^th century storms: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/Table5.htm Source for 21^st century storms http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/index.html http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2011/index.html

I mention these items because the research is easy to do, and anyone with a genuine interest in whether CO2 is a villain, as proclaimed by Al Gore, can search the internet for the same things I did.

For those who want additional scientific information it can be obtained at http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2009/pdf/CCR2009FullReport.pdf

People will criticize the Climate Change Reconsidered report for extraneous reasons. For example, the publisher, The Heartland Institute, has been accused of receiving large amounts of funding from Exxon. Whether they have or not, and I don’t believe they have, is no reason to ignore the information in the report. From what I have seen, the information is reliable, scientific information.

Also, there have been personal attacks against the authors, but, again, the ad hominem attacks shouldn’t keep people from reading the report and determining for themselves whether the information is accurate.

Ad hominem attacks are the tool of cowards.

Our nation depends on having a plentiful and reliable supply of energy. Market forces can help us reach good decisions about how to use our natural resources.

Distorting the market with regulations about CO2 emissions hurts our country and threatens our children’s future.

This is why I write about energy issues. My personal commitment is that everything I write is factually correct.

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EPA’s Sustainability Gambit

January 27, 2012

tags: energy, EPA, EU, Green Book, NAS, Obama, Rio+20

The EPA paid the National Academy of Science (NAS) $700,000 to determine how to integrate sustainability as one of the key drivers within the regulatory responsibilities of the EPA.

Adopting sustainability as a key driver would have an enormous effect on how we develop and use our energy resources.

The study is already known as the “Green Book” within the EPA.

The study did not, however, try to define sustainability, which it should have, because there is no widely accepted definition of sustainability.

Rather than defining sustainability, the NAS used president Obama’s executive order 13514 entitled Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy and Economic Performance that broadly defines sustainability as the ability “to create and maintain conditions, under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations.”

The NAS study said the experience of the European Union, that has adopted an all encompassing vision, “is especially relevant”. The EU’s specific priorities include, “climate change and clean energy; sustainable transport; sustainable consumption and production; conservation and management of natural resources; public health; social inclusion, demography and migration; and global poverty.”

As applied to the United States, the study says the EPA needs to establish “how to define and control unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and how to encourage the development of sustainable communities, biodiversity protection, clean energy, environmentally sustainable economic development and climate change controls.”

The study proposes new tools, specifically the use of “sustainability impact assessment” as part of the Environmental Impact Statement process. Environmental Impact Statements for siting power plants, transmission lines and development of mines and drilling etc. can already take years. Adding a sustainability assessment will increase the time it takes to approve projects – and increase the hurdles that result in projects being denied approval.

The study urges the EPA to “create a new culture among all EPA employees.” It encourages the EPA to “hire an array of new experts in order to bring the sustainability focus to every corner of the agency and its operations.”

The study says the EPA should adopt a suite of tools that have the ability to analyze present and future consequences of alternative decision options on the full range of social, environmental and economic indicators.

Little of this was reported in the media.

Adoption of these recommendations would automatically include adoption of the Precautionary Principle, which essentially says do nothing if there is any perceived risk.

The study admits that the EPA would be required to forecast the future – which, of course, is impossible.

All of this comes in preparation for Rio+20 to be held in Rio de Janeiro this summer. It’s to be held on the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations conference known as the Earth Summit, where the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted, which in turn, led to the Kyoto Protocol and a continuing demand for cutting CO2 emissions.

Rio+20 is called the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.

The term sustainability is a catch phrase that means different things to different people. If it’s impossible to define, it’s also impossible to measure.

The EPA is already conducting a war on coal and is doing what it can to obstruct fracking. With a sweepingly defined sustainability added to its portfolio, the EPA will be in a position to control all aspects of energy development and use in the United States.

The NAS report is available at https://download.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13152

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Clean Coal Debacle

January 24, 2012

tags: AEP, Bloomberg, Carbon, China, CO2, coal, Emissions, EU, IGCC, natural gas, Sierra Club

The coal industry has created a problem for itself by saying that “clean coal” refers to Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants where CO2 is captured and stored underground.

IGCC plants are exorbitantly expensive to build, costing twice as much as an ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant, and nearly as much as a nuclear power plant.

They also require that the captured CO2 be stored underground for centuries, something that is impossible to prove.

It’s very likely that most new power plants, at least for the immediate future, will be natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) plants, but at some point, the availability of coal and the suitability of coal-fired power plants for providing base load power, will mean that coal-fired power plants could once again be competitive with NGCC plants.

But IGCC plants won’t be able to compete, unless government regulations force their adoption.

The coal industry would have been wiser to establish that ultra-supercritical plants deserved the label “clean coal”, and to never have assigned the label to IGCC plants.

Ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants operate at very high temperatures and pressures and have thermal efficiencies of between 38% and over 43% HHV. They use 25% to 35% less coal, respectively.

In addition, properly equipped ultra-supercritical units have lower emissions. Emissions of SOx are cut by over 95%, NOx by over 85%, particulates by over 98%, while 90% of Hg is removed with appropriate emission control equipment.

Ultra-supercritical units are superior to the existing fleet of traditional coal-fired power plants that have a thermal efficiency of only 32% HHV.

For those who worry about CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions from ultra-supercritical coal-fired plants are nearly the same as from NGCC plants.

Ultra-supercritical plants are being built in China, and even in Europe, but except for one unit being built in the United States, they aren’t being built here. And AEP has had to agree to onerous conditions to merely complete the plant it’s building in Arkansas.

The coal industry seems to be running scared ahead of environmentalists, and still assigns the label “clean coal” to IGCC units, where CO2 is captured and stored underground – “forever”?

With utilities announcing retirements of coal-fired power plants and the abandonment of projects to build new coal-fired power plants, the Sierra Club is claiming victory in its war against coal. Interestingly, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City has given $50 million to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, so the coal industry is getting nowhere by touting expensive IGCC units as being clean.

Dirty Business, a new film by an environmental group, claims there is no such thing as “clean coal”. It will be shown at the Get Reel festival and highlights coal as being the number one sources of CO2 emissions. The film is narrated by Rolling Stones contributing Editor Jeff Goodell.

It’s clear; the coal industry is making no headway against environmentalists and the EPA.

The coal industry has locked itself into an untenable position where IGCC plants are uneconomic, while ignoring ultra-supercritical plants that are economic and can meet all environmental regulations, except for potential CO2 regulations – which NGCC plants can’t meet either.

(For information on NGCC carbon capture, see Interesting News from California.)

(Link for information on Carbon Capture and Sequestration.)

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Mercury Reality

January 20, 2012

tags: coal, EPA, Hg, Mercury, OSHA, USGS

Mercury has been attacked as a dangerous toxin emitted by coal-fired power plants.

But how much do coal-fired power plants contribute to the mercury found in our environment? And how dangerous is the mercury that’s been deposited around the country?

U.S. coal-fired power plants emit 41 tons of mercury into the atmosphere, but this is a fraction of the 9,100 tons of mercury emitted globally each year, mostly from natural sources.

Mercury emitted into the atmosphere travels around the globe, so mercury emitted by coal-fired power plants in China is probably being deposited in the U.S.

The EPA has undertaken a program to eliminate the use of coal in power plants, and its efforts will cost billions of dollars. Are these expenditures necessary? Will they really reduce the effect of mercury on our health? Are coal-fired power plants the villains portrayed by the EPA?

A recent study by the USGS can shed light on these questions.

: USGS Mercury Study

This graph produced by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) shows mercury deposition as determined from ice cores taken in Wyoming.

The spikes are mostly from volcano eruptions, and show how mercury travels around the world.

While mercury deposition increased during the industrial revolution, the important question is: Did the increase create a danger to public health?

If the mercury levels found in the ice cores exceed the safety limits established by OSHA and others, then we could conclude that mercury deposition from coal-fired power plants may be affecting public health.

But, if the mercury found in the ice-cores were well below the safety limits, then we could conclude that coal-fired power plants are not affecting public health and the phasing out of coal-fired power plants, at great cost to the economy and in jobs lost, is unnecessary.

The highest level of mercury on the USGS graph was 23 ppt (parts per trillion).

This is an extremely small amount of mercury.

Professor James Rust (nuclear engineering, retired) converted the ng/L (nano grams per cubic liter) shown on the USGS graph, to parts per trillion (ppt) and then compared these concentrations with the safety limits established by OSHA and others.

“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) occupational exposure limit (8 hr, 5-day week) is 100 micrograms per cubic meter.
“The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended safety limit is 50 micrograms per cubic meter.
“The American Conference of Government and Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) recommend 25 micrograms per cubic meter for the same conditions as OSHA.
“The Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry (ATSDR) recommends a maximum level of 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter for exposure of children on a continual basis.

“A cubic meter of air has a mass of 1280 grams. Thus 1 microgram per cubic meter is a concentration of 780 parts per trillion by mass.”

Here are the results of these calculations by Professor Rust, for the safe limits for mercury established by each of these organizations,.

OSHA 78,000 ppt
NIOSH 39,000 ppt
ACGIH 19,000 ppt
ATSDR 156 ppt

The highest level of 23 ppt from the USGS graph is infinitesimal when compared with the safety limits established by OSHA, NIOSH or AGOG, and is well below the level established for children.

The amount is so small that, if the USGS chart was posted horizontally at street level on the side of a building, with the highest peak on the graph being 2 inches high, the OSHA limit would be drawn at a height of over 500 feet above the peak amount of mercury, or at a height that was approximately forty stories above the USGS chart.

The USGS study demonstrates that the EPA is pursuing a strategy to eliminate coal-fired power plants for no legitimate scientific reason.

Note:

Concentrations in the USGS graph are given in nanograms per liter. Assuming 1000 grams of ice per liter, the USGS concentrations are also parts per trillion (ppt). Ice is about 900 rather than 1000 grams per liter, but the comparison is sufficiently close to permit a reasonable approximation of ppt.

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Biofuel Mandates

January 17, 2012

tags: Biofuels, Cello, CO2, EPA, Ethanol, GHG, global warming, Khosla, oil, oil sands, Solyndra

Why are biofuels being forced onto America?

This year the EPA has mandated that 8.65 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol be mixed with gasoline. If a producer can’t obtain cellulosic ethanol to mix with its gasoline, it must pay a penalty in the form of waivers.

So far, in 2010 and 2011, companies have had to “buy” $10 million of waivers. This cost finds its way into the price of gasoline at the pump.

It’s preposterous, but this mandate requires companies to buy a product that doesn’t exist.

This is how the environmental movement has forced untenable rules and regulations onto the American public.

But why?

The two reasons heard most often are:

To free the U.S. from being dependent on foreign oil.
To cut CO2 emissions to help prevent global warming.

The first excuse is ludicrous. There is enough oil in North America to supply the U.S. for decades to come. Of course, a good portion of this oil would come from Canadian oil sands, and they are condemned by environmentalists for emitting CO2. That is the real reason behind the effort to kill the Keystone pipeline.

There is a strong scientific case that CO2 is not the primary cause of global warming. The publication, Climate Change Reconsidered, at http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2009/pdf/CCR2009FullReport.pdf a report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, contains a wealth of information explaining why CO2 is not a real problem. Merely reading the eight-page executive summary will provide people with the information needed to make a judgment on this issue.

The National Academy of Sciences has also concluded that the biofuel mandates “may be an ineffective way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.”

As has been widely reported, temperatures have remained steady or have declined over the past dozen years, which contradicts all computer programs on which the global warming threat is based.

It’s also been pointed out that biofuels emit CO2, which undermines the supposed reason for requiring the use of cellulosic ethanol – a product that doesn’t exist outside the laboratory in spite of the government having spent over $1.5 billion of taxpayer money in grants and loan subsidies.

Similar to Solyndra, the most outrageous failure and bankruptcy of a biofuels company to-date, was Cello. Cello had gone so far as to show investors a fuel made from petroleum when asking for money to produce ethanol from cellulosic plant material. It received the first round of funding from the government.

Cello went bankrupt in October 2010.

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UK Report on Renewables

January 13, 2012

tags: CO2, Emissions, GDP, renewable, solar, UK, wind

While I have asserted in several articles that wind and solar are uneconomic and unreliable, it’s interesting to see how the UK has fared under its policy of cutting CO2 emissions through the use of renewables.

The just issued report Renewable Energy, Vision or Mirage, evaluates the current situation in the UK.

In its forward, the report says: “[Governments] have an obligation to the electorate to provide a secure, affordable supply of energy, on which economic competitiveness and the safety and comfort of citizens depends. The evidence shows that continuing along the current path will not do this and certainly does not represent an efficient use of tax revenues.”

The report makes it clear that renewables, with a few notable exceptions, “hydro in Norway and geothermal in Iceland,” are not economic and cannot supply the needed electricity.

The report is technically oriented.

A few of the items that caught my attention were:

GDP in the UK has increased while energy usage has remained flat, resulting in an improvement in energy efficiency. Some of this improvement has been due to actual improvements in efficiency, but some of it has also been due to industries moving out of the UK.

Industry uses more energy than other sectors, so if GDP increases as a result of a large increase in the service sector and a decrease in the industrial sector, it gives the impression that energy efficiency is improving.

In the U.S., energy efficiency has also improved, but some of the improvement is also due to American manufacturing jobs moving to China and elsewhere.

Renewables require government subsidies to exist.
The low density of biomass and lack of supply in the UK means that biomass can never produce a significant amount of electricity in the UK.
The types of large scale storage required to make renewables useful do not exist – and are not in development.
The UK needs to use its large supply of coal to contribute to energy security.
A phenomenon in the UK has been referred to as fuel poverty. The UK’s emphasis on high cost renewables and attempts to eliminate coal generated electricity has driven up the price of electricity to the point that people cannot afford electricity — and with less natural gas available, the cost of natural gas has also increased making that fuel also unaffordable to many.

So far, we in the United States haven’t experienced fuel poverty, though renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that require increased wind and solar generation of electricity are causing an increase in the cost of electricity. We are also fortunate in that fracking has increased our nation’s supply of natural gas so that prices for heating with natural gas will remain low.

The report also provides an excellent history of energy development in the UK.

We in the United States can learn a great deal from what is happening in the UK.

The report is available at: http://www.adamsmith.org/research/reports/renewable-energy-vision-or-mirage

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Defense Dollars Wasted

January 10, 2012

tags: Algae, Biofuel, Cellulosic Ethanol, DOD, Ethanol, Mabus, Tyson Foods

While the Department of Defense (DOD) budget is being eviscerated and our fighting ability emasculated, the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, is forcing the Navy to spend money on biofuels.

The latest example of this was the Navy’s purchase of 450,000 gallons of biofuels, which according to Mabus, was the “largest single purchase of advanced drop-in biofuel in government history.” The biofuels will be produced by blending algae and cooking oil. This, in turn, will be blended with jet fuel.

The 450,000 gallons will cost $12 million. This is money the Navy will have to take away from its other needs, such as buying equipment and paying salaries of servicemen and women.

Secretary Mabus has said he wants a carrier strike group to be fueled by biofuels mixed with diesel fuel to accompany the nuclear carriers on a multi-month tour.

The suppliers of the 450,000-gallon purchase will be algae from Solazyme and cooking oil from Dynamic Fuels, LLC, a joint venture of Tyson Foods and Syntroleum Corp.

The cost will be about nine times the cost of jet fuel normally used to power our aircraft. The biofuels will cost $26 per gallon, or $16 per gallon when mixed with regular jet fuel that costs less than $3 per gallon.

Solazyme previously received $21.7 million in stimulus money to build a bio-refinery.

The Wall Street Journal reported, the “administration has also funded a $510 million program in partnership with the Navy to produce advanced biofuels for the military. In September, the feds loaned $134 million to Abengoa Bioenergy, [the subsidiary of a Spanish company], to build a cellulosic plant in Kansas. In September, the Department of Energy provided POET, which advertises itself as the world’s largest ethanol producer, a $105 million loan guarantee for cellulosic.”

Loan guarantees for cellulosic biofuels will likely become losses borne by tax payers, similar to those incurred from the loan guarantee to Solyndra.

The rationale for these efforts is to decrease our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our carbon foot print.

The National Academy of Sciences concluded that the mandates “may be an ineffective way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.” The report notes that “currently, no commercially viable biorefineries exist for converting cellulosic biomass to fuel.”

The idea that we should invest in biofuels to cut our dependence on foreign oil is ludicrous, when there is enough oil in North America to supply all our needs for decades.

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US Energy Policy and China

January 6, 2012

tags: Canada, China, natural gas, Navy, oil, oil sands, PLAN, Shale, South China Sea, Vietnam

Historically, China has primarily been a continental nation, looking to the North, South and West for security threats. For energy, it has huge supplies of coal and the potential for large supplies of shale gas. What it lacks is oil.

Now, it is looking Eastward, toward the ocean – specifically the Pacific Ocean and the sea lanes from the Indian Ocean.

This shift has been caused by China’s growing dependence on oil and China’s role as a major maritime trading power.

How the United States pursues its energy needs will determine whether the United States and China will compete for the same oil resources.

China is in the process of developing a large, modern navy, including ballistic missile and attack submarines, frigates and the supporting ships necessary for a modern navy.

Currently, half these vessels are older and not suitable for 21^st century combat. The Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has adopted sea skimming anti-ship missiles, such as the maneuverable Yakhont, that travels at 2.5 Mach with a range of 160 miles. Missile ships, using catamaran hulls that provide a stable platform for cruise missiles, are also part of the PLAN’s arsenal.

It’s been said that if Argentina had had another half dozen Exocet missiles, it would have won the Falkland Islands war against the U.K.

China, using sea based and land based maneuverable missiles, is developing , and may already have, the ability to implement an anti-access (A2) and area-denial (AD) strategy in the South China Sea, that could prove deadly to the U.S. Navy if it had to operate in the South China Sea should hostilities ever occur.

While the PLAN is getting newer, better and bigger, the U.S. Navy is getting smaller.

Currently, the PLAN’s primary focus is to protect the South China and East China Seas; and the existing PLAN is a credible defensive force.

South China Sea and Key Straits

As it looks East, it sees a line of islands stretching from Japan, South, past Taiwan and the Philippines, and then to Brunei and Indonesia. It views this “first row of islands” as an obstacle to reaching the Pacific Ocean, and – more importantly, to maintaining access through the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok straits.

More than five times as many ships pass through the Malacca Strait as pass through the Panama Canal. The Lombok Strait is important since very large crude carriers (VLCCs) traverse it because the Malacca Strait is too shallow.

Over 15 million barrels of oil per day traverse through the South China Sea destined for China, and the other bordering nations. For comparison, the United States uses 20 million barrels of oil per day.

China has claimed virtually the entire South China Sea as belonging to it. (See the dotted line on the map.) The South China Sea stretches from Taiwan, past the Philippines and as far south as Malaysia.

China believes there are large oil and natural gas resources under the seabed.

Many islands within the South China Sea are claimed by several nations, including China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. These disputes have the potential for conflict, though China’s navy is too strong for any of the other countries to challenge China – without the support of the United States.

China views the presence of the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea as a threat.

China’s growth is expected to result in its importing much larger quantities of oil, so the straits and the South China Sea will grow in strategic importance to China. China is increasing its oil imports from the Mideast and Africa. It has also invested in Canadian oil companies, and would sorely like to import oil from Canada. It’s also exploring for oil in the South China Sea.

The United States energy policy can increase the potential for conflict between the United States and China – or, minimize the threat of conflict.

By developing oil resources in Alaska, the [U.S.] outer continental shelves, and on federal land, and by partnering with Canada to develop Canada’s oil sands, the United States can avoid having to compete with China for Mideast and other oil resources.

While it may not be possible to avoid conflict over the islands and navigation rights in the South China Sea, it is possible to be certain we don’t go head to head with China, competing for oil.

For additional information on China’s Navy and maritime interests, see The Great Wall at Sea, published by the USNI.

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MIT Report on Grid Problems

January 3, 2012

tags: EV, grid, MIT, PHEV, smart grid, solar, wind

The recent MIT report, The Future of the Electric Grid, establishes why changes are needed to the grid, i.e., to create the smart grid.

What’s remarkable about the MIT report is that it leads to conclusions that are opposite of the intent of the report.

The report establishes that policy decisions are at the root of problems with the grid.

Forcing the use of wind and solar onto the system is creating problems on the supply side, while another policy, the push for electric vehicles, is causing problems on the demand side.

The report says:

“One of the most important emerging challenges facing the grid is to incorporate more renewable generation in response to policy initiatives.”

And:

“Increased penetration of electric vehicles and other ongoing changes in electricity demand will, if measures are not taken, increase the ratio of peak to average demand and thus further reduce capacity utilization and raise rates.”

In other words, there would be fewer problems if it weren’t for these two policy decisions – forcing the use of wind and solar, and the use of electric vehicles.

In so far as the grid is concerned, we would be better off without wind and solar generated electricity and without electric vehicles.

Contrary to what is reported in the media, the MIT report says, “The U.S. electric grid is not broken today.” And, “The grid is currently functioning well.”

In essence: The grid is stable and reliable, unless we add wind and solar.

This doesn’t preclude improving the grid through the use of new sensing and communication technologies.

Improving the stability, reliability and efficiency of the grid, can be achieved by utilizing enhanced communications between all elements of the grid, with these improvements being the result of incredibly improved sensing and communication technologies.

Wind and solar are uneconomic and should not be part of the problem in the first place, while problems associated with electric vehicles can be easily managed by restricting battery charging to off-peak hours. For example, battery charging can be restricted to off-peak hours if home charging systems control the hours during which charging can occur.

The MIT report says:

“Exploiting these variable energy resources [wind and solar] will require building more transmission than if fossil-fueled or nuclear generating plants, built relatively close to load centers, were driving system expansion. The use of very long transmission lines can cause technical problems and compromise system stability.”

One of the report’s recommendations is to recover fixed costs through fixed customer rates rather than charging customers based on usage.

This contradicts the long accepted idea that people should pay for what they use, and not be forced, in essence, to pay for what other people use.

Once again, green house gasses become central to the report’s conclusions, when it says a national policy is required for green house gas emissions. The report’s prejudice is revealed when it refers to “dirty diesel”. Only those with an agenda refer to fossil fuels as “dirty”.

And the report calls for the adoption of demand response, where utilities, and governments, have control over homeowners’ equipment, including air-conditioning units and refrigerators.

Most of the proposals in the MIT report are because of wind and solar on the supply side, and electric vehicles on the demand side. The purpose of the MIT report is to establish the actions that need to be taken because policy decisions are forcing the use of wind and solar and distributed generation on us.

The MIT report clearly demonstrates, once again, why wind and solar are bad for America.

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Capacity Factor and Reality

December 27, 2011

tags: AWEA, energy, natural gas, New York Times, renewable, solar, wind

Capacity Factor is key to understanding the ineffectiveness of the most popular renewables, wind and solar.

Power generation equipment, from steam turbines to wind turbines, are assigned nameplate ratings.

The nameplate rating defines the amount of electricity a unit, be it a gas turbine, steam turbine or wind turbine, can produce, if operated continuously.

For many reasons, all power generation installations are not able to operate consistently, all the time. There are maintenance issues, cycling issues, efficiency issues and several other issues that cause units to not generate electricity at their nameplate rating.

The theoretical amount of electricity that can be generated by a unit over one year can be calculated by multiplying the nameplate rating, by 365 days and then by 24 hours, with the answer expressed in kilowatt-hours, kWh.

Taking the total amount of electricity actually generated during the year and dividing it by the amount that could theoretically be generated, gives the Capacity Factor.

The capacity factor of a nuclear power plant is typically 90% or slightly more. This means that an investment in a nuclear power plant can be expected to generate 90% of the electricity that could theoretically be generated based on its nameplate rating.

Wind turbines have a capacity factor of around 30%. This reflects the fact that they don’t generate electricity when the wind isn’t blowing or when the wind blows too hard, say over 55 mph. It also reflects that between the units lowest operating speed, say 5 mph, to its most efficient operating speed, say 35 mph, it operates at different efficiencies. Wind turbines are least efficient at low wind speeds; say 5 mph, with efficiency gradually increasing as wind speed increases, until the wind turbine is operating most efficiently.

An investment in a wind turbine generates only 30% of the electricity that could theoretically be generated based on its nameplate rating.

Typical capacity factors are:

Nuclear 90%
Coal 85%
Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) 85%
Wind 30%
Concentrating Solar (CCS) 22%
PV Solar 16%

It’s been said that electricity from nuclear, coal and NGCC power plants is more valuable than electricity generated by wind, CCS or PV power plants.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) actually misleads the public when it announces that “x” megawatts (MW) of wind turbines have been installed during the year.

Comparing the MW of installed wind with the MW of installed nuclear, coal or NGCC, overstates the amount of electricity that can be produced by wind turbines.

It compares apples with oranges, and misleads people into thinking that equal investments in MW of wind or NGCC power plants produce equal amounts of electricity.

Wind also has the disadvantage of generating electricity at night when it isn’t needed. The NY Times noted this past August that the investment in wind energy couldn’t provide electricity during the afternoon when it was needed to meet the air conditioning load.

Understanding capacity factor helps to understand why wind and solar are so expensive and why they can’t produce enough electricity to meet our needs.

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Emergency Power

December 20, 2011

tags: coal, electricity, EPA, grid, RES, RPS, wind

The rapid closing of coal-fired power plants, coupled with the imposition of renewable portfolio standards (RPS) with the increase in renewables that produce electricity when it isn’t needed, but not when it is needed, means there will be a greater probability of rolling blackouts in coming years.

Storms, such as those that caused extensive power outages in Connecticut, already have people thinking about emergency backup power for their homes and offices.

Some of my neighbors in Illinois lost nearly all the furniture and belongings in their basement recreation rooms, when a storm caused a power outage and the sump pumps didn’t work.

Driving around the neighborhood after the storm, there were carpets, clothing and furniture lining the street, waiting to be picked up and taken to the landfill.

Subsequently, at least one neighbor installed a backup generator that was connected to the natural gas line. The generator comes on automatically when there is a power failure and can supply the home with all the electricity needed for refrigerators, furnaces, air-conditioning and lighting.

This shouldn’t be necessary in the United States. Shortages of electricity and rolling blackouts used to be the province of under-developed countries.

While storms are not preventable, having adequate power supplies from the grid used to be the norm. Occasionally a hurricane would create such extensive flooding and damage that power interruptions couldn’t be avoided, but seldom did they last for more than three days.

Today, the grid and power generation installations are weaker and more susceptible to outages.

The lack of transmission lines is one problem, partially caused by people not wanting them in their back yards, or because the transmission line would go through forests or environmentally sensitive areas.

Renewables are another problem. This past summer, blackouts were barely averted in New York and New Jersey when a heat wave caused an increase in load and the newly installed power generation, which was from wind, couldn’t supply the needed electricity. Wind generates electricity mostly at night, when it isn’t needed, and can’t generate very much electricity when air temperatures are high and the air is thin.

It was the availability of coal-fired power plants that prevented the blackouts, but these plants are being shut down because of EPA regulations. They won’t be available in the future when needed to supply electricity on hot summer afternoons.

Backup generators, such as those installed by my neighbors, cost about $5,000. Larger units for offices or building complexes can cost as much as $25,000.

But these may have to become the norm, because we aren’t building the base-load power plants and transmission lines we need.

The so-called smart grid doesn’t help very much. It may trim peak load or help prevent local outages caused by minor damage from ice and wind, but it can’t supply electricity if the power plants and transmission lines haven’t been built, or have been shut down prematurely.

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Hurricane Reality Check

December 16, 2011

tags: CO2, GHG, global warming, Hurricane, Irene, NY, Vermont

In recent years, especially after the movie, An Inconvenient Truth, it has been popular to predict that upcoming hurricane seasons would produce more and bigger storms.

With all this hoopla, it’s worth taking a look at the facts.

This year’s hurricane season has officially come to an end, and it hasn’t been as severe as predicted. There have been eighteen named storms, but only one hurricane hit the United States. Two tropical depressions also hit the United States.

The following table shows there have been periods of greater hurricane activity before CO2 in the atmosphere increased by any significant amount.

In addition, Dr. Chris Landsea, National Hurricane Center, has noted that many hurricanes went undetected before the advent of satellites.

This is an important point, since we can now see embryonic hurricanes as they emerge from North Africa – and then track them as they cross the Atlantic, with many swerving to the North and missing the United States by a wide margin. We might never have known about these storms prior to the use of satellites unless some hapless ship got in the path of a hurricane.

Hurricane Lisa in 2010 that rambled near the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa is an example of a storm that might not have been seen without satellites. This year, tropical storm Cindy, far out in the Atlantic, might not have been known about, though it crossed the shipping lanes and a ship might have reported it before the advent of satellites.

This table summarizes the number of hurricanes in the last century. Bringing the table up to date, 2010 and 2011: one category 3 hurricane.

Decade	All Category 1-5	Major Category 3,4,5
1900-1909	15	6
1910-1919	20	8
1920-1929	15	5
1930-1939	17	8
1940-1949	23	8
1950-1959	18	9
1960-1969	15	6
1970-1971	12	4
1980-1989	16	6
1990-1999	14	5
21^st Century
2000- 2009	23	7
Hurricanes that hit mainland U.S. Source for 20^th century storms: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/Table5.htm Source for 21^st century storms http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/index.html http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2011/index.html

Of the hurricanes that reached the continental United States, there were 90 during the first half of the twentieth century and only 75 during the second half: An average of 7 major hurricanes reached the U.S. each decade during the first half and only 6 during the second half of the century.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere were greater in the second half of the twentieth century, the reverse of hurricane frequency.

The insurance industry is clamoring for action to be taken to stop global warming because they have suffered large losses in recent years.

However, it was the increase in coastal populations that caused the higher insurance losses. In his testimony to Congress, Professor Lomborg pointed out that “the two coastal South Florida counties, Dade and Broward, are home to more people than the number of people who lived in 1930 in all 109 counties stretching from Texas through Virginia, along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.”

This year was an exception, in that Irene caused extensive flooding in Vermont, New York and New Jersey. Though unusual, this was similar to the flooding that occurred in Connecticut in 1955 from Diane when 200 dams received partial or total failure and there were 77 lives lost.

We will likely experience periods of strong hurricanes in the future, but any attempt to attribute them to global warming should be looked at with a jaundiced eye.

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Lighting Alternatives

December 13, 2011

tags: CFL, electricity, Halogen, Incandescent, LED

There’s a high probability that Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) represent the future in lighting.

Earlier articles, Lighting Aint Simple, and The CFL Debacle, explained lighting basics.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) have been forced on the American public with the outlawing of incandescent bulbs.

As explained earlier, the economics for CFLs are only favorable if the CFL is used for more than 3 hours each day. A typical CFL, rated to replace a 100W incandescent bulb, is rated to use 25 watts, with light output of 1750 Lumens and a life of 8,000 hours.

CFLs use about 75% less electricity than incandescent bulbs.

A 100 watt CFL costs about $1.40 more than an incandescent A19 bulb, the type used in table or floor lamps. The cost differential for overhead R40 or R30 lamps, used in ceilings, is about $4.30.

If a CFL is used for three hours each day, it will recover the added cost in about two months. In this case, it would make sense to replace the A19 incandescent bulb with a CFL if there is no other alternative.

But, if the CFL is used for much shorter periods of time, such as in a closet where it might be used 5 or 10 minutes each day, it would take around five years to recover the extra cost. This is most likely a bad investment.

The story is worse for overhead R40 and R30 flood lamps. A CFL used in this application for 3 hours per day would take 6 months to recover the increased cost. If used for 10 minutes a day, it would require 9 years to recover the increased cost.

It’s important to know that a CFL cannot be used for dimming, unless specifically designed for such use. Using an ordinary CFL in a dimming circuit can cause a fire.

LEDs designed to replace an A19 Edison base incandescent bulb, cost around $20 each. To be suitable for replacing a 100 W incandescent bulb, the LED lamp should have a rating of around 1700 lumens, and a color temperature of around 2900 K.

Obviously, a $20 lamp is uneconomic, even if it uses 90% less electricity than a 100 W incandescent bulb. At $20 each, it would require nearly 2 years to recover the added cost of the LED lamp.

The cost of LED lamps is decreasing rapidly, and could reach a cost where LED lamps are an economic replacement for a 100 watt incandescent bulb in ten years or so.

LED lamps are economic where the labor cost to replace a lamp exceeds the premium for incandescent or other lamps, such as sodium vapor street lamps.

A recent Wall Street Journal article described the use of LED lamps in commercial and street lighting applications where the high cost of labor to change out a lamp, justified the more expensive LED lamps.

There is another alternative to CFLs for home use.

Halogen lamps for replacing 100 W incandescent bulbs are available. They can be superior to CFLs in life and color rendering. Halogen lamps rated 1490 Lumens, with a color temperature of 2900 K, are available.

When replacing a 100 W incandescent bulb that is used for 3 hours each day, the Halogen lamp will pay for itself in 3 1/2 months. While the payback period is slightly longer than for a CFL, the improved light may be worth the cost.

LEDs have a bright future in lighting and will undoubtedly capture the lion’s share of the lighting market in ten years or so.

In the meantime, we are encumbered by a politically motivated Congress to having to pay more for lighting.

In addition this, legislation has cost American jobs, with the bulk of CFLs made in China.

By outlawing incandescent bulbs, Congress has taken away our ability to use the lowest cost alternative.

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Another Misleading Report

December 9, 2011

tags: Brattle Group, Carbon, CO2, Conservation, Demand Response, EIA, EnerNOC, environment, Keystone, NREL, Smart Meters

The Brattle Group proudly issued their report that energy efficiency will result in a 5% to 15% drop in electricity consumption by 2020.

Prestigious publications published summaries of the report.

It’s unbelievable that an unscientific poll could form the basis of a report intended to influence policy makers. The Brattle Group should be ashamed of itself for issuing such an unscientific report.

The Brattle Group surveyed 50 so-called experts, asking for their opinion as to whether energy efficiency would cause a reduction in the usage of electricity.

Of the 50 “experts” who were surveyed, 22 were from utilities, 10 were from non-profits (TSAugust was not surveyed) and 8 were from government. For example, the manufacturer of smart meters participated in the survey, as did a representative of NREL, the government organization promoting renewables and energy efficiency.

Furthermore, the report was issued in conjunction with Global Energy Partners, an EnerNOC Company, which sells energy and demand response solutions and obviously has a vested interest in promoting these approaches.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of survey participants, 40 out of 50, had a bias for, and a vested interest in, promoting energy efficiency.

The Brattle Group also asked the question in a way that made the report’s conclusions irrelevant.

The question was: How much will energy efficiency lower consumption compared to what it would have been?

The question infers there is a baseline against which to make a comparison, but the report doesn’t refer to or establish a baseline. Responses, therefore, were irrelevant opinions without meaning – and unscientific.

The only baseline that makes sense is the forecast of electricity consumption made by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA’s, April 2011 projections, forecast that electricity demand would grow at a 1% rate between now and 2035, essentially the same as population growth.

The EIA forecast already INCLUDES the impact of the various technologies highlighted by the 50 responders as the reasons why electricity consumption will decrease by 5% to 15%. (Page 73 of the EIA projections makes this clear.)

The report said “enhancements in energy efficiency may eliminate the need to make investments in the power supply system.”

The lack of new investments, however, could lead to a shortage of electricity, and there is no careful examination of this possibility in the report.

Here is how the 50 participants expect to cut energy usage 5% to 15% by 2020, which, as noted, are already largely included in the EIA’s forecast of 1% growth.

The use of Demand Response (DR), including smart meters, will reduce peak demand by 7.5% to 15%.
Changing consumer behavior is identified as the way by which demand can be cut. It refers to smart meters, home energy management and new rate structures that penalize electricity usage during peak periods, as the next approach for cutting energy usage.
Next, the report cites the establishment of aggressive codes requiring people to invest in such things as insulation and Energy Star appliances.

It should be noted that DR requires home owners to agree to allow utilities to control their thermostats, or allow utilities to interrupt electricity to their refrigerator or air-conditioning units.

For the most part, the report lacks specific data as to how savings will be achieved. One exception is a statement that 40% of consumers will buy high efficiency air-conditioning units by 2020.

There is no statistical explanation for the statement. Undoubtedly, new air-conditioning units purchased for new buildings will be high efficiency units. There won’t be enough residential construction over the next 8 years to support such a statement. There also aren’t sufficient cost savings to justify replacing existing units before they fail. So what is the scientific or statistical basis for such a statement?

These highlight the unscientific nature of the Brattle Group report, though they are not isolated instances.

The report makes similar claims about natural gas usage.

The report doesn’t even mention the impact that electric vehicles, PHEVs and EVs, or that Cloud Computing will have on demand for electricity. These are not minor omissions.

The only reason I can see for publishing the unscientific Brattle Group report was to encourage State legislators and members of Congress, who won’t have time to critically analyze the report, to support measures that may not be in the best interests of their constituents, but that are widely supported by environmental activists.

Such ideas as smart meters, time of day pricing and forcing uneconomic decisions on consumers are currently in vogue, and supported by those who want to cut the use of fossil fuels.

The report references a carbon constrained world, which is shorthand for cutting CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. For example, EnerNOC, on its website, advertises carbon accounting, under the “CarbonSMART” logo, as one of its offerings.

We all need to be alert to this type of demagoguery in the guise of so-called scientific reporting, which is too often championed by the media in support of cutting the use of fossil fuels.

The influence of activist environmentalists in stopping the Keystone XL pipeline demonstrates how relentless these groups can be.

The Brattle Group report is very unfortunate. In my view, the report is essentially opinion, masquerading as science.

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Storing Electricity

December 6, 2011

tags: Batteries, Beacon Power, CO2, electricity, GHG, Hydrogen, renewable, RES, RPS, solar, wind

Storage of electricity is the holy grail of renewables. Without the ability to store electricity, renewables will remain uneconomic.

Electricity must be generated as it is consumed, unless there is a way to store excess electricity for use at a later time – referred to as time-shifting renewables.

The storage issue isn’t a one size fits all issue.

Renewables require the ability to store very large quantities of electricity.

Uninterruptable power supplies, on the other hand, only require storing enough electricity to provide a buffer until back-up supplies can be brought on-line. The nature of the buffer depends on the required quality of the electricity supplied by the storage medium, in terms of voltage stability, interruptible cycles and frequency.

There are storage devices covering the spectrum between these two extremes, for doing such tasks as smoothing transmission and distribution to provide better quality in terms of voltage regulation, power factor correction and integrating distributed generation.

The real storage issue relates to renewables.

Electricity can be stored as chemical, thermal or mechanical energy.

Batteries utilize chemical storage. These include lead-acid, Lithium-ion, Sodium-Sulphur and flow batteries.

Salt pits at concentrating solar power (CSP) plants are a form of thermal storage. Using ice in cooling systems is another method of thermal storage.

Pumped storage, where water is pumped uphill to a reservoir, is a form of mechanical storage. Compressed air is another form of mechanical storage. Flywheels, such as those produced by Beacon Power Corp., which recently went bankrupt, is another method for mechanical storage.

Another approach is to use hydrogen as a storage medium.

Storage becomes a critical element of grid operation as the impact of renewable portfolio standards (RPS) or renewable energy standards (RES) become more pronounced. Specifically, as the percentage of electricity from renewables grows from a few percent to 20% or more.

In California, where RPS has been taken to an extreme, regulators are in the process of requiring utilities to equip their systems with increasing amounts of storage. This, of course, will increase costs and the prices paid by consumers for electricity. (Assembly Bill 2514 directs the California Public Utilities Commission to determine energy storage procurement targets.)

In attempting to explain the value of energy storage, the CPUC avoids the financial cost of storage by including societal benefits in the cost equation, such as avoiding use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

All of the storage mediums described above, have limitations.

Pumped storage, which is a proven technology, requires building expensive dams and reservoirs, while incurring objections from environmental organizations.

Most batteries have limited storage capacities. Those that could store large amounts of electricity, such as Sodium-Sulphur, are very large and expensive.

Compressed air storage requires a large space, with sufficient volume in which to store the compressed air.

In summary, we currently lack the ability to store large quantities of electricity at low cost.

Until this changes, renewables will remain a very costly and inefficient method for generating electricity.

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Pipelines Required For CCS

December 2, 2011

tags: Carbon, carbon capture, CCS, CO2, CO2Europipe, coal, EU, Europe, GHG, global warming, Sequestration

While the ability to capture CO2 from coal-fired and natural gas power plants remains under investigation, and the ability to store CO2 underground remains in doubt, people are now looking at what it would take to transport the CO2 from where it’s been captured to where it might be sequestered.

The second edition of Carbon Folly contains a map that I prepared showing where CO2 pipelines might have to be built in the United States.

: USA CO2 Pipelines

The map is based on transporting CO2 from 417 coal-fired power plants, rated 100 MW and above, to locations where it might be possible to sequester the CO2. The map does not include pipelines for transporting CO2 from the remaining coal-fired power plants, natural gas power plants or from cement mills and other industrial operations, such as steel mills.

The total length of the pipelines shown in the map is nearly 11,000 miles.

In November 2011, the CO2Europipe project published a map showing where CO2 pipelines would be needed in Europe by 2050.

EU CO2 Pipelines 2050

There were some important differences between the two approaches.

While my projections limited transporting CO2 from only 417 coal-fired power plants, the CO2Europipe project included industrial locations, such as steel mills. It also grouped point sources into clusters.
The CO2Europipe project also included underwater pipelines to allow sequestration under the North Sea.
The projected cost of the European pipeline was about $68 billion, or roughly three times my estimate. Part of the difference is caused by the higher cost of pipelines routed underwater. The CO2Europipe project also had more engineers working on the project, which probably resulted in more detailed estimates.
The European pipeline would also cross country borders. Cross border issues complicate construction, funding and sequestration. Local popular discontent with CO2 sequestration is complicating decision making.

There were also some similarities between my projections and those of the CO2Europipe project.

The CO2Europipe project concluded there would be a need for at least 13,000 miles of pipelines.
The CO2Europipe report also reiterated there would be safety issues when transporting CO2 at high pressures of approximately 2,000 psi. Issues surrounding the purity of the CO2 stream, mixing of different streams and prevention of crack propagation are examples.
The report also reiterated the fact that locations for sequestering CO2 had not been properly evaluated.

Carbon Folly contains more detailed information about CCS and the pipelines required for transporting CO2. Carbon Folly also explores other related issues. See www.carbonfolly.com

Three earlier articles also discussed CCS in more detail. See Carbon Capture; and CO2 Pipeline Concerns with CCS; and CO2 Pipeline Rights of Way.

The EU study of CO2 transportation issues, coupled with problems surrounding CO2 capture and sequestration, reinforces the impression that CCS is a boondoggle that should be abandoned.

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Capacity Factor and Reality

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Another Misleading Report

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Pipelines Required For CCS

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