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Banco Mundial reduce expectativas crecimiento

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Petróleo de Texas cierra la semana a $99,56 para entrega en marzo - La Tribuna.hn

La Tribuna.hnPetróleo de Texas cierra la semana a $99,56 para entrega en marzoLa Tribuna.hnEl petróleo de Texas bajó hoy el 0,14% y cerró la semana a $99,56 el barril, durante un día en el que se conoció que la economía estadounidense creció el último trimestre a un ritmo ligeramente menor del previsto por los analistas. EL petróleo en Texas ...Petróleo cierra con leve caída en Nueva York en mercado inquieto ...UnivisiónSube el petróleo Brent, baja el WTIPrensa LatinaPetróleo sube en Europa y cae levemente en Nueva YorkEl Universal (Venezuela)ABC.eslos 175 artículos informativos »

PETROLEO-Brent avanza tras amenaza Irán de frenar exportaciones - Reuters América Latina

swissinfo.chPETROLEO-Brent avanza tras amenaza Irán de frenar exportacionesReuters América LatinaNUEVA YORK (Reuters) - Los precios del crudo Brent subieron por segundo día consecutivo el viernes, dado que la próxima votación parlamentaria en Irán sobre la suspensión de las exportaciones de petróleo a la Unión Europea mantuvo la atención en la ...Presidente de Irán asegura que su país no necesita vender petróleo ...Centro de Información por Internet de ChinaIrán responde a UE con su propia amenaza de embargoTerra Perúlos 158 artículos informativos »

¿Cómo puede perjudicarnos el embargo de petróleo iraní? - La Vanguardia

Los Andes (Argentina)¿Cómo puede perjudicarnos el embargo de petróleo iraní?La VanguardiaVaya por delante que el precio del petróleo en el mercado internacional depende de multitud de factores, pero la geopolítica y las amenazas de países contra otros influye en la negociación que imponen los ricos países productores, como Arabia Saudi.España sustituirá el crudo iraní por petróleo saudíEl País.com (España)UE bloquea al petróleo iraní y Teherán amenaza con cerrar Ormuzlatercera.comTeherán amenaza con dejar a Europa sin petróleo tras el embargo de ...ABC.esLos Andes (Argentina) -La Voz de Galicialos 1.728 artículos informativos »

Véspera de Nada

O prezo do petróleo volve marcar (en euros) o récord histórico de 2008

Ofrecémosvos traducido un artigo publicado o pasado martes no blog Oil Man de Le Monde, no que se nos fai ver como a depreciación do euro fronte ao dólar desde 2008 fixo que —contados na moeda europea— esteamos de novo nos maiores prezos da historia. A tradución de urxencia é de Xoán Doldán: En euros, [...]

Ted Trainer: «O obxectivo non é loitar contra a sociedade capitalista, senón construír a súa alternativa»

Traducimos parte dunha interesante entrevista que publicou hai uns días o web australiano GreenLeft (Esquerda Verde). O entrevistado é Ted Trainer, profesor da Universidade de Nova Gales do Sur, autor do libro «Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society» e propoñente do Simpler Way, concepto moi achegado ao Decrecemento. (…) debemos movernos cara depender das [...]

O pico do petróleo en varios medios de comunicación grazas a Europa Press

Sorprendeunos que unha das principais axencias de noticias mencionase —aínda que un tanto agachado dentro dunha nova que tocaba diversos temas e na boca non dun responsable político senón dun líder ecoloxista— nos medios de masas o pasado día 30 de decembro o concepto do Teito do petróleo: «El portavoz de Ecologistas en Acción, Luis [...]

The Oil Crash

Gestionando los recursos desde una maternidad consciente

Maternidad, de Pablo Ruiz PicassoQueridos lectores,En varias ocasiones se ha hablado aquí del control de la población, de cómo gestionar la violencia que viene, de las inevitables guerras, hambrunas o epidemias... todas ellas visiones muy masculinas de cómo deben gestionarse las relaciones interpersonales de la transición, muy viriles, muy "guerreras". Quizá convendría por una vez tener otra visión, de ese 50% de la Humanidad que muchas veces es invisible y que, en particular, raramente participa en este blog. Por eso creo que es una ocasión especial contar hoy con el post que ha escrito Natalia. En realidad su post no va de escasez de recursos o de cómo gestionar la crisis, sino de cosas más básicas y que en realidad están antes. Quizá de ser atendidas cosas antes no habría ese después del que tanto hablamos en este blog.La visión de Natalia es muy diferente de la que predomina en este blog, y probablemente no será del gusto de muchos lectores habituales. Les invito, sin embargo, a leerla sin perjuicios, a ver un poco más lejos, a ver cómo, en realidad, de lo que habla Natalia es de lo mismo sobre lo que damos tantas vueltas... pero yendo más directamente al grano.Les dejo con Natalia. Salu2,AMT*******  Elpresente post se escribe desde el contexto de una crisis que no acabará nunca, tal como nos ha recordado Antonio en otro postanterior, teniendo como posible escenario generalizado una gran exclusión social debida a la crisis económica que, como sabemos losque aquí comentamos, va de la mano de una crisis de recursos,energética y ecológica . Cada vez se hace más urgente gestionarlos recursos de que disponemos de una manera consciente, prudente ymoderada, para que nuestras necesidades básicas y las de nuestrasfamilias estén cubiertas.Heincluido el término de maternidad consciente ya que las madres somosel núcleo sobre el que nos sustentamos como especie. Somos laurdimbre de este tejido social. Los hombres, padres o no, y lasmujeres que no son madres forman la trama de ese tejido humano. Sinurdimbre no hay tejido. Sin trama, tampoco.Cadavez que aparezca la palabra madre hay que entenderla como personamaternante de una criatura humana, esto es, como persona base deconexión emocional, de alimento y de cuidados de dicha criatura.ElDr. Michel Odent es un conocido obstetra francés que creó enLondres el "Centro de Investigación de Salud Primal", centrodonde recopilan estudios publicados en revistas científicas ymédicas en las que se investiga la relación entre el periodo primal(que comprende desde el embarazo hasta un año después delnacimiento) y la capacidad de amar del individuo. Así, se descubrióque las conductas violentas en edades adultas están asociadas a"complicaciones" durante el nacimiento, junto a una tempranaseparación de la madre o rechazo por parte de ella.Lahormona oxitocina se encuentra en medio de cualquier aspectorelacionado con el amor. Es primeramente secretada por el hipotálamo;posteriormente, pasa a la glándula pituitaria posterior donde, bajocircunstancias específicas, como puede ser un parto, es liberadarepentinamente al torrente sanguíneo de forma pulsátil.Lasbetaendorfinas liberan prolactina, una hormona que le da el toquefinal a la maduración de los pulmones del bebé y que es necesariapara la secreción de la leche materna. A la vez, durante el parto,el bebé libera sus propias endorfinas. Es en este momento en el quese establece esa relación de apego o vínculo.Sinembargo existen otras hormonas, como la adrenalina, que inhiben a lasanteriores y que son liberadas cuando los mamíferos tienen miedo osienten frío. Estas hormonas nos preparan para un posible caso dehuida o lucha, y permite a una madre en fase de parto, detener elmismo y posponerlo. Otro potente inhibidor del parto es el neocórtex.Para que el parto se produzca el neocórtex tiene que reducir suactividad, permitiendo al "cerebro primitivo" tomar el mando.Luces intensas, conversaciones lógicas, ruidos, o un ambientedesconocido, alteran la fluidez durante el parto. Para sentirnosseguros, antes nos debemos sentir protegidos. Lo que consideramos lamanera normal de nacer es una manera violenta de venir al mundo, esuna manera violenta de dar a luz.Cuandoel proceso del nacimiento se vea como un período importantísimo ennuestra capacidad de amar, nuestra visión de la violencia cambiará.Frederick Leboyer en su precioso libro "Por un nacimiento sin violencia",nos acerca al nacimiento desde la perspectiva del bebé, otorgándoleel papel protagonista que le pertenece.John Bowlby escribió un artículo titulado "The Nature of theChild's Tie to his Mother". Por su parte Harry Harlow publicóel mismo año "The Nature of Love". Ambos escribieron sobre elapego y su función primordial en la salud del bebé.Otrosestudios antropológicos realizados por Margaret Mead en su extensaobra, Jean Liedloff en su obra "El concepto del continuum", oMeredith F. Small en "Nuestros hijos y nosotros", nos recuerdanque las sociedades más apegadas y cuidadosas con la naturaleza, enlas que predomina la armonía, son aquellas que tratan a los niñoscon igualdad, dignidad y respeto. Los niños están incluidos entodos los ámbitos de la vida y se les tiene en cuenta para laorganización de cada aspecto de la misma. Sin embargo en lassociedades guerreras, los niños son tratados con dureza y educadospara ese fin en su vida futura.Sepuede concluir, por lo tanto, que si deseamos una sociedad másjusta, donde las personas sean tratadas con dignidad, respeto eigualdad, hemos de tratar amablemente a los niños.Dela misma manera, las madres que están criando necesitan sentirseprotegidas y cuidadas, para poder cuidar adecuadamente de sucriatura. Es por esto que se dice que para criar a un niño hacefalta toda una tribu. Antonio escribió en un post anterior sobre lanecesidad de la comunidad para resolverse en los duros tiempos que seavecinan, y las madres y sus bebés son especialmente vulnerables ala falta de esa comunidad.Asu vez, tienen mucho que aportar. Ya nuestro cuerpo durante elembarazo, momento especial en el que se ha de nutrir a otro ser vivo,se vuelve más efectivo con los alimentos que ingiere la madre. Loque antes alimentaba a uno, ahora lo hace para dos personas.Cuandonace el bebé, aprendemos a utilizar las dos manos para tareas en lasque antes sólo sabíamos utilizar una sola, como comer, por ejemplo.Aprendemos de manera exponencial a prestar atención a dos, tres oincluso más tareas a la vez. Nuestro cuerpo se prepara para cobijardurante muchos meses a la criatura recién nacida. Nuestra mentefocaliza la atención en todas las áreas cerebrales que impliquenuna mayor efectividad para ofrecer cuidados y atención. Otras áreastales como las implicadas en el lenguaje, son relegadas a un segundoplano. (Ver "El cerebro femenino" de la neurobióloga LouannBrizendine).Haynumerosos autores que han publicado el resultado de susinvestigaciones y sería demasiado extenso mencionarlos y resumir elaporte de cada uno de ellos en un solo post, por lo que intentaréaumentar la información en los comentarios. Ennuestra sociedad disponemos actualmente de una gran cantidad yvariedad de recursos. Éstos han moldeado la cultura en la quevivimos, con sus límites e ideas. Recuerdo el parto de mi primerahija. Venía de nalgas y esta posición está considerada como"peligrosa", por lo que la solución a este problema es practicaruna cesárea. Sin embargo yo tenía suficientes conocimientos comopara elegir con conciencia qué opción tomar. Mi hija nació denalgas en un parto natural que duró unas tres horas en unamaternidad muy especial donde mi elección fue respetada. Mi segundahija nació en casa, frente al fuego del hogar. La recogieron supadre y una amiga que nos acompañaba esa noche. La matrona sepresentó unos minutos más tarde para observar que mi evolución yla de mi hija fueran las adecuadas. No necesité nada más, así queliberé recursos para que repercutieran en el resto de la sociedad. Undía cualquiera en nuestras vidas puede transcurrir aproximadamenteasí:Noslevantamos con el sol y desayunamos unas mandarinas, algo de pantostado y yo me preparo un café, que me tomo con la conciencia deestar disfrutando de un lujo. La mañana se nos pasa en encender elfuego y preparar la leña, dar de comer a las gallinas y al gato,recoger los huevos, leer algún libro y practicar alguno de losúltimos conocimientos que hayamos adquirido. En mi caso hace poco heaprendido a tejer. Mi hija está fascinada con las matemáticas yutilizamos garbanzos, lentejas, macarrones o piedras para resolverlos problemas. Posiblemente también realice algún juego creativodonde se invente historias, o comience una manualidad que le permitaadquirir una habilidad o un conocimiento nuevo. Mientras tanto heamamantado varias ocasiones a mi bebé, que habrá dormido alguna queotra vez. Su papá ocupa el tiempo fuera del trabajo en finalizaraquellas tareas que se hayan quedado pendientes, o en atender aalguna de sus hijas. Preparamos la comida, que en escasas ocasionesllevará carne. Después de comer, si el tiempo lo permite,recogeremos ramas secas del bosque que tenemos cercano a casa, oquizá esparto para alguna manualidad. Con facilidad nos cruzaremoscon alguno de los pastores del pueblo y yo intentaré concluir algúntrueque de leche o lana por otros alimentos. A su vez visitaremos alos vecinos de al lado para darles mandarinas a cambio de las patatasque recibimos hace unas semanas atrás. Llegará la noche y cenaremosaprovechando el horno de leña unas patatas asadas, que acompañaremosde los huevos que hemos recogido de nuestras gallinas. Cuando lleguela hora de dormir, a pesar del cansancio, tendremos la sensación deque faltó tiempo para todas las cosas que deseábamos hacer. Concalma, nos acostamos sabiendo que mañana comienza un nuevo día yque miles de nuevas opciones se abren ante nuestros ojos.Buenasnoches.

Amortiguador logístico y local a la crisis energética

 Queridos lectores,Después de tantos post tan negativos sobre las alternativas renovables, el post de hoy corre a cargo de un viejo conocido de este blog, Juan Luis Chulilla, quien nos brinda algunas ideas útiles sobre una cuestión clave y poco discutida de la crisis energética: las necesidades logísticas. Les dejo con Juan Luis.Salu2,AMT Amortiguador logístico y local a la crisis energética(CC-By) Juan ChulillaCada vez hay que hacer un esfuerzo de voluntad más férreo, cada vezhay que ser más disciplinado en el wishful thinking, paranegar el escenario que nos espera en el futuro cercano: la ofertaenergética no va a poder satisfacer la totalidad de la demanda.Antonio lleva más de dos años ilustrándonos con análisis propiosy ajenos distintos aspectos de este cuadro.Podríamos dejarlo aquí, dado que es tan innegable comoinevitable... si no se matiza. Efectivamente, la oferta energéticano va a poder responder a la demanda energética tal cual es hoyen día. Como quiera que los homo sapiens somos muy buenos enhacer de la necesidad virtud, hay espacio para una reflexiónpositiva y realista, sin wishful thinking por un lado ni madmaxismospor otro. No sé vosotros, pero a mí el cuero con tachuelas mequedan fatal y sé quién saldría de la cúpula del trueno conaquello de "dos hombres entran, uno sale": no sería yo.A lo que voy. La demanda energética es más elástica de lo queparece, si pagamos distintos precios. Como Antonio nos ha idocomentando, uno de los precios va a ser el del transporte privado. Dehecho, en colaboraciones anteriores hablé del problema del cochecomo símbolo de status, con lo que huelga repetirlo. Sin embargo, eltransporte privado es una parte hasta menor de un problema mucho másgeneral, de uno de los problemas esenciales de la humanidad denuestro tiempo: la logística.Si tengo que ir al curro en tren en vez de en coche (no es mi caso) yle tengo que echar 4 horas en vez de una es una faena tremenda, peropuedo vivir con ello. Si la flota logística mundial transporta menosproductos de primera necesidad, no es una faena: es un peligro mortalpara poblaciones enteras. Las dos maravillas de la logísticaindustrial y postindustrial es que es eficaz a escalas inimaginableshace 60 años, o incluso 30, y que es transparente. Y la sostienen laenergía barata, lo que tienen los días contados, y ladigitalización de la cadena, lo que tiene margen para la mejora.Vaya por delante que las mejoras en la digitalización de la cadenano pueden compensar la caída de la energía barata, pero síaminorar un poco su impacto. Sobre todo, si deja de ser transparente:nuestro día a día ha provocado que nos resulte invisible eltrasiego de mercancías por nuestros núcleos urbanos, a fuerza deverlo. Sólo una minoría de la población es consciente de lasenormes distancias que recorren nuestras mercancías, y delkilometraje excesivo consecuencia de las economías de escaladependientes de la energía barata. Lo mismo que es más baratoproducir en China y transportar en enormes portacontenedores aRotterdam, es más barato producir los componentes del ketchup engran escala en donde sea más barato de Europa y mezclarlos en UK.Si la población es consciente de que la cadena logística puedemejorar, que es necesario que mejore y que una de las mejorasconsiste en eliminar los kilometrajes innecesarios, aumentarán lapresión para reconfigurar las cadenas de producción. Los logospueden llegar a ser muy poderosos si adquieren viralidad, con lo quea lo mejor sería muy útil que, una vez que empezara el movimientode limitación logística, los fabricantes que se adhirieran a élusaran un logo impactante. Algo asíhttp://ekamanganese.deviantart.com/art/Snail-Vector-94976805Claro que la disminución de la huella logística de un producto noacaba ahí. Podemos dar un paso más y apostar por la vuelta delgranel, tanto en envase reciclable como en sobre de papel.Cuando vayáis a una gran superficie, paraos a observar lasestanterías repletas de productos. Una orgía visual y de coloresenvuelve a cada alimento o bebida. Si las bandejas de poliuretanoexpandido son obligatorias de facto para envolver carne opescado y muy habituales para fruta y hasta verdura, ahoraplastificamos hasta la herramienta más inane para colgarla de sugancho en el expositor. Cada producto consume no sólo cantidadesnada despreciables respecto a su masa de envoltorio y decoración delmismo, sino que además ocupa mucho más en el transporte. Es obvio que no se puede volver de golpe a las compras que hacíannuestras abuelas, pero algunos pasos son sencillos: desde el envaseretornable en refrescos y bebidas alcohólicas, a rechazar elembalaje en poliuretano del máximo de productos posibles, parallegar a una conciencia cívica y social de la falta de necesidad detanta fanfarria marketiniana. Y esto no es político o estético,sino energético: transportar barriles de bebidas, o alimentos agranel, es más eficiente que empaquetarlos en cómodos packs.La ciudadanía y su conciencia es imprescindible. Vuelvo a la ideasencilla, hasta tonta, de un logo que podría convivir con elcaracol. Aquí no lo veo tan obvio, pero quizás un paquete abierto,o un cucurucho... (perdonad si el arte gráfico no es lo mío). http://www.veryicon.com/icons/system/sticker-pack-1/package-2.htmlY por no extenderme demasiado, una última medida logística, aúnmás social que la anterior: volver a la fabricación localaprovechando el conocimiento distribuido.Las lamentables condiciones de trabajo en China y otros países endesarrollo provocan que sea muy barato producir en grandes fábricasal otro lado del mundo. El fin de la energía barata romperá esasituación, y la única solución nace del decrecimiento odownshifting. Pero ese decrecimiento, tan inevitable como deseable,no tiene por qué ser en bruto, lineal.Ocurre lo mismo que con la logística: de tan abundante, esinvisible. En este caso, las fábricas se han alejado de las zonasresidenciales, y sólo una minoría pequeña de la población conocede primera mano los procesos de fabricación de los bienes. Contandocon que el decrecimiento reducirá la masa de productos fabricados ypor lo tanto la ventaja de la economía de escala, la fabricaciónlocal puede responder muy bien a la nueva situación. No sólo porreducir la huella logística de productos elaborados - recordemos,hasta ahora hay que moverlo todo, la materia prima y el productoelaborado, por medio mundo - sino que con apoyo digital se puedeajustar mucho más el stockage y el volumen de fabricación ademandas mucho más precisas. Dell en su día fue un ejemplo de cómoreducir al mínimo el stockage de componentes aprovechando la cadenade distribución basada en Internet.Pero eso es sólo el principio. El problema de la fabricaciónindustrial convencional es que exige el empleo de máquinasherramienta enormes, caras y complejas de operar. Aunque no sea elejemplo más positivo, el Kalashnikov es "barato" porque hay enIzhmash y otros lugares líneas de producción kilométricas quepermiten producciones millonarias. Sin embargo, el auge de lastecnologías digitales ha provocado que la Ley de Moore influyatambién en el coste de las máquinas-herramienta asistidas porordenador o CNC: cortadoras, prensadoras, rematadoras, etc. Siguiendocon el ejemplo, el abaratamiento de las CNC permitió que en USAfloreciera una red de pequeñas empresas de armamento basadascompletamente en CNC, lo que les aseguraba tanto unas calidades yacabados muy estrictos como les permitía que tiradas muy cortasfueran viables y ajustables a la demanda, en lugar de almacenarkilómetros de armeros.La ley de Moore se sigue aplicando a los procesos de fabricación, yhay margen para la mejora. No sólo eso, Internet ha entrado de llenoy ha provocado su típico efecto disruptivo: si antes de Internet eracomplejo acceder a los conocimientos necesarios para operar máquinasCNC, hoy hay comunidades de particulares que adquieren máquinasbaratas y/o usadas y las operan adquiriendo y compartiendoconocimiento.Como ejemplo de comunidad (amateur, sin pretensiones profesionales,pero aún así impactante) tenemos thingiverse(http://www.thingiverse.com).Os recomiendo un paseo a los que no la conozcáis, porque es unejemplo magnífico de lo que puede lograr una comunidad motivada parala autofabricación.De hecho, en thingiverse vemos gran cantidad de ejemplos de unosdispositivos con más publicidad mediática: las impresoras 3D. Estosaparatos, que lentamente y capa a capa extruden un modelo plástico apartir de instrucciones del ordenador, bien pueden ser el anticipo deuna revolución que algunos creen cercana, la autofabricación encasa. Sin embargo, hoy por hoy no solucionan la mayoría de lasnecesidades reales de objetos y productos fabriles de primeranecesidad.Por otra parte, si se distribuyen y abaratan las máquinas CNC, si sedistribuye el conocimiento de operarlas y, como vemos en thingiverse,modelos digitales para fabricar productos reales, la fabricacióndistribuida, plenamente local, podría ser una realidad enrelativamente poco tiempo. Esto tendría el beneficio añadido de darempleo a las masas de desempleados habidos y por haber.En resumen: la conciencia de lalogística moderna, sus problemas y sus soluciones permiten seroptimistas hasta cierto punto y asumir que, con más decisión quesuerte, el downshifting puede no ser catastrófico

Los problemas del biodiésel: contaminación bacteriana y desgaste del motor

Queridos lectores,He aquí el segundo post de la miniserie sobre la discusión de los problemas específicos al uso del biodiésel, en este caso uno bastante grave y muy bien documentado por Rafael Íñiguez. Salu2,AMT Biocarburantes de recursos 'renovables'. Apuntes del biodiésel. Desde hace unos años, es habitual ver en algunas estaciones de servicio de nuestros pueblos y ciudades surtidores etiquetados como 'Biodiésel', la reacción a su visión es de agrado, la diferencia de precio no es muy grande, pero el creer que hacemos un bien a nuestro entorno nos hace sentirnos mejor. Elegir esta opción implica el uso de un carburante biodiésel o FAME(1) que puede consumirse puro o en un porcentaje determinado, (p.e., B20= 20% FAME), para estos productos la estación de servicio tiene la obligación de venderlos etiquetados, para que el usuario asuma la compatibilidad de la determinada concentración de FAME con el funcionamiento de su motor. No obstante, aunque no utilicemos la opción del biodiésel, desde el año 2008 (Orden ITC/2877/2008) todos los gasóleos contienen por imperativo legal un porcentaje de FAME mezclado con el gasóleo fósil. Este porcentaje ha ido aumentando desde su implantación hasta el 7% actual(2).  Esto es consecuencia de la aplicación de las políticas de los estados para reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, estimular la agricultura  y disminuir la dependencia energética exterior que tienen la mayoría de los países industrializados de la Unión Europea y particularmente de España. Estas políticas se iniciaron con la Directiva 2003/30/CE, del Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo, de 8 de mayo de 2003, para el fomento del uso de biocarburantes, la cual despertó grandes expectativas de negocio a nuevas empresas, las cuales han sido incentivadas con ayudas y facilidades por parte de las administraciones. Sin embargo, la aventura no ha sido muy afortunada y gran parte de las plantas de producción han tenido que cerrar por falta de rentabilidad, sobre todo por inferioridad de condiciones ante la importación de estos productos desde Estados Unidos o Argentina, donde aprovechan las subvenciones de sus países, y la llamada tasa cero que los exime de pagar impuestos al entrar en nuestro país (en principio, hasta finales del 2012), lo que les da a estas importaciones unas condiciones de mercado muy ventajosas. Debido a esta competencia, se ha llegado a solicitar por la asociación de productores de energías renovables (APPA) que se incremente progresivamente la proporción de FAME en el gasóleo hasta el 15% para el año 2020 y así poder dar salida a la capacidad de producción de nuestras plantas. Este es uno de los problemas que ha tenido, lo que en principio fue previsto como una ayuda para solucionar los problemas energéticos. Por desgracia nada es tan fácil y el biodiésel, si bien puede ser una ayuda, está 'recién llegado' y tiene muchas barreras que superar.En España, más del 70% del parque móvil emplea gasóleo, ya que además es el que utilizan los transportistas debido a que el motor diésel tiene un mayor rendimiento que el de gasolina, y también porque existía una histórica diferencia de precios a favor del gasóleo. Una diferencia que, por la nueva fiscalidad, ha desaparecido. Esto determina que las características físico-químicas del gasóleo a suministrar estén limitadas por la compatibilidad con los millones de motores existentes que están funcionando, y que en su mayoría fueron diseñados para consumir gasóleo fósil (petrodiésel) con la  especificación técnica EN 590. Ahora y desde la obligación del uso de mezclas con biocarburantes, estos son  producidos según la norma europea EN 14214.Esta norma EN 14214 se ha diseñado en función del biodiésel obtenido a partir de aceite de colza, la oleaginosa de mayor productividad en la zona centroeuropea, así como por otras características regionales. Debido también a las características regionales, algunos países mediterráneos donde, por ejemplo, el girasol es la principal oleaginosa, han introducido determinadas modificaciones en la norma para estimular la producción de biodiesel a partir de sus propias materias primas. En el caso de España, por ejemplo, se estableció un límite máximo superior en el índice de yodo, lo que impide su comercialización en otros países europeos donde se adoptaron las especificaciones originales de la norma.Entre las normativas de países hay especificaciones con diferencias fundamentales, que se deben, por ejemplo, a normas sobre emisiones, o de protección del medio ambiente regional, o a las certificaciones exigidas a los constructores de motores. Entre las especificaciones que más limitan se encuentran (3):• Contenido en azufre: el límite sobre este parámetro depende de la legislación sectorial de aplicación sobre contaminación atmosférica, que en la UE se basa en los requisitos establecidos legalmente para el diésel fósil.• Operabilidad en climas fríos: el punto de fusión y el comportamiento a bajas temperaturas en las materias primas que se pueden utilizar en la producción de biodiésel. Los límites de este parámetro están principalmente basados en las condiciones climáticas regionales.• Número de cetano: el límite sobre este parámetro depende de las especificaciones establecidas para el diésel convencional en la norma europea EN 590. El límite europeo para los constructores de motores está certificado con el mínimo de 51, establecido también para el biodiésel. Este estándar depende de las materias primas utilizadas en su fabricación.• Estabilidad a la oxidación: el biodiésel se degrada con mayor facilidad que el diésel fósil debido a su composición química. La estabilidad a la oxidación es un parámetro fundamental para asegurar el correcto funcionamiento en los motores, así como para su almacenamiento y distribución.• Contenido en mono-, di-, y triglicéridos: la norma europea establece límites individuales en el contenido de estos compuestos, así como para el glicerol total. Estos parámetros, y el glicerol libre, dependen del proceso de producción.• Densidad: la densidad del biodiésel es generalmente mayor que la del diésel fósil. Esta propiedad depende, en el caso del biodiésel, de su composición. Los límites de la normativa europea para este parámetro implican unos requisitos más restrictivos a las materias primas utilizables para su elaboración.• Viscosidad cinemática: esta propiedad es mayor en el caso del biodiesel que en el diesel fósil, y en algunos casos a bajas temperaturas el biodiesel se puede convertir en un producto demasiado viscoso e incluso solidificar. Es el rango más restrictivo europeo de este estándar e implica limitaciones a las posibles materias primas utilizables para su fabricación.• Índice de yodo: este parámetro mide la insaturación (4)  total existente en una mezcla de materias grasas, sin tener en cuenta los porcentajes relativos entre los compuestos mono y poliinsaturados. El mismo implica una importante restricción en cuanto a las materias primas utilizables para la producción de biodiésel. • Éster metílico de ácido linolénico y ésteres metílicos poliinsaturados: los límites aplicados en la norma europea para el contenido de estos dos tipos de compuestos pueden implicar la exclusión de determinadas materias primas.Una característica esencial de la especificación técnica europea, la ya citada EN 14214, es que sólo se aplica a los ésteres metílicos de ácidos grasos (FAME), y otra es que establece las especificaciones técnicas, tanto para el gasóleo resultado de mezclar FAME con petrodiesel, como para el componente FAME puro (B100).Si nos fijamos en el sexto grupo de la tabla superior vemos que la cantidad de agua admisible es de 500 ppm. Esto se debe a que el FAME es higroscópico y su solubilidad de agua es mayor de 5.000 ppm.  Por contra el gasóleo fósil, tiene una especificación de contenido máximo de agua de 200 ppm, y solubilidad de agua sólo es de 60 a 80 ppm.El FAME, por su poder higroscópico, actúa como un emulsionante, formando una micro emulsión de agua en todo el sistema de combustible. Además el FAME es muy sensible frente a la oxidación y respecto a su carácter biodegradable es casi el doble que el del mejor gasóleo fósil.La exposición anterior describiendo las propiedades higroscópicas del FAME, frente a la ausencia de afinidad por el agua del gasóleo fósil, se debe a la intención de mostrar, en primer lugar, la facilidad del aumento de contenido de agua de forma espontánea en el FAME en caso de exposición a humedad. Esto explica la mayor cantidad de agua permitida en la especificación de la norma EN 14214 para la mezcla de gasóleo fósil con biodiésel, frente a la menor cantidad permitida para los carburantes diésel fósiles. Resumiendo, el biodiésel puede absorber hasta 40 veces más agua que el diésel.El problema es que cuando el contenido en agua es superior a 60 ppm es posible la aparición de vida microbiana en los carburantes diésel. Es por esta mayor facilidad de contener agua por lo que los FAME son más susceptibles a 'padecer'  infecciones de hongos, levaduras y bacterias (5) que se desarrollan en el agua y se alimentan del gasóleo. Además como suele ser común en estos seres vivos su reproducción en condiciones favorables suele ser por duplicación, es decir exponencial, y con alimento disponible y temperatura adecuada en unos ciclos reproductivos muy cortos. El funcionamiento normal de un motor diésel calienta el combustible, ya que el circuito es el siguiente:  "La bomba de aspiración succiona combustible del depósito a través de una rejilla filtrante, que se encuentra en el extremo del tubo de aspiración. Este combustible llega a través de un primer filtro que elimina las impurezas más gruesas que lleva en suspensión el gasóleo. Después la bomba lo mandaría al filtro del combustible y de ahí pasaría a la bomba de inyección, que lo mandaría a los inyectores. La bomba de alimentación normalmente trabaja con presiones en torno a 1 ó 2 Kg/cm2. y en cantidad suficiente, siendo una válvula de descarga la que regula dichas presiones, teniendo una canalización de retorno para el combustible sobrante que va de vuelta al depósito". Una vez calentado por su paso por el motor, el carburante constituye un templado y perfecto caldo de cultivo en el que crecen y se extienden estos seres microscópicos, formando colonias y produciendo residuos de textura gelatinosa, infectando el gasóleo y recubriendo las paredes del depósito, las conducciones y los filtros. Además, tienen efectos corrosivos sobre algunos metales como aluminio y aleaciones de acero y por su estado gelatinoso, obstruyen los circuitos de combustible y elementos filtrantes, ocasionando pérdidas de potencia en los motores y averías, que si no se detectan a tiempo son graves y caras, sobre todo las causadas por la corrosión. (5)En total unas 30 especies diferentes son capaces de vivir y multiplicarse en el gasóleo.Este tipo de problemas, que antes de 2008 ocurría casi únicamente en el ámbito de las embarcaciones, se está extendiendo a la automoción, pero está cogiendo por sorpresa a usuarios y mecánicos que corrigen los síntomas con una limpieza, sin saber realmente, en muchos casos, el origen: 'Un ser vivo sobre un carburante de nueva formulación' que es más propenso a albergar vida, y que le sirve de alimento. Además si no hay un tratamiento con 'medicación', el problema se repetirá periódicamente, ya que solo es cuestión de tiempo que las bacterias vuelvan a multiplicarse. Advierto que con esto no invito a que seamos unos 'manitas' y solucionemos estos problemas haciendo gala de un "Do it yourself"; si leen el etiquetado de un biocida comercializado para este fin, avisa que hay que tomar numerosas precauciones para manipular estos productos y que, si por ejemplo, el producto contacta con nuestra piel, acudamos al médico. Mucho cuidado.Mención aparte merecen las explotaciones agrícolas que se abastecen de gasóleo al por mayor y que son muy susceptibles a este problema debido a que las máquinas funcionan durante temporadas, quedando el gasóleo almacenado y sin renovación largos periodos de tiempo. Caso de que se contamine un gran depósito, se 'contagia' a toda la maquinaria a la que suministra, ocasionándoles problemas en los caros y vitales sistemas de inyección.Sedimentos producidos por microorganismos en el gasóleo.  Filtros obstruidos.Corrosión en depósito de aluminio causada por microorganismos.Los FAME, también tienen detractores por otros motivos, por ejemplo en Estados Unidos la asociación de fabricantes de motores, se ha quejado de lo que ellos consideran una incongruencia, dado que después de años de esfuerzos y gastos en Investigación & Desarrollo en eficiencia y reducción de emisiones, la utilización por ley de los carburantes biodiésel les ha hecho retroceder notablemente por los problemas técnicos e incompatibilidades que se han presentado en el funcionamiento de los motores. El siguiente documento recoge estas quejas:En los foros de automoción de todos los países que usan biodiésel, se leen numerosas historias de problemas de usuarios de vehículos diésel, sobretodo, con motores modernos dotados de tecnología electrónica y de alto rendimiento, supuestamente por la alimentación con FAME, aunque en muchos de los casos es debido a un mal uso, ya que hay fabricantes de automóviles que en sus manuales limitan el uso de los FAME. En  ocasiones, las causas de las averías, son las infecciones anteriormente descritas, es decir las causadas por microorganismos. Otra averías se deben al mayor poder oxidante de los FAME, lo que les da mas poder disolvente, atacando y ablandando las juntas y sellos de goma. También se apunta como causa de la aparición de mayor numero de averías, a la reducción del azufre permitido en la mezcla, que actuaba como lubricante, hasta un máximo de 10 mg/Kg y que  debería ser compensado por el mayor poder lubrificante del FAME.Problemas de inyección usando biodiésel (6).Además la presencia de agua normalmente puede darle al carburante unas propiedades de lubricidad menores, acortando la vida de piezas móviles. También tiene desventajas por la coquización de inyectores y por la mayor dilución del lubricante, por lo que se recomiendan cambios de aceite en periodos más cortos que para un gasóleo fósil.Curiosamente las nuevas tecnologías en los motores, lo que precisamente consiguen es reducir las emisiones aumentando la eficiencia. Sin embargo, las averías se presentan al parecer por ser más vulnerables a estos cambios de composición de los FAME, por lo que los usos deben ser lo más escrupulosamente correctos según el fabricante del motor, lo cual para un conductor estándar se torna complicado.La industria de los biocarburantes es reciente, y la ley de Murphy ha hecho su aparición. De momento, algunos fabricantes de aditivos, están desarrollando y comercializando productos para combatir las nuevas amenazas a los usuarios de motores diésel (y sus doloridos bolsillos), con tratamientos de biocidas de amplio espectro, compatibles con la mecánica y que sirven para prevenir y 'curar' estas infecciones. También se pueden usar caros aditivos para micronizar el agua y así evitar que aniden las bacterias. Según fuentes del sector, desde la implantación de la mezcla de biodiésel, ha aumentado mucho la demanda de los productos biocidas para los automóviles. Seguramente, en poco tiempo esta industria conseguirá  solucionar estos problemas, (probablemente con un encarecimiento de los productos) pero actualmente es una tarea que resolver.Merece la pena citar que el boletín del estado que regula los biocarburantes, http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2006/02/17/pdfs/A06342-06357.pdf,  ya citaba expresamente la posible presencia de agua en las instalaciones de almacenamiento de mezcla de gasóleo con biodiésel, al ser esta mezcla más propensa a absorber humedad y a contenerla disuelta. Y es que la presencia de agua es el origen de problemas de contaminación biológica, corrosión y disminución de la capacidad lubricante.También recomiendo la lectura del informe elaborado por la AOP con la colaboración técnica de Deloitte, en que se planteaban 'graves problemas' a la implantación de los biocarburantes en España, entre ellos a causa de las incompatibilidades de muchas de las motorizaciones existentes con mezclas superiores al 5% de FAME. Además, advierte de que: "la seguridad jurídica no se garantiza ya que no se fijan unos requerimientos concretos de calidad y no se asegura la correcta información al cliente final." Cito también el resumen del proceso de fabricación del biodiesel, publicado por el miembro del Debate de la energía en Facebook, Armand Valeta Roig, el cual es ingeniero químico de formación y que lo describió con el siguiente párrafo: "Los biodiesel son ésteres metílicos de ácidos grasos obtenidos por transesterificación de aceites vegetales (triglicéridos) mediante metanol y un catalizador p.e. metilato sódico. Los subproductos de la reacción son muy difíciles de eliminar al 100% y tanto el metanol residual, aceite no reaccionado, glicerina, como el metilato son veneno para los motores, pueden oxidarse y provocar corrosión y carbonilla, además contienen cierta cantidad de humedad muy difícil de eliminar y ahora sólo faltan las bacterias anaeróbicas."  Y ya saben, si algo puede salir mal ...Con toda esta exposición sólo he pretendido mostrar que el desarrollo e implantación de nuevas soluciones no es tan fácil como parece, apareciendo problemas de difícil previsión, cuya resolución también tendrá un coste energético extra y mostrarán los limites de la aplicación. En este caso, dada la baja TRE, si aparecen problemas que resuelves con mayor consumo de energía, prácticamente solo 'trasladas' la energía empleada en la producción al biodiesel elaborado, convirtiéndolo en un vector energético, no en una fuente de energía.¡Mal balance!Rafael Iñiguez Sánchez, Enero de 2012.Fuentes y referencias:(1) FAME, abreviatura de "Fatty Acid Methyl Esther".(2) B7, y objetivo B10(3) Tripartite Task Force: Brazil, European Union & United Estates of America 2007. "White Paper on Internationally Compatible Biofuel Standards".(4) El grado de insaturación de una grasa, esto es el número de enlaces dobles, normalmente se expresa en términos de "índice yodo de la grasa".(5) http://www.boatwide.es/acatalog/Grotamar71_ES_BWSL.pdf(6) http://www.wearcheckiberica.es/documentacion/doctecnica/combustibles.pdfhttp://www.appa.es/descargas/una_obligacion_biocarburante_espana_mar07.pdfhttp://www.marabierto.eu/noticias/grotamar-82-especial-biodieselhttp://www.acbiodiesel.net/docs/news/BOE_4_sep_2010.pdf   (modificación al 7%)http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2011/10/20/pdfs/BOE-A-2011-16468.pdf  (desulfuración)Normas de calidad del biodieselhttp://www.biodieselspain.com/2011/02/25/el-gasoleo-debera-contener-un-7-de-biodiesel/  (modificación al 7%)http://www.caminoseuskadi.com/Demarcacion/Actividades/Biomasa/Biocombustiblehttp://www.biocarburante.com/http://www.ambisol.es/index.php?Tema=detallen&id=863http://www.ambisol.es/index.php?Tema=detallen&id=765http://biodiesel.com.ar/3067/biodiesel-en-espana-la-planta-de-biodiesel-de-linares-echa-el-cierre-tras-captar-24-millones-de-euroshttp://www.biocarburante.com/biocombustibles-en-espana-informe-de-situacion/http://www.wearcheckiberica.es/boletinMensual/PDFs/ESPECIFICACIONES_DEL_GASOLEO_Y_BIODIESEL.pdfhttp://www.aop.es/informes/biocombustibles/Dossier_AOP_biocombustibles_version_final.pdfhttp://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2008/10/14/pdfs/A41170-41175.pdfhttp://www.mecarun.es/uploads/ANTI BACTERIAS para GASOIL%281%29.pdf

Oil Crash Observatory

Amortiguador logístico y local a la crisis energética

  Queridos lectores, Después de tantos post tan negativos sobre las alternativas renovables, el post de hoy corre a cargo de un viejo conocido de este blog, Juan Luis Chulilla, quien nos brinda algunas ideas útiles sobre una cuestión clave y poco discutida de la crisis energética: las necesidades logísticas. Les dejo con Juan Luis. Salu2, AMT Amortiguador logístico y local a la crisis energética (CC-By) Juan Chulilla Cada vez hay que hacer un esfuerzo de voluntad más férreo, cada vezhay que ser más disciplinado en el wishful thinking, paranegar el escenario que nos espera en el futuro cercano: la ofertaenergética no va a poder satisfacer la totalidad de la demanda.Antonio lleva más de dos años ilustrándonos con análisis propiosy ajenos distintos aspectos de este cuadro. Podríamos dejarlo aquí, dado que es tan innegable comoinevitable… si no se matiza. Efectivamente, la oferta energéticano va a poder responder a la demanda energética tal cual es hoyen día. Como quiera que los homo sapiens somos muy buenos enhacer de la necesidad virtud, hay espacio para una reflexiónpositiva y realista, sin wishful thinking por un lado ni madmaxismospor otro. No sé vosotros, pero a mí el cuero con tachuelas mequedan fatal y sé quién saldría de la cúpula del trueno conaquello de "dos hombres entran, uno sale": no sería yo. A lo que voy. La demanda energética es más elástica de lo queparece, si pagamos distintos precios. Como Antonio nos ha idocomentando, uno de los precios va a ser el del transporte privado. Dehecho, en colaboraciones anteriores hablé del problema del cochecomo símbolo de status, con lo que huelga repetirlo. Sin embargo, eltransporte privado es una parte hasta menor de un problema mucho másgeneral, de uno de los problemas esenciales de la humanidad denuestro tiempo: la logística. Si tengo que ir al curro en tren en vez de en coche (no es mi caso) yle tengo que echar 4 horas en vez de una es una faena tremenda, peropuedo vivir con ello. Si la flota logística mundial transporta menosproductos de primera necesidad, no es una faena: es un peligro mortalpara poblaciones enteras. Las dos maravillas de la logísticaindustrial y postindustrial es que es eficaz a escalas inimaginableshace 60 años, o incluso 30, y que es transparente. Y la sostienen laenergía barata, lo que tienen los días contados, y ladigitalización de la cadena, lo que tiene margen para la mejora. Vaya por delante que las mejoras en la digitalización de la cadenano pueden compensar la caída de la energía barata, pero síaminorar un poco su impacto. Sobre todo, si deja de ser transparente:nuestro día a día ha provocado que nos resulte invisible eltrasiego de mercancías por nuestros núcleos urbanos, a fuerza deverlo. Sólo una minoría de la población es consciente de lasenormes distancias que recorren nuestras mercancías, y delkilometraje excesivo consecuencia de las economías de escaladependientes de la energía barata. Lo mismo que es más baratoproducir en China y transportar en enormes portacontenedores aRotterdam, es más barato producir los componentes del ketchup engran escala en donde sea más barato de Europa y mezclarlos en UK. Si la población es consciente de que la cadena logística puedemejorar, que es necesario que mejore y que una de las mejorasconsiste en eliminar los kilometrajes innecesarios, aumentarán lapresión para reconfigurar las cadenas de producción. Los logospueden llegar a ser muy poderosos si adquieren viralidad, con lo quea lo mejor sería muy útil que, una vez que empezara el movimientode limitación logística, los fabricantes que se adhirieran a élusaran un logo impactante. Algo así Claro que la disminución de la huella logística de un producto noacaba ahí. Podemos dar un paso más y apostar por la vuelta delgranel, tanto en envase reciclable como en sobre de papel. Cuando vayáis a una gran superficie, paraos a observar lasestanterías repletas de productos. Una orgía visual y de coloresenvuelve a cada alimento o bebida. Si las bandejas de poliuretanoexpandido son obligatorias de facto para envolver carne opescado y muy habituales para fruta y hasta verdura, ahoraplastificamos hasta la herramienta más inane para colgarla de sugancho en el expositor. Cada producto consume no sólo cantidadesnada despreciables respecto a su masa de envoltorio y decoración delmismo, sino que además ocupa mucho más en el transporte. Es obvio que no se puede volver de golpe a las compras que hacíannuestras abuelas, pero algunos pasos son sencillos: desde el envaseretornable en refrescos y bebidas alcohólicas, a rechazar elembalaje en poliuretano del máximo de productos posibles, parallegar a una conciencia cívica y social de la falta de necesidad detanta fanfarria marketiniana. Y esto no es político o estético,sino energético: transportar barriles de bebidas, o alimentos agranel, es más eficiente que empaquetarlos en cómodos packs. La ciudadanía y su conciencia es imprescindible. Vuelvo a la ideasencilla, hasta tonta, de un logo que podría convivir con elcaracol. Aquí no lo veo tan obvio, pero quizás un paquete abierto,o un cucurucho… (perdonad si el arte gráfico no es lo mío). Y por no extenderme demasiado, una última medida logística, aúnmás social que la anterior: volver a la fabricación localaprovechando el conocimiento distribuido. Las lamentables condiciones de trabajo en China y otros países endesarrollo provocan que sea muy barato producir en grandes fábricasal otro lado del mundo. El fin de la energía barata romperá esasituación, y la única solución nace del decrecimiento odownshifting. Pero ese decrecimiento, tan inevitable como deseable,no tiene por qué ser en bruto, lineal. Ocurre lo mismo que con la logística: de tan abundante, esinvisible. En este caso, las fábricas se han alejado de las zonasresidenciales, y sólo una minoría pequeña de la población conocede primera mano los procesos de fabricación de los bienes. Contandocon que el decrecimiento reducirá la masa de productos fabricados ypor lo tanto la ventaja de la economía de escala, la fabricaciónlocal puede responder muy bien a la nueva situación. No sólo porreducir la huella logística de productos elaborados – recordemos,hasta ahora hay que moverlo todo, la materia prima y el productoelaborado, por medio mundo – sino que con apoyo digital se puedeajustar mucho más el stockage y el volumen de fabricación ademandas mucho más precisas. Dell en su día fue un ejemplo de cómoreducir al mínimo el stockage de componentes aprovechando la cadenade distribución basada en Internet. Pero eso es sólo el principio. El problema de la fabricaciónindustrial convencional es que exige el empleo de máquinasherramienta enormes, caras y complejas de operar. Aunque no sea elejemplo más positivo, el Kalashnikov es "barato" porque hay enIzhmash y otros lugares líneas de producción kilométricas quepermiten producciones millonarias. Sin embargo, el auge de lastecnologías digitales ha provocado que la Ley de Moore influyatambién en el coste de las máquinas-herramienta asistidas porordenador o CNC: cortadoras, prensadoras, rematadoras, etc. Siguiendocon el ejemplo, el abaratamiento de las CNC permitió que en USAfloreciera una red de pequeñas empresas de armamento basadascompletamente en CNC, lo que les aseguraba tanto unas calidades yacabados muy estrictos como les permitía que tiradas muy cortasfueran viables y ajustables a la demanda, en lugar de almacenarkilómetros de armeros. La ley de Moore se sigue aplicando a los procesos de fabricación, yhay margen para la mejora. No sólo eso, Internet ha entrado de llenoy ha provocado su típico efecto disruptivo: si antes de Internet eracomplejo acceder a los conocimientos necesarios para operar máquinasCNC, hoy hay comunidades de particulares que adquieren máquinasbaratas y/o usadas y las operan adquiriendo y compartiendoconocimiento. Como ejemplo de comunidad (amateur, sin pretensiones profesionales,pero aún así impactante) tenemos thingiverse(http://www.thingiverse.com).Os recomiendo un paseo a los que no la conozcáis, porque es unejemplo magnífico de lo que puede lograr una comunidad motivada parala autofabricación. De hecho, en thingiverse vemos gran cantidad de ejemplos de unosdispositivos con más publicidad mediática: las impresoras 3D. Estosaparatos, que lentamente y capa a capa extruden un modelo plástico apartir de instrucciones del ordenador, bien pueden ser el anticipo deuna revolución que algunos creen cercana, la autofabricación encasa. Sin embargo, hoy por hoy no solucionan la mayoría de lasnecesidades reales de objetos y productos fabriles de primeranecesidad. Por otra parte, si se distribuyen y abaratan las máquinas CNC, si sedistribuye el conocimiento de operarlas y, como vemos en thingiverse,modelos digitales para fabricar productos reales, la fabricacióndistribuida, plenamente local, podría ser una realidad enrelativamente poco tiempo. Esto tendría el beneficio añadido de darempleo a las masas de desempleados habidos y por haber. En resumen: la conciencia de lalogística moderna, sus problemas y sus soluciones permiten seroptimistas hasta cierto punto y asumir que, con más decisión quesuerte, el downshifting puede no ser catastrófico

Los problemas del biodiésel: contaminación bacteriana y desgaste del motor

Queridos lectores, He aquí el segundo post de la miniserie sobre la discusión de los problemas específicos al uso del biodiésel, en este caso uno bastante grave y muy bien documentado por Rafael Íñiguez. Salu2,AMT Biocarburantes de recursos 'renovables'. Apuntes del biodiésel.  Desde hace unos años, es habitual ver en algunas estaciones de servicio de nuestros pueblos y ciudades surtidores etiquetados como 'Biodiésel', la reacción a su visión es de agrado, la diferencia de precio no es muy grande, pero el creer que hacemos un bien a nuestro entorno nos hace sentirnos mejor. Elegir esta opción implica el uso de un carburante biodiésel o FAME(1) que puede consumirse puro o en un porcentaje determinado, (p.e., B20= 20% FAME), para estos productos la estación de servicio tiene la obligación de venderlos etiquetados, para que el usuario asuma la compatibilidad de la determinada concentración de FAME con el funcionamiento de su motor. No obstante, aunque no utilicemos la opción del biodiésel, desde el año 2008 (Orden ITC/2877/2008) todos los gasóleos contienen por imperativo legal un porcentaje de FAME mezclado con el gasóleo fósil. Este porcentaje ha ido aumentando desde su implantación hasta el 7% actual(2).  Esto es consecuencia de la aplicación de las políticas de los estados para reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, estimular la agricultura  y disminuir la dependencia energética exterior que tienen la mayoría de los países industrializados de la Unión Europea y particularmente de España. Estas políticas se iniciaron con la Directiva 2003/30/CE, del Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo, de 8 de mayo de 2003, para el fomento del uso de biocarburantes, la cual despertó grandes expectativas de negocio a nuevas empresas, las cuales han sido incentivadas con ayudas y facilidades por parte de las administraciones. Sin embargo, la aventura no ha sido muy afortunada y gran parte de las plantas de producción han tenido que cerrar por falta de rentabilidad, sobre todo por inferioridad de condiciones ante la importación de estos productos desde Estados Unidos o Argentina, donde aprovechan las subvenciones de sus países, y la llamada tasa cero que los exime de pagar impuestos al entrar en nuestro país (en principio, hasta finales del 2012), lo que les da a estas importaciones unas condiciones de mercado muy ventajosas. Debido a esta competencia, se ha llegado a solicitar por la asociación de productores de energías renovables (APPA) que se incremente progresivamente la proporción de FAME en el gasóleo hasta el 15% para el año 2020 y así poder dar salida a la capacidad de producción de nuestras plantas. Este es uno de los problemas que ha tenido, lo que en principio fue previsto como una ayuda para solucionar los problemas energéticos. Por desgracia nada es tan fácil y el biodiésel, si bien puede ser una ayuda, está 'recién llegado' y tiene muchas barreras que superar.En España, más del 70% del parque móvil emplea gasóleo, ya que además es el que utilizan los transportistas debido a que el motor diésel tiene un mayor rendimiento que el de gasolina, y también porque existía una histórica diferencia de precios a favor del gasóleo. Una diferencia que, por la nueva fiscalidad, ha desaparecido. Esto determina que las características físico-químicas del gasóleo a suministrar estén limitadas por la compatibilidad con los millones de motores existentes que están funcionando, y que en su mayoría fueron diseñados para consumir gasóleo fósil (petrodiésel) con la  especificación técnica EN 590. Ahora y desde la obligación del uso de mezclas con biocarburantes, estos son  producidos según la norma europea EN 14214. Esta norma EN 14214 se ha diseñado en función del biodiésel obtenido a partir de aceite de colza, la oleaginosa de mayor productividad en la zona centroeuropea, así como por otras características regionales. Debido también a las características regionales, algunos países mediterráneos donde, por ejemplo, el girasol es la principal oleaginosa, han introducido determinadas modificaciones en la norma para estimular la producción de biodiesel a partir de sus propias materias primas. En el caso de España, por ejemplo, se estableció un límite máximo superior en el índice de yodo, lo que impide su comercialización en otros países europeos donde se adoptaron las especificaciones originales de la norma. Entre las normativas de países hay especificaciones con diferencias fundamentales, que se deben, por ejemplo, a normas sobre emisiones, o de protección del medio ambiente regional, o a las certificaciones exigidas a los constructores de motores. Entre las especificaciones que más limitan se encuentran (3): • Contenido en azufre: el límite sobre este parámetro depende de la legislación sectorial de aplicación sobre contaminación atmosférica, que en la UE se basa en los requisitos establecidos legalmente para el diésel fósil. • Operabilidad en climas fríos: el punto de fusión y el comportamiento a bajas temperaturas en las materias primas que se pueden utilizar en la producción de biodiésel. Los límites de este parámetro están principalmente basados en las condiciones climáticas regionales. • Número de cetano: el límite sobre este parámetro depende de las especificaciones establecidas para el diésel convencional en la norma europea EN 590. El límite europeo para los constructores de motores está certificado con el mínimo de 51, establecido también para el biodiésel. Este estándar depende de las materias primas utilizadas en su fabricación. • Estabilidad a la oxidación: el biodiésel se degrada con mayor facilidad que el diésel fósil debido a su composición química. La estabilidad a la oxidación es un parámetro fundamental para asegurar el correcto funcionamiento en los motores, así como para su almacenamiento y distribución. • Contenido en mono-, di-, y triglicéridos: la norma europea establece límites individuales en el contenido de estos compuestos, así como para el glicerol total. Estos parámetros, y el glicerol libre, dependen del proceso de producción. • Densidad: la densidad del biodiésel es generalmente mayor que la del diésel fósil. Esta propiedad depende, en el caso del biodiésel, de su composición. Los límites de la normativa europea para este parámetro implican unos requisitos más restrictivos a las materias primas utilizables para su elaboración. • Viscosidad cinemática: esta propiedad es mayor en el caso del biodiesel que en el diesel fósil, y en algunos casos a bajas temperaturas el biodiesel se puede convertir en un producto demasiado viscoso e incluso solidificar. Es el rango más restrictivo europeo de este estándar e implica limitaciones a las posibles materias primas utilizables para su fabricación. • Índice de yodo: este parámetro mide la insaturación (4)  total existente en una mezcla de materias grasas, sin tener en cuenta los porcentajes relativos entre los compuestos mono y poliinsaturados. El mismo implica una importante restricción en cuanto a las materias primas utilizables para la producción de biodiésel. • Éster metílico de ácido linolénico y ésteres metílicos poliinsaturados: los límites aplicados en la norma europea para el contenido de estos dos tipos de compuestos pueden implicar la exclusión de determinadas materias primas.Una característica esencial de la especificación técnica europea, la ya citada EN 14214, es que sólo se aplica a los ésteres metílicos de ácidos grasos (FAME), y otra es que establece las especificaciones técnicas, tanto para el gasóleo resultado de mezclar FAME con petrodiesel, como para el componente FAME puro (B100). Si nos fijamos en el sexto grupo de la tabla superior vemos que la cantidad de agua admisible es de 500 ppm. Esto se debe a que el FAME es higroscópico y su solubilidad de agua es mayor de 5.000 ppm.  Por contra el gasóleo fósil, tiene una especificación de contenido máximo de agua de 200 ppm, y solubilidad de agua sólo es de 60 a 80 ppm. El FAME, por su poder higroscópico, actúa como un emulsionante, formando una micro emulsión de agua en todo el sistema de combustible. Además el FAME es muy sensible frente a la oxidación y respecto a su carácter biodegradable es casi el doble que el del mejor gasóleo fósil. La exposición anterior describiendo las propiedades higroscópicas del FAME, frente a la ausencia de afinidad por el agua del gasóleo fósil, se debe a la intención de mostrar, en primer lugar, la facilidad del aumento de contenido de agua de forma espontánea en el FAME en caso de exposición a humedad. Esto explica la mayor cantidad de agua permitida en la especificación de la norma EN 14214 para la mezcla de gasóleo fósil con biodiésel, frente a la menor cantidad permitida para los carburantes diésel fósiles. Resumiendo, el biodiésel puede absorber hasta 40 veces más agua que el diésel. El problema es que cuando el contenido en agua es superior a 60 ppm es posible la aparición de vida microbiana en los carburantes diésel. Es por esta mayor facilidad de contener agua por lo que los FAME son más susceptibles a 'padecer'  infecciones de hongos, levaduras y bacterias (5) que se desarrollan en el agua y se alimentan del gasóleo. Además como suele ser común en estos seres vivos su reproducción en condiciones favorables suele ser por duplicación, es decir exponencial, y con alimento disponible y temperatura adecuada en unos ciclos reproductivos muy cortos. El funcionamiento normal de un motor diésel calienta el combustible, ya que el circuito es el siguiente:  "La bomba de aspiración succiona combustible del depósito a través de una rejilla filtrante, que se encuentra en el extremo del tubo de aspiración. Este combustible llega a través de un primer filtro que elimina las impurezas más gruesas que lleva en suspensión el gasóleo. Después la bomba lo mandaría al filtro del combustible y de ahí pasaría a la bomba de inyección, que lo mandaría a los inyectores. La bomba de alimentación normalmente trabaja con presiones en torno a 1 ó 2 Kg/cm2. y en cantidad suficiente, siendo una válvula de descarga la que regula dichas presiones, teniendo una canalización de retorno para el combustible sobrante que va de vuelta al depósito". Una vez calentado por su paso por el motor, el carburante constituye un templado y perfecto caldo de cultivo en el que crecen y se extienden estos seres microscópicos, formando colonias y produciendo residuos de textura gelatinosa, infectando el gasóleo y recubriendo las paredes del depósito, las conducciones y los filtros. Además, tienen efectos corrosivos sobre algunos metales como aluminio y aleaciones de acero y por su estado gelatinoso, obstruyen los circuitos de combustible y elementos filtrantes, ocasionando pérdidas de potencia en los motores y averías, que si no se detectan a tiempo son graves y caras, sobre todo las causadas por la corrosión.  (5)En total unas 30 especies diferentes son capaces de vivir y multiplicarse en el gasóleo. Este tipo de problemas, que antes de 2008 ocurría casi únicamente en el ámbito de las embarcaciones, se está extendiendo a la automoción, pero está cogiendo por sorpresa a usuarios y mecánicos que corrigen los síntomas con una limpieza, sin saber realmente, en muchos casos, el origen: 'Un ser vivo sobre un carburante de nueva formulación' que es más propenso a albergar vida, y que le sirve de alimento. Además si no hay un tratamiento con 'medicación', el problema se repetirá periódicamente, ya que solo es cuestión de tiempo que las bacterias vuelvan a multiplicarse. Advierto que con esto no invito a que seamos unos 'manitas' y solucionemos estos problemas haciendo gala de un "Do it yourself"; si leen el etiquetado de un biocida comercializado para este fin, avisa que hay que tomar numerosas precauciones para manipular estos productos y que, si por ejemplo, el producto contacta con nuestra piel, acudamos al médico. Mucho cuidado. Mención aparte merecen las explotaciones agrícolas que se abastecen de gasóleo al por mayor y que son muy susceptibles a este problema debido a que las máquinas funcionan durante temporadas, quedando el gasóleo almacenado y sin renovación largos periodos de tiempo. Caso de que se contamine un gran depósito, se 'contagia' a toda la maquinaria a la que suministra, ocasionándoles problemas en los caros y vitales sistemas de inyección. Sedimentos producidos por microorganismos en el gasóleo.  Filtros obstruidos. Corrosión en depósito de aluminio causada por microorganismos. Los FAME, también tienen detractores por otros motivos, por ejemplo en Estados Unidos la asociación de fabricantes de motores, se ha quejado de lo que ellos consideran una incongruencia, dado que después de años de esfuerzos y gastos en Investigación & Desarrollo en eficiencia y reducción de emisiones, la utilización por ley de los carburantes biodiésel les ha hecho retroceder notablemente por los problemas técnicos e incompatibilidades que se han presentado en el funcionamiento de los motores. El siguiente documento recoge estas quejas: En los foros de automoción de todos los países que usan biodiésel, se leen numerosas historias de problemas de usuarios de vehículos diésel, sobretodo, con motores modernos dotados de tecnología electrónica y de alto rendimiento, supuestamente por la alimentación con FAME, aunque en muchos de los casos es debido a un mal uso, ya que hay fabricantes de automóviles que en sus manuales limitan el uso de los FAME. En  ocasiones, las causas de las averías, son las infecciones anteriormente descritas, es decir las causadas por microorganismos. Otra averías se deben al mayor poder oxidante de los FAME, lo que les da mas poder disolvente, atacando y ablandando las juntas y sellos de goma. También se apunta como causa de la aparición de mayor numero de averías, a la reducción del azufre permitido en la mezcla, que actuaba como lubricante, hasta un máximo de 10 mg/Kg y que  debería ser compensado por el mayor poder lubrificante del FAME. Problemas de inyección usando biodiésel (6).Además la presencia de agua normalmente puede darle al carburante unas propiedades de lubricidad menores, acortando la vida de piezas móviles. También tiene desventajas por la coquización de inyectores y por la mayor dilución del lubricante, por lo que se recomiendan cambios de aceite en periodos más cortos que para un gasóleo fósil. Curiosamente las nuevas tecnologías en los motores, lo que precisamente consiguen es reducir las emisiones aumentando la eficiencia. Sin embargo, las averías se presentan al parecer por ser más vulnerables a estos cambios de composición de los FAME, por lo que los usos deben ser lo más escrupulosamente correctos según el fabricante del motor, lo cual para un conductor estándar se torna complicado. La industria de los biocarburantes es reciente, y la ley de Murphy ha hecho su aparición. De momento, algunos fabricantes de aditivos, están desarrollando y comercializando productos para combatir las nuevas amenazas a los usuarios de motores diésel (y sus doloridos bolsillos), con tratamientos de biocidas de amplio espectro, compatibles con la mecánica y que sirven para prevenir y 'curar' estas infecciones. También se pueden usar caros aditivos para micronizar el agua y así evitar que aniden las bacterias. Según fuentes del sector, desde la implantación de la mezcla de biodiésel, ha aumentado mucho la demanda de los productos biocidas para los automóviles. Seguramente, en poco tiempo esta industria conseguirá  solucionar estos problemas, (probablemente con un encarecimiento de los productos) pero actualmente es una tarea que resolver. Merece la pena citar que el boletín del estado que regula los biocarburantes, http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2006/02/17/pdfs/A06342-06357.pdf,  ya citaba expresamente la posible presencia de agua en las instalaciones de almacenamiento de mezcla de gasóleo con biodiésel, al ser esta mezcla más propensa a absorber humedad y a contenerla disuelta. Y es que la presencia de agua es el origen de problemas de contaminación biológica, corrosión y disminución de la capacidad lubricante. También recomiendo la lectura del informe elaborado por la AOP con la colaboración técnica de Deloitte, en que se planteaban 'graves problemas' a la implantación de los biocarburantes en España, entre ellos a causa de las incompatibilidades de muchas de las motorizaciones existentes con mezclas superiores al 5% de FAME. Además, advierte de que: "la seguridad jurídica no se garantiza ya que no se fijan unos requerimientos concretos de calidad y no se asegura la correcta información al cliente final." Cito también el resumen del proceso de fabricación del biodiesel, publicado por el miembro del Debate de la energía en Facebook, Armand Valeta Roig, el cual es ingeniero químico de formación y que lo describió con el siguiente párrafo: "Los biodiesel son ésteres metílicos de ácidos grasos obtenidos por transesterificación de aceites vegetales (triglicéridos) mediante metanol y un catalizador p.e. metilato sódico. Los subproductos de la reacción son muy difíciles de eliminar al 100% y tanto el metanol residual, aceite no reaccionado, glicerina, como el metilato son veneno para los motores, pueden oxidarse y provocar corrosión y carbonilla, además contienen cierta cantidad de humedad muy difícil de eliminar y ahora sólo faltan las bacterias anaeróbicas."  Y ya saben, si algo puede salir mal … Con toda esta exposición sólo he pretendido mostrar que el desarrollo e implantación de nuevas soluciones no es tan fácil como parece, apareciendo problemas de difícil previsión, cuya resolución también tendrá un coste energético extra y mostrarán los limites de la aplicación. En este caso, dada la baja TRE, si aparecen problemas que resuelves con mayor consumo de energía, prácticamente solo 'trasladas' la energía empleada en la producción al biodiesel elaborado, convirtiéndolo en un vector energético, no en una fuente de energía.¡Mal balance! Rafael Iñiguez Sánchez, Enero de 2012. Fuentes y referencias: (1) FAME, abreviatura de "Fatty Acid Methyl Esther".(2) B7, y objetivo B10(3) Tripartite Task Force: Brazil, European Union & United Estates of America 2007. "White Paper on Internationally Compatible Biofuel Standards".(4) El grado de insaturación de una grasa, esto es el número de enlaces dobles, normalmente se expresa en términos de "índice yodo de la grasa".(5) http://www.boatwide.es/acatalog/Grotamar71_ES_BWSL.pdf(6) http://www.wearcheckiberica.es/documentacion/doctecnica/combustibles.pdfhttp://www.appa.es/descargas/una_obligacion_biocarburante_espana_mar07.pdfhttp://www.marabierto.eu/noticias/grotamar-82-especial-biodieselhttp://www.acbiodiesel.net/docs/news/BOE_4_sep_2010.pdf   (modificación al 7%)http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2011/10/20/pdfs/BOE-A-2011-16468.pdf  (desulfuración)Normas de calidad del biodieselhttp://www.biodieselspain.com/2011/02/25/el-gasoleo-debera-contener-un-7-de-biodiesel/  (modificación al 7%)http://www.caminoseuskadi.com/Demarcacion/Actividades/Biomasa/Biocombustiblehttp://www.biocarburante.com/http://www.ambisol.es/index.php?Tema=detallen&id=863http://www.ambisol.es/index.php?Tema=detallen&id=765http://biodiesel.com.ar/3067/biodiesel-en-espana-la-planta-de-biodiesel-de-linares-echa-el-cierre-tras-captar-24-millones-de-euroshttp://www.biocarburante.com/biocombustibles-en-espana-informe-de-situacion/http://www.wearcheckiberica.es/boletinMensual/PDFs/ESPECIFICACIONES_DEL_GASOLEO_Y_BIODIESEL.pdfhttp://www.aop.es/informes/biocombustibles/Dossier_AOP_biocombustibles_version_final.pdfhttp://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2008/10/14/pdfs/A41170-41175.pdfhttp://www.mecarun.es/uploads/ANTI BACTERIAS para GASOIL%281%29.pdf

Los problemas del biodiésel: diferenciación química con el petrodiésel

Queridos lectores, He aquí el primer post sobre los problemas prácticos de usar biodiésel en nuestros motores actuales. Escrito por un ingeniero químico con décadas de experiencia, es un post muy técnico pero también muy clarificador de un problema poco abordado: el de la imperfecta sustitutibilidad del diésel convencional (petrodiésel) por biodiésel. Salu2, AMT   Cuandopienso en biodiésel, me viene a la memoria la frase "Nada nuevobajo el Sol", y es que ya en el año 1893 el ingeniero alemánRudolf Diesel hizo funcionar por primera vez un motor monocilíndricoalimentado nada menos que con aceite de cacahuete.    Suvisión de futuro era pasmosa ya que en un discurso de 1912 dijo: "eluso de aceites vegetales como combustible para motores puede parecerinsignificante hoy, pero con el paso del tiempo será importante comosustituto del petróleo y del carbón". Apesar de este inicio, los aceites vegetales fueron sustituidosrápidamente por hidrocarburos obtenidos de la destilación delpetróleo por su menor coste y mejores propiedades y ventajastécnicas. La fracción del petróleo usada como combustible paralos motores diésel, es la que llamamos diésel (gas-oil , gasóleo)en honor al inventor del motor. Araíz de la crisis del petróleo de los años 70 del siglo pasado,seretomó de nuevo el uso de aceites vegetales como punto de partidapara desarrollar carburantes de motores diésel.    Losproblemas a resolver que producía el uso directo de los aceitesvegetales como combustibles en motores diésel se había visto queeran principalmente : Alta viscosidad (dificulta la pulverización en la cámara de combustión) Baja Volatilidad (dificulta la formación de mezcla aire-combustible) Temperatura de gelificación alta ( en invierno se forman geles por debajo de 10-15ºC) Combustión incompleta con tendencia a formar residuos carbonosos y polímeros gomosos en las cámaras de combustión Estosproblemas son debidos a que los aceites vegetales son químicamenteTriglicéridos, esto es, ésteres de distintos ácidos grasos y deglicerol ó glicerina (propanotriol). Cadamolécula consta de tres ácidos grasos que pueden ser iguales odistintos y una molécula de glicerol, el elevado peso molecular esel responsable de la baja volatilidad y la alta viscosidad.    Losácidos grasos, de los aceites son principalmente hidrocarburoslineales con cadenas desde C4 hasta C30 y terminados en un grupoácido. Las cadenas pueden ser saturadas (p.e. Acido Estearico) einsaturadas con uno (p.e. Oleico), dos (p.e. Linoleico) y hasta tresdobles enlaces (p.e. Linolénico). Losácidos grasos al tener mucha similitud con los hidrocarburosconstituyentes del diésel del petróleo (petrodiésel), se pensóque separándolos de la glicerina y cambiando ésta por unmonoalcohol de cadena corta (Metanol, Etanol) tendrían uncomportamiento muy parecido al petrodiésel. Asíse desarrollaron los Biodiésel, el proceso más empleado hasta ahorapara su fabricación es el de la Transesterificación en el que serompe el triéster ácido-glicerina y se sustituye ésta por unmonoalcohol (Metanol, Etanol) en presencia de un catalizadornormalmente un álcali fuerte (Sosa, Potasa) el resultado es laformación de tres moléculas de Ester (Metílico-Etílico) y una deglicerina.                              1               3            1                     3 Parafavorecer el rendimiento de la reacción, se debe utilizar un excesode alcohol sobre el estequiométrico y hacer la reacción en calientecasi al punto de ebullición del alcohol.    Aúnasí al final quedan cierta cantidad de Triglicéridos sinreaccionar, Diglicéridos (sólo se desplaza un ácido),Monoglicéridos (sólo se desplazan dos ácidos) junto con laglicerina, el exceso de alcohol, los restos de catalizador y los ésteres. Lareacción debe estar lo más exenta posible de humedad pues lapresencia de agua provoca la formación de jabones sódicos opotásicos de los ácidos grasos.    Paraevitar al máximo la formación de Mono y diglicéridos cuanto máscorta es la cadena del alcohol mejor rendimiento se obtiene al sermenor el impedimento estérico frente al triglicérido, por esto elalcohol más empleado es el Metanol. Despuésde la reacción debe procederse a las operaciones de separación detodas las impurezas y subproductos de la reacción, unamicrofiltración y la adición de aditivos para mejorar propiedadesde viscosidad, punto de congelación y antioxidantes. Debealmacenarse en lugares muy secos y en depósitos expresamentediseñados para este tipo de combustible. Losésteres metílicos de ácidos grasos, al contener en su moléculados átomos de oxígeno y en las cadenas del ácido graso doblesenlaces (insaturación) tienen un comportamiento muy distinto de loshidrocarburos del petrodiésel. Lapresencia de oxígeno, le daun carácter más polar y por ello una mayor viscosidad , una mayordensidad, un punto de gelificación a mayor temperatura, menor poderenergético por unidad de volumen (un 7%) , mayor formación deóxidos nitrosos en la combustión, mayor propensión a formarcompuestos ácidos , mayor poder disolvente atacando y ablandando lasjuntas y gomas en contacto. En depósitos de vehículos que sólo hancontenido petrodiésel, al poner biodiésel, se disuelven todas lasimpurezas que había en los fondos y conductos, obturando filtros einyectores. Es más higroscópico y absorbe humedad ambiental. Eldoble enlace es propenso a la oxidación, seforman peróxidos y compuestos ácidos, provocando la formación depolímeros y lacas en la cámara de combustión y corrosión enmetales blandos (cobre, estaño, etc).    Comose oxida más fácilmente, el tiempo de vida del biodiésel eslimitado y aunque se conserve en depósitos adecuados y se añadanaditivos, no dura más allá de unos 6 – 10 meses. Otrograve inconveniente es que en presencia de humedad, se formanfácilmente colonias de bacterias anaeróbicas precipitandosedimentos gomosos en los fondos de depósitos y en las conducciones,obturando fácilmente los filtros. Comoventajas tienen mayor poder de lubricación y una menorformación de monóxido de carbono ( CO ) en la combustión, unamenor emisión de hidrocarburos libres y de compuestos aromáticos ycicloalifáticos. Menor formación de micropartículas carbonosas enlos gases de escape y prácticamente exento de azufre. Mayorbiodegradabilidad. Unbuen poder detonante, pues tiene un alto Indice de Cetano(Hidrocarburo C16) que equivaldría en diésel al Indice de Octano enel caso de la gasolina LosEsteres Metílicos de Acidos Grasos ó FAME por sus siglas en ingés(Fatty Acid Methyl Ester) pueden usarse sólos (100%) el llamadogasoil tipo "B100" en algunos vehículos industriales ó enmezclas con el diésel del petróleo. Normalmente se está usando conun 5% (gasoil tipo "B5") Losaceites más usados como fuente del biodiésel son los de colza ygirasol en países de clima templado (Europa) aceite de soja yAceite de Palma en los países tropicales. Losrendimientos medios en aceite elaborado son: Aceitede Colza: 954 Lt/Ha Aceitede Soja : 922 " Aceitede Girasol: 767 " Aceitede Palma: 4.570 " Seestá trabajando intensamente en intentar obtener Aceites a partirdel cultivo de algas microscópicas, pero aún no se ha pasado de lafase de Planta Piloto. Apartedel método de la transesterificación, hay otros métodos demodificar los aceites tanto vegetales como animales que permitenobtener hidrocarburos de distinta composición susceptibles de usarsecomo combustibles en motores diésel, pero todos son másconsumidores de energía que el descrito.    Porejemplo, para evitar los problemas de la insaturación y ademásseleccionar los ácidos grasos con la cadena que consideremos óptimapara dar un buen rendimiento y un alto índice de cetano, podríamospor ejemplo destilar los FAME en una torre a alto vacío yseleccionar el intervalo de destilación óptimo para motores diésel,ó se podría hacer la hidrólisis ácida o alcalina de los aceites yseparar los ácidos grasos obtenidos, destilarlos y esterificarlosluego a gusto.    Paraevitar la oxidación se podrían hidrogenar los ácidos grasosinsaturados. Sehan hecho ensayos de “cracking” de los aceites como si setratara de petróleo , pero se obtiene una nube de moléculas nodeseables aparte de bajo rendimiento en hidrocarburos que haceinviable su separación. Cualquierade estos procesos, consume una cantidad de energía “obscena”,en calefacción, refrigeración, agitación, filtración,evaporación, tratamiento de efluentes líquidos, gaseosos , sólidos,etc. Hayque mencionar también que el Metanol se obtiene a partir del gasnatural por combustión parcial en presencia de agua (gasde síntesis) a alta temperatura y presión y con catalizadoresespeciales de cobre. Químicamente,por poderse hacer se puede hacer lo que se quiera, otra cosa es elcoste prohibitivo energético de cualquier manipulación además dela cantidad de subproductos contaminantes. Pero,si contemplamos el Biodiésel como carrier de energía para uso envehículos especiales, ambulancias, policía, tractores agrícolas,etc, se puede asumir la baja TRE actual de los biodiésel y sucoste.  Teniendoen cuenta que el consumo mundial de Petrodiésel en 2007 fué de1.157 MMTn y asumiendo un rendimiento medio de producción de Aceitesde 1 Tn/Ha para producir el Aceite necesario para transformarlo enBiodiésel consumido durante este año, harían falta unas 1200 MM Ha. Aquíes donde se ve ya el absurdo de creer que se pueda mantener elconsumo actual de gasoil sustituyéndolo por biodiésel. Siconsideramos toda la energía consumida en el cultivo y recolecciónde las semillas junto con los abonos e insecticidas y herbicidas, yluego toda la energía consumida en el proceso de obtención de losFAME veremos que la tasa de retorno energético (TRE) como mucho esde 2 -3, muy por debajo de lo admisible como renovable de 10. Superficiecultivable. El planeta se calcula que tiene unas 5.017MMHa de tierra cultivable, el 38,5% de la superficie terrestre, delos cuales los pastos se llevan la mayor parte, por lo que se calculaque queda para usos agrícolas menos de un tercio, 1.530 MMHasolamente, es decir, 0,22 hectáreas para cada uno de los 7.000millones de habitantes; y esta superficie está disminuyendo cada añopor el cambio climático y el incremento de la desertización y otrascausas. Energíaprimaria. El consumo en 2006 fue de 11.500 Mtpe (millonesde toneladas de petróleo equivalente) con el 33% de petróleo; 21%gas natural; 26% carbón y lejos del 1% de energía solar y eólica. Cereales.La producción mundial en 2006 fue de 1.995 Mt (millones detoneladas) de las que 598 fueron de trigo, 30%; de maíz 693, 35%; dearroz 420, 21%; y los restantes 284 Mt de mijo, sorgo y otros. Laalimentación humana consumió el 48%, los usos industriales el 29% yel 23% restante fue para alimentación animal. Oleaginosas.La producción de estas semillas en 2006 fue de 390 Mt, siendo desoja 219, (56%); de colza 49, (13%); de semillas de algodón 42; degirasol 30 y los 50 Mt restantes de otras semillas menos conocidas. Biocombustibles.Sumando los cereales y oleaginosas disponemos de 2.385 Mt de las quese calcula que podremos obtener el 20% de etanol o biodiésel, apenas500 Mt, es decir, un teórico 4% de la energía que actualmente seconsume. Y eso suponiendo que las personas no empleáramos el 48% enla alimentación, aparte de la alimentación animal y las necesidadesindustriales. Perosi consideramos que de esta producción de grano -cereal uoleaginosas- la mitad está destinada al consumo humano, el restosólo llegaría para cubrir el 2% de las actuales necesidadesenergéticas mundiales. La agricultura actual, está basada en altísimos consumos de energíafósil en sus distintas operaciones: preparación, arado, siembra,abonos, riego, insecticidas, cosechado, transporte, almacenaje y unlargo etcétera que ahora se quiere sustituir con losbiocombustibles. Ademáseste modelo agrícola es deficitario en cuanto al rendimientoenergético, es decir, que para obtener una unidad de energía -unacaloría- se gastan más de 10 en las labores, transportes ymanipulaciones de esta agricultura forzada e industrial. Laenergía de los combustibles se basa en la diferencia de energíapotencial del enlace, generalmente Carbono-Hidrógeno  respectoa la energía potencial del enlace una vez oxidado ,CO2 y H2O . Poresto, para conseguir moléculas con alto potencial de enlace químico,hace falta aportar una cantidad de energía muy superior a ladiferencia de energías de enlace , o sea que todo lo que seamanipular enlaces químicos comporta un consumo de energía muyalto.  Otracosa es la sabia Naturaleza que mediante el CO2 de la atmósfera, elH2O de lluvia, y iones metálicos de los suelos y el maravillosocatalizador Clorofila de las plantas, mediante la energía de losfotones captados de la luz solar, es capaz de romper los enlacesO=C=O y H-O-H para formar cadenas hidrocarbonadas  CH3-CH2-CH2-…. n,  con grupos funcionales , ácido, éster, alcohol,cetona, aldehído, incorporación a la molécula de N, S, etc. y conestas piezas del mecano y con el resto de enzimas construir lacomplejidad de los seres vivos. La energía de los fotones solaresacumulada en estos enlaces es la que después se libera cuando seoxidan – combustión- y vuelven a la estabilidad química de loscomponentes de partida . Es el típico ejemplo de la montaña y elvalle, el enlace C-H está en la cima de la montaña, y una vezliberada su energía potencial en la oxidación, regresa al valledonde se encuentra más a gusto ( ley del mínimo energético) Alfinal, la agricultura no es más que el resultado de la fotosíntesis-sol, agua y nutrientes- que cada año dan las cosechas. La colza, lasoja la palma,etc. hacen su función a su aire y por más quequeramos no podremos multiplicar ni acelerar su producción por unfactor de un millón pues, la energía fósil -petróleo, gas naturaly carbón- que suma el 80% de la energía mundial consumida tiene elmismo origen, pero es el resultado de la fotosíntesis producida yacumulada a lo largo de cientos de millones de años. Encien años, hemos consumido lo que la naturaleza ha acumulado en 100millones, o sea cada año "gastamos" el capital energéticoacumulado durante ¡ 1 millón de años ! y ahora pretendemos que laNaturaleza se acelere 1 millón de veces, para continuar gastando lomismo en el BAU absurdo actual. Cualquiercultivo tiene un rendimiento que está determinado por la naturalezay que podemos modificar pero aportando previamente los incrementosenergéticos que deseamos obtener y así, para obtener mejorescosechas será necesario un esfuerzo energético que hasta ahora hasido a costa de la “inagotable” energía fósil. Amenazadaesta energía que hasta ahora nos ha salvado,en su declive imparableuna vez pasado el Peak Oil, se pretende sustituirla por unosproductos agrícolas: cereales y semillas oleaginosas queprecisamente se están obteniendo con la energía fósil a la que sepretende sustituir; además de la degradación medioambiental queimplica todo este proceso, agotamiento de nutrientes, suelos y deagua, cerrando así el círculo de lo imposible. Quizálo que deberíamos investigar es mejorar el diseño original del SrDiésel para usar aceites directamente en los motores, nosevitaríamos manipular químicamente el aceite, aunque el problemaenergético continuaría siendo el mismo. No podemos acelerar elproceso de fotosíntesis y el suelo disponible para el cultivo eslimitado e impensable para mantener el BAU actual. Armand

Canarias ante la crisis

Canarias incrementó un 2.000% el consumo de electricidad en los últimos 40 años

El proyecto “La memoria encendida”, de la empresa ENDESA-UNELCO en Canarias, está recopilando miles de documentos sobre la historia de la electricidad en Canarias (aquí, enlace de www.canariasahora.es sobre la citada exposición). En este interesante artículo del diario El Día se recopilan algunos datos de la historia de la electricidad en Canarias, destacando el incremento sorprendente anual del consumo eléctrico en el archipiélago (un 8% anual durante las últimas décadas), que ha llevado al archipiélago a ser una sociedad totalmente electrificada en pocas décadas, como ha ocurrido en buena parte del Mundo hoy desarrollado. Recopilación de imágenes de la Historia de la electricidad en Canarias, en Canarias Ahora.

La adquisición de combustible se acerca al 30% de los costes totales de las compañías aéreas

 ”La sensibilidad del negocio de la aviación al precio del combustible y su variación es realmente muy importante“, como afirma el estudioso Robaltón en su página web especializada. El factor del combustible ha pasado a suponer casi un tercio de los costes totales de una compañía aérea, partiendo de un porcentaje de alrededor del 10-15% de los costes, en un plazo de cinco años. Numerosos sectores empresariales se hacen eco de los efectos de este incremento sobre las compañías aéreas y del efecto de subida del precio de las tarifas, aunque consideran que la industria se adaptará a esta nueva estructura de costes. Según el director general de la IATA, “El combustible contabiliza el 27% de los costos operativos, y un aumento sostenido del precio del crudo podría aguarnos la fiesta“. En la memoria, el ajuste de compañías aéreas de la crisis financiera y energética de los años 2008 y 2009.

El precio de la gasolina

El precio del petróleo, la referencia obvia del precio de la gasolina, amen de la consabida imposición fiscal en cada país (en España es, pese a lo que se pudiera pensar, prácticamente la más baja de toda la Unión Europea) ha mantenido, durante los últimos meses, un ritmo de continua escalada que está acercando al crudo al record numérico del año 2008. Los diversos expertos han puesto sobre la mesa los elementos que están condicionando este incremento: el cambio dólar - euro, la incertidumbre en Medio Oriente, el sostenido crecimiento de los países emergentes y su demanda; la expectativa de recuperación económica que hace esperar un mayor consumo; el efecto Fukushima; la insuficiente inversión en exploración e investigación petrolera en las pasadas décadas; el anuncio de Rusia de reducir sus exportaciones de petróleo; la sospecha de que la capacidad excedente de Arabia Saudí se puede desvanecer con un repunte de la economía global; la deriva de fondos especulativos hacia las materias primas, que ha provocado inclusive la determinación del presidente Obama de perseguir a los manipuladores de precios; y un largo etcétera. Simplificando, podemos decir que  todos los factores mencionados tienen tras sí como principal pivote el elemental juego de la oferta y la demanda, que se saben ajustadas desde hace unos años en el mercado petrolero. La oferta de petróleo global se ha ampliado casi exclusivamente del que proviene de aguas profundas y de las “arenas bituminosas” del Canadá; también se ha incrementado la producción de agrocombustibles. Toda esta nueva oferta alumbra los mercados a precios muy superiores que los del petróleo fácil del Medio Oriente. Por otro lado, la demanda mantiene su pugna con la incipiente, aunque muy desigual recuperación económica global, y las aún sorprendentes cifras del gigante asiático, que aún hoy crece con dos dígitos anuales en consumo de combustible.   El economista jefe de la Agencia Internacional de la Energía, Fatih Birol, ha calificado el momento actual de “zona de peligro” para la economía mundial. Diversos economistas han dibujado un panorama que vincula claramente un petróleo alcista con otra crisis económica, conocida la relación entre el incremento del precio del crudo, la inflación generalizada y la subida de tipos de interés, que frenaría las expectativas de mejora económica en muchas zonas del mundo desarrollado, más devoradoras de recursos energéticos. Se cuestionan estos estudiosos de la energía si no estaríamos ante un periodo de crisis cíclicas en las que la destrucción de la demanda y posterior crisis que provocaría un petróleo caro traería consigo un abaratamiento de éste hasta que un ulterior episodio de recuperación - como el que se vive en muchos países - provoque nuevos repuntes de precio del crudo, crisis económica, y así sucesivamente. La lógica de este planteamiento se encuentra en que el fin del petróleo barato largamente anunciado no ha sido reemplazado, por ahora, por un recurso energético de similares prestaciones a precio económico. Cómo será la transición energética y a qué coste está aún por ver.   Sí que parece imprescindible por lo tanto, y no sólo por motivos  macro y microeconómicos sino también climáticos, de salud pública, de precaución, etc., ir reduciendo el consumo compulsivo de gasolina, lo que incluirá importantes cambios en nuestros hábitos de consumo. No se tratará tanto de extrañarnos por ver un precio cada vez más espectacular del combustible sino de dar pasos decisivos para deshacernos del derroche que supone nuestro consumo energético actual, y dedicar mayores esfuerzos a reducir nuestra vulnerabilidad y dependencia extrema del petróleo, haciendo un acopio de “buenas prácticas” ya implantadas que deben formar parte de nuestra agenda para la transición energética, un  incierto periodo de cambios que parece haber empezado ya.

(Varias fuentes)

El FMI alerta de que en el futuro habrá problemas en el suministro de petróleo · ELPAÍS.com

La AIE certifica en Madrid que la era del petróleo barato "se ha terminado" en Cincodias.com

Global oil availability has peaked -EU energy chief | Reuters

Cenit-del-petroleo.com

Chris Martenson habla en Madrid

La semana pasada Chris Martenson (autor del Crash Course sobre el petroleo) habló en Madrid en una conferencia sobre plata, oro y metales (patrocinado por la Asociación Española de metales preciosos). El título de la charla es “Unfixable”, ó “imposible de arreglar”. Para ver subtítulos dar al botón CC, y elegir “traducir subtítulos” [...]

Cada vez más informes …

El informe de la “Oxford University” sugiere que las reservas de petróleo mundiales se han exagerado un 33%: [LINK, INGLÉS] El “United Kingdom Energy Research Center” indica que hay una alta probabilidad de que el petróleo barato alcance su zenit antes del 2020: [LINK, INGLÉS] El ejército de los EEUU sugiere que el cénit del petróleo [...]

Repsol y la era pospetróleo

El país publicaba hace unos días el artículo: Repsol se prepara para la era pospetróleo La escasez de crudo y el coche eléctrico obligan a las petroleras a reinventarse [...] según explicó hace poco su presidente, Antonio Brufau, suponen “convertir Repsol, de una compañía de crudo y gas, en un grupo de energía para el transporte”. El de [...]

Visiones de otro tiempo

Arabia Saudita: ¿Cantamañanas?

High Noon at OK Corral Es el momento de la verdad. Llevamos años escuchando los claims de Arabia Saudita de que pueden aumentar su producción para cubrir faltas y/o aumentos en la demanda a nivel mundial. Pues con la presión Estadounidense sobre la comunidad internacional para disminuir la compra del petróleo Iraní, ha llegado el momento de demostrar las capacidades reales del Reino. En los últimos años han tenido la oportunidad y las condiciones idóneas (altos precios) para aumentar su producción, pero no lo han hecho. Arabia Saudita dice que su capacidad de producción es de 12 millones de barriles diarios. No obstante, la realidad es que su producción de crudo no ha superado los 10 millones de barriles al día en los últimos años, según datos de la AIE. Tal vez se puede producir algo más de los 9,9 millones de barriles diarios producidos en agosto de 2011, pero aún no se sabe y hay serias dudas sobre sus capacidades, como indica Gail Tverberg en su artículo “Saudi Arabia – Headed for a Downfall?“. Con 260 millones de barriles de petróleo, Arabia Saudita tiene más del doble de las reservas comprobadas de Irán, su competidor más cercano dentro de la OPEP. En una entrevista en la CNN, el veterano Ministro de Energía, Ali Al Naimi, dijo que el país está listo para compensar el déficit de petróleo si las sanciones a Irán minimizan las exportaciones de 2,2 millones de barriles al día. “Tenemos la capacidad para producir 12,5 (millones de barriles al día) y ahora estamos al ralentí entre 9,4 y 9,8…”. Naimi también sugirió que el aumento podría ocurrir muy rápidamente. “Creo que podemos llegar hasta 11,4  o 11,8, casi inmediatamente, en pocos días, porque lo único que tenemos que hacer es abrir mas el grifo. Ahora, para llegar a los 700 siguientes, se necesitará alrededor de 90 días. ” Lo dice con tal cara de poker que hasta parece creíble…Tengo mis dudas. Dado la situación actual en cuanto limites reales de producción y el cenit de petróleo, seguramente ya alcanzado en el 2008, es difícil de entender que están pensando los líderes occidentales (y Japón). ¿Como pretenden satisfacer la demanda global, y así estimular el crecimiento económico global, sin el petróleo Iraní? Me atrevo a sugerir que es una estrategia temporal de EEUU para guardar/retrasar la explotación del petroleo de Irán, hasta provocar un cambio de régimen que promete hacerse con el Iranian Oil Bourse y vender en Petrodollars. (Desde antes de su fundación en el 2007, el Oil Bourse de Irán ha jurado no vender su petroleo en petrodollars, una decisión que ha consolidado su lugar en el “Eje del Mal”). Si EEUU y sus aliados pueden provocar dicho cambio, sería una victoria gigantesca para Estados Unidos, sus aliados y sus economías.

La Transición Imprescindible a un Sistema Alimentario con mas Resiliencia

Sin comida no hay vida. En  un post anterior he hablado de la poca resiliencia de nuestro sistema alimentario. El sistema actual es completamente dependiente del petróleo. El petróleo es la materia prima en las pesticidas y en los fertilizantes; es el combustible para los tractores gigantescos que cultivan los enormes campos, [con el tiempo y esfuerzo de pocos trabajadores]; es también el combustible para los camiones que transportan grandes cantidades de comida muchos kilómetros hasta llegar a nuestras mesas , [otra vez con el tiempo y esfuerzo de pocos trabajadores]. Y aún así el sistema carece de cualquier pizca de eficacia o eficiencia neta: Por cada caloría que consumimos, gastamos entre 8 y 10 en su producción! En el año 1900, con una población en España de 18 millones de personas, el 67%  se dedicaba a la agricultura. Hoy con una población de 48 millones, solo el 3% se dedica a darnos de comer. Es mucho peso sobre pocos hombros. La parte mas gruesa del trabajo lo hace John Deere, que sólo necesita una fuente ininterrumpida de combustible para funcionar las 24 horas del día si es necesario. Lo preocupante y lo que hace el sistema especialmente vulnerable, es  el coste energético y económico de este arreglo y como repercute en el precio del pan. El Brent ha dejado ser barato hace tiempo y empieza a hacer estragos irreversibles. En los países menos desarrollados los precios de los alimentos han alcanzado niveles históricos. Según datos del World Food Program, el numero de personas con hambre hoy supera a la suma de las poblaciones de Estados Unidos, Canadá y la Unión Europea. Y aunque los del mundo desarrollado no se identifican con esa falta de resiliencia, se estima que, en cualquier momento dado, estamos a 3 días del caos y del hambre:  Cualquier rotura en la cadena del sistema provocaría el desabastecimiento en los supermercados en solo 3 días. El mensaje de este post es simple: Tenemos que empezar la transición hacia la recuperación de nuestra resiliencia perdida, empezando con el sistema alimentario y movernos hacia la relocalización de las economías. En el futuro (próximo), como es lógico, la parte más grande de la población estará dedicada a la agricultura… es de cajón.  Para ello tenemos que empezar a trabajar en el gran reskilling (re-aprendizaje) de habilidades y oficios relacionados con la agricultura y sobre todo la permacultura. Con este espíritu de aprendizaje, os animo a ver este vídeo sobre la agricultura del futuro:

Peak Oil: ¿Es una calle sin salida?

La vida es un viaje. Y de repente aparece un hombre en el camino y te cuenta todo sobre el peak oil y sus repercusiones (maldito! ¿será mala gente?) Te asusta y al mismo tiempo te resulta fascinante. Investigas, navegas por la web en los foros, haces preguntas, ¡¡te contestan!! (lamentas haber preguntado!!) Sigues investigando, desarrollando tus propias ideas  y opiniones sobre el tema.  Poco a poco se va formulando la gran pregunta: ¿Hay vida después de peak oil? ¿Es una calle sin salida? La contestación sin duda alguna es: ¡Hay una salida! ¡Hay un camino! Es el camino de La Transición. Y nos llevará a otra parte, a un futuro diferente del pasado y del presente. Nos toca salir del superhighway en el que llevamos viajando muchas décadas, a coger aquel camino que nos queda: El camino de La Transición. Para empezar, vamos a evitar la tentación de ponerle etiquetas: ¡horrible!, ¡catastrófico!, ¡romántico, como los viejos tiempos! – porque, como la vida misma, habrá de todo, sufrimiento y alegrías incluido. Además de los difíciles ajustes que vendrán al tener que acostumbrarnos con menos, quizás volveremos a recuperar algo de valor práctico ya que con tanto petróleo fácil nos hemos convertido en la generación más inútil y mas vulnerable de la historia. A nivel practico hemos perdido virtualmente toda nuestra resiliencia. A través del camino que tenemos delante, tenemos también la oportunidad y  la responsabilidad de recuperar esa resiliencia perdida…eso sí, a través de un proceso doloroso que requerirá mucha (muchisima) mano de obra! Ya podemos ir subiendo las mangas de nuestras camisas. Que quede clara, hay una salida digna de esto.

Observatorio petrolero sur

Tenemos nueva página!

A partir de 2012 toda la información actualizada sobre la industria hidrocarburífera y sus impactos la encontrás en www.opsur.org.ar

Perforando el subsuelo de la corona

Moratoria temporal en Inglaterra; organizaciones sociales buscan su ratificación permanente. Por OPSur.- ¿Industrias extractivas en la rica Europa? Mientras todos los ojos se dirigen a la crisis financiera y los indignados, la "revolución silenciosa" del gas no convencional se cuela por la ventana del continente, donde varios gobiernos ya licitaron áreas para exploración. El OPSur realizó una recorrida por los caminos de resistencia que diversos grupos están planteando ante el avance de la frontera hidrocarburífera en sus países. En esta primera entrega la organización Frack Off comenta las consecuencias de la exploración de áreas no convencionales en el Reino Unido de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda del Norte. Luego de dos pequeños temblores, y ante la desconfianza que generan las reservas anunciadas, las organizaciones demandan la aplicación de una moratoria definitiva --hoy en día en una pausa temporal- a este tipo de actividad en manifestaciones y mediante la toma de pozos. Irlanda del Norte ya aprobó una moratoria. Manifestación de Frack Off en Londres. Fuente: Nanda Nalin La costa oeste de Inglaterra es el epicentro de la gran mayoría de los pequeños sismos  que afectan a este país, unos veinte anuales según el Servicio Geológico Británico (BBC, 28/5/2011). Pero, entre abril y mayo de este año, se registraron dos temblores --de 2,2 y 1,5 en la escala Richter- que escaparon a los parámetros usuales de la región de Blackpool. Los hechos coincidieron con el comienzo de las maniobras de fractura hidráulica en dos pozos concesionados en la zona a la empresa Cuadrilla. En la ronda de licitación número 13, promovida por el Departamento de Energía y Cambio Climático en 2008, se ofertaron 60 áreas para exploración de las cuales 20 eran para gas. Según el gobierno, la tan anhelada seguridad energética es posible (y urgente) al desarrollar esta fuente barata y propia. El debate en torno a la explotación de hidrocarburos no convencionales ya estaba instalado en el país. En mayo la Casa de los Comunes del Parlamento británico (cámara baja nacional de legisladores) --a través de la Comisión de Energía y Cambio Climático- publicó un informe [1] estableciendo que no había ningún tipo de riesgo en la fractura hidráulica. Tim Yeo, titular de la Comisión, declaró que las críticas en torno a la contaminación de las napas hídricas, como otros daños ambientales, se "desvanecían en el aire". Si bien Londres no tembló, seguramente lo habrá hecho el parlamentario cuando, en los primeros días del mes siguiente, se dispuso una prohibición temporal sobre la técnica de fractura hidráulica: Blackpool había sufrido un "mini terremoto" por segunda vez (The Independent, 1/6/2011). ¿Existía una conexión entre estos dos sucesos? ¿Podría llegar a ser la fractura hidráulica un detonante de pequeños sismos? Removiendo el avispero de la reina Cuadrilla fue la encargada de aclarar estas incertidumbres al publicar un informe de los hechos en los primeros días de noviembre [2]. El estudio, realizado por profesionales independientes, consignó que era "altamente probable" que la fractura hidráulica hubiera sido la causa de los temblores. Al mismo tiempo, el Servicio Geológico Británico confirmó que los epicentros de ambos se encontraban a 500m de uno de los pozos de la firma (BBC, 2/11/2011) y emitió un informe en la misma sintonía: "es probable que la fracturación haya disparado los terremotos" (BGS, s/n). No obstante, se estableció que era improbable que el fenómeno ocurriera nuevamente, dado que las razones principales se encontraban en "inusuales condiciones geológicas". Esto parece ir a contramano de las evidencias que lentamente emergen a partir del desarrollo de esta actividad en los Estados Unidos. Mapa de áreas hidrocarburíferas. Fuente: British Geological Survey El centro de investigación estadounidense Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, dependiente de la Universidad de California y miembro de la red del Departamento Federal de Energía, afirma que una de las causas de los temblores inducidos --los provocados por el ser humano- es la fractura hidráulica, descartando que sean potencialmente dañinos dada la baja intensidad de la técnica en términos geológicos (LBL, s/n). Sin embargo, cada vez más voces ponen reparos a estas afirmaciones. En agosto de este año, la agencia sismológica del Estado de Oklahoma emitió un estudio donde vincula las fracturas con pequeños terremotos, estableciendo que, aunque la relación causal directa no pueda ser afirmada, existen fuertes evidencias que hacen pensar en una correlación. Detalla que luego de que se hayan producido fracturas hidráulicas en la zona se identificaron por lo menos 50 pequeños temblores [3]. En 2010 se identificaron 1.047 episodios en todo el Estado, cuando dos años antes no se habían superado los 50 (Oil Price, 8/11/2011). A las mismas conclusiones llegaron investigadores de la agencia geológica del Estado de Arkansas: si bien no es posible establecer una relación causal directa, hay fuertes evidencias espacio-temporales que mostrarían un vínculo. Al igual que el Estado de Oklahoma, con compañías instaladas recientemente, los temblores producidos en los últimos años no tendrían causas naturales (The New York Times, 6/2/2011). Lejos de ser una tendencia novedosa, los terremotos inducidos son estudiados desde hace más de 80 años en Estados Unidos, y se establece como principal causa la inyección o extracción de líquidos. El Lawrence Berkeley Lab afirma que el primer antecedente se produjo en la década de 1930 en California: la rápida extracción de petróleo y gas produjo una serie de terremotos que provocaron importantes daños (LBL, s/n). El U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) explica los terremotos inducidos de la misma forma. En 1967, en Denver, la inyección de residuos líquidos peligrosos tuvo que ser discontinuada debido a que el ejército estadounidense constató que esta práctica estaba provocando terremotos: tres de gran magnitud, más de 5 en la escala Richter, y pequeños temblores siguieron durante años cerca de los pozos (USGS, s/n) (Nicholson y Robert, 1990). Otro estudio de 1990, también de un investigador de la USGS en cooperación con la Agencia Federal Ambiental (EPA), estableció una relación causal entre pozos de inyección profunda y terremotos al estudiar numerosos casos en Estados Unidos (Nicholson y Robert, 1990). Y un estudio más, de 2010, realizado por investigadores de las universidades de Texas y Metodista del Sur (Frohlich et al, 2010), sobre los terremotos en Dallas de años recientes, establece como una de las causas probables las operaciones de empresas petroleras en la zona, al tiempo que cita ejemplos del siglo pasado que llegan hasta los 4,6 en la escala Richter. También el informe emitido por el Servicio Geológico Británico, por los terremotos de mayo y abril, afirmó que: "es bien conocido que la inyección de agua u otros fluidos durante procesos de extracción de petróleo, ingeniería geotérmica y gas de esquisto puede provocar terremotos" (BGS, s/n). "No a la fractura hidráulica en el Reino Unido" Con la evidencia sobre la mesa, los voceros de Frack Off sostienen que el estudio de Cuadrilla "no inspira confianza" (BBC, 2/11/2011). Esta organización surgió a nivel nacional al mismo tiempo que se iban publicitando las áreas y la compañía entraba en los territorios. En entrevista con el OPSur, Tim Andrews, uno de los integrantes de Frack Off, dijo que tienen el objetivo de resistir la entrada de las empresas petroleras. "Las formaciones de gas no convencional se encuentran debajo de un tercio del Reino Unido, lo que significaría una industrialización masiva de las zonas rurales. Sabemos lo que pasa en Estados Unidos, no queremos eso aquí". Otro factor que Frack Off ve con preocupación es un manejo inadecuado del agua: "Una parte del agua y los químicos que inyectan tiene que salir, ellos lo tienen que tratar. No importa qué químicos pusieron en el agua, ya está llevando sustancias de las rocas, como elementos radioactivos y esto es muy difícil de tratar. Y la gente que está tomando agua no está midiendo los niveles de radiación, y ciertamente lo hacen millones. En EEUU hay creciente evidencia de que la radiación está circulando por los ríos". En este sentido, la Agencia de Protección Ambiental de Estados Unidos, en un estudio que demandó tres años, confirmó hace unos días la contaminación de agua por parte de la industria petrolera en el Estado de Wyoming (The Guardian, 9/12/2011). Andrews detalla que han tomado nota de otros impactos, como la contaminación del aire, de la tierra, e incluso la provocada por la enorme infraestructura y logística. "Se necesitan hasta 1.000 camiones por sitio, y, posiblemente, otros 400 por cada fractura. Esta cantidad enorme de camiones en pequeños caminos, más los gasoductos y otras cosas, son intervenciones masivas en períodos muy cortos". Toma de la torre de perforación en Blackpool. Fuente: Indymedia El día en que se realizó la entrevista varios hechos ayudaron a poner en tapa de diarios el avance de la frontera hidrocarburífera en Inglaterra. Además de publicarse el estudio sobre los terremotos, Frack Off organizó una manifestación frente a un hotel céntrico de Londres, donde se llevaba a cabo una conferencia sobre gas no convencional auspiciada por empresas del sector. Nathan Roberts, que también integra Frack Off, dijo: "las protestas con pancartas están bien pero si uno realmente quiere hacerse escuchar hay que entrar en acción". En efecto, doce horas antes varios integrantes habían ingresado a uno de los pozos en Blackpool parando la producción, una moratoria "de hecho". Roberts y Andrews afirman que la reforma legal es un paso, necesario, y el elemento clave es la prohibición de la actividad. "Pero no solamente aquí, sino las empresas irán para otros países, causarán los mismos daños". Roberts dice que ellos promueven la organización de los ciudadanos, el empoderamiento de la gente, hacia un cambio que involucre diversos aspectos más allá del petróleo no convencional. Reservas petroleras enormes y gigantes: ¡las más grandes del mundo! Los problemas para el desarrollo de los hidrocarburos no convencionales en el Reino Unido no provinieron únicamente de los cuestionamientos de Frack Off y otros grupos, sino también de los mismos anuncios de la compañía Cuadrilla. En septiembre dio a conocer que en la formación Bowland, donde se asientan los pozos perforados, había reservas por 5.600 billones de metros cúbicos (200 trillones de pies cúbicos), una cantidad que podía satisfacer la demanda del país por 56 años, y representaba uno de los descubrimientos globales más grandes en los últimos tiempos. Para extraer esta cantidad eran necesarios entre 400 y 800 pozos y se crearían 5.600 puestos de trabajo en los próximos quince años. Estos anuncios, en un país con reservas casi agotadas -principalmente las de Mar del Norte-, reposicionaban a los hidrocarburos en el horizonte energético. Mark Miller, titular de Cuadrilla, sostuvo en declaraciones a la prensa que la región de Lancashire era tan rica como las mejores de Texas (The Guardian, 21/9/2011). Apenas dos días después una nota de la agencia de noticias Reuters reunió diversas voces que pusieron en tela de juicio tal descubrimiento. Los argumentos fueron desde una necesidad urgente por parte de la firma de recibir financiamiento para continuar los trabajos, pasando por cuestionamientos que apuntaron a la imposibilidad de estimar tales cifras con únicamente dos pozos, y hasta una deliberada presión política para evitar discusiones en torno a los impactos sociales y ambientales (Reuters, 23/9/2011). Lo cierto es que en los primeros días de noviembre el Servicio Geológico Británico no terminaba de confirmar los anuncios de Cuadrilla, y hasta ese momento la empresa no había presentado a la agencia ni la metodología utilizada en su evaluación de la potencial reserva ni los resultados finales. Actualmente el organismo sigue contabilizando una reserva de 150 billones de metros cúbicos, una diferencia muy amplia con el anuncio inicial (BGS, s/n). Charles Hendry, Ministro de Estado para el Departamento de Energía y Cambio Climático. Fuente: The Guardian Más allá de estos avatares, la frontera sigue una tendencia expansiva. Un informe de Amigos de la Tierra Inglaterra señaló en octubre que hay intereses explícitos puestos en por lo menos otras tres regiones, e incluso sobre Irlanda del Norte y la República de Irlanda. Mientras tanto, diversas estimaciones dicen que en las áreas marítimas podría haber reservas hasta cinco veces más grandes (Amigos de la Tierra, 2011). ¿Corriendo el eje? Frack Off, Amigos de la Tierra y otras organizaciones y especialistas coinciden en que, aún sin contar los numerosos impactos locales, el desarrollo de los hidrocarburos no convencionales ahondaría en emisiones responsables del cambio climático. Andrews dice que uno de los aspectos positivos que están esgrimiendo las empresas y el gobierno es que el gas no convencional tiene menor cantidad de emisiones que el carbón, una fuente importante para Inglaterra. "Sin embargo, como muestran abundantes investigaciones, toneladas de gas están siendo filtradas a la atmósfera. Como el metano es setenta y dos veces peor por molécula que el dióxido de carbono, liberarlo directamente es definitivamente peor, y la fractura hidráulica causa inevitablemente filtraciones". En un estudio publicado en 2011 por investigadores de la Universidad Cornell, de Estados Unidos, se afirma que la emisión global de gases de efecto invernadero en explotaciones de gas de esquisto es mayor que en yacimientos convencionales e, incluso, que en el carbón. Para esta conclusión se abordó no solamente las emisiones directas por quema sino también las indirectas por filtraciones en todas las etapas --extracción, venteo, transporte, industrialización, almacenamiento y distribución. Su fuente principal es el estudio de emisiones de la industria hidrocarburífera de la Agencia de Protección Ambiental de Estados Unidos. Al fracturar hidráulicamente parte del líquido vuelve a la superficie, la cantidad de metano excede la capacidad de este para absorberlo, por lo que entre el 0,6% y el 3,2% del gas total del yacimiento se filtra como metano en las primeros días y semanas. Otro 0,33% se estima que es liberado una vez que se extrae la infraestructura usada para romper el esquisto y, de esa forma, permitir el ascenso del gas. En promedio un 1,9% del metano producido es filtrado solamente para la puesta a punto del pozo; muy por arriba del 0,01% del convencional. Al tener en cuenta todas las etapas en el caso de no convencionales la emisión de metano sería entre 3,6% y 7,9%, un 30% mayor que en gas convencional. (Howarth, R.; Santoro, R.; Ingraffea, A., 2011) El Tyndall Centre for Climate Research ya había emitido un estudio en este sentido en enero de 2011, en el que evaluaba los potenciales impactos sobre agua y tierra. Pero, en un nuevo informe de noviembre, afirmó que si se explotara solamente un quinto de las reservas --estableciendo reparos ante la falta de información cuantitativa fiable- los objetivos planteados por el país frente al cambio climático serían echados por la borda. Esto representaría un 15% de las emisiones de dióxido de carbono hasta 2050, cuando las emisiones totales tienen que ser reducidas en un 80%. Asimismo, el objetivo de mantener el alza de temperatura por debajo de 2⁰ -fruto de la Convención de las Partes (COP) de 2009 en Copenhague, Dinamarca- tampoco sería cumplido de continuar esta línea. Otro hecho sobre el que cargaban las tintas era la generación de trabajo, muy baja comparada con la que se podría generar a partir del desarrollo de energías renovables. Aún más, con un nivel de inversión similar sobre fuentes renovables el suministro energético sería mayor (Tyndal Centre, 2011). A los diversos elementos que plantean estas organizaciones, se le suma uno sustancial: la promoción del gas no convencional quita prioridad a la transición energética de base renovable. Aun compartiendo este horizonte, Chris Huhne, Secretario de Estado para el Departamento de Energía y Cambio Climático del gobierno inglés, afirma que hoy en día el gas forma parte insustituible de la oferta energética, un pilar para la seguridad energética. En un artículo publicado en The Telegraph, el Secretario centra su exposición sobre los vaivenes del mercado, sobre el alto grado de incertidumbre de los commodities, y en el hecho de que no se puede confiar en una fuente, siendo la diversificación una necesidad. ¿Consecuencias ambientales? Las desestima en menos de un párrafo: "no somos EEUU (…), nuestra planificación y marco regulatorio son diferentes" (The Telegraph, 8/11/2011). Otra persona que comparte el análisis es, sin lugar a dudas, su jefe Charles Hendry, Ministro de Estado para el Departamento de Energía y Cambio Climático. En un artículo publicado en The Guardian dice que: "El gas no convencional recién está comenzando aquí y está gobernado por uno de los marcos regulatorios más robustos y restrictivos a nivel mundial". Detalla que la Agencia Ambiental ha revisado profundamente los estudios presentados por Cuadrilla --aunque el especialista en medio ambiente del mismo diario, George Monbiot, denunció que nunca pudo acceder a ellos (The Guardian, 23/9/2011)-, demostrando que no hay riesgos de impactos ambientales en la actividad. "No hay necesidad de una moratoria" afirma el Ministro (The Guardian, 22/9/2011). Manifestación de Frack Off en Londres. Fuente: OPSur Pero, al parecer, las aseveraciones vertidas en estos artículos no se condicen con la realidad. Un periodista del diario The Guardian, John Vidal, puso en duda la capacidad regulatoria del gobierno inglés al acceder a misivas entre funcionarios públicos y empleados de compañías petroleras. El periodista destaca que la existencia de tres organismos con poder de policía --Departamento de Energía y Cambio Climático, Agencia Ambiental y Salud e Higiene- más que potenciar, podría generar problemas sobre cuál es responsable en última instancia; no hay un marco regulatorio específico, ya que, aunque los desarrollos se hagan a cientos de metros de poblaciones, se asientan sobre normativas antiguas para pozos costas afuera; no hay estudios de impacto ambiental realizados por la Agencia Ambiental o las autoridades locales; entre otros. Mike Hill, ingeniero en petróleo que ha trabajado en fractura hidráulica, dice que confiar en los autorregulación de la industria, como se lo viene haciendo en la práctica, es "totalmente inaceptable" y la regulación es extremadamente necesaria. Pero, ¿lo hará el Estado? Citando una carta de una autoridad de Salud e Higiene: "un control pozo por pozo sería una locura, elevaría la necesidad de recursos inmensamente" (The Guardian, 23/9/2011). El gobierno del Primer Ministro David Cameron, del Partido Conservador, en su asunción prometió ser el más "verde" en la historia del Reino Unido. Una amplia coalición de grupos ecologistas --Amigos de la Tierra, Partido Verde y otros- fustigó a principios de diciembre la política ambiental calificándolo como la más destructiva en las últimas décadas. El ministro de Finanzas, George Osborne, afirmó que proteger el ambiente era contrario al interés público y, entre otros temas, propuso: reducción de impuestos a industrias contaminantes, quita de subsidios a energía solar y revisión de la protección básica de áreas protegidas (The Guardian, 3/12/2011). A la misma conclusión, arribó un informe de junio de este año realizado por el Parlamento de la Unión Europea, que destaca que los marcos regulatorios para la fractura hidráulica cuentan con numerosas carencias e inconsistencias, que la actividad no estaría dentro de los mínimos para la presentación de estudios de impacto ambiental y, entre otros puntos, afirma que los recursos no convencionales de gas en Europa son demasiado pequeños para tener un impacto significativo como fuente de energía, al tiempo que quitaría del eje otras fuentes renovables (European Parliament, 2011). Mayor o menor regulación podría ser un eje del debate, una forma de verlo. Pero, sin lugar a dudas, lo central es discutir sobre una moratoria a la exploración y explotación de yacimientos no convencionales. La corta, pero intensa, historia de Estados Unidos al respecto da señales claras de que continuar con la actividad es un camino escarpado y sinuoso, las consecuencias a la vista son demasiado graves y preocupantes para no tenerlas en cuenta. A esto apuntan organizaciones como Frack Off o Bristol Rising Tide, las cuales, por segunda vez, cerraron uno de los pozos de Cuadrilla al ocupar el campamento en Hesketh Bank, Lancashire (Indymedia, 1/12/2011). Sobre el cierre de esta nota Irlanda del Norte declaró la moratoria sobre la fractura hidráulica hasta en tanto no se realicen estudios ambientales, marcando un nuevo piso de discusión para el Reino Unido (Belfast Telegraph, 7/12/2011).   Más Información sobre hidrocarburos no convencionales Shale gas: hacia la conquista de la nueva frontera extractiva Hidrocarburos no convencionales en Argentina Zapala: Comunicado de la 1ra jornada de debate y contrainformación sobre no convencionales Bibliografía Frohlich, C.; Potter, E.; Hayward, C.; Stump, B. (2010): Dallas-Fort Worth earthquakes coincident with activity associated with natural gas production. Disponible en: http://smu.edu/newsinfo/pdf-files/earthquake-study-10march2010.pdf Friends of the Earth [Amigos de la Tierra] (2011): Shale gas: energy solution or fracking hell?. Disponible en: http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/shale_gas.pdf Howarth, R.; Santoro, R.; Ingraffea, A. (2011): Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations. Disponible en: http://www.sustainablefuture.cornell.edu/news/attachments/Howarth-EtAl-2011.pdf Nicholson, C. y Wesson, R. (1990): Earthquake hazard associated with Deep Well Injection. Denver: U.S. Geological Survey. Disponible en: http://foodfreedom.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/earthquake-hazard-associated-with-deep-well-injection-report-to-epa-nicholson-wesson-1990.pdf Tyndall Centre for Climate Research (2011): Shale gas: an updated assessment of environmental and climate change impacts. Conclusiones y resumen disponibles en: http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/broderick2011_shalegasexecsummary_conclusions.pdf Agencias oficiales British Geological Survey, 27/5/2011: Blackpool earthquake. British Geological Survey, consultado el 5/12/2011: Shale gas www.bgs.ac.uk/research/energy/shaleGas.html European Parliament, Policy Departament A: Economic and Scientific Policy (2011): Impacts of shale gas and shale oil extraction on the environment and on human health. Disponible en: http://europeecologie.eu/IMG/pdf/shale-gas-pe-464-425-final.pdf Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratorie, consultada 5/12/2011: What is Induced Seismicity?. http://esd.lbl.gov/research/projects/induced_seismicity/primer.html#causes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, consultado el 5/12/2011: apartado web de Induced Seismicity. http://esd.lbl.gov/research/projects/induced_seismicity/oil&gas/ U.S. Geological Survey, consultado el 5/12/2011: Can we cause earthquakes? Is there any way to prevent earthquakes? http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?categoryID=1&faqID=1 Medios de prensa BBC, 28/5/2011: Small earthquake hits Fylde coast at Poulton. BBC, 2/11/2011: Fracking tests near Blackpool ‘likely cause’ of tremors. Belfast Telegraph (Liam Clarke), 7/12/2011: Gas fracking is put on hold by Northern Ireland Assembly. Indymedia (Bristol Rising Tide), 1/12/2011: Bristol anti-Fracking protesters shut down the country's only hydraulic fracturing. Millicent Media (Tim Robert), 2/9/2011: British Geological Survey: Cuadrilla's shale gas estimate unreliable, to release new figure. Oil Price (John Daly), 8/11/2011: U.S. Government confirms link between earthquakes and hydraulic fracturing. The Guardian (Terry Macalister), 21/9/2011: Vast reserves of shale gas revealed in UK. The Guardian (John Vidal), 23/9/2011: Fracking industry will be minimally regulated in UK, letters reveal. The Guardian (Charles Hendry), 23/9/2011: The potential of shale gas is worth exploration. The Guardian (George Monbiot), 23/9/2011: Charles Hendry’s fracking response raises more questions than it answers. The Guardian, 3/12/2011: The government must embrace a green future The Guardian, 9/12/2011: Fracking may be causing groundwater pollution, says EPA report. The Independent (Steve Connor), 1/6/2011: Small earthquake in Blackpool, major shock for UK’s energy policy. The New York Times (Campbell Robertson), 5/2/2011: A dot on the map, until the earth started shaking. The Telegraph (Chris Huhne), 8/11/2011: Britain can't afford to bet its future on shale gas – wind turbines are here to stay. Reuters (Tom Bergin), 23/9/2011: Doubts raised about giant UK shale gas find. [1] El estudio se puede encontrar en: http://www.ogs.ou.edu/pubsscanned/openfile/OF1_2011.pdf [2] Disponible en: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmenergy/795/795.pdf [3] El estudio se puede encontrar en la página de Cuadrilla: http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Final_Report_Bowland_Seismicity_02-11-11.pdf

El Paquete de Durban: "Laisser faire, laisser passer" (dejar hacer, dejar pasar)

Por Pablo Solon.- La Conferencia de Cambio Climático terminó dos días después de lo previsto aprobando un conjunto de decisiones que recién se conocieron horas antes de su adopción. Algunas decisiones no estaban completas el momento de su consideración. Les faltaban párrafos y algunas delegaciones ni siquiera tenían el texto de las mismas. El Paquete de decisiones fue puesto por la Presidencia Sudafricana con el ultimátum de "Tómalo o déjalo". Sólo a la Unión Europea se le aceptó modificaciones de último momento en plenaria. Varias delegaciones hicieron duras críticas a los documentos y manifestaron su oposición. Sin embargo, ninguna delegación objeto de manera explicita y consecuente la adopción de estas decisiones. Al final el paquete entero se adoptó por consenso sin la objeción de ninguna delegación. Los elementos centrales del Paquete de Durban se los puede resumir de la siguiente manera: 1) Un Zombi llamado Protocolo de Kioto Un muerto viviente sin alma: Las promesas de reducción de emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero para el segundo período de compromisos del Protocolo de Kioto representan menos de la mitad de lo necesario para mantener el incremento de la temperatura por debajo de los 2ºC. Este Zombi (segundo período del Protocolo de Kioto) recién se adoptará el próximo año (COP 18). No se sabe si el segundo período del Protocolo de Kioto será de 5 u 8 años. Estados Unidos, Canadá, Japón, Rusia, Australia y Nueva Zelandia estarán fuera de este segundo período del Protocolo de Kioto. Esta será conocida como la década perdida en la lucha contra el cambio climático. 2) Nuevo régimen del "Laisser faire, laisser passer" El 2020 entrará en vigencia un nuevo instrumento legal que remplazará el Protocolo de Kioto y afectará seriamente los principios de la Convención Marco de Cambio Climático de las Naciones Unidas. Los elementos centrales de este nuevo instrumento legal ya se los puede apreciar por los resultados de las negociaciones: a) promesas voluntarias en vez de compromisos vinculantes de reducción de emisiones, b) mas flexibilidades (mercados de carbono) para que los países desarrollados cumplan sus promesas de reducción de emisiones, y c) un mecanismo de cumplimiento aún más débil que el del protocolo de Kioto. El nuevo instrumento legal abarcará a todos los Estados borrando la diferencia entre países en desarrollo y países desarrollados. El principio de "responsabilidades comunes pero diferenciadas" y establecido en la Convención de Cambio Climático irá desapareciendo. El resultado será la profundización del régimen del "Laisser Faire, laisser passer" que se ha inaugurado en Copenhagen, Cancún y Durban y que lleva a un incremento de la temperatura de más de 4ºC. 3) Un fondo Verde sin fondos El Fondo Verde tiene ahora una arquitectura institucional en la que el Banco Mundial es un actor clave Los 100 mil millones son sólo una promesa y NO serán provistos por los países desarrollados. El dinero vendrá del mercado de carbono (que está colapsando), de la inversión privada, de créditos (que habrá que pagar) y de los propios países en desarrollo. 4) Un salvavidas para los Mercados de Carbono Los mercados de carbono existentes vivirán independientemente de la suerte del Protocolo de Kioto. Además se crearán nuevos mecanismos de mercado de carbono para cumplir con las promesas de reducción de emisiones de esta década. Es un intento desesperado por evitar que desaparezcan los mercados de carbono que están colapsando debido a que los Bonos de carbono han caído de 30 euros la tonelada a 3 euros la tonelada de CO2. Los países desarrollados reducirán menos de lo que prometen porque compraran Certificados de Reducción de Emisiones de los países en desarrollo. 5) REDD: un incentivo perverso para deforestar en esta década Si no talas árboles no podrás emitir certificados de disminución de la deforestación cuando entre en funcionamiento el mecanismo de REDD (Reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación de bosques). CONSECUENCIA: deforesta ahora si quieres prepararte para REDD. Las salvaguardas para los pueblos indígenas serán flexibles y de aplicación discrecional según cada país. La oferta de financiamiento para bosques se posterga hasta la próxima década debido a que la demanda de Bonos de Carbono no se incrementará por las bajas promesas de reducción de emisiones. De los procesos de negociación de cambio climático no podemos esperar un resultado que salve a la humanidad y a la Madre Tierra. Los gobiernos anteponen la economía de las transnacionales frente a la necesidad urgente de emprender un nueva forma de vida en armonía con la naturaleza. La clases dominantes no van subvertir el capitalismo que es la causa de fondo del calentamiento global. Lejos de traer el capitalismo a la naturaleza a través de la "economía verde" es necesario emprender el camino del reconocimiento y respeto a los Derechos de la Madre Tierra. ¡Amandla! ¡Jallalla! En las acciones y eventos de los movimientos sociales en Durban dos gritos se fusionaron: "Amandla" y "Jallalla". El primero es un palabra Xhosa y Zulu del Sur de África que quiere decir "poder". La segunda es una expresión aymará que significa "por la vida". "¡Amandla! ¡Jallalla!" significa "¡Poder por la Vida!". Ese es el "poder por la vida" que trascendiendo fronteras debemos construir desde nuestras comunidades, barrios, centros de trabajo y estudio para frenar este genocidio y ecocidio que esta en curso. www.ecoportal.net Pablo Solón, analista internacional y activista social. Fue Jefe negociador para cambio climático y Embajador ante Naciones Unidas del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia (2009-Junio 2011). Ecoportal

Ni nuclear ni otras

Peaknik (Twitter)

Peaknik: RT @LionelBadal: @Ed_Crooks @kmac @derek_brower Colin Campbell says that IMF recently sent an analyst to discuss #PeakOil with him, inte ...

Peaknik: RT @LionelBadal: @Ed_Crooks @kmac @derek_brower Colin Campbell says that IMF recently sent an analyst to discuss #PeakOil with him, inte ...

ASPO International

Norway raises drill costs alarm

The head of Norway's oil agency has sounded the alarm over high drilling costs on the country's continental shelf that are putting a serious restraint on its ability to tap new reserves to reverse a production decline. At the same time, offshore operators are delaying drilling due to factors such as a lack of rig capacity and stalling on investments in technology to boost recovery, putting a further brake on reserves expansion, Bente Nyland, director of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), warned on Wednesday. Read more: Upstream Online

Special issue highlights peak oil and health connections

The September issue of the American Journal of Public Health is now available online featuring 8 studies and articles by an interdisciplinary set of experts, each examining the health risks posed by peak petroleum and what can be done to mitigate and protect against the onset of a major spike in energy prices. The studies are entitled: Public Health and Medicine in an Age of Energy Scarcity: The Case of Petroleum Petroleum and Health Care: Evaluating and Managing Health Care's Vulnerability to Petroleum Supply Shifts Petroleum Scarcity and Public Health: Considerations for Local Health Departments Peak Oil, Food Systems, and Public Health Peak Oil, Urban Form, and Public Health: Exploring the Connections [http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/9/1607 Peak Oil and Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Impacts and P read more

PetroChina: warns of 'severe' market

PetroChina, the Chinese oil and gas giant, saw soaring costs devour much higher revenues in the first half to post a similar profit to a year ago. PetroChina said it piled on revenues in the six months to the end of June despite "a complex macro-economic environment" which saw volatility in oil prices and poor demand for petrochemical products. The second half could prove even more challenging with the company warning: "The uncertainty and instability of the global economic recovery may become more severe, while the global financial markets and crude prices may see greater fluctuations." Read more: Upstream Online

Oil Depletion Protocol

ASPO's Stuart McCarthy on the ODP in QLD

Stuart McCarthy of ASPO Brisbane discusses the recent response to a petition for the state of Queensland to adopt the Oil Depletion Protocol and other Australian peak oil news. Read more.

The Oil Depletion Protocol in Earth Island Journal

Richard Heinberg discusses the Oil Depletion Protocol in the Winter 2007 edition of Earth Island Journal. Click here to read more.

Bush urged to break US oil dependence

By Carola Hoyos in London, Edward Luce in Washington and Krishna Guha in Beijing Published: December 13 2006 22:07 | Last updated: December 13 2006 22:07 The Bush administration should act decisively to break America's dependence on oil, said a group of leading US business executives and senior military officers in a report presented on Wednesday to the White House and Congress. The bipartisan group, which includes the chief executives of Fedex, UPS, Dow Chemicals and some of America's best known retired generals, urged Washington to recognise that "pure market economics will never solve the problem" of US oil dependency. The report poured cold water on the Bush administration's goal of reducing America's dependence on foreign oil, rather than on oil in general. It urged Mr Bush and the new Democrat-controlled Congress to set up a plan to halve the American economy's oil-intensity by 2030. George W. Bush has repeatedly identified "energy independence" and immigration reform as two of the issues most likely to attract bipartisan support following the Republican loss of control of Capitol Hill in mid-term elections last month. "Events affecting supply or demand anywhere will affect consumers everywhere," said the report, brought out by the Energy Security Leadership Council, a think tank. "Exposure to price shocks is a function of how much oil a nation consumes and is not significantly affected by the ratio of "domestic oil" to so-called "foreign oil". The report also warned Mr Bush, who is expected to announce new energy independence measures in his annual State of the Union address to Congress next month, that America's oil dependence makes it acutely vulnerable to terrorist attacks. America's transport system is 97 per cent dependent on oil. More than 90 per cent of world oil supply is controlled by foreign governments. "America must address this critical weakness." Said P.X. Kelley, a retired Marine Corps general. "An oil supply interruption cannot be reasonably dismissed as improbable." However, there is deep-seated scepticism about the willingness of the Bush administration, which has yet to endorse the theory of global warming, to take the tough steps most energy experts say are necessary to reduce America's dependence on oil. Last January Mr Bush declared that America was "addicted to oil". But Mr Bush's announcement was not followed by any significant change in energy strategy. "There is very little reason to believe that the White House will take the tough measures necessary to make this happen," said a Washington-based energy lobbyist. "There is no appetite, say, to impose a carbon tax or for putting a floor under the price of oil that would incentivise investors to put their money into alternative energy." However, the US administration wants to step up co-operation with China on energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels. Energy and the environment will be among the topics addressed in Friday's final session of the US-China strategic economic dialogue involving top officials meeting in Beijing. The dialogue is the brainchild of Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, who has a strong track record as an environmentalist and is treated with suspicion by some US conservatives as a result. Lack of binding targets for China and other big emerging market countries such as India to limit their greenhouse gas emissions was one of America's principal reasons for refusing to ratify the Kyoto accord. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006 See article here.

The Oil Drum

Drumbeat: January 27, 2012

Everything You Know About Peak Oil Is Wrong We've been warned before. Four decades ago this year, five scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published an influential set of predictions regarding the sustainability of human progress. Titled Limits to Growth, their report suggested the world was heading toward economic collapse as it exhausted the natural resources, such as oil and copper, required for economic production. The report forecast that the world would run out of new gold in 2001 and petroleum by 2022, at the latest. Over the intervening years, the threat of "peak oil" has stayed with us--the date when global petroleum production was to reach its supposed maximum, afterward and evermore to decline as dwindling reserves were tapped out. And the exhaustion of the world's oil reserves was just the start. A host of other critical natural resources, from phosphorus to uranium, have been declared peaking or already peaked. Forty years later, however, rereading Limits to Growth invokes a growing sense of irony. Far from being depleted, worldwide reserves of minerals continue to climb. New technologies suggest the dawn of U.S. energy independence. The biggest concern isn't that the planet is running out of resources--it's having too many for the planet's own good. Oil supply limits and the continuing financial crisis Since 2005, (1) world oil supply has not increased, and (2) the world has undergone its most severe economic crisis since the Depression. In this paper, logical arguments and direct evidence are presented suggesting that a reduction in oil supply can be expected to reduce the ability of economies to use debt for leverage. The expected impact of reduced oil supply combined with this reduced leverage is similar to the actual impact of the 2008--2009 recession in OECD countries. If world oil supply should continue to remain generally flat, there appears to be a significant possibility that oil consumption in OECD countries will continue to decline, as emerging markets consume a greater share of the total oil that is available. If this should happen, based on these findings we can expect a continuing financial crisis similar to the 2008--2009 recession including significant debt defaults. The financial crisis may eventually worsen, to resemble a collapse situation as described by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies (1990) or an adverse decline situation similar to adverse scenarios foreseen by Donella Meadows in Limits to Growth (1972). This and other related articles from the 7th Biennial International Workshop "Advances in Energy Studies" are free, at least for now. Usually ScienceDirect charges a fee, but this publication is apparently a "sample issue." Oil Heads for First Weekly Gain in Three; Total Sees $100 Brent Support Oil headed for its first weekly gain in three, trading near a one-week high in New York amid signs of economic recovery in the U.S., the world's biggest crude consumer. Futures gained as much as 0.8 percent, advancing for a third day. The U.S. Commerce Department may say today that economic growth accelerated in the fourth quarter. Durable goods orders rose more than forecast in December, according to data published yesterday, and a report this week showed gasoline demand grew the most in more than two months. Total SA Chief Executive Officer Christophe de Margerie said it would take a "real recession" to send Brent crude below $100 a barrel. Russia sets new gas pumping record to cover European demand Moscow (dpa) - Russia has set a new record on volumes of fuel drawn from underground reservoirs in the face of increasing winter demand by domestic and particularly European customers, Russian government energy data made public on Friday showed. Draws on underground natural gas reserves inside Russia totalled 565 billion cubic metres on Wednesday - topping a previous 553 billion cubic metres single day record set in January 2011, a report published by the Russian government energy monitoring agency TsDU TEK said. Workers at Pa. refinery get layoff notices TRAINER, Pa. (AP) -- The first of hundreds of employees have been laid off from a Philadelphia-area oil refinery that hasn't found a buyer after four months on the market. ConocoPhillips laid off two shifts of workers at its Trainer, Delaware County on Thursday. The remainder of the 385-employee workforce is expected to be laid off Friday. Chevron profit falls as refineries, output suffer (Reuters) - Chevron Corp reported lower quarterly earnings on Friday as rising spending on oil and gas projects and losses at its refinery business offset gains from higher crude oil prices. Oil and gas output at the No. 2 U.S. oil company also declined to 2.64 million barrels per day (BPD) from 2.79 million BPD a year-ago. Colombia to Get $10 Billion in Mining, Energy Investments, Cardenas Says Colombia, South America's third- largest oil producer, expects about $10 billion in international investment in crude, mining and energy projects this year, Mines Minister Mauricio Cardenas said. Pertamina green lights $2bn gas spend PT Pertamina is to splash out almost $2 billion over the next three years as it wins approval for ambitious plans to revamp gas infrastructure in Indonesia. Myanmar has no plans to boost gas exports beyond 2013 (Reuters) - Myanmar will keep natural gas from new projects beyond 2013 for domestic consumption, a shift of policy aimed at powering its development, the country's energy minister said on Friday. Oil industry sees China winning, West losing from Iran sanctions (Reuters) - As the European Union prepares to ban Iranian oil and the United States turns the screw on payments, oil executives and policymakers say China and Russia stand to gain the most and Western oil firms and consumers may emerge the biggest losers. Iran could ban EU oil exports next week -lawmakers TEHRAN (Reuters) - A law to be debated in Iran's parliament on Sunday may halt oil exports to the European Union as early as next week, foiling an EU plan to phase in an oil embargo gradually to help its struggling economies adapt, lawmakers said on Friday. "On Sunday, parliament will have to approve a 'double emergency' bill calling for a halt in the export of Iranian oil to Europe starting next week," Hossein Ibrahimi, vice-chairman of parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. Oil Markets Seen Withstanding Iran Attack Shock in Global Investor Survey More than 70 percent of investors said an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would create only a short-term disruption in oil markets, according to a quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll. Only about a third of the 1,209 global investors, traders and analysts surveyed Jan. 23-24 said an attack could trigger an oil shock leading to a global recession. Israel's Bombing Threat Helped Spur Iran Sanctions, How Will it Affect Iran Diplomacy? Reiterating the threat of military action is a well-established Israeli tactic: Netanyahu argues publicly that Iran will only concede if it faces a real and imminent danger of military action. "This threat is crucial for scaring the Iranians and for goading on the Americans and the Europeans [into putting more pressure on Tehran]," wrote Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit last summer, castigating Israel's recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan for pooh-poohing the idea of an Israeli strike on Iran. "It is also crucial for spurring on the Chinese and the Russians. Israel must not behave like an insane country. Rather, it must create the fear that if it is pushed into a corner it will behave insanely." Iran's threat to fast-growing Qatar Qatar is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and the country's gross domestic product (GDP) rocketed up by 28% in 2011. But growing tensions in Iran and the potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz could endanger one the of nation's main money makers -- gas exports. Oman may help Sri Lanka if Iran oil sanctions bite (Reuters) - Oman may sell oil to Sri Lanka in the event of a crisis, which the island nation is racing to avert with U.S. sanctions on Iranian crude threatening its primary refining supply, Sri Lankan officials told Reuters on Friday. Tensions flare over Falkland Islands Buenos Aires (CNN) -- It's been nearly 30 years since British and Argentinian troops fought over the Falkland Islands, but politicians from both countries are ratcheting up their rhetoric over the British-controlled territory. ..."They are preying on our natural resources, our oil, our fish," Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said Wednesday. Activists report 'terrifying massacre' in Syria BEIRUT (AP) -- A "terrifying massacre" in the restive Syrian city of Homs has killed more than 30 people, including small children, in a barrage of mortar fire and attacks by armed forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, activists said Friday. Officials: Car bomb targets funeral in Baghdad, killing dozens Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- A suicide car bomber targeted a Shiite funeral procession in the Iraqi capital Friday, killing 31 people and wounding 60 others, two police officials said. Saudi warns of possible Mideast nuclear arms race DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) -- An influential member of the Saudi royal family is warning if the Middle East does not become a nuclear weapon-free zone, a nuclear arms race is inevitable and could possibly include Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Turkey. Spike in deaths blamed on 2003 NYC power outage The biggest electricity blackout to occur in the United States resulted in 90 additional deaths in New York City, caused both by accidents and disease-related problems, according to a new analysis of data from the summer of 2003. "Our results from this study indicate that power outages can immediately and severely harm human health," said Brooke Anderson, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. BP Can't Collect Part of Gulf Spill Costs From Transocean BP Plc (BP) can't collect from Transocean Ltd. (RIGN) part of the $40 billion in cleanup costs and economic losses caused by the 2010 oil well blowout and Gulf of Mexico spill, a judge ruled. Transocean shares rose on the news. BP must indemnify Transocean for pollution-related economic damage claims under its drilling contract, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans ruled yesterday. London-based BP (BP/) sued Transocean in April to recover a share of its damages and costs from the spill. No Energy Industry Backing For The Word 'Fracking' NEW YORK (AP) - A different kind of F-word is stirring a linguistic and political debate as controversial as what it defines. The word is "fracking" -- as in hydraulic fracturing, a technique long used by the oil and gas industry to free oil and gas from rock. It's not in the dictionary, the industry hates it, and President Barack Obama didn't use it in his State of the Union speech -- even as he praised federal subsidies for it. EU law enough for now to regulate shale gas - study BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU law is enough for now to regulate shale gas exploration, although changes might be needed to protect the environment once Europe enters the development phase, a study commissioned by the EU found. Shale gas exploitation in the United States has transformed the global supply-demand balance. In Europe, however, development is less advanced and EU member states Bulgaria and France have banned shale gas activity because of environmental concerns. Japan Post-Fukushima Reactor Checks 'Insufficient,' Advisers Say Japan's safety review of nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster is based on faulty criteria and many people involved have conflicts of interest, two government advisers on the checks said. "The whole process being undertaken is exactly the same as that used previous to the Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident, even though the accident showed all these guidelines and categories to be insufficient," Hiromitsu Ino, Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo, said at a briefing in Tokyo today. Japan's 'Nuclear Alley' conflicted over reactors OHI, Japan (AP) -- International inspectors are visiting a rugged Japanese bay region so thick with reactors it is dubbed "Nuclear Alley," where residents remain deeply conflicted as Japan moves to restart plants idled after the Fukushima disaster. Fukushima's animals abandoned and left to die Inside Fukushima Exclusion Zone, Japan (CNN) -- When you stand in the center of Japan's exclusion zone, there is absolute silence. The exclusion zone is the 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an area of high radiation contamination. On March 12, the day after the quake and tsunami hit, 78,000 people were evacuated out of this area, believing they would return within a few days. As such, thousands of people left with their dogs tied up in the backyard, cats in their houses and livestock penned in barns. Revamped Search Urged for a Nuclear Waste Site WASHINGTON -- A commission appointed to find alternatives to a failed plan to store nuclear waste in the Nevada desert declared on Thursday that the United States would have to develop a "consent-based approach" for choosing a site because leaving the decision to Congress had failed. By securing local consent, the panel said, the government might avoid the kind of conflicts that led to the cancellation of plans to create a repository at Yucca Mountain, a site 100 miles from Las Vegas, in 2010. It noted that local willingness had been crucial to decision-making on sites for nuclear waste depots in Finland, France, Spain and Sweden. Is Spent Nuclear Fuel Really Waste? Among advocates of nuclear power, considerable disagreement exists about whether the spent fuel can be considered waste, given that it contains unused uranium as well as plutonium, which is created in nuclear reactors and can be used as fuel. President Obama's energy plan panned by both sides As his re-election bid nears, President Obama is pitching a made-in-America energy agenda that calls for more offshore oil drilling, natural gas development and clean-energy investments. But he's not winning kudos from either the oil industry or environmental groups. API scoffs at Obama's lease sale WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The American Petroleum Institute welcomed plans for a lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico but also said U.S. energy ambitions are lackluster. Tech bet sours for Elkhart, Ind., as electric carmaker Think, battery firm Ener1 fall into bankruptcy Indiana's foray into electric vehicles is a cautionary tale for states in hot pursuit of high-tech manufacturing jobs. Think's story illustrates how politicians so badly wanted to stimulate job growth that they showered it and the battery supplier with tax breaks and incentives while at the same time failing to determine whether there was a market for the car: a plastic two-seater with a top speed of about 65 miles an hour and a price tag approaching $42,000. "Where's the value?" Gregg Fore, an Elkhart recreational vehicle industry executive, said of Think. "I could buy a golf cart for five grand if that's what I wanted to drive.'' Renewables From Vestas to Suntech Plan Profit Without Subsidy Renewable energy companies are approaching the point where they can generate electricity at a price competitive with fossil-fuels without subsidies, the biggest wind and solar manufacturers said. Waning Support for Wind and Solar Assisted by technological innovation and years of subsidies, the cost of wind and solar power has fallen sharply -- so much so that the two industries say that they can sometimes deliver cleaner electricity at prices competitive with power made from fossil fuels. At the same time, wind and solar companies are telling Congress that they cannot be truly competitive and keep creating jobs without a few more years of government support. German Solar Rush Is Predicted by Breil as Lawmakers Put Off Subsidy Cuts Germany may see a rush of solar panel installations in the coming weeks after lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition failed to agree on an overhaul of the country's clean-energy subsidy system. Apple, Electronics and Environmental Ills Environmental groups say that while multinational corporations like Apple are trying to improve conditions, thousands -- or perhaps tens of thousands -- of smaller companies are cutting corners and dumping hazardous chemicals in rural areas and even near densely populated areas. Contest Time! The Crisis of Civilization Remix Challenge If you've seen it, you'll probably have guessed that here at The Crisis of Civilization we love Remix films -- and we want you to have a go too. We would like to invite you to create your own Crisis of Civilization-style sequences, using unused interview audio of Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed with images put over the top and music laid underneath. Southern plants find fertile ground farther north Southern magnolias, lovers of sultry weather, braving the chillier Northeast? Camellias, a New Orleans trademark, staking out in North Carolina and higher latitudes? It's true, gardening experts say, and expect similar oddities to represent the new norm. Regional Cap-and-Trade Effort Seeks Greater Impact by Cutting Carbon Allowances Adjusting to shifts in the economy, states in the cap-and-trade system known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative have slashed the number of allowances that electric power companies can buy to offset their emissions. Al Gore: Living on Thin Ice Last September, millions of you joined us for 24 Hours of Reality, when we connected the dots between the extreme weather events happening all over the world and the reality of the climate crisis. Together, we saw that we don't need to travel far to see the impacts of climate change. Most of us are already feeling those impacts close to home. Yet the climate crisis is also causing momentous changes in remote regions far from major population centers, in places like Antarctica, Greenland and the North Polar Ice Cap. Some of the most dangerous changes in our climate system are the ones that often receive the least attention. "Monster" rules Nepal village on climate frontline There are more than 3,200 glaciers in Nepal, and 14 of them are at risk of bursting the dams which control the melting water that flows from them, officials say. "The melting of glaciers that forms lakes can only be attributed to climate change," said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, climate change specialist at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which studies climate change in the Hindu Kush Himalayas. Singapore raises sea defences against tide of climate change SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A 15-km (10 mile) stretch of crisp white beach is one of the key battlegrounds in Singapore's campaign to defend its hard-won territory against rising sea levels linked to climate change. Stone breakwaters are being enlarged on the low-lying island state's man-made east coast and their heights raised. Barges carrying imported sand top up the beach, which is regularly breached by high tides. Stuart Staniford: Historical Note on Drought in Climate Models This morning, I stumbled on a 1999 paper "DETECTABILITY OF SUMMER DRYNESS CAUSED BY GREENHOUSE WARMING" by Wetherald and Manabe. The paper discusses a single climate model (obviously a by-now very outdated one) which generates very serious drought across much of the world in the second half of the twenty-first century. The map above gives the general idea.

With Gas So Cheap and Well Drilling Down, Why is Gas Production so High?

This is a guest post by David Hughes, a geoscientist, president of a consultancy dedicated to research on energy and sustainability issues, and a fellow of Post Carbon Institute, on whose website this article first appeared. Natural gas prices have declined to below $3.00/mcf, levels not seen for years, yet the EIA posted the highest gas production ever in October, 2011. U.S. gas production is growing despite annual well completion rates that are half that at the peak of the drilling boom in 2008, when gas price topped $12.00/mcf. Proponents of shale gas as a “game changer” suggest that, despite the well-known high decline rates of shale gas wells, their productivity is sufficient to grow production with far fewer wells at historically low prices. Others, such as Arthur Berman, claim that shale gas plays require much higher prices to be economic. The answer may lie in the gas produced in association with oil drilling, which is near all time historical highs. Figure 1 illustrates the annual number of gas wells and gas production documented by the EIA. Although drilling is still well above 1990’s levels, it is only half that of the all time record drilling levels reached in 2008. Natural Gas Production versus Annual Drilling Rates, 1990-2011 Figure 1 – Annualized U.S. natural gas production and drilling rates, 1990-2011. U.S. natural gas production has reached production levels of 4.6 percent above the previous 1973 peak, and nearly 16% above the recent 2001 peak. While some of this increase is likely due to delayed tie-ins from the 2008 drilling boom, and some due to the high initial productivities of shale gas wells, these are not likely the whole story. Hydraulic fracturing has certainly changed the game with respect to gas production from shales and tight rocks, albeit with widely reported collateral damage including methane leakage into groundwater, pollution from produced frackwater disposal on the surface, induced earthquakes from frackwater injection into disposal wells and the environmental footprint of industrialized landscapes. Equally important is the game changing nature of applying hydraulic fracturing to producing oil from shales. Figure 2 illustrates annualized crude oil production versus well drilling rates. Drilling rates are near all time highs, more than double the rates of the 1990’s, and have succeeded in increasing production to levels not seen since late 2003 (yet down 42% from 1971). Production has grown by 0.65 million barrels per day above the all time low in U.S. oil production in May, 2008, causing some pundits to declare a new era of “American energy independence”. Crude Oil Production versus Annual Drilling Rates, 1990-2011 Figure 2 - Annualized U.S. crude oil production and drilling rates, 1990-2011. Large amounts of natural gas are produced in conjunction with the production of hydraulically fractured shale oil and in association with conventional oil drilling. Given the price differential between oil and gas at present many companies have changed their focus to shale oil or liquids rich shale gas to enhance economic returns. Although much associated gas in the production of shale oil is simply flared, as in the Bakken play in North Dakota, much is also produced into the market even at current low prices. Thus the apparent “too- good-to-be-true” statistics showing growing gas production with declining drilling are simply that – too- good-to-be-true. The record drilling for oil, and its contribution to gas production, is masking the high drilling rates required to grow gas production in the EIA statistics (which classify a well as either “oil” or “gas” depending on its principal product). Drill baby drill – Recent drilling rates are near all time highs Production decline rates in both shale gas and shale oil wells are very high – first year declines in Barnett shale gas wells are in the order of 65% and are higher in Haynesville wells. Similar decline rates are observed in shale oil plays. Thus new wells must continually be drilled to offset depletion in existing wells. Figure 3 illustrates the aggregate footage drilled for oil and gas in the U.S. and the average depth of the wells. Annual Footage Drilled versus Average Well Depth 1990-2011 Figure 3 - Annualized U.S. aggregate footage drilled and average well depth, 1990-2011. It can be seen that the footage drilled is near all time historical highs. And it can be argued that a hydraulically fractured foot, drilled in 2012, required much higher inputs of energy and capital investment than a foot drilled in 1980, as the deposits targeted are so much more challenging (or marginal, depending on your perspective). In addition, the average depth of a well is 40 percent deeper than it was in 1990. This reflects the declining EROEI associated with domestic U.S. oil and gas production, which can only be expected to decline further going forward. So, despite vocal industry proponents to the contrary, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Growing, or even maintaining, U.S. oil and gas production will require an increasing level of inputs in terms of the number of wells drilled, the footage drilled, the capital investments required, and likely, the large amounts of collateral environmental damage incurred. Editor's note: This post spawned a vigorous debate among the editors that has delayed publication by about a week. This debate revolved around the contribution made by shale gas and shale oil plays to overall US gas production, the impact of delayed hook ups to production figures and the veracity of EIA data. These issues are open for debate in the comments.

The Changing Status of Renewable Fuels

While it may be way too early to declare a final winner in the race to find replacement renewable liquid fuels for the jet fuel and diesel that power so many of the vehicles in the world, there are some indications as to the technology that just might end up coming out ahead. The results starting to appear also show that sometimes there is a disconnect between what the Government wants and considers possible, and the real world. The concern over climate change (not peak oil) led many governments around the world to mandate that propulsion fuels include a growing percentage generated from a renewable source. Six years ago I was in St Louis for the Renewable Energy Conference with its great emphasis on cellulosic ethanol. President Bush came to bless the endeavor, and much was made of it being the time to start building plants. A short while thereafter, I started looking into the generation of biodiesel from algae, and brought up the logical suggestion, to me, of growing it underground. (That idea still gains me the occasional pat on the head). Some of the early reviews of the technology were not good, but nevertheless, the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency began funding the development of algae, particularly as a source for jet fuel. Time passed, and the development of the new fuels took quite different paths. In order to encourage the change to renewable fuels, the EPA mandated that motor fuel include 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2009, 250 million in 2010, and 500 million by 2013. (This is on the way to a target of around 2 mbd by 2022.) Some of the original companies to seize on this opportunity started out with too great an ambition. Range Fuels, after some $156 million of Government loans from the Bush Administration, closed its doors this past year, unable to make the product it had promised. When it became obvious that the initial targets would not be met the mandated volumes were lowered, so that this year, for example, the industry target is 8.5 million gallons. But still the Government will fine companies, for not using a fuel that doesn’t yet exist in the volumes needed to meet those quotas. Two firms say that they will be able, in time, to produce significant volumes; POET is beginning construction of a plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa that is targeted to produce 25 million gallons a year from 700 tons a day of the left-over material from corn fields after the corn is removed. They have currently stockpiled 61,000 tons of stover for use this year. There is some concern however over the long-term Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which is supposed to help with funding. (DOE is to provide a $105 million loan). However, the Scotland S.D. pilot plant can only handle a ton a day of material (turning it into 80 gallons of ethanol at a cost of around $3 a gallon), and so the rest is to be burned as a fuel at the ethanol plant in Chancellor, S.D. (This is a corn ethanol plant.) A second plant will be built at Kinross in Michigan by Mascoma, following an agreement with Valero, and the award of $80 million from the Department of Energy. The plant is intended to generate an annual flow of 20 million gallons (1,300 barrels/day ) of cellulosic ethanol from hardwood pulp. The process is based on the use of engineered micro-organisms to produce the necessary saccharolytic enzymes and then converting the sugars released by those enzymes into the desired end-products. The process is known as Consolidated BioProcessing (CBP). In the meanwhile, they are also licensing a technology for improving the performance of corn ethanol plants. To date, therefore, the promise of cellulosic ethanol has not been met. Other sources for liquid fuels have been also been tested, and some – particularly the use of vegetable oils, either pre or post use in fast food chains – have found some niche in the market. Alaskan Airways are using an 80% conventional 20% cooking oil derived mix. At the moment, the cooking oil derivative is six times the cost of conventional fuel and Dynamic Fuels is the only commercial source with the plant having a capacity of 75 million gallons per year. They are now working with Solazyme to meet a target delivered volume of 450,000 gallons of renewable fuel, and that brings the focus back to biodiesel from algae. By 2010, DARPA was already claiming that the contractors it was working with had shown the promise of producing algal biodiesel at a price of $2 a gallon. Following that step, the US Navy has begun trials with oil made from algae. In the set of agreements that have flowed out of the initial success and led to the 450,000 gallon agreement, the U.S. Navy has taken delivery of roughly 75,000 gallons of biodiesel for testing in the fleet. And while the US Air Force is continuing trials of jet fuel made from camelina as the search for replacement renewable fuels continues. Beyond camelina (which has some problems finding a suitable home for large volume growth) commercial airlines are looking at algae sourced alternatives, with a United Continental flight having used a 60% conventional 40% algal sourced mix on a flight from Houston to Chicago. The algae-based fuel comes from Solazyme, which went public last spring and the company and has signed a non-binding letter of intent with the airline to sell them 20 million gallons of bio-sourced jet fuel starting in 2014. Interestingly the plant uses “indirect photosynthesis” to grow the algae, rather than open ponds. Robert Rapier has described the technology that they use. By using algae that do not require sunlight, they can generate the fuel in bioreactors where the process can be better controlled. Gail Tverberg first wrote about the company in 2008. Despite the opportunities that the fuel market presents, it does not, however, at the present time, provide much profit to a company, since it is costing about as much to produce a product as the market price will bear (around $3 a gallon). Thus it is still more profitable for the company to use the algal product in an earlier form as a triglyceride that can then be used in cosmetics and other chemical stocks. But, in contrast to the problems that cellulosic ethanol continue to have, I must admit to a quiet smile as I see the success that algal-derived fuels are starting to achieve. Now if I could just get them interested in nice, constant temperature locations for their plants, with much of the infrastructure, walls, roof and floor already in place, and relatively little cost for development, my original projections just might . . . .

Energy Bulletin (peak)

Oil prices, exhaustible resources, and economic growth: report extract

This chapter explores details behind the phenomenal increase in global crude oil production over the last century and a half and the implications if that trend should be reversed. I document that a key feature of the growth in production has been exploitation of new geographic areas rather than application of better technology to existing sources, and suggest that the end of that era could come soon. The economic dislocations that historically followed temporary oil supply disruptions are reviewed, and the possible implications of that experience for what the transition era could look like are explored. read more

ODAC Newsletter - Jan 27

President Obama exuberantly embraced America's new oil and gas frontier this week in his State of the Union address. Clearly aiming to steal some Republican election thunder, he pledged to open 75% of potential oil and gas resources, and repeated claims that the US is sitting on enough natural gas to last for 100 years (see insightful commentary on the numbers behind this from Chris Nelder, and more on gas prospects from David Strahan. read more

Commentary in Nature: Can economy bear what oil prices have in store?

Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy. That's the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in the current issue of the journal Nature (Jan. 26) that the economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels. The "tipping point" for oil supply appears to have occurred around 2005, says James W. Murray, UW professor of oceanography. The commentary concludes: "This will be a decades-long transformation and we need to start immediately. Emphasizing the short-term economic imperative from oil prices must be enough to push governments into action now." read more

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Everything You Know About Peak Oil Is Wrong - BusinessWeek

BusinessWeekEverything You Know About Peak Oil Is WrongBusinessWeekOver the intervening years, the threat of "peak oil" has stayed with us--the date when global petroleum production was to reach its supposed maximum, afterward and evermore to decline as dwindling reserves were tapped out. And the exhaustion of the ...Obama Vows to Stop Iran Nuclear Program by All MeansRIA Novostiall 3,442 news articles »

Researchers Argue Peak Oil Is Here, Bringing Permanent Volatility - Wired News

Wired NewsResearchers Argue Peak Oil Is Here, Bringing Permanent VolatilityWired NewsThe notion of peak oil is fairly simple: Oil is a finite resource and at some point we simply won't be able to extract as much as we once did. There is no getting around that limit for any finite resource. The issue that has made peak oil contentious, ...World oil supplies beyond tipping point, says Sir David KingEnergy Efficiency Newsall 13 news articles »

Peak Oil Crisis Being Compounded by Refinery Closures - OilPrice.com

Peak Oil Crisis Being Compounded by Refinery ClosuresOilPrice.comBy Post Carbon | Thu, 26 January 2012 23:45 | 1 Here is one more thing for those of us who live in the North Eastern US to start worrying about - the refineries that make our gasoline, diesel, heating oil, etc. are dropping like flies.and more »

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PeakOil.com

Canadian Retail Gas Pricing 101

(Or "Talk To Me About Gas Retail Pricing--Like I'm in Grade Four") Last year back in April-May, when I visited family and friends in Hamilton, Ontario, regular gas was being retailed at the $1.37 to $1.45 per litre range. You could literally hear groans from motorists each morning as they saw the daily updated pricing posted at refuelling stations. During my three-week stay the upward trend was a sustained phenomenon.  Some close friends -- upon learning I worked for the oil and gas industry (sort of, that is) and being based in Alberta -- bombarded me with questions about gasoline pricing in Canada. (As if I had something to do with the increases, or that I would know enough to help them understand what was happening). Truth was (and still is) the explanations I've heard from TV talk shows at that time have not greatly eased the clutter in my mind about the subject. I am still far from having a firm grasp of the relevant pricing mechanism. Most popular questions/observations I received were as follows: 1."We are a major oil-producing country, aren't we? How come our gas prices are so high?"  2."Can you explain why gas is cheaper South of the border (U.S.A)?"  3."Is it true a major portion of the price is taxes?"  4."Can government not intervene and make gas prices more affordable especially for low-income families?" I tried to give them a lay person's answer to some of the questions but, being as befuddled as they were, I didn't think I made much headway. The most I achieved,  I think, was to make many of them understand  I was as much in the dark as they were about the issue. In the aftermath of this encounter with largely disgruntled inquisitors (disgruntled with the system, that is) I tried searching for answers and explanations.  What follows is the result so far of reviewing information at certain key internet sites, particularly the excellent pages devoted to the subject at the Natural Resources Canada website, and at the Department of Finance Canada website. Item #1:  Petroleum Products Rack Pricing and The Law of Supply and Demand   Source: Google Images – Shortage attributed to State price ceiling (leading to either artificially high consumption and/or supply tightening) Let's begin with the rack pricing system which, as in everything else -- particularly in a free-market economy or, the very least, in a mixed-economy -- is based on the operation of the Law of Supply and Demand. The rack price of petroleum products is of key importance to refiners because it determines viability of refinery operations. It is the product selling price available to the refiner at the loading rack (hence, "rack price"). And as any sensible product seller would do assuming product mobility -- as is the case, for instance, of US and Canada -- a refiner (either Canadian or US) would go for the best price available in a given choice of markets. Thus, to use the illustration at the Natural Resources Canada website -- "…if the rack price for gasoline was lower in Toronto than it was in Buffalo, refiners in Toronto would choose to ship their product to Buffalo to sell at the higher price, as long as the cost of transporting it to Buffalo was less than the price difference. …" . [Translation: In a free-market economy (or a mixed economy with sufficiently strong market forces at work and not one run entirely or mainly by command or dictatorial fiats) refiners will always seek to maximize their revenue and profit by choosing the market with the best selling price. Profitability is the key determinant of such business decisions -- not patriotism, not benevolence, or anything else one may consider a higher value or a loftier ideal than so-called "filthy lucre".] But eventually, as more product is shipped to Buffalo due to the attractiveness of the rack price in that market the supply will soon build up and the price will soon drop until it is no longer advantageous for the Toronto refiner to ship his product over to Buffalo. Soon the two markets will be in balance. Item # 2: Effects of North American Petroleum Products Market Integration and Global Market Conditions Domestic pricing affected by global demand It is not just the local supply-demand equation that comes into play when pricing petroleum products. Domestic refiners are "price takers" --  meaning (and using Canadian local refiners as an example) the price of imported petroleum products is used by local Canadian refiners as basis for their own competitive pricing even if Canada were not importing any such products at all. [Translation: Local or domestic pricing is affected by import pricing regardless of whether we (in this example, we, Canadians) are doing any actual importation of such products or not. The Natural Resources Canada website refers to this practice as exercising "pricing discipline". Hence, even when a local refiner's cost structure is very competitive and the supply-demand equation may indicate a lower domestic price is sustainable (or attainable), actual pricing will still be close to the higher import price available in the integrated market.] Again, the so-called "profit maximization function" will lead a refiner to seek opportunities to exact a higher price to maximize revenues. To repeat the dictum --  for-profit-ventures, such as refining operations, are not driven by patriotism or benevolence: profitability is the moving force behind such a key business decision as product pricing. Item #3: Effects of Substitute or Alternative Products Source: Wikipedia – “Porter Five Forces” Diagram showing, among others, substitute products affecting markets and price regimes. It may be difficult to understand but it is reality: petroleum products pricing is affected not just by the demand-supply situation for a given  petroleum product but by the equation and pricing as applied to alternative or substitute products. Take for example propane which is described in as follows:  "Propane is a three-carbon alkane with the molecular formula C3H8, normally a gas, but compressible to a transportable liquid. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, it is commonly used as a fuel for engines, oxy-gas torches, barbecues, portable stoves, and residential central heating. A mixture of propane and butane, used mainly as vehicle fuel, is commonly known as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG or LP gas). …………………………. ." (Source: Wikipedia) Thus, for instance, automotive fuels (gasoline and diesel) directly compete with propane as far as its use as a vehicle fuel is concerned. The overall supply and demand equation for petroleum automotive fuels and resulting price regime are thus affected by the demand-supply-price behaviour of propane.   Item #4: The Very Nature of the Petroleum Product and How It is Used Affect the Price Consumer Pays for  It Source: Natural Resources Canada – As an illustration the price of diesel fuel, a highly flexible products with competing uses, is affected by how consumers actually use it. This point is still pretty much along the theme of demand-supply equations. The way consumers use (or consume) the product has a direct bearing on the demand-supply situation and, therefore, its price. One may even correctly say a given product may have competing "uses"; and the whole set of such competing or alternative uses necessarily affects the price consumers are willing to pay. A good example will illustrate this point more clearly and none can probably do it better than diesel fuel. People who track economic activity -- to determine whether it is waning or is on the rise -- usually observe diesel demand and consumption patterns as a proxy indicator of economic activity.  A healthy, growing economy will have a strong demand for diesel fuel because goods and services need to be moved and distributed increasingly in such a robust economy. This translates to an increase in truck traffic which largely relies on diesel fuel to run the engines of such huge tractor-trailers and other freight trucks. Add to this the fact that most agricultural machinery and equipment likewise use diesel fuel. Then also diesel fuel can be easily converted to furnace oil for heating purposes. So versatile is diesel fuel that it is used as a fuel of choice in transportation, agricultural, industrial, and residential applications. The whole slew of such competing uses (translation: demand) is a big factor to diesel fuel pricing. Item #5: The Tax Regime Applicable to a Given Market Affects the Price Consumers Pay for Petroleum Products Source: http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/ – Comparative fuel tax rates of selected OECD countries. You must have heard the old cliché about the two things certain in this life: taxes and death. And in Canada automotive fuels are certainly subject to federal excise tax, GST and, depending on the province concerned, provincial tax. The sum total of such taxes amounts to approximately $0.32 for a representative $1.00 per litre price of automotive fuels. Item #6: Retailer's Operating Costs Plus Any Retail Marketing/Promotion Strategy Affect the Price Consumers Pay Source: http://www.roadtripamerica.com/roadside/ – The only Frank- Lloyd- Wright-designed gas station in the world! Retail operations entail costs that must be recovered and, to stay in business, such operations must give the operators a sufficient profit margin. Such considerations all affect the actual retail price offered to customers. Also, in certain instances, a retailer may opt to implement a promotion campaign to attract a bigger market share; price competition may be the best option. By offering a lower price they may drive more traffic to a particular retailer. Summary How these different key items affect pricing is summarized in the following graph from Department of Finance Canada using gasoline at an illustrative price of $1 per litre: Approximate Price Components of Gasoline at CAN $1 per Litre (in cents) Source: Department of Finance Canada (which is careful to note that "Values for crude, refiner and retailer are estimated and are for demonstration purposes only"). Click on image to have a clear view. ______________________________________________________________ I hope this post sheds some light on the subject of automotive fuel pricing in Canada. I will continue with this topic to touch on some other factors that affect the price customers have to actually deal with. Among the most controversial ones are the effects of a) speculative demand, and b) US $ fluctuation. I must admit, though, this post hardly meets the challenge of explaining gas pricing in terms easily understood by a Grade Four student. I give up! But go to the Canadian government websites mentioned above. Also, at next post on the subject I will include non-government sites that I stumbled upon recently. They have a better way of reducing the complexity of information on this largely misunderstood topic.  GeoLogic

Another Terrifying Drought Paper

The conviction has been growing in me for quite some time that the really big deal about global warming is increasing frequency and severity of droughts.  If I’ve succeeded in convincing you of this too (or you already believed it for other reasons of your own), then you will be interested in a new paper by Wehner et al (a group of scientists at NOAA and US national labs) titled Projections of Future Drought in the Continental United States and Mexico. The full paper doesn’t seem to be freely available on the Internet but  there’s a press release and also conference talk slides that will give you the flavor.  Furthermore, a reader sent me a copy and I’ll summarize the points that interested me here. Let me start by explaining the figure above which is really the heart of the paper.  The x-axis of the figure is time during the twentieth and twenty-first century.  The y-axis plots the fraction of the area of the US and Mexico that is in at least moderate drought (PDSI less than -2).  The red and black lines are based on two different estimates of the historical PDSI: both use the same code for generating the PDSI that NOAA uses for its regular drought monitoring but they use temperature/precipitation data series from different groups as the input to the PDSI calculation.  Then the pale grey lines represent the (corrected) PDSI from nineteen climate model runs used in the IPCC AR4 process with the A1B emissions scenario (the world is currently tracking noticeably above this scenario).  The purple line is then the average of the 19 model runs (ie all the grey lines which are too blurred together to really see well).  Because the purple line is an average of 19 simulated worlds, it has much less fluctuations in than the one real world (red/black lines).  Also, because climate models seem to systematically under-estimate drought in the twentieth century, the purple line is below the red line on average. But here’s the kicker: notwithstanding the fact that the models seriously underestimate the level of drought in the 20th century, by the end of the 21st century, their average has reached around a level a little above 0.6.  And if you look over to about the mid 1930s you’ll see a red spike – the worst year of the dust bowl – which extends to about 0.65 (hard to see the exact level in the figure above but you can see it clearly in the version in the slides).  So the paper is saying that climate models predict a level of US/Mexican drought in 2100 that is comparable to the worst year of the dustbowl.  As the press release puts it: These models showed that the normal state for much of the continental United States and Mexico in the mid- to late-21st century would be conditions considered severe to extreme drought by today's standards. Holy shit. One interesting thing is that this new paper does not cite, and shows no awareness of, the line of papers by Dai and coauthors that I have covered extensively on this blog.  While that’s a flaw in the paper, it does mean that the broad conclusions of those papers have been reproduced completely independently by a different group of scientists. Needless to say the conclusions here are terrible – if there is that much drought on a regular basis, lots of US forests will be turning into savannah (and savannahs into grasslands or deserts) and there will be huge releases of carbon dioxide from the biosphere – really nasty positive feedbacks that the climate models I’m quite sure are not capturing properly – and we are really going to turn our beautiful planet into a hell fit only for robots to live on. If you want to see the best guesses as to the regional distribution of the problem, here they are: This shows the change in the average PDSI in the models regionally.  Note the scale – the dark brown is a full -4 shift: the new normal will be extreme drought by the standards of the past.  So if this map is right, you can basically kiss Mexico goodbye altogether and the mountain west and great plains look terrible too.  However, I wouldn’t necessarily see the map as very certain for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment. Is there any escape from this conclusion? Well, the one hope is that it turns out that the climate models really suck at reproducing the historical conditions of drought.  This isn’t as much comfort as it might be since it turns out they really want to under-predict the amount of drought, but such hope as there might be, it lies in there.  In particular, when the authors first ran the PDSI calculation on the model temperature/precipitation variables, the models really grossly failed to explain the 20th century level of drought: it’s the left picture in this pair: The first thing the researchers noticed is that the models have a tendency to predict too much rain and not enough heat in some parts of the country.  So they took the temperature and precipitation for each model, and for each simulation grid cell, and rescaled them so that the average over the twentieth century matched the actual average in the real world. Then they reran the PDSI calculations and that’s the picture on the right (which is also the one at the top of the post).  You can see that this adjustment hasn’t really solved the problem in the twentieth century – though it’s a bit better - but the prediction in the twenty-first century is pretty sensitive to this adjustment. Presumably, the real problem is that the climate models aren’t very good at producing the kind of long hot rainless summer that gives rise to killer droughts (like in Texas in 2011).  The rainfall and temperature in the model probably lack sufficiently long auto-correlations to produce real world droughts.  Still, just adjusting the model output to have the correct mean values before doing the PDSI doesn’t seem like a crazy thing to do: although it’s crude, it’s hard to argue that it invalidates the right hand side figure.  Still, the fact that the models clearly fail to capture the most important dynamics of drought should give one some pause. Pretty much all the models predict more drought – that’s a robust prediction that arises because the increasing temperature produces more moisture demand on the soil than the precipitation can supply, even where the latter is increasing.  However, one story you might try to tell about how it might not be so bad: suppose climate change makes the weather less correlated (ie more changeable) so now it becomes very unlikely to have an entire hot summer, but instead you get a hot week or three and then a bunch of rain and cooler weather and then back again.  That might produce less drought even in a warmer world, but climate models simply couldn’t credibly predict this trend (or the reverse) since they do a rotten job of predicting the level of drought now. Of course, there isn’t the slightest reason at the moment to suppose the weather is going to get more changeable under anthropogenic climate change – it’s just a place where you could park some doubt, if you really didn’t want to believe this stuff.  Right now, it looks a lot more likely that we really are headed into a future with a lot of killer droughts. More research desperately needed.  And more action on climate change from individuals and politicians too.  Please. Early Warning

John Michael Greer: The Myth of the Machine

The strategy discussed in last week's post--that of walking away from energy-intensive lifestyles before the waning of the age of abundant energy brings them grinding to a halt--is a viable response to the crisis of our age, but it's also a great way to poke a stick at some of the most deeply entrenched of the modern world's dysfunctional habits of thinking. Suggest it in public, for example, and you'll very quickly learn why all that talk about saving the planet has turned out to be empty air: everyone's quite willing to watch someone else make sacrifices for the good of the biosphere, but ask them to make sacrifices themselves and you'll see just how far their love of the planet extends. In honor of the ongoing failure of global climate talks, let's call the resulting dance the Copenhagen cha-cha--one step forward, three steps back, run in a circle making squawking noises, and then point the finger of blame at somebody else on the dance floor. Over the years to come, you can expect to see that number done on a scale that would make the ghost of Busby Berkeley turn green with envy. Yet there's more going on here than simple hypocrisy. To make sense of the reasons why so many people who know perfectly well that their own lifestyles are dragging the world to ruin still can't bear the thought of living any other way, it's going to be necessary to explore some of the murkiest crawlspaces of the modern mind. We can start, once again, with the automobile. I suggested last week that the private auto is simply one way to get people and light cargoes from one place to another. Strictly speaking, that's true, but it's true in much the same sense that sex is simply one way to distribute the adult population among the supply of available bedrooms. Especially but not only in America, the car has been loaded down with so much in the way of powerful cultural fantasies and emotional drives that it's almost impossible to talk about it in purely practical terms. I dislike cars, and not just on principle--chalk it up, maybe, to a family habit of long pointless Sunday drives with the smoke from my father's cheap cigarettes pooling like a miasma in the back seat--and I've never owned one, or had a driver's license. I've still felt, while catching a ride with friends to some Druid gathering or the like, the lure of the open highway that plays so huge a role in America's collective psyche. That's a major theme in our national character that I suspect many people elsewhere in the world simply don't get. The vast majority of white Americans are descended from people who turned their backs on the static ways of the Old World to chase the dream of a better life on the other side of the ocean, and that pattern of seeking a new life elsewhere has repeated far more often than not with each generation. One of the many factors that make white Americans so clueless about nonwhite Americans, in turn, is that that experience isn't shared with the other peoples of this nation. For us, that first journey beyond limitations has always defined the American experience, but for African-Americans, their encounter with this continent was a bitter exile into bondage; for the Hispanic population this side of the Rio Grande, the defining experience was dispossession--white Americans like to forget that the southwestern quarter of our country used to be the northern half of Mexico, before we stole it from them at gunpoint--and for the first inhabitants of this continent, it was not merely dispossession but very nearly annihilation. A road leading into the far distance means something very different to the descendants of pioneers on the Oregon Trail than it does to the descendants of those who survived the Trail of Tears. Still, even among white Americans, the dream of freedom somewhere on the far side of the horizon could at least theoretically have expressed itself in many different ways. It so happens that nowadays, at least, it almost always expresses itself through the automobile. This is why Americans cling to their cars with such frantic intensity, and why Republican politicians--always a better barometer of the American mass psyche than their Democrat rivals--so reflexively treat any alternative to the private car as a threat to America's freedom. On any rational level, of course, that's the most vacuous sort of hogwash, but on a nonrational level--on the level of collective passions and mass fantasies where most human motivation takes shape--it's a potent reality. If freedom consists of being able to turn the key, put the pedal to the metal, and go zooming off to a new life somewhere else, a future of buses and trains lumbering along fixed routes with somebody else driving is a future where freedom no longer exists, and a future in which nothing speeds along on wheels--in which life plods along at a walking pace--doesn't bear thinking about at all. The cultural processes that condensed the experience of a people into the dream of a perpetual quest to catch the receding horizon, and then bound that dream into a talisman perched on four rubber tires, are hard to discuss in any meaningful way without using words like “spell” and “enchantment.” Part of the magic involved, to be sure, was the work of the sorcerers of Madison Avenue, who flogged the dream into a bloody pulp in order to sell yet another round of otherwise uninteresting products, but there's more than that to the misplaced concreteness that confuses freedom with a machine. Glance over at a different technology and the same misplaced concreteness appears in even sharper relief. The technology I have in mind here is television. I don't own one of those, either; I grew up watching TV, of course, like everyone else in my generation, but got heartily bored with it in my teen years and haven't had one in the house in my adult life. Mention this to most Americans, though, and the reaction you'll get is considerably more violent than the one you get if you admit that you don't use a car. There's a defensive quality to it, the sort of brittle edge you only get when the mere fact that you don't share somebody's habit flicks them on the raw. If you've ever walked past a suburban neighborhood at night when some much-ballyhooed show was on, and seen the blue light flickering in perfect sync in the windows of house after house, you might have caught some sense of the reason why. If the automobile is America's talisman of freedom, the television is its talisman of community, of participation in a world of shared activities and shared meanings. Notice how often casual talk in a social setting veers at once in the direction of something that was on the television, or how hard it is to find a tavern these days that doesn't have half a dozen big television screens blaring inanities from all sides. We stare at the screens, because that makes it easier not to notice the world around us, or each other. For most Americans, television has come to represent the experience of collective participation, and yet the flickering lights in the suburban windows serve as a reminder that few activities are more solitary or more isolating. In precisely the same way, the freedom represented by the car moving down the open road is a pathetic illusion; from the immense government programs that build and maintain those open roads, through the gargantuan corporate systems that produce the cars, to the sprawling global network of oilfields, pipelines, refineries, and the rest of the colossal system that transforms fossil hydrocarbons into the gas that keeps the car going, there are few human activities on Earth that depend more completely on the vast and faceless bureaucracies that most Americans think they despise. Isolation packaged as participation, dependence packaged as freedom: there's much to be learned here about the power of thaumaturgy to twist the meanings of things--but I want to go one step further here. Americans by and large accept an extraordinary degree of dependence on a machine--the automobile--in order to invest that machine with the feelings and dreams that cluster around the concept of freedom. We accept an extraordinary degree of dependence on another machine--the television--in order to give that machine the emotional charge that other societies give to participation in collective meanings and activities. Sort through any of the narratives that play a central role in contemporary American culture, and you'll find a machine at the center of each one. Thus it's absolutely predictable that when Americans try to think about finding some way out from between the narrowing walls closing in on our future, nearly everything they come up has some kind of machine at its heart. A solar panel, a wind turbine, an electric car, a thorium reactor, a supercomputer, a flying saucer or a nuclear bomb, take your pick, but it's got to be based on a machine. A good many years ago, Lewis Mumford wrote two hefty volumes under the joint title The Myth of the Machine. It's vintage Mumford and thus by definition well worth reading, but it's also very much a work of its time, a well-aimed blast against the superlative technological efficiency and utter ethical failure of America's pursuit of the Vietnam war. Since I first read it, I've wished that Mumford could have found time to pursue the promise of the title in a good deal more depth. There is indeed a myth of the machine in the strict sense of that much-abused word “myth,” and I've come to see the extraordinary fixation on that myth as one of the major barriers in the way of a viable response to the crisis of our time. Let's start with the basics. What is a machine? There are plenty of ways to answer that deceptively simple question, but I'm going to propose a provocative one. It requires a bit of background, though, and so I'm going to have to approach it in a slightly roundabout way. As human beings our experiences fall into two broad categories. One of these comprises what we might as well call the outer world--the world we experience in the form of sensations perceived by the five senses. The other comprises what we might correspondingly call the inner world--the world we experience in the form of thoughts and feelings perceived directly by the mind. Those two worlds overlap in the body, which we can explore as a sensory object but which we can also perceive directly as a locus of thoughts and feelings. Outside that overlap, for each of us, those two worlds are distinct; we can't perceive our own personality, for example, as a sensory object, or experience directly what's going on in the inner lives of the other beings we encounter. Developmental psychologists noticed a long time ago that the process of growing up involves a curious double movement in the way each of us experiences these two worlds. It takes the infant a great deal of time and exploration to figure out the difference between the inner and outer worlds and sort out what belongs on which side of the boundary. It then takes the child quite a bit more time and experience to realize that both worlds exist on both sides of the boundary--that he or she is an object in the outer world of others as well as the subject of the inner life of his or her own, and that others have their own inner lives. Arriving at this realization is one of the core things that's meant by the word “maturity,” and entire worlds of human experience are closed to those who refuse it. Everything we do as mature human beings thus falls along a continuum between what philosopher Martin Buber called “I-It” and “I-Thou” relationships--less obscurely, between those interactions in which the individual can simply deal with other things as objects, and those in which he or she must deal with other beings as subjects with their own inner lives and their own capacities for interpretation and choice. Getting stuck in the sort of useless binary that treats the spectrum as a total opposition and labels its ends “evil” and “good” respectively is as useless a move as it is inevitably popular, since the universe of human experience embraces the whole spectrum, and it's entirely possible to fall into absurdity in either direction--on the one hand, for example, by treating other human beings as objects, and getting blindsided by their responses to that sort of treatment; on the other, by convincing yourself that you can ignore the laws of nature by applying to the cosmos the sort of means that induce changes in the behavior of a human subject. (The cosmos may well be a subject--there's a long and by no means unsophisticated philosophical tradition of seeing it in such terms--but the chance that it will respond favorably to your wheedling are no better than your chances of responding to the desires of any one of the dust mites living on your skin at this moment.) A machine, though, can never be a subject. Machines imitate the actions of persons, but they have no subjectivity, no inner world; they're always and only objects, and so the only relationship you can have with them is an I-It relationship. That wouldn't be a problem, except for the torrent of cheap abundant energy that transformed the world of human experience over the last three centuries. The breakthroughs that set that torrent in motion were precisely methods of using fossil carbon of various kinds to power machines. Before then, power consisted almost entirely in the ability to express the will of the individual through I-Thou relationships--the human relationship of monarch to subject, general to soldier, lord to vassal, and the like were quite simply what power meant. With the coming of the industrial age, that equation changed. Power exerted through a machine is defined purely by I-It relationships, and that's become the modern definition of power. I suspect that, as much as greatly improved technologies of killing, had a great deal to do with the extraordinary scale of mass murder in the 19th and 20th centuries. Tamerlane may have had his soldiers exterminate the whole population of a city now and then, but the methodical annihilation of entire peoples by national governments as an ordinary element of peacetime policy was, if not new, then at least unusual in the scale and the casualness with which it has been applied. That's a very specific effect; there are many broader ones. One of those is the democratization, at least in the industrial world, of the experience of domination. A modern American climbing into the driver's seat of a large SUV has more sheer physical energy under his direct control than your average Southern plantation owner had before the Civil War. Talk of “energy slaves” isn't simply a metaphor; the one difference between power exerted by dominating machines and power exerted by dominating human slaves is again that the machines don't have an inner life; they won't slack off when the overseer isn't looking, head north on the Underground Railroad, or join Nat Turner's rebellion and cut your throat some fine Virginia night. So the role played by machines in the modern industrial world, in large part, is as the primary focus for the very common human craving for power. The fact that the appearance of power is purchased at the cost of total dependence simply makes the irony that much richer; people nowadays cling to their autos and their televisions all the harder because they know perfectly well that the sensation of power as the engine roars is an illusion, and that a community that goes away when you change the channel doesn't actually meet their needs for participation. Take a hard look at any other technology that has a central role in contemporary culture, and you'll find the same nexus between an illusion of power, a reality of dependence--and a large and increasing cost. How that nexus might be unraveled in the twilight of the industrial age will be the subject of next week's post. *********************** End of the World of the Week #6 The mere fact that a belief system's proponents claim that it's a perfectly rational scientific theory doesn't prevent that belief system from being yet another example of our old friend, the apocalypse meme. There are plenty of examples that show this in action, but the most colorful of the last century and a half has to be Marxism. Back before it imploded under the strains of its own internal contradictions, Marxism was among the ideologies that most loudly proclaimed the superiority of science and reason to superstition. Behind the rhetoric, though, the historical structure of Marxist theory is point for point identical to that of evangelical Protestant Christianity There's a real point, in fact, in suggesting that Marxism was simply the furthest extension of one end of the spectrum of Christian heresy. Follow out the historical trajectory and the parallels are easy enough to track. Primitive communism is the Garden of Eden; the invention of private property is the Fall; the period between the rise of property and the coming proletarian revolution, divided into various stages, is the period between the Fall and the Second Coming, divided into various dispensations; the peasant revolutionary movements of the feudal and early capitalist periods play the role of the Israelites; the life of Marx fills the same role as the life of Jesus, with the doings of the First International as the Acts of the Apostles; the horrors of late capitalism followed by proletarian revolution are dead ringers for the horrors of the Tribulation followed by the Second Coming; the era of socialism, finally, is the Millennium, the thousand years before the final descent of the New Jerusalem of communism. Of course this colorful trajectory has something else in common with such offshoots of evangelical prophecy as the career of Harold Camping; its predictions turned out to be completely wrong. Marx insisted that the great proletarian revolution would break out first in the most advanced industrial nations; instead, Marxist revolutions only succeeded in nations just beginning to industrialize, where Marxism played the same role of convenience that Puritanism played in the English Civil War and Enlightenment rationalism in the French Revolution. Furthermore, and far more significantly, the first Marxist revolution wasn't followed by the gradual overthrow of capitalism around the world; instead, Marxism reached its high-water point in the 1950s and then receded, as the golden promises of Das Kapital gave way to gray bureaucratic inefficiency and, in time, total systemic failure. --story from Apocalypse Not

Aleklett Energy Mix

Sweden's 100 most environmentally influential people / Sveriges 100 miljömäktigaste personer

(Swedish below) Every year the magazine Miljöaktuellt [Environmental News] publishes a list of Sweden's 100 most influential people regarding the environment. Since part of the research we are engaged in is crucial for our future environment I am happy that someone has nominated me to be on the list. The actual list will be announced at Nalen on 18 January. Of course, I don't expect to wind up high on the list but to be somewhere among the 100 would be fun. Since 2003 I have asserted that the emissions scenarios published by the IPCC in 2000 are incorrect and can never happen in reality. At that time the matter gained publicity when CNN published on it in association with Anders Sivertsson presenting his Ph.D. thesis (read the article by CNN). In my coming book, "Peeking at Peak Oil" I describe the goings on regarding the emissions scenarios. A detailed analysis of the scenarios can be found in our research article, "Validity of the fossil fuel production outlooks in the IPCC Emission Scenarios". I would like to point out that the results of our analysis do not mean that there are no problems for our future with respect to climate change but the scenarios that are usually described as "business as usual" can never be true. In reality, our future requires us to change our energy system so that the world's coming 9 billion people can survive. At the moment it is Peak Oil that is affecting our economy but that, unfortunately, is just the beginning. (I go into more detail regarding this in the book.) At the moment the IPCC is working on "The Fifth Assessment Report" that is estimated to be ready by 2014. This report will also present scenarios on future emissions. Previously the IPCC published 40 scenarios and now, apparently, they plan to reduce these to four. The person who is responsible for the chapter on future scenarios has told me personally that I will be able to read the chapter before it is published and we will see if they have taken our research into account. The IPCC has stated that it must give regard to peer-reviewed research articles. If this environmental engagement is sufficient for me to wind up on the top 100 list remains to be seen. In any case, currently the intention is that I will discuss these issues and other interesting parts of my book, Peeking at Peak Oil on the stage at Nalen with the chief editor of Miljöaktuellt Mikael Salo. (Swedish) Varje år upprättar tidningen Miljöaktuellt en lista på Sveriges 100 miljömäktigaste personer. Då en del av den forskning som vi bedriver är avgörande för vår framtida miljö blev jag glad för att någon nominerat mig till att vara med på listan. Själva utnämningen sker på Nalen den 18 januari och självfallet tror jag inte att jag skall hamna så högt på listan, men att vara med bland de 100 skulle vara trevligt. Ända sedan 2003 har jag hävdat att de utsläppsscenarier som IPCC publicerade 2000 är felaktiga och kan aldrig ske i verkligheten. Då uppmärksammades det till och med av CNN i samband med att Anders Sivertsson presenterade sitt examensarbete (läs artikel i CNN). I min kommande bok "Peeking at Peak Oil" kommer jag att berätta om spelet runt utsläppsscenarierna. En detaljerad genomgång av scenarierna finns i vår forskningsartikel "Validity of the fossil fuel production outlooks in the IPCC Emission Scenarios". Jag vill poängtera att detta inte betyder att det inte finns problem för framtiden men det betyder att de scenarier som man brukar kalla för "Business as usual" aldrig kan bli verklighet och att vår framtid i verkligheten kräver en förändring av energisystemen för att 9 miljarder personer skall överleva. Just nu är det Peak Oil som påverkar vår ekonomi, men det är tyvärr bara början (mer om detta i boken). Just nu arbetar IPCC med "The Fifth Assessment Report" som beräknas vara klar 2014. Även i denna rapport kommer det att finnas scenarier om framtida utsläpp. Tidigare har det varit 40 scenarier och nu skall man enligt dagrens planer reducera dem till 4. Den person som är ansvarig för kapitlet om framtidens scenarier har personligen sagt till mig att jag skall få läsa kapitlet innan det publiceras och vi får se om man tar hänsyn till vår forskning. IPCC har sagt att man skall ta hänsyn till forskningsgranskade artiklar. Om detta är tillräckligt för att jag skall hamna på topp 100-listan återstår att se, men det är iallafall meningen att jag från scen skall diskutera dessa frågor och andra intressanta delar av min bok "Peeking at Peak Oil" med Miljöaktuellt chefredaktör Mikael Salo.

World Petroleum Congress in Doha, Qatar; Total pulls itself into line.

(Swedish below) Before the World Petroleum Congress in Doha, Qatar the newspaper Gulf Times wrote in an article that, "A highlight is the keynote speech that will be delivered by Total's President and CEO, Christophe de Margerie on the theme: "Peak oil -- ahead of us or behind us?" on December 7". The fact that Peak Oil is the theme for one of the seven main presentations at the congress shows that Peak Oil is now an important topic of discussion in the international and national oil industries. Earlier, Total had indicated that they believed Peak Oil could occur before 2030 so it was with some suspense that we awaited the message from Total and their managing director de Margarie. It was with great excitement that I read in Upstreamonline.com their first article on the new message from Total. However, it proved to be a great disappointment. It seems that Total has pulled itself into line and now says, "Yes, we can meet demand". On Peak Oil they now no longer give any timepoint but say instead that technology will make it possible meet future needs. The International Energy (IEA) says that future needs are greater than 100 million barrels per day in 2035. Here are some lines from the article at Upstreamonline.com: "Yes we can," was the message from the enigmatic boss of oil giant Total to the World Petroleum Congress in Qatar on the industry's ongoing attempt to tackle pessimistic peak oil scenarios, with improvements in technology to lead the fight. "We have plenty of resources," the chief executive of the French oil stalwart told delegates at a conference session in Doha on Wednesday entitled: 'Peak oil: ahead of us or behind us?' "The problem is not with resources, it is how to extract resources in an acceptable manner, because today, a lot of people won't accept it. So we have to fight, not against it, but to fight to…prove that we can do it in a more acceptable, sustainable way." De Margerie claimed it is a fight which can be won by oil companies once priority is given to implementing new technologies for exploration and production."Keep in mind that: yes we can -- and I was not the first to say it," de Margerie said in reference to a campaign slogan employed by Barack Obama in his successful bid for the US presidency. "Energy is life, but the price to pay will be extremely high… Energy can be done in a way which is in compliance with the climate, and definitely we have this as a common challenge." The Total boss warned that "huge investment" is needed in the oil and gas industry to meet increasing demand at lower cost to the climate. "That is what people are expecting from us: it is not just to say that we cannot do it, it is to say, 'yes, we can do it', but we need to prove that it can be done in a clean way." If we summarise the oil industry's activities in recent months we can assert that Peak Oil is now on their agenda and they do not deny that, with current technology Peak Oil would be reality. However, they believe in new technological breakthroughs. This can be interpreted in many ways but what is needed now is that industry and the IEA reveal what their analyses say that these new technologies will be able to achieve. The IEA has said previously that four new Saudi Arabias will be needed just to maintain current production. Swedich: Inför World Petroleum Congress i Doha, Qatar, skriver Gulf Times i en artikel: A highlight is the keynote speech that will be delivered by Total's President and CEO, Christophe de Margerie on the theme: "Peak oil – ahead of us or behind us?" on December 7. Det faktum att Peak Oil blev temat för en av de sju huvudpresentationerna vid kongressen visar att Peak Oil numera är ett stort diskussionsämne inom den internationella och nationella oljeindustrin. Tidigare har Total indikerat att man tror att Peak Oil kan bli verklighet innan 2030 så det var med spänning som vi väntade på budskapet från Total och deras verkställande direktör de Margerie. Med stor spänning läste jag i Upstreamsonline.com en första artikel om det nya budskapet från Total och det blev en stor besvikelse. Det visade sig att man nu har rättat in sig i ledet och säger "Yes, we can meet demand" och vad det gäller Peak Oil nämner man ingen tidpunkt utan budskapet är att teknologi skall göra det möjligt att möta framtidens behov och International Energy Agency säger att framtidens behov är mer än 100 miljoner fat om dagen år 2035. Här är några rader från artikeln i Upstreamsonline.com: "Yes we can," was the message from the enigmatic boss of oil giant Total to the World Petroleum Congress in Qatar on the industry's ongoing attempt to tackle pessimistic peak oil scenarios, with improvements in technology to lead the fight. "We have plenty of resources," the chief executive of the French oil stalwart told delegates at a conference session in Doha on Wednesday entitled: 'Peak oil: ahead of us or behind us?' "The problem is not with resources, it is how to extract resources in an acceptable manner, because today, a lot of people won't accept it. So we have to fight, not against it, but to fight to…prove that we can do it in a more acceptable, sustainable way." De Margerie claimed it is a fight which can be won by oil companies once priority is given to implementing new technologies for exploration and production. "Keep in mind that: yes we can -- and I was not the first to say it," de Margerie said in reference to a campaign slogan employed by Barack Obama in his successful bid for the US presidency. "Energy is life, but the price to pay will be extremely high… Energy can be done in a way which is in compliance with the climate, and definitely we have this as a common challenge." The Total boss warned that "huge investment" is needed in the oil and gas industry to meet increasing demand at lower cost to the climate. "That is what people are expecting from us: it is not just to say that we cannot do it, it is to say, 'yes, we can do it', but we need to prove that it can be done in a clean way." Om vi summerar oljeindustrins aktiviteter de senaste månaderna kan vi konstatera att Peak Oil nu finns på agendan och man förnekar inte att med dagens teknik är Peak Oil verklighet, men man tror på nya teknologiska genombrott. Detta kan tolkas på många sätt, men det krävs nu att industrin och IEA med öppna analyser visa vad dessa nya teknologier skall åstadkomma. International Energy Agency har tidigare sagt att det krävs fyra nya Saudiarabien bara för att behålla en konstant produktion.

Peak Oil discussions at the World Petroleum Congress in Qatar

(Swedish below) When one examines the programme for the World Petroleum Congress in Qatar, December 5-7, one can see that there are seven plenary sessions and the last of these has the theme "Peak Oil: Ahead of Us or Behind Us?". The managing director of the French oil company Total, Christophe de Margarie, is the main speaker and it will be exciting to see what he has to say. However, Peak Oil was already a topic of discussion yesterday at a round table discussion titled, "Peak Oil: Reality or Mirage?" The online oil news site Upstreamonline.com headlined its daily news with, "ExxonMobil: 'Technology to beat Peak Oil'''. This was because Marco Rasi, vice president of Asia Pacific at ExxonMobil Development had made the following statement during the discussion, "We don't need to discover a lot of new resources if we continue to push forward with new technology and make it possible to economically produce resources that we already know about,". He added, "Many of the assumptions that underlie peak oil theory…are really unfounded, because they do not take into account the role of technology. Technology makes it easier, and therefore more economically viable, to find hydrocarbons." This optimistic attitude towards Peak Oil was not shared by Alexey Kontorovich, Academician and Chairman of the Presidium of Kemorovo Scientific Center, Russian Academy of Science. He thought it possible that oil production would reach a maximum in 2020 and not later than 2030. It was also interesting that he gave an estimated oil production in year 2100 of between 4.2 and 4.5 billion barrels per year. That should be compare with current production of 30 billion barrels per year. Of course, it would have been interesting if I had been invited to participate in the discussion on Peak Oil but it was gratifying nevertheless that Peak Oil is now on the agenda of the large oil companies. (Swedish) Då man studerar programmet för World Petroleum Congress i Qatar, december 5-7, så har man under de tre dagarna 7 planarsessioner och den sista av dessa har temat "Peak Oil: Ahead of Us or Behind Us?" Det är verkställande direktören för det franska oljebolaget Total, Christophe de Margerie, som är huvudtalare och det skall bli spännande att få referat om vad han sagt. Men redan igår tisdag diskuterades Peak Oil vid en rundabordsdiskussion under temat: "Peak Oil: Reality or Mirage?" Den dagliga oljetidningen "Upstreamsonline.com" toppade dagens nyhetssida med rubriken: ExxonMobil: 'Technology to beat Peak Oil'. Det var Marco Rasi, vice president of Asia Pacific at ExxonMobil Development, som hade uttalat sig och i debatten gjorde han följande uttalande: "We don't need to discover a lot of new resources if we continue to push forward with new technology and make it possible to economically produce resources that we already know about," med tillägget "Many of the assumptions that underlie peak oil theory…are really unfounded, because they do not take into account the role of technology. Technology makes it easier, and therefore more economically viable, to find hydrocarbons." Denna optimistiska inställning till Peak Oil delades inte av Alexey Kontorovich, Academician, Chairman of the Presidium of Kemorovo Scientific Center, Russian Academy of Science, Russia. Han kunde tänka sig att oljeproduktionen skulle nå en topp år 2020 och inte senare än 2030. Det var också mycket intressant att han angav beräknade att oljeproduktionen år 2100 skulle vara mellan 4.2 och 4.5 miljarder fat om året. Det skall jämföras med dagen produktion på 30 miljarder fat om året. Självfallet skulle det varit intressant om jag blivit inbjuden och fått vara med och diskutera Peak Oil, men det känns ändå stort att vi nu placerat Peak Oil på de stora oljebolagens agenda.

OilWatch

Statement of Climate Justice Now! on the outcomes of COP15

for sign-on by 5 January 2010 Organisations and individuals are invited to endorse the statement visit www.climate-justice-now.org (http://www.climate-justice-now.org) Call for “system change not climate change” unites global movement Corrupt Copenhagen ‘accord’ exposes gulf between peoples demands and elite interests The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States and dropped into the conference at the last moment. The "agreement" was not adopted. Instead, it was "noted" in an absurd parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States and permit Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement "We have a deal."

La historia de la falsas soluciones climáticas

La Historia del Mercado del Carbono http://storyofcapandtrade.org (http://storyofcapandtrade.org/) es una mirada rápida, bien fundamenta, ademas de entretenida, a la principal solución climática que está siendo discutida en Copenhage y en el Capitol Hill. La conductora Annie Leonard presenta a la gente que está en el centro de este esquema –comerciantes de energía y financieros de Wall Street-. Ahí se examinan “los demonios en los detalles” de la actual propuesta de comercio de carbono: permisos gratuitos para grandes contaminadores, falsas compensaciones y distracciones de lo que realmente es requerido para enfrentar la crisis climática. Si tu has escuchado sobre el comercio de carbono pero no estás seguro de cómo funciona (o a quién beneficia), este documental-filme es para tí. Este documental esta hecho al estilo de La historia de las cosas.

Southeast Asian Leaders - Go for Solution Not Delusion!

A Joint Statement, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 14, 2009Copenhagen - 14 December 2009: We, members of Oilwatch Southeast Asiai and Indonesian Civil Society Forum for Climate Justice (CSF) declare our common position and demands on the current climate negotiation in COP 15 UNFCCC Copenhagen. We have witnessed the lack of leadership among industrial countries to significantly cut carbon emission let alone show their responsibility to support developing countries to tackle the impacts of climate change.

Final Energy Crisis

Plazoo

Peak Moment TV

“Your Environmental Road Trip” - a film festival in one movie

“YERT - Your Environmental Road Trip” is an entire environmental film festival wrapped up in an absorbing and entertaining, fast-paced two-hour documentary that’s both personal and planetary. Friends Mark, Julie and Ben pack themselves into a Prius to tour all 50 states in 52 weeks while aiming for near-zero garbage. We view environmental problems like Appalachian mountaintop removal, Alaska permafrost melt, and post-Katrina wetlands habitat destruction, southwest water depletion. We meet problem-solvers like Wes Jackson restoring perennial prairie grasses, farmer Joel Salatin cycling animals through pasture to build soil, and Will Allen growing plants and fish to feed the city. We meet creative people building houses inside caves, turning compost into worm poop then packaged in recycled plastic, and developing solar panels roadways to replace asphalt in the post-petroleum era. These twenty-somethings intersperse a lot of playfulness amidst the serious talk and fascinating tours. Silly, funny, gross, wacky. Ben pushes the Prius down the road on “National Bike and Walk Day.” In their five-day Iowa Corn Challenge, Mark chows down only fresh corn while Ben scarfs packaged foods containing corn products (all that high-fructose corn syrup, yuck!). The trio lets us glimpse real life on the road, up close and personal: moments of elation, crabbiness, joy. Julie discovers she’s pregnant early on and bails from the vegetarian diet. I won’t spoil the ending, but you’ll find out whether it’s a girl or boy, and just how much garbage the trio accumulated. This well-produced overview of important environmental issues and sampler of creative responses is optimistic without being pollyanna. We loved it. Smiles amid the serious stuff and the inspiring innovators. A chance to meet some of our heros and watch young people learn lots. We hope to follow in their footsteps and bring Peak Moment TV viewers longer chats with many of YERT’s interviewees. With five film festival awards (and counting), YERT is an inspiring one-movie environmental film festival for EveryTown. Go to yert.com to watch the trailer and other clips, buy a DVD, find a screening, sign up for their e-mail list. Watch a short video with Mark and Ben at TEDx with innovations featured in their film.

Notes from Derrick Jensen’s Earth at Risk 2011 Conference

We traveled to Berkeley on November 13, 2011 for Earth at Risk: Building a Resistance Movement to Save the Planet in which author Derrick Jensen interviews his invited guests. Below are some quotes and notes from the day. Derrick opened with: “The only miracle we’re going to get is us. Gather your heart and join up with every living being [to fight back against destruction of the planet.]“ Lierre Keith is co-author with Derrick and Aric McBay of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. She spoke about the problem with civilization: its dependence on agriculture, which destroys topsoil the world over, and signaled the start of militarism (to protect stored food and to steal neighboring lands for expanding populations). Lierre points to the need to build a culture of resistance to industrial civilization, based not on individual lifestyle change but change at the societal level. Videos of her two full-length presentations are on YouTube’s DeepGreenResistance channel. Political cartoonist Stephanie MacMillan’s Code Green cartoons graced the program and her presentation.  “The only weekly editorial cartoon focused exclusively on the environmental emergency,” they poke at industrial civilization’s hypocrisy and short-sightedness, and its assault on nature with dark and delicious humor. Aric McBay, co-author of Deep Green Resistance, presented information on creating security culture in both aboveground and belowground groups. He pointed out that in resistance movements, only 2% of the people carry arms. The majority of people are needed to raise awareness, and to provide material and psychological support to those at the front lines - to become a culture that supports resistance. He showed examples of resistance movements that have in the past, and are now, making a difference. Videos of Aric’s two full-length presentations are on YouTube’s DeepGreenResistance channel. Thomas Linzey is a public interest attorney at Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). He’s doing gutsy groundbreaking work with local communities to pass ordinances preventing corporations from trashing their communities: anti-fracking, anti-big box stores, anti-factory farms. Since we taped his local talk “Reclaiming Democracy: How Communities are Saying “NO” to Corporate Rights” in 2008, he has further pushed the edges in those ordinances: besides placing the rights of communities and nature above those of  corporations, recent ordinances are standing up to states. We first “met” Waziyatawin in the documentary END:CIV: Resist or Die (entire film is online). A Dakota writer, educator and activist, “Waz” spoke about her culture’s resistance to colonization by westerners, removal from their ancestral lands, and destruction of their cultures. She called for indigenous people to resume their role as first defenders of the land -- with support from those in the non-indigenous community. It begins, she said, by decolonizing the mind. This quote spoke to me: “The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land?”  --Vine DeLoria, Jr. from God is Red: A Native View of Religion. Arundhati Roy read from two recent books Broken Republic: Three Essays and Walking with the Comrades about visiting forbidding forests in Central India, where tribespeople are taking up arms to protect their people and region from state-backed exploiters. Labeled by the Indian mainstream as “Maoist guerillas,” these indigenous groups are fighting corporate interests like multinational mining companies who are cannibalizing India’s natural resources, supported by Indian government agreements and military. Derrick closed with this reminder: “The task of an activist is not to navigate the systems of authority with as much integrity as possible, but to take down those systems.” Read more about Deep Green Resistance in Beyond Protest: Saving our planet with ‘Deep Green Resistance’ by Rady Ananda of Food Freedom. “So while DGR [Deep Green Resistance] is about fighting back, in the end this movement is about love. The songbirds and the salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love.” -- Derrick Jensen

At Home in Our Winter Encampment

It’s been all quiet on the writing front while Robyn and I have set up our winter encampment site for our “Little House” (motorhome). Enormous ancestral black oaks ring Bearhaven meadow, whispering of the Maidu people whose acorn grinding rocks are not far from the year-round spring. Red-shouldered hawk has been a frequent caller, along with a band of curious ravens frequently circling to check us working on outdoors projects. For electricity, we are supplementing the RV’s generator and her rooftop solar panels with twelve 20-year-old solar panels from our house’s original set. Robyn installed equipment in the RV to optimize both solar systems (contact us if you want details). Not finding what we wanted commercially, we designed and built lightweight, portable racks to hold the panels off the ground and at angles adjustable for different seasons. Such a fun project, just about right for the level of our construction skills and portable tools. We started with drawings and a small foamcore model to think through our design. Each three-panel rack is made of 2×2’s and held together by bolts. (I always envied my boy cousins’ lincoln logs and erector sets back in 1950s era of gender-specific toys. Now that longing is fulfilled.) Some shovel work to level the ground for each rack, a long wire run from panels to the RV, voila! Extra juice! We’re warm and cozy now as the cold winter rains descend upon us, grateful for our sweet corner in this wild country, and welcoming an introspective season.

Twitter

RT @CollapseNet MEMBER VIDEO UPDATE: Blood in the Water -- Our Year of Victory http://t.co/QzW22MUj #IWouldNeverEver deny #peakoil

RT @CollapseNet MEMBER VIDEO UPDATE: Blood in the Water -- Our Year of Victory http://t.co/QzW22MUj #IWouldNeverEver deny #peakoil

RT @CollapseNet Occupy protest seizes UC Davis building, blocks bank http://t.co/XetXdwFy #peakoil #transition

RT @CollapseNet Occupy protest seizes UC Davis building, blocks bank http://t.co/XetXdwFy #peakoil #transition

RT @CollapseNet: Occupy protest seizes UC Davis building, blocks bank http://t.co/EUdbZUkw #peakoil #transition

RT @CollapseNet: Occupy protest seizes UC Davis building, blocks bank http://t.co/EUdbZUkw #peakoil #transition

PowerSwitch

UK government warned of, and dismissed, peak oil warning in 2007

The UK government was warned by its own civil servants two years ago that there could be significant negative economic consequences to the UK posed by near-term peak oil energy shortages.Ministers were told it was impossible to know exactly when production might fail to meet supply but when it did there could be global consequences, including civil unrest .Yet ministers consistently played down the threat with the contemporaneous Wicks review into energy security (PDF) effectively dismissing peak oil as alarmist and irrelevant.Read more

UK DECC acknowledges risk of peak oil

Department of Energy and Climate Change consultation acknowledges real risk of significant long-term rises in oil pricesRead more (http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2077627/decc-accepts-warning-rising-peak-oil-risks)or read the DECC report in pptx format (http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/index.php?option=com_content task=edit id=2980 Itemid=1 Returnid=1)

Government to develop Oil Shock Response Plan

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne yesterday agreed to develop an 'Oil Shock Response Plan', following a meeting with the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (http://peakoiltaskforce.net/) (ITPOES).Click here for more (http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2072738/exclusive-government-develop-oil-shock-response-plan?WT.rss_f= WT.rss_a=Exclusive%3A+Government+to+develop+Oil+Shock+Response+Plan)

Peakoil News

We have already entered peak oil,' IEA source reportedly claims

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/we-entered-peak-oil-iea-source-reportedly-claims/By Stephen C. Webster Two International Energy Agency whistleblowers have come forward with startling claims about the world's supply of crude oil, according to a report published Tuesday."We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone," an unnamed former IEA official told British newspaper The Guardian. "I think that the situation is really bad."A second whistleblower reportedly claimed that the IEA's current figures are inflated due to pressure from the United States and a pervasive fear that the announcement of falling oil output in the future could cause markets to respond with panic.The claims come on the same day the IEA plans to publish its annual "World Energy Outlook" report for 2009. "Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further," one of the IEA sources reportedly told the paper. "And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources."The agency reported in its 2008 World Energy Outlook that a field-by-field analysis of production trends revealed "that decline rates are likely to rise significantly in the long term, from an average of 6.7% today to 8.6% in 2030."The whistleblowers see things differently."The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," one of the sources claimed. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this."In a 2008 interview with Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, Guardian environment writer George Monbiot reported that the IEA had expected peak oil output to be reached in a decade or two. "In terms of non-Opec [countries outside the big oil producers' cartel]," Birol reportedly said, "we are expecting that in three, four years' time the production of conventional oil will come to a plateau, and start to decline. In terms of the global picture, assuming that Opec will invest in a timely manner, global conventional oil can still continue, but we still expect that it will come around 2020 to a plateau as well, which is, of course, not good news from a global-oil-supply point of view."The 2008 World Energy Outlook suggested peak oil would be reached in 2030.The prediction that peak oil production was approaching in 2020 was enough to "scare the pants off" Monbiot, considering the predicted implications of a global energy crunch in just over a decade. However, if the allegations by The Guardian's whistleblowers are indeed true and peak oil has been reached, dark days loom for the global economy. According to The Wall Street Journal, the agency is not expected to announce the arrival at such a dramatic conclusion. Instead, the 2009 report due out Tuesday will predict slower growth in demand for oil, the Journal reported.Reuters added: "While the Paris-based IEA has repeatedly warned that a lack of investment could lead to a strain on supply, it maintains that there is enough oil in the ground."

The End Of Fossil Fuel

forbes.com By Chris Nelder, 07.24.09, 03:00 PM EDT Prepare for a radically different lifestyle as global crude oil production peaks and begins to decline. You will never see cheap gasoline again. You will probably never see cheap energy again. Oil, natural gas and coal are set to peak and go into decline within the next decade, and no technology can change that. Peaking is a simple concept. We generally exploit natural resources in a bell-shaped curve, with the rate of extraction increasing over time until we reach a peak and then gradually slowing down until we stop using them. Peak oil is not about "running out of oil"; it's about reaching the peak rate of oil production. It's not the size of the tank that matters, but the size of the tap. Read more about how soaring energy prices will transform our lives in our special report on $20 a Gallon. The peak is usually reached when resources become too difficult to extract, or too expensive, or they are replaced by something cheaper, better or more plentiful. Unfortunately, we have no substitutes for oil that are cheaper or better. According to the best available data, we are now at the peak rate of oil production. After over a century of continual growth, global conventional crude oil production topped out in 2005 at just over 74 million barrels per day (mbpd) and has remained at that level ever since. Read All Comments rtsUtil.addRtsBox('rateStoryP2',{source_type:"story",source_id:"2009/07/24/peak-oil-production-business-energy-nelder.html"}); The additional "oil" that brings the oft-cited world total to 84 mbpd today (down from 87 mbpd last year; according to U.S. government data) isn't conventional crude, but, rather, unconventional hydrocarbons, including natural gas liquids, "extra heavy" oil, synthetic oil made from Canadian tar sands, refinery gains, liquids produced from the conversion of coal and natural gas, and biofuels. Oil production is expected to go into terminal decline around 2012. The principal reason is that the largest and most productive fields are becoming depleted while new discoveries have been progressively smaller and of lesser quality. Discovery of new oil peaked over 40 years ago and has been declining ever since despite furious drilling and unprecedentedly high prices. When it begins to decline, rate of crude production is projected to fall at 5%, or over four mbpd, per year--roughly equivalent to losing the entire production of Latin America or Europe every year. The decline rate will likely accelerate to over 10% per year by 2030. The Paris-based International Energy Agency estimates that the world would need to add the equivalent of six new Saudi Arabias by 2030 in order to meet declining production and growing demand. Obviously, there aren't another six Saudi Arabias waiting to be discovered, and unconventional liquid fuels simply cannot fill such a yawning gap. Natural gas is likewise expected to peak some time around 2010-2020, and coal around 2020-2030. Oil, natural gas and coal together provide 86% of the world's primary energy. By the end of this century, nearly all of the economically recoverable fossil fuels will be gone. From now until then, what remains will be rationed by price. There will be shortages. Renewable energy--solar, wind, geothermal--currently makes up less than 2% of the world's primary energy supply, and although growing very rapidly, it is not on course to fill the fossil fuel gap, either. As fossil fuels peak and then decline, the world's economies will be forced for the first time to live within a shrinking, not expanding, energy budget. They will adapt to this new reality by repeating the cycle we saw over the last 18 months: commodity price spikes, leading to economic destruction, leading to supply destruction, leading back to price spikes. Only in recessionary periods, like now, will there be excess supply. How this will affect the global economy, and our lifestyles, cannot be overstated. Former chief economist for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce World Markets, Jeff Rubin, and oil investment banker Matthew Simmons have concluded that it means no less than the end of globalization. Americans, who constitute 4% of the world population but consume 25% of its energy, will have radically different lifestyles. Production of everything will have to be re-localized. Instead of our food traveling an average 1,500 miles before it reaches us, it will have to come from nearby and use organic methods instead of requiring 10 calories of fossil fuel inputs for every calorie of food we eat. Rather than shipping ore to China and shipping it back to the U.S. as steel, we'll need to revive our domestic steel industry. "Bedroom communities" will die and ideally be reborn as fully functional independent communities. It means the end of long commutes. The coming energy shortage is the most serious crisis the world has ever faced, but it could have a very positive outcome. In theory, the Earth's wind, solar, geothermal and marine resources could each provide more than the total energy the world consumes every day, if we had the ability to harvest them. As fossil fuel prices rise, the price of renewably generated electricity will continue to fall. If we are wise and lucky, we will rapidly improve the efficiency of our built environment, deploy renewable capacity and convert to an all-electric infrastructure that runs on it. Fortunately, political momentum is now leaning strongly in this direction. If we move fast to re-localize production and proceed with the renewable revolution, we could end the 21st century with a largely carbon-free economy, putting an end to climate change and averting resource wars. We would have healthier food and a safer, more resilient and equitable world. Chris Nelder is the author of Profit from the Peak--The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century and the coauthor of Investing in Renewable Energy. He blogs on GetRealList.

'$20 Per Gallon' by Christopher Steiner

Los Angeles TimesChristopher Steiner looks ahead and projects, $2 at a time, how rising gasoline prices will transform civilization.By Matthew DeBordAmazon.com - $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the BetterDuring the summer of 2008, Americans found out just how much was too much to pay for gas. On July 11, a barrel of oil hit $147.27, which translated into $4.11 for a gallon of regular gas at the pump -- the highest price ever reached in the U.S. And that was just the average. In some places, the price got close to $5 a gallon. It was the Summer of Pain.Many people who'd never heard of "peak oil," or who'd been trading in one SUV for another, or who'd scoffed at the idea that Americans would ever drive less, suddenly learned that when the price of a finite commodity spikes, even cherished habits change. And it's not just about driving: Our entire American way of life, in fact much of the global economy, has been built over decades on cheap oil: Seafood and plastic toys from China can flow freely around the world. The price of bread and milk stays low. Airlines can engage in price wars.But when the price of oil rises dramatically, inflation can kick in, scarcity can become the order of the day, freeways empty, General Motors and Chrysler slide into bankruptcy, and the American way of life grinds to a halt. Of course, after the price of oil crested in 2008, it quickly collapsed, leading some observers to speculate that the Summer of Pain was a blip on the radar.But for the first six months of this year, the price was steadily rising. Though it has stabilized and even fallen in recent weeks, it may begin a slow, undulant march until gas literally costs too much for anyone.This is the altered state of petroleum consciousness that Christopher Steiner, a trained engineer and writer for Forbes, envisions. And it's happening quickly, he points out. "As the middle class continues to explode in China, India, and scores of other spots circling the earth, hundreds of millions of additional cars will hit the roads," he writes. Many of those cars will be like the $2,200 Tata Nano, a "people's car" created for Indian consumers who've been riding bicycles and motor scooters for generations. "People want what Americans have had for decades: easy cars and an easy life. These people will get what they want, but in the process they will catalyze a global economic reformation on a scale never seen. . . . " Even the tattered remnants of the Detroit Big Three want a piece of this market: As General Motors left bankruptcy at home, it was selling more cars than ever in China.Steiner has adopted a nicely readable structure for the book. Starting at $4 a gallon, each chapter tracks what will happen when gas hits a particular price, escalating by $2 until he gets to $20. He visits an airplane graveyard in order to explain how $8-a-gallon gas will crush the airline industry. At $14, he checks out an abandoned Wal-Mart "ghost box" and imagines a grim end to the car-dominated exurb. "Stores will return to the downtowns of yore as small towns' populations . . . return to the small-town infrastructures that their grandparents and great-grandparents built."By $18 a gallon, high-speed railroads serve our travel needs, and by $20 a gallon, we just can't do oil anymore. And like a lot of people who've studied our post-oil energy options, he comes down on the side of nuclear. Eventually, he's replaced transatlantic flights with leisurely ocean passages akin to the grand liners of yesteryear. Except these new Queen Marys will run on nuclear reactors. Personal cars will be a thing of the past. Citizens of the future will wonder why we ever thought we needed them.By now, you may have noticed a great bifurcation here, typical of newbies to the study of spiking oil prices. We Americans will find our existence irrevocably altered to the point where we are forced to inhabit a downmarket green fantasy, harvesting power from wind and ocean currents, breaking our addiction to automobiles and generally living with less. Meanwhile, the developing world will have become the new first world, with a middle class with disposable income that Americans lack filling China, India and other rapidly growing countries with roads, cars and petroleum products. At least until all the oil runs out and they, too, must convert to lives of noble deprivation.Some of Steiner's speculations will happen. In particular, rising global energy demand could have a disastrous impact on food cultivation, which at the industrial scale needed to feed a populous planet requires fertilizers synthesized from natural gas. Nuclear power will be an obvious alternative-energy choice when gas settles into double-digit per gallon prices.Personal mobility could be another story, however, and here Steiner gets into tricky territory when he latches onto start-up electric car companies and gee-whiz mobility providers. In fact, good old internal-combustion engines running on gas may be with us for much longer than he thinks. Even $10 per gallon gas would be acceptable if efficient gas and hybrid engines can achieve significantly higher mileage, which is technologically feasible. Widespread electrification of transportation will come, but we could have to wait until the middle of the century, or even longer. The romance of the personal automobile won't fade so fast in the U.S., especially if it increases its hold elsewhere.There's also a glaring omission in "$20 Per Gallon" that should be addressed. Much of the ground that Steiner covers, with a certain boyish, gearhead utopianism, was traversed in much more apocalyptic fashion by James Howard Kunstler in his 2005 book, "The Long Emergency." Kunstler's arguments, which are actually more ecological than economic, are well known and widely debated. So it seems remarkable that Steiner, who comes to many of the same conclusions, fails to acknowledge a book that's been around for four years and actually anticipated the 2008 gas mini-crisis. "$20 Per Gallon" also reads at times as if it were hurriedly written. Still, Steiner has served up a terrific speculative primer on a future of much pricier energy and all that it may entail.DeBord writes the Shifting Gears blog for Slate's the Big Money and has written widely on the automobile industry and the future of mobility.

Early Warning

Historical Note on Drought in Climate Models

This morning, I stumbled on a 1999 paper "DETECTABILITY OF SUMMER DRYNESS CAUSEDBY GREENHOUSE WARMING" by Wetherald and Manabe. The paper discusses a single climate model (obviously a by-now very outdated one) which generates very serious drought across much of the world in the second half of the twenty-first century.  The map above gives the general idea.Much more refined predictions with averages over many far-more sophisticated models have only changed the picture a bit:The paper's discussion of the physical mechanisms at work is interesting. There are separate discussions of the more northern interior of the US ("CNA1") and the more southerly portions of North America (eg Mexico, Texas - which they call "CNA2").For CNA1:In general, the increase of both CO2 and water vapor in the model atmosphere increases the downward flux of longwave radiation absorbed by the continental surface. This results in an early disappearance of snow cover (with a large surface albedo), thereby increasing the solar energy absorbed by the continental surface. Because of the increase in the surface absorption of both longwave and solar radiation, evaporation is enhanced during spring and early summer (Figure 10a), reducing the soil moisture in the CNA1 region. By mid-summer, the soil moisture is reduced to the point where evaporation can no longer increase. Thus, evaporation is decreased and sensible heat increased, reducing the near-surface relative humidity and cloud cover, which increases insolation absorbed by the continental surface and makes more energy available for evaporation. On the other hand, the rate of precipitation hardly increases over the continents in summer because of the low relative humidity in the lower troposphere (Figure 10a). As a matter of fact, the rate of precipitation even decreases slightly after mid-summer when the soil becomes very dry. Therefore, the soil moisture anomaly remains negative throughout the rest of the summer and early fall in 'CO2 + SUL'In sharp contrast to the summer situation discussed above, soil moisture in CNA1 increases during winter in 'CO2 + SUL' (Figure 9a). Despite the increase in the downward flux of longwave radiation, the rate of evaporation hardly increases over the continental surface in middle and high latitudes where the increase in the downward flux is compensated mainly by the upward fluxes of sensible heat and longwave radiation rather than latent heat flux in winter. On the other hand, the rate of precipitation increases significantly in the CNA1 region where the relative humidity in the lower troposphere is much higher in winter than in summer (Figure 10a). This is quite different from the situation in summer when the relative humidity in the lower troposphere is very low and precipitation hardly increases in this region despite the increase in the rate of evaporation in the surrounding oceans.The increase in precipitation, together with the failure of evaporation to increase,accounts for the increase of soil moisture in the CNA1 region during winter in'CO2 + SUL'.By contrast: in the drier regions to the south:In the CNA2 region, where there is little or no snow cover in spring, the monthly mean soil moisture is considerably below saturation during most of the year. Figure 9b indicates that the CO2-induced change in soil moisture is negative throughout the entire year and the maximum reduction occurs from summer to early winter.As in CNA1, the reduction of soil moisture in CNA2 is attributable partly to the increased downward flux of terrestrial radiation resulting from the increase of both CO2 and water vapor in the model atmosphere.The increase in the downward flux of longwave radiation raises the surface temperature, thereby increasing the rate of potential evaporation. As Figure 10b indicates, the increase in potential evaporation increases the evaporation from early winter to May when the soil moisture is relatively large. However, the CO2-induced change in the evaporation rate becomes slightly negative from summer to early fall when soil moisture is relatively small. On the other hand, the CO2-induced change of precipitation rate in the CNA2 region is negative throughout most of the annual cycle (Figure 10b), in sharp contrast to the situation over most of the globe where both evaporation and precipitation increase in response to the increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. The failure of precipitation to increase is attributable partly to the reduction of near-surface relative humidity in these regions where a major fraction of radiative energy absorbed at the land surface is removed as sensible heat flux rather than through evaporation. The increase in potential evaporation together with the reduction of precipitation discussed above contribute to the general reduction of soil moisture shown in Figure 9b. The decrease of soil moisture, in turn, reduces the near-surface relative humidity and precipitation rate further throughout most of the year (Figure 10b). The reduced near-surface relative humidity induces a corresponding reduction of low level cloudiness, increasing the insolation reaching the continental surface and further enhancing the drying of the soil. This analysis applies equally well to other semi-arid regions of the world such as central Asia and the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.The paper also predicted it would be a little while until the trend became clear above the natural variability:Results of the 'CO2 + SUL' integration suggest that, over mid-continental regions of middle and high latitudes, the summer reduction and winter increase of soil moisture will not become noticeable until the first half of the 21st century. An analysis of the central North American and southern European regions indicates that the time when the change of soil moisture exceeds one standard deviation about the control integration occurs considerably later than that of surface temperature because the ratio of the forced change to the natural variability is smaller for soil moisture than for temperature.It does seem to be true that clear emergence of a drying trend has occurred later than clear emergence of a warming trend.  However, now, a decade into the twenty-first century, we do seem to be getting there.

Another Terrifying Drought Paper

The conviction has been growing in me for quite some time that the really big deal about global warming is increasing frequency and severity of droughts.  If I've succeeded in convincing you of this too (or you already believed it for other reasons of your own), then you will be interested in a new paper by Wehner et al (a group of scientists at NOAA and US national labs) titled Projections of Future Drought in the Continental United States and Mexico. The full paper doesn't seem to be freely available on the Internet but  there's a press release and also conference talk slides that will give you the flavor.  Furthermore, a reader sent me a copy and I'll summarize the points that interested me here.Let me start by explaining the figure above which is really the heart of the paper.  The x-axis of the figure is time during the twentieth and twenty-first century.  The y-axis plots the fraction of the area of the US and Mexico that is in at least moderate drought (PDSI less than -2).  The red and black lines are based on two different estimates of the historical PDSI: both use the same code for generating the PDSI that NOAA uses for its regular drought monitoring but they use temperature/precipitation data series from different groups as the input to the PDSI calculation.  Then the pale grey lines represent the (corrected) PDSI from nineteen climate model runs used in the IPCC AR4 process with the A1B emissions scenario (the world is currently tracking noticeably above this scenario).  The purple line is then the average of the 19 model runs (ie all the grey lines which are too blurred together to really see well).  Because the purple line is an average of 19 simulated worlds, it has much less fluctuations in than the one real world (red/black lines).  Also, because climate models seem to systematically under-estimate drought in the twentieth century, the purple line is below the red line on average.But here's the kicker: notwithstanding the fact that the models seriously underestimate the level of drought in the 20th century, by the end of the 21st century, their average has reached around a level a little above 0.6.  And if you look over to about the mid 1930s you'll see a red spike - the worst year of the dust bowl - which extends to about 0.65 (hard to see the exact level in the figure above but you can see it clearly in the version in the slides).  So the paper is saying that climate models predict a level of US/Mexican drought in 2100 that is comparable to the worst year of the dustbowl.  As the press release puts it:These models showed that the normal state for much of the continental United States and Mexico in the mid- to late-21st century would be conditions considered severe to extreme drought by today's standards.Holy shit.One interesting thing is that this new paper does not cite, and shows no awareness of, the line of papers by Dai and coauthors that I have covered extensively on this blog.  While that's a flaw in the paper, it does mean that the broad conclusions of those papers have been reproduced completely independently by a different group of scientists.Needless to say the conclusions here are terrible - if there is that much drought on a regular basis, lots of US forests will be turning into savannah (and savannahs into grasslands or deserts) and there will be huge releases of carbon dioxide from the biosphere - really nasty positive feedbacks that the climate models I'm quite sure are not capturing properly - and we are really going to turn our beautiful planet into a hell fit only for robots to live on.If you want to see the best guesses as to the regional distribution of the problem, here they are:This shows the change in the average PDSI in the models regionally.  Note the scale - the dark brown is a full -4 shift: the new normal will be extreme drought by the standards of the past.  So if this map is right, you can basically kiss Mexico goodbye altogether and the mountain west and great plains look terrible too.  However, I wouldn't necessarily see the map as very certain for reasons I'll discuss in a moment.Is there any escape from this conclusion? Well, the one hope is that it turns out that the climate models really suck at reproducing the historical conditions of drought.  This isn't as much comfort as it might be since it turns out they really want to under-predict the amount of drought, but such hope as there might be, it lies in there.  In particular, when the authors first ran the PDSI calculation on the model temperature/precipitation variables, the models really grossly failed to explain the 20th century level of drought: it's the left picture in this pair:The first thing the researchers noticed is that the models have a tendency to predict too much rain and not enough heat in some parts of the country.  So they took the temperature and precipitation for each model, and for each simulation grid cell, and rescaled them so that the average over the twentieth century matched the actual average in the real world. Then they reran the PDSI calculations and that's the picture on the right (which is also the one at the top of the post).  You can see that this adjustment hasn't really solved the problem in the twentieth century - though it's a bit better - but the prediction in the twenty-first century is pretty sensitive to this adjustment.Presumably, the real problem is that the climate models aren't very good at producing the kind of long hot rainless summer that gives rise to killer droughts (like in Texas in 2011).  The rainfall and temperature in the model probably lack sufficiently long auto-correlations to produce real world droughts.  Still, just adjusting the model output to have the correct mean values before doing the PDSI doesn't seem like a crazy thing to do: although it's crude, it's hard to argue that it invalidates the right hand side figure.  Still, the fact that the models clearly fail to capture the most important dynamics of drought should give one some pause.Pretty much all the models predict more drought - that's a robust prediction that arises because the increasing temperature produces more moisture demand on the soil than the precipitation can supply, even where the latter is increasing.  However, one story you might try to tell about how it might not be so bad: suppose climate change makes the weather less correlated (ie more changeable) so now it becomes very unlikely to have an entire hot summer, but instead you get a hot week or three and then a bunch of rain and cooler weather and then back again.  That might produce less drought even in a warmer world, but climate models simply couldn't credibly predict this trend (or the reverse) since they do a rotten job of predicting the level of drought now.Of course, there isn't the slightest reason at the moment to suppose the weather is going to get more changeable under anthropogenic climate change - it's just a place where you could park some doubt, if you really didn't want to believe this stuff.  Right now, it looks a lot more likely that we really are headed into a future with a lot of killer droughts.More research desperately needed.  And more action on climate change from individuals and politicians too.  Please.

European Industrial Orders Continue Slide

Eurostat has produced the numbers for November industrial orders in the Eurozone and the EU as a whole. The picture continues to appear that Europe is sliding into recession, though not at a breathtaking pace.  In this particular case, the Eurozone has retrenched to the low level of September, erasing the slight improvement in October.  Meanwhile the broader EU continued to follow the Eurozone down.Here are the changes relative to 12 months ago (Nov for most cases, Oct for a few):Eastern Europe is mostly recovering, as is Ireland.  Greece and Portugal have had a terrible year.  Spain Germany and Italy don't look great either.Of course, the negative developments in the real economy are going to feed back into the financial crisis.  In a slowdown, more businesses will fail than usual, and more households will lose income or become bankrupt.  That in turn will increase the strain on bank balance sheets as they get left holding the resulting bad loans.

Associated Content

Bicycling in a Post-peak Oil World

This article discusses the pros and cons of bicycles as a post peak oil means of transportation.Contributor: Randy MoserPublished: Aug 29, 2011

We Hit Peak Oil

We Hit Peak Oil - Quatrain by Stephen C. RoseContributor: Stephen C. RosePublished: Dec 03, 2010

25 Words -- Peak Oil Theory

Peak oil assumes we're on a downward slope and oil will run out. This After Green thought suggests oil is ruinous no matter what the theory is.Contributor: Stephen C. RosePublished: Jul 17, 2010

GetREALlist

The Siren song of LNG exports

For SmartPlanet this week, I compared the new expected demands for US natural gas to the data on supply, and concluded that exporting LNG could be a grave policy error. Read it here: The Siren song of LNG exports

The revolution will be bottom-up

For SmartPlanet this week, I looked at various ways that ordinary people are finding ways to reduce their energy consumption, relocalize food production, and create more sustainable communities in the absence of effective top-down leadership.  Read it here: The revolution will be bottom-up  

Interview with Financial Sense January 13, 2012

I appeared on the Financial Sense with Jim Puplava program last Friday, in a segment they titled “Political Stand-off in US Energy Policy.” We discussed energy security, the vulnerability of island nations to liquid fuel supply, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Left-Right stalemate over energy policy, the failure of our leadership to grapple with energy and transportation transitions, the “narrow ledge” of oil prices, and how oil has effectively replaced the Fed as the primary moderator of the economy. You can download the show (21 mins) here: RealPlayer | WinAmp | Windows Media | MP3 See also:  Energy politics at the piano bar Reframing the transportation debate The narrow ledge of oil prices Have we reached an inflection point in economics history?

The Telegraph: Oil and Gas

Coryton refinery administrators seek crude oil supplies

Coryton refinery's administrators were tonight attempting to secure supplies of crude oil, after resuming deliveries of fuels to customers this morning.

Coryton oil refinery resumes deliveries following deal

Petrol trucks were rolling out of the Coryton refinery in Essex on Thursday morning after an overnight deal which will resume deliveries for the first time since it was placed in administration.

Cairn drops £2.5m share award for Sir Bill Gammell

Cairn Energy has given in to shareholder pressure and dropped its plan to give chairman and former chief executive Sir Bill Gammell a £3.5m one-off reward package.

Mobjectivist

The Oil ConunDRUM

I synthesized the last several years of blog content and placed it into The Oil ConunDRUM. This document turned into a treatise of topics relating to the role of disorder and entropy in the applied sciences. Volume 1 is mainly on the analysis of the decline in global oil production, while Volume 2 uses often related analysis in studying renewable sources of energy and how entropy plays a role in our environment and everyday life. TOC essentially draws a line in the sand and a virtual stake in the ground. Everything I have written about and all the original analyses I have worked out on the blog has not fundamentally changed as I aggregated the information. As far as I can tell, no one else has picked up on the direction that I have taken, and nothing has come out of the research literature that comes close to unifying the set of topics as well as this does.A couple of commenters have said I should publish the research work through peer-reviewed channels. That won't happen because the project covers too much territory and compiling a massive tome such as this represented the best option I could think of. I invite all with an interest in the natural world to take a whack at digesting it.This is a list of the novel areas of research, listed in what I consider a ranked order of originality:The Oil Shock Model.A data flow model of oil extraction and production which allows for perturbations.The Dispersive Discovery Model.A probabilistic model of resource discovery which accounts for technological advancement and a finite search volume.The Reservoir Size Dispersive Aggregation Model.A first-principles model that explains and describes the size distribution of oil reservoirs and fields around the world.Solving the Reserve Growth "enigma".An application of dispersive discovery on a localized level which models the hyperbolic reserve growth characteristics observed.Shocklets.A kernel approach to characterizing production from individual fields.Reserve Growth, Creaming Curve, and Size Distribution Linearization.An obvious linearization of this family of curves, related to HL but more useful since it stems from first principles.The Hubbert Peak Logistic Curve explained.The Logistic curve is trivially explained by dispersive discovery with exponential technology advancement.Laplace Transform Analysis of Dispersive Discovery.Dispersion curves are solved by looking up the Laplace transform of the spatial uncertainty profile.The Maximum Entropy Principle and the Entropic Dispersion Framework. The generalized math framework applied to many models of disorder, natural or man-made. Explains the origin of the entroplet.Gompertz Decline Model.Exponentially increasing extraction rates lead to steep production decline.Anomalous Behavior in Dispersive Transport explained.Photovoltaic (PV) material made from disordered and amorphous semiconductor material shows poor photoresponse characteristics. Solution to simple entropic dispersion relations or the more general Fokker-Planck leads to good agreement with the data over orders of magnitude in current and response times.Framework for understanding Breakthrough Curves and Solute Transport in Porous Materials.The same disordered Fokker-Planck construction explains the dispersive transport of solute in groundwater or liquids flowing in porous materials.The Dynamics of Atmospheric CO2 buildup and extrapolation.Used the oil shock model to convolve a fat-tailed CO2 residence time impulse response function with a fossil-fuel stimulus. This shows the long latency of CO2 buildup very straightforwardly.Terrain Slope Distribution Analysis.Explanation and derivation of the topographic slope distribution across the USA. This uses mean energy and maximum entropy principle.Reliability Analysis and understanding the "bathtub curve".Using a dispersion in failure rates to generate the characteristic bathtub curves of failure occurrences in parts and components.Wind Energy Analysis.Universality of wind energy probability distribution by applying maximum entropy to the mean energy observed. Data from Canada and Germany.Dispersion Analysis of Human Transportation Statistics.Alternate take on the empirical distribution of travel times between geographical points. This uses a maximum entropy approximation to the mean speed and mean distance across all the data points.The Overshoot Point (TOP) and the Oil Production Plateau.How increases in extraction rate can maintain production levels.Analysis of Relative Species Abundance.Dispersive evolution of species according to Maximum Entropy Principle leads to characteristic distribution of species abundance.Lake Size Distribution.Analogous to explaining reservoir size distribution, uses similar arguments to derive the distribution of freshwater lake sizes. This provides a good feel for how often super-giant reservoirs and Great Lakes occur (by comparison)Labor Productivity Learning Curve Model.A simple relative productivity model based on uncertainty of a diminishing return learning curve gradient over a large labor pool (in this case Japan).Project Scheduling and Bottlenecking.Explanation of how uncertainty in meeting project deadlines or task durations caused by a spread of productivity rates leads to probabilistic schedule slips with fat-tails. Answers why projects don't complete on time.The Stochastic Model of Popcorn Popping.The novel explanation of why popcorn popping follows the same bell-shaped curve of the Hubbert Peak in oil production.The Quandary of Infinite Reserves due to Fat-Tail Statistics.Demonstrated that even infinite reserves can lead to limited resource production in the face of maximum extraction constraints.Oil Recovery Factor Model.A model of oil recovery which takes into account reservoir size.Network Transit Time Statistics.Dispersion in TCP/IP transport rates leads to the measured fat-tails in round-trip time statistics on loaded networks.Language Evolution Model.Model for relative language adoption which depends on critical mass of acceptance.Web Link Growth Model.Model for relative popularity of web sites which follows a diminishing return learning curve model.Scientific Citation Growth Model.Same model used for explaining scientific citation indexing growth.Particle and Crystal Growth Statistics.Detailed model of ice crystal size distribution in high-altitude cirrus clouds.Rainfall Amount Dispersion.Explanation of rainfall variation based on dispersion in rate of cloud build-up along with dispersion in critical size.Earthquake Magnitude Distribution.Distribution of earthquake magnitudes based on dispersion of energy buildup and critical threshold.Income Disparity Distribution.Relative income distribution which includes inflection point to to compounding interest growth on investments.Insurance Payout Analysis, and Hyperbolic Discounting.Fat-tail analysis of risk and estimation.Thermal Entropic Dispersion Analysis.Solving the Fokker-Planck equation or Fourier's Law for thermal diffusion in a disordered environment. A subtle effect.GPS Acquisition Time Analysis.Engineering analysis of GPS cold-start acquisition times.You can refer back to details in the blog, but The Oil ConunDRUM cleans everything up. It features quality mathematical markup, references to scholarly work, a full subject index, hypertext table of contents, several hundred figures with captions, footnotes and sidebars with editorial commentary, embedded historical documents, source code appendices, and tables of nomenclature and glossary.EDIT (1/21/11): Here is a critique from TOD. I can only assume the commenter doesn't understand the concept of convolution or doesn't realize that such a useful technique exists:Your methods are fundamentally flawed you cannot aggregate across producing basins like you do. Its simply wrong.To add multiple producing basins together you must adjust the time variable such that all of them start production at the same time or if they have peaked all the peaks are aligned.The time that a basin was discovered and put into production is an irrelevant random variable and has no influence on the ultimate URR.If you don't correctly normalize the time variable across basins your work is simply garbage. There is no coupling between basins and no reason to average them based on real time. Its junk math. No simple function exists in real time to describe the aggregate production profile.The US simply happened to have its larger basins developed about the same time in real time. Hubbert's original analysis worked simply because the error in the normalized time and real time was small.One of the mysteries of science and mathematics is the role of entropy. The mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota from MIT had this to say just a few years ago:The take on this is that as Rota says about the Maximum Entropy Principle "Among all mathematical recipes, this is to the best of my knowledge the one that has found the most striking applications in engineering practice", yet it retains this sense of mystery in that no one can really prove it -- entropy just IS and by its existence, you have to deal with it the best you can.EDIT (1/31/11): In the book, the last prediction of global crude production I made was a while ago. Here is an update:The chart above is the best guess model from 2007 using the combined Dispersive Discovery+Oil Shock Model for crude. Apart from a conversion from barrels/year to barrels/day, this is the same model as I used in a 2007 TOD post and documented in The Oil ConunDRUM. The recent data from EIA is shown as the green dots back to 1980. I always find it interesting to take the 10,000 foot view. What may look like a plateau up close, may actually be part of the curve at a distance.EDIT (2/22/2011): An additional USA Shock Model not included in the book. I included Alaska in this model.Discovery data transcribed from this figure; the discoveries seem to end in 1985, so I extended the data with a dispersive discovery model. I added in Alaska North Slope at 22 billion barrels in 1968 and a small 300 million barrel starter discovery in 1858..The blue line in the Dispersive Discovery Model is this equation, which is essentially a scaled version of the world model:DD(t)=(1-exp(-URR/(B*((t-t')^6))))*B*((t-t')^6), URR=240,000 million barrels, B=2E-7, t'=1835.I did not include any perturbation shocks to keep it simple. Apart from the data, the following is the entirety of the Ruby code; the discovery.txt file is yearly discovery data, which is from the first graph. The second graph shows reserve.out and production.out. cat discovery.txt | ruby exp.rb 0.07 | ruby exp.rb 0.07 | ruby exp.rb 0.07 > reserve.outcat reserve.out | ruby exp.rb 0.08 >production.out$ cat exp.rbdef exp(a, b)rate = blength = a.lengthtemp = 0.0for i in 0..length dooutput = (a[i].to_f + temp) * ratetemp = (a[i].to_f + temp) * (1.0 - rate)puts outputendendexp(STDIN.readlines, ARGV[0].to_f)

Terrain Slopes

Entropy makes its mark everywhere. Take the case of modeling topography. How can we model and thus characterize disorder in the earth's terrain? Can we actually understand the extreme variability we see?If we consider that immense forces cause upheaval in the crust then we can reason that the energy can also vary all over the map, so to speak. The process that transfers potential energy into kinetic energy to first order has to contain elements of randomness. To the huge internal forces within the earth, generating relief textures equates to a kind of brownian motion in relative terms -- over geological time, the terrain amounts to nothing more than inconsequential particles to the earth's powerful internal engine.In a related sense the process also resembles the pressure distribution in the earth's atmosphere, a classic application of maximum entropy that we can re-apply in the case of modeling terrain slope distributions.Premise. We take the terrain slope S as our random variable (defined as rise/run). The higher the slope, the more energetic the terrain. Applying Maximum Entropy to a section of terrain, we can approximate the local variations as a MaxEnt conditional probability density function:p(S|E) = (1/cE) * exp(-S/cE)where E is the local mean energy and c is a constant of proportionality. But we also assume that the mean E varies over a larger area that we are interested in, as in the superstatistical sense of applying a prior distribution.p(E) = k*exp(-k*E)where k is another MaxEnt measure of our uncertainty in the energy spread over a larger area.The final probability is an integral over the marginal distribution consisting of the conditional multiplied by the prior:p(S) = integral p(S|E) *p(E) dE from E=0 to infinityThis integrates as a BesselK function of the zero order, K0, available on any spreadsheet program (see here for a similar derivation in an unrelated field).p(S) = 2/S0 * K0(2*sqrt(S/S0))The average value of the terrain slope for this distribution is simply the value S0.Now we can try it on a large set of data. I downloaded all the DEM data for the 1 degree quadrangles (aka blocks/tiles) in the USA from the USGS web site. http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/DEM/250/This consists of post data at approximately 92 meter intervals (i.e. a fixed value of run) at 1:250,000 scale for the entire USA. I concentrated on the lower 48 and some spillover into Canada. I used curl to iteratively download each of the nearly 1000 quadrangle files on the server.I then wrote a program to read the data from individual DEM files and calculate the slopes between adjacent posts and came up with an average slope (rise/run) of 0.039, approximately a 4% grade or 2.2 degrees pitch. I take the absolute values of all slopes so that the average is not zero.The cumulative plot of terrain slopes for all 5 billion calculated slope points appears on the following chart (Figure 1). I also added the cumulative probability distribution of the BesselK model with the calculated average slope as the single adjustable parameter.Figure 1: CDF of USA DEM data and the BesselK model with a small variation in S0 (+/-4% about the average 0.037 rise/run) demonstrating sensitivity to the fit.This kind of agreement does not just happen because of coincidence. It occurs because random forces contribute to maximizing the entropy of the topography. Enough variability exists for the terrain to reach an ergodic limit in filling the energy-constrained state space.As supporting evidence, it turns out that we can generate a distribution that maps well to the prior by estimating the average slope from the conditional PDF of each of the 922 quadrangle blocks and then plotting this aggregate data set as another histogram (see Figure 2).Figure 2: Generation of the prior distribution by taking the average slope of each of the nearly 1000 quadrangles . The best fit generates a value of S0 (1/27=0.037) close to that used in Figure 1.Practically speaking, we see the variability in slopes expressed at the two different levels. The entire USA at the integrated (BesselK model) level and the aggregated regions at the localized (exponential prior) level. These remain consistent as they agree on the single adjustable parameter S0 .The modeled distribution has many practical uses for analysis, including transportation studies and planning. Obviously, vehicles traveling up slopes use a significant amount of energy and you might like to have a model to base an analysis on without having to rely on the data by itself. (As a caveat, I did not include any of the spatial correlations that must also exist and might prove useful as well)Perusing the recent research, I couldn't find anyone that had previously discovered this simple model. Not that they haven't tried, coming up with a good slope distribution model seems to amount to a mini Holy Grail among geophysicists. I went as far as dropping $10 to downloading the first paper, which turned out to be a bust.Probabilistic description of topographic slope and aspect.G. Vico and A. Porporato, JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 114, F01011, doi:10.1029/2008JF001038, 2009http://www.agu.org/journals/jf/jf0901/2008JF001038/2008JF001038.pdfNonlinear Processes in Geophysics Multifractal earth topography.J.-S. Gagnon, S. Lovejoy, and D. Schertzer, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 13, 541--570, 2006http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/33/10/93/PDF/npg-13-541-2006.pdfPROPAGATION OF DEM UNCERTAINTY: AN INTERVAL ARITHMETIC APPROACH.G Gonçalves, XXII International Cartographic Conference, 2005http://www.cartesia.org/geodoc/icc2005/pdf/oral/TEMA7/Session%202/GIL%20GON%C7ALVES.pdfSAR interferometry and statistical topography.Guarnieri, A.M. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Dec 2002http://home.dei.polimi.it/monti/papers/montiguarnieri02.pdfIf someone wants to generate Monte Carlo statistics for the BesselK model without having to do the probability inversion, the algorithm turns out surprisingly simple. Draw two independent random samples from a uniform [0.0 .. 1.0] interval, apply the natural log to each, multiply them together, and then multiply by the S0 scaling constant. That will give the following cumulative if done 5 billion times, which is the same size as my USA DEM data sample.Figure 3: Generation of the BesselK model via Monte Carlo.The only statistical noise is at the 1e-9 level, same as in the DEM data.Examples of some random-walk realizations drawing from a two-level model follow. The flatter regions occur more often reflecting the regional data.

Understanding Recovery Factors

A recent TOD post on reserve growth by Rembrandt Kopelaar motivated this analysis.The recovery factor indicates how much oil that one can recover from the original estimate. This has important implications for the the ultimately recovery resources, and increases in recovery rate has implications for reserve growth.First of all, we should acknowledge that we still have uncertainty as to the amount of original oil in place, so that the recovery factor has two factors of uncertainty.The cumulative distribution of reservoir recovery factor typically looks like the following S-shaped curve. The fastest upslope indicates the region closest to the average recovery factor.Figure 1: Recovery Factor cumulative distribution function (from)To understand the spread in the recovery factors, one has to first realize that all reservoirs have different characteristics. Some are more difficult to extract from and others have easier recovery factors. One of the principle first-order effects has to do with the size of the reservoir: bigger reservoirs typically have better recovery factors and as one reservoir engineer mentioned on TOD "Reserve growth tends to happen in bigger fields because thats where you get the most bang for your buck"So if we make the simple assumption that cumulative recovery factors (RF) have Maximum Entropy uncertainty or dispersion for a given Size:P(RF) = 1-exp (-k*RF/Size)this makes sense as the recovery factor will extend for larger fields.Add to the mix that reservoir Sizes go approximately as (see here):Pr(Size)= 1/(1+Median/Size)Then a simple reduction in these sets of equations (with the key insight that RF ranges between 0 and 1, i.e. between 0 and 100%) gives usP(RF) = 1 - exp(-k*RF*RF/(1-RF)/Median)the ratio Median/k indicates the fractional average recovery factor relative to the median field size.A set of curves for various k/Median values below:Figure 2: Recovery Factor distribution functions assuming maximum entropyRembrandt provided some recovery factor curves originally supplied by Laherrere, and I fit these to the Median/k fractions below.Figure 3: Recovery factor curves from Rembrandt's TOD post,alongside the recovery factor model described here.Laherrere also provided curves for natural gas, where recovery factors turn out much higher.Figure 4: Recovery Factor distribution functions for natural gas.Note that the recovery factor is much higher than for oil.(Note: I had to fix the typo in the graph x-axis naming)It looks like this derivation has strong universality underlying it. This remains a very simple and parsimonious model as it has only one sliding parameter. The parameter Median/k works in a scale-free fashion because both numerator and denominator have dimensions of size. This means that one can't muck with it that much -- as recovery factors increase, the underlying uncertainty will remain and the curves in Figure 2 will simply slide to the right over time while adjusting their shape. This will essentially describe the future reserve growth we can expect; the uncertainty in the underlying recovery factors will remain and thus we should see the limitations in the smearing of the cumulative distributions. To reverse the entropic dispersion of nature and thus to overcome the recovery factor inefficiency, we will certainly have to expend extra energy.

PeakOil Task Force

Government to work with business on plans to tackle peak oil threat

Business leaders today welcomed a commitment by the Government to work with the private sector on contingency plans to protect the UK and its economy from the growing risk of rising oil prices. It follows a meeting between Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and representatives from the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES). During the meeting, the Secretary of State agreed that the Department for Energy and Climate Change and ITPOES should work more closely together on peak-oil threat assessment and contingency planning. The collaboration should begin with a joint examination of concerns that global oil supply will begin to fall behind global demand within as little as five years -- far earlier than previous widely-held assumptions. While full details are to be agreed,  Mr Huhne has indicated this would be the first step in the development of a national Peak Oil contingency plan. DECC has already begun to explore the likely damaging economic impact of rising oil prices, as reported in The Times. Following the discussions with Mr Huhne, business leaders are also to seek engagement with the Treasury to  raise their concerns over the economic consequences for UK businesses which are likely to result from the threat of energy security. ITPOES Chairman John Miles said: “We had a very constructive meeting with Chris Huhne, and this is a positive step forward in the dialogue between business and Government. It is important that we work together to assess the short-term threat which confronts the national economy and the business climate in which we have to operate." "We must define the risks and develop sensible contingency plans. This means thinking critically about what we should be doing now if we knew that the oil price would soar over the next five years. Many of the possible courses of action could also help to accelerate our response to the parallel threat of climate change. We look forward to building on this commitment from Government to work together on developing practical plans to mitigate these risks.” ITPOES member companies are Arup, Buro Happold, Solarcentury, SSE, Stagecoach Group and Virgin Group. For the past three years, ITPOES has argued for proactive and rapid mobilisation against both the oil and climate-change threats through a coalition of government, business and consumers. ITPOES released reports in 2008 and 2010 on the impact of peak oil on the UK economy, highlighting the complex factors above and below ground which will increasingly tighten the flexibility in the oil market over the next few years, and as early as 2015. ITPOES also produced a briefing note in November 2010 highlighting the risks to global oil supply from increasing exposure to deepwater oil production.

Industry taskforce welcomes Carbon Plan

The UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) welcomed the Government's new Carbon Plan as a “positive first step”. However, the group said political instability in the Middle East, rising fuel prices and increasing uncertainty over oil reserves had heightened the urgency for action. ITPOES said the private sector was crucial to ensuring the practical delivery of any strategy. It urged Ministers to adopt a closer and more collaborative working partnership with industry and use the forthcoming Budget to give a clear commitment to accelerate a range of low carbon initiatives, including the “Green Deal”, Green Investment Bank and protection of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy. In a joint statement, ITPOES members Arup, Buro Happold, Kingfisher, Solarcentury, SSE, Stagecoach Group and Virgin Group said: “For the past three years, we have been warning of the very energy security risks that have been brought into sharp focus by events in the Middle East. We have stressed the need for co-operative contingency planning and proactive risk-abatement and we remain extremely keen to work with the UK government. “Recognition by the Coalition administration that we have a serious problem and moves to ensure a more joined up approach across government are a positive first step. “However, the negative impact of our dependency on oil threatens to be far worse than the oil shocks of previous decades and the actions needed to tackle it are wider than just government. “Business has a crucial role to play if we are to wean the UK off oil. We must work together to deliver a radical solution to the challenge of peak oil, and we hope this will be reflected in the forthcoming Budget with accelerated support for domestic and commercial low-carbon initiatives, including a low-carbon transportation strategy to reduce our oil dependency.” ITPOES released reports in 2008 and 2010 on the impact of peak oil on the UK economy, highlighting the complex factors above and below ground which will increasingly tighten the flexibility in the oil market over the next few years, and as early as 2015. ITPOES also produced a briefing note in November 2010 highlighting the risks to global oil supply from increasing exposure to deepwater oil production. These reports are all available on this website. For further information, contact Ben Richardson, Arup: ben.richardson@arup.com

Oil fuels UK producer prices rise

A BBC news online article looks at oil prices and a rise in the price of goods. “The prices of goods leaving UK factories rose at their fastest rate for 13 months in January, fuelled by a jump in the cost of oil, figures show.” Read the full article.

Peak Energy

Transition Culture

Five questions for Emma Goude, producer of ‘In Transition 2.0′

It’s less than a week to go until ‘In Transition 2.0′ is previewed in each of the places whose stories appear in the film.  For example, it will be previewed in a fire station in Moss Side in Manchester, a community centre in Lyttelton in New Zealand that was one of only a few buildings there to survive the earthquake (their screening starts at 9am), a Hindu temple in Tooting in London, a ‘Cinema Paradiso’ in a village in rural India, and in a village hall in Japan (see here for the full list of previews).  I caught up with producer Emma Goude to ask her 5 quick questions about the film.

Your chance to be in a music video!

This is your chance to be in the Transition music video! With the upcoming release of In Transition 2.0 we are releasing a song written by the composer for the film, Rebecca Mayes, complete with music video. Rebecca is an astonishingly talented musician, you can find out more at her website.  The song is called ‘Turn the Lights Out’ and we want clips of YOU turning out the lights. Any lights. It can be creative/unusual ways of turning lights out, or just plain looking into camera and turning lights out. You can do it alone or with your Transition community (preferably both!) Five second clips maximum. It can be filmed on your phone, digital camera, whatever. As high quality as possible but everything is welcome. Once the clip is filmed please upload it to YouTube (either privately or publicly) and send the link to Rebecca at audiogamer(at)gmail.com, before February 19th.  This is a creative, community project and we’d like as many of you in the video as possible.  If you have any questions, do post them below.  The song will be released as a single, but here is a short clip of it as a taster…

Introducing ‘The Transition Companion’ widget

Here’s a great ‘The Transition Companion’ widget created by Green Books, which offers an immersion into the book, complete with audio bits and all sorts. It’s easily embeddable, so if you have anywhere on-line it could go, that would be wonderful. Click on it and it blows up into a flip-throughable selection from the book. Thanks to Stacey at Green Books for creating it…

Transition Voice

The garden school

It was the first day of school for Sakiko and six of the neighbor's children. Katie stood behind a desk made of two file cabinets and an old solid core wood door covered in a table cloth. The blackboard behind her was as black as a winter's night except for her name written in yellow chalk. Her students sat in mismatched office chairs around two dining room tables salvaged from nearby abandoned homes. While the boys experimented with the adjustable features of their chairs, the girls sat with rapt attention. Sakiko, the young Japanese girl who had traveled with her former tutor from Japan was delighted to once again be in the familiar role as her student. "Welcome, everyone to the Garden School. My name is Ms. Duffel and I am very happy to see all of you" said Katie, suppressing a rush of emotion swelling within her. "I understand that most of you know each other, but, starting from my left," she continued with an outstretched hand, "would each of you please stand up and tell everyone your name and the title of your favorite book?" In turn, the 4 girls and 3 boys ages six to fourteen stood politely and introduced themselves. The basement of Ryan's 1950's brick rancher, next door to where Katie lived with Sakiko and her grandparents, had been transformed in recent weeks. To create Katie's classroom, the partition wall that ran down the middle was removed along with the old drop ceiling and the recessed lights. The exposed floor joists were painted various shades of white from several half empty cans. The fluorescent tube fixtures were re-hung from chains and twists of galvanized wire. The single paned windows were cleaned and a hole in the screen door leading out to the garden was patched. Along the back wall, sturdy pine bookcases were stuffed with an assortment of collected books and several dozen National Geographic magazines. Plastic bins held art supplies and a whole ream of copier paper. Katie's grandfather, Henry, donated two solar powered calculators from his old cabinet making business. However, everyone's eyes kept drifting toward the shiny metallic laptop in the center of Katie's desk. Ryan had used it at his IT job at the local university to update department web pages and retrieve lost research data. It had worked 'miracles' for the less tech savvy professors back then. Today, the icon made secret promises to each of the children in Katie's class. Several hands went up once the introductions were complete. "Yes, Becca?" responded Katie to the small girl sitting next to Sakiko. Becca's mother was the first to accept Katie's offer to teach. The widower had lost her husband and teenage son when their home was robbed during the banking holiday. "Is that a computer?" asked Becca in a whisper. It was then that Katie realized young children born during the economic collapse might not know what a computer was or how it had once been a staple in classrooms around the country. "Yes, it is. Have you ever used one before?" "No" she replied shaking her head. "My mom has one but it doesn't work anymore. She said it got sick with a virus and she doesn't know how to make it better. Is yours sick?" "No, this one works fine. It's not connected to Internet II, but we can still use it in our lessons" replied Katie. "Ms. Duffel?" asked the oldest boy without waiting to be called on, "do we get recess?" "Yes, Jeremy. We'll take a break for lunch each day and go outside if the weather's nice. We're also going to spend lots of time in the Garden. We're going to study the plants we grow and how they use nutrients in the soil, water, the sun and carbon dioxide to produce the food we eat. Does anyone know what the scientific study of plants and animals is called?" The oldest, a tall thin girl with blonde hair responded confidently, "Biology." "That's right, Schuyler, biology. To help us learn about biology, each of you is going to have a little space in the Garden where you can grow whatever you like. We're going to experiment with hugelkulture, vermiculture, and lots of other messy things!” Becca raised her hand again timidly." What’s 'vermiculture' Ms. Duffel?" Hoping to get a smile, Katie scrunched up her nose and said, “Worms, Becca. Lots and lots of wiggly, red worms!" Becca's expression indicated that she was not impressed. "Don't worry; we're going to have lots of fun in the Garden. I'm also going to teach you Math and Reading. Once in while, we'll even make some art together. Now, do any of you have a musical instrument at home?" Several of the student's hands went up. "Wow! In that case, I’ll also give you some basic music lessons." Sakiko was delighted. The seven year old played the violin very well. Unfortunately, hers had been lost during their month long journey from Japan. There were more questions about homework and taking tests. There was still so much to figure out. “One week at a time,” Katie told herself as she wrote out the first week's schedule on the black board. Delivery Retrieving his backpack from a row of hooks, Ryan headed toward the office to return the dry goods inventory list he had been double checking this afternoon. It was his third week of working at the distribution warehouse next to the train depot. This morning, his boss had asked him to help with the monthly inventory reports. Mr. Stafford was a neatly dressed, older fellow with a full head of white hair and rimmed glasses. Knocking on the open office door, Ryan stepped in to return the report. "The Dry Goods inventory is done, sir. I found an open carton of wool blankets near the back so I pulled them out and counted; there were two missing." "Why am I surprised" said Stafford without looking up. He was buried behind a small desk covered in clip boards. Stuffed with yellow forms, each one represented a different government subcontractor.  "Thank you for your help; I knew I could count on you." "You're welcome. I'm surprised you don't have a laptop or a smart pad to track everything." "Nope; not yet. I've been waiting for a computer and the parts to the forklift for almost a month now." Stafford looked up at him, "I understand you had a job in computers before. Any chance you might be able to get one of my old computers up and running in the meantime? I've got one that was never connected to the Cloud." "I'd be happy to try, sir." "Alright, I'll bring it in. Oh, and would you mind doing one more thing tonight? I need you to deliver something for me" he said pushing back his chair and standing. Stafford reached into a pocket and pulled out a set of keys as he turned to the upright file cabinet behind him. "This needs to go over to the office tonight," he said opening the top drawer. Stafford took out a large brown envelope with a bar coded address and handed it to him. Ryan looked at the adhesive backed label. He didn't recognize the recipient's name, but the office for the depot's operation was in the old historic building across from city hall. "Will someone be there at this hour?" he inquired. "Someone’ll be there. Thank you. See you tomorrow?" asked Stafford. "Absolutely. Have a good night,” Ryan said, nodding as he stepped out. Outside the late summer sky had turned dark and the air smelled of ozone. Rain was on the way. “Better late than never,” Ryan muttered to himself as he headed quickly up the concrete steps toward downtown. Light emanated from the double glass entry doors of the historic building. Standing inside the foyer, a uniformed guard was watching the approaching storm. He unlocked and opened the door as Ryan ascended the brick portico. "Mr. Stafford sent me to deliver a package" he said producing the envelope from his backpack. ""I'll take it, thanks" replied the guard coldly, glancing up and down at Ryan quickly. Then hearing voices from inside, he stepped out to hold the door open. Zipping his backpack, Ryan turned to leave when he heard his name called amidst raucous laughter. "Ryan, fancy bumpin' into you here' said his jovial neighbor Bill exiting with two other men. Instead of overalls, Bill was dressed in an expensive button down shirt, slacks and leather shoes. One of the men behind him handed Bill an overcoat while the other took out a large umbrella. "How's the job workin' out for ya?" asked Bill in his familiar drawl. "Fine, great. I'm just dropping something off for Mr. Stafford. By the way, Katie asked me to thank you again for the blackboard." "Well, you tell her she's welcome. Let me know if she needs anything else." "Thank you, I'll tell her. " They parted quickly under the distant sound of thunder. Ryan decided to take a short cut through downtown and cut across the cemetery to save time. As he entered the side street, he saw something move in the alley to his left. He glanced quickly in that direction and prepared to run if it was trouble. Instead, he caught sight of the stray dog he’d seen before. Going down on one knee slowly he pulled a piece of jerky from his backpack. Breaking it in two, he tossed one half in the direction of the hungry looking dog. The dog moved cautiously toward the stick of dried venison, grabbed it and took off down the alley. "You're welcome!" shouted Ryan after the dog. He bit firmly on the other half as the rain began to fall. –J.B. Sties, Transition Voice

Occupying your bookshelf

Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America, ed. by Astra Taylor, Keith Gessen and others, Verso, 216 pp, $14.95 To refute critics in the mainstream media who claim that the Occupy movement has no demands, Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America, edited by a team of activist editors including Astra Taylor and Keith Gessen, begins with a list of demands from organizers in an OWS planning meeting in New York. These range from the expected — repealing Citizens United, debt forgiveness and a “Tobin” tax on financial transactions — to the quirky — removing the bull sculpture from Wall Street and pay-as-you-go warfare. But just as concrete policy proposals are not really the point of the Occupy movement, so they’re definitely not the point of this book, a pastiche of reporting, essays, documents and artwork as eclectic as the encampment at Zuccotti Park. The book’s variety makes for entertaining reading that’s also informative, offering up answers to all the questions about OWS that you were afraid to ask. For example, what’s the deal with drum circles? Turns out that they’re partly historical, inspired by Native American and African traditions, and partly whimsical, their true adherents found at Venice Beach or Santa Cruz. But people who want to talk in a general assembly hate drummers as much as the neighbors do. How about the deep meaning behind the “We are the 99 percent” Tumblr blog where people post all those handwritten notes about how they’ve suffered in the Great Recession? It’s a way of “resigning from the American Dream” and creating a class consciousness not seen in decades. And who really initiated Occupy Wall Street? While Adbusters magazine takes credit for the initial announcement, a group of anti-globalization organizers in New York actually did the groundwork for the encampment that began on September 17 of last year. The Yes Men This Changes Everything ed. by Sarah van Gelder and the staff of YES! Magazine, Berrett-Kohler, 84 pp, $9.95. This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement is a more conventional book, though its editors, Sarah van Gelder and the staff of YES! Magazine, rushed it into print as an “instant book” to catch the OWS wave before it hit the shore. But there’s nothing rushed about the high quality of the book’s contributions, many of which have been in print or online before but all of which were worth collecting into this slim but powerful volume. This second book is less an immersion in the culture of OWS than a collection of good old-fashioned essays showing why Occupy is not just a movement demanding change, but a revolution that is “transforming how we, the 99%, see ourselves.” Anyone who considers themselves middle class but has suffered in the economic turmoil of late can’t help but feel consoled by van Gelder’s intelligent empathy: The shame many of us felt when we couldn’t find a job, pay down our debts, or keep our home is being replaced by a political awakening. Millions now recognize that we are not to blame for a weak economy, for a subprime mortgage meltdown, or for a tax system that favors the wealthy but bankrupts the government. The 99% are coming to see that we are collateral damage in an all-out effort by the super-rich to get even richer. Of course, this is the kind of talk that we’ve been hearing for years from YES! and its éminence grise, David Korten, author of numerous books on the economy including When Corporations Rule the World. But as America and the rest of the industrial world head into what could be the final collapse at the end of two centuries of fossil-fueled economic growth, we need to hear just this kind of talk more than ever. So it’s most appropriate that YES! should bring together some of the best lefty writers (with Korten joined by Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader and Rebecca Solnit) to praise a movement that has vindicated the magazine’s own years of crying in the wilderness about economic and financial reform, human-scale and local economies and even peak oil. – Erik Curren, Transition Voice

Solar panels face cloudy views

All of solar's merits add to its beauty. Photo SolarDave.com. After months of wrestling with the local County Building Department about permits and codes, excruciating financial gymnastics and down and dirty back-breaking spadework, we finally got our solar installation up. It's a massive 3 kw (stc) photovoltaic pole mount. We feel like we created the best of two worlds, too, since we live way back in the woods while, at the same time, we’re generating a lot of electricity. Inscribed around the base of the installation is a sun mantra, OM Suryaya Namaha, honoring the Sun as the principal of light, life and love. In Vedic philosophy, the Sun represents the soul--the causal body or reincarnating entity, as well as the mind of clarity and illumination. As Charles Eisenstein, in Sacred Economics, points out, he’s "not surprised that ancient people worshiped the sun, the only thing we know that gives without expectation or even possibility of return. The sun is generosity manifest." He goes on, a bit later, to say that "solar energy is the light of earthly love reflected back at us". So, yes, we think our solar array is beautiful. It's a piece of  architectural artwork; it's practical spirituality; it's earthly love reflected back at us! Yards apart We’ve learned that this, however, is not a popularly held viewpoint. Comments to us have ranged from "what’s that monstrosity in your back yard?" to "I wouldn't put something like that on my property!" Oh, there was also the woman who asked if we were "expecting an alien landing". Good grief. These comments, mind you, all came from people who wouldn't think twice if there were a couple of junk cars sitting out there, or maybe even a garish TV satellite receiver. If we had stashed an old washer or dryer on the back porch or had a couple of broken-down snowmobiles in the shed, they'd walk right by them, too, and never bat an eyelash. But, some solar panels? No way! Take, for example, the Town of Warwick, in southern Orange County, New York. They were the first community in the US to install solar panels on their Town Hall, install an electric car charging station near their farmers’ market and attract an LEED-certified supermarket. This all sounds great to me! But the town is now contending with the complaints of people who don’t like the idea of solar panels on downtown village homes. John Hicks, the town attorney and former Orange County Republican chairman whose wife sent in a letter of complaint regarding the solar installations, said he and his wife support energy efficiency but oppose the installation of solar panels on historic downtown homes “because basically solar panels are pretty ugly.” And, Warwick isn't the only place where solar panels are under assault. Here comes the sun Residents and politicians in Ridgewood, Wyckoff, and several other posh suburban towns just outside New York City are attacking local utility company PSE&G for putting up solar panels. Specifically, in an attempt to double the neighboring Garden State's solar capacity, the company has been installing 3-foot-by-5-foot solar modules on utility poles. And the reactions are less than positive: "It's just horrible," said Ridgewood's Deputy Mayor Tom Riche, according to an article in The Record, of Bergen County, N.J. Aren't we really addressing an age-old philosophical question about what constitutes beauty? Or fashion? What is beauty? For example, no self-respecting chic woman of the 21st century would be caught dead in a fitted bodice with gathers and heavily padded shoulders. But, if this were 1942, she'd be sizzling. And, I'll bet that few people thought that all of those poles and electric lines that got hung in the early 1900's were ugly. Probably not: they were too excited about exchanging their oil lamps for light bulbs. If we're really talking about aesthetics, a nicely trimmed oil lamp is way prettier than a light switch. But, electric lights were a step forward. They lessened the chance of a house fire, didn't emit fumes and put off way more light. So, nobody complained. Well, it's kind of the same with solar panels: they’re a step forward. Onward and upward Solar power is renewable and non-polluting. And, after the initial investment, all of the electricity produced is free. As a culture, we're just not yet used to looking at them. But, give us a decade or so, and they'll be like those electric wires that are strung all over the place--we’ll hardly even notice them. And, when we do, we'll recognize that they’re beautiful. They're beautiful because they’re renewable and non-polluting. They’re beautiful because making and installing more of them means very serious job creation. And, because they’re a step forward. Their beauty is grounded in their contribution to sustainable futures. They are an icon to something that we are giving to--instead of taking away from--subsequent generations. They are not a fashion statement: they're an evolutionary statement. They’re monuments and odes to the awakening of our species. OM Suryaya Namaha –Sherry L. Ackerman, PhD., Transition Voice

Postcarbon Cities

Getting Out From Behind the Wheel

The New York Times' "Green Inc." blog explores reactions to a previous article on the Vauban car-free development in Freiburg, Germany. Post Carbon Cities author Daniel Lerch is quoted in this article.

Small, Green and Good: The role of neglected cities in a sustainable future

Smaller cities have a distinctive and vital role to play in the work of the new century: they will be critical in the move to local agriculture and the development of renewable energy industries. Their underused or vacant industrial space and surrounding tracts of farmland make them ideal sites for sustainable land-use policies, or "smart growth." (This article quotes Post Carbon Cities author Daniel Lerch.)

Post Carbon Cities ending daily news posts

As of 10 January 2009 we are no longer collecting news articles on the Post Carbon Cities website. When we started this service two years ago, news and information on city responses to energy and climate uncertainty was hard to come by. Climate change and fossil fuel depletion have since become widely recognized concerns among local decision-makers and planners, so the time has come to shift our efforts elsewhere. Post Carbon Institute continues to do research on how local governments can best respond to and prepare for energy and climate uncertainty. Our database of local government actions will remain on the site and continue to be updated, as will our accompanying resource database of relevant resolutions and reports. If you'd like to keep following the news we find interesting, you can visit or subscribe to our feed on the bookmark-sharing site del.icio.us. Our News Archives will remain online for a few more months. Daniel Lerch, author of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, will continue blogging and posting articles on the Post Carbon Institute website. We hope our work at Post Carbon Institute continues to be useful to you. Please send your questions, concerns and suggestions to us using the contact form.

Community Solution

Who Will Kill the Electric Car this Time? Part 4

Pat Murphy       May 2, 2011 Summarizing EV/PHEV performance --  1996 to 2011 Attempting to evaluate car mileage performance from past and present EPA labels is not the same as actually testing them. The Leaf and Volt have only been available for a few months and extensive performance testing has not been done. Hopefully the EPA performance values are reasonably accurate. Table 4-1 combines the data from the previous parts of this analysis (table 2-2 to 2-4) a past and present approximation of 37 mpg for a range of EVs, very close to the Leaf average of 36 mpg. Table 4-1 Combined New and Older EV Cars This is a much lower appraisal of actual PHEV and EV mileage performance than the estimates of the EPA and car manufacturers. As a general rule one could reduce any mileage numbers shown on an EPA label for electric cars by roughly 2/3 to be more accurate. Comparing different fuels using different modes of energy generation (power plant generators versus internal combustion engines) is tricky. However, it is not unsolvable unless one has an interest in distorting the information. Unfortunately government and auto makers are marketing, not measuring. It is notable that the first EV car, the GM EV1, seems to have better mileage than the latest model, the Nissan Leaf. And the Leaf does not have significantly higher performance that the RAV 4 EV. The mileage performance of the new generation of electric cars is not outstanding. Note that the PHEV Volt and BEV Leaf are very close in terms of fuel economy. Comparing the BEV/PHEV to the HEV Figure 3-1 of the previous section of this analysis pointed out that the concept of an ever improving mileage for PHEVs as the battery storage increased was misleading. The change from an HEV, which is a gasoline car, to a PHEV which is an electric car, does not result in an automotive improvement in mpg. I have previously noted that the original 41 mpg Prius delivered to the U.S. in 2002 had a major negative impact on the CARB ZEVs once hybrid cars were included in CARB's portfolio of low emissions cars under the designation of Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles (PZEVs). It is important to understand how a more contemporary HEV will compare to the later electric cars? We are fortunate that the new BEV (Leaf) and the new PHEV (Volt) can be compared directly to a new HEV, the 2011 Prius. Table 4-2 shows the mileage comparisons of the newer cars. Table 4-2: Comparison of adjusted mileage numbers for Volt, Leaf, Prius The electric vehicles accurate mpg corrections for the energy cost of generating electricity have been derived in earlier parts of this analysis. The Prius mpg is taken from the EPA label. This number is surprising to those who have accepted the EPA and car companies way of calculating Mile per Gallon Equivalence. But the approach used here are more in line with the laws of thermodynamics. Adding the Prius makes a difficult job of comparing architectures even harder. One way to make a normalized comparison is to measure the CO2 that is generated from the various options. Both electric cars and gasoline cars generate CO2 as fuel is burned -- either gasoline in the car itself or coal and natural gas at a remote power plant. Such a comparison is possible now with the latest car models. The CO2 Method of Comparison -- EV/PHEV vs. Prius CO2 measures are the most important metrics for cars and their influence on the climate. It is not an artificially calculated "miles per gallon equivalence (MPGe)". Nor is it a question of how much money is saved. Gasoline is a small part of the average person's budget and should be viewed as secondary compared to the fate of the atmosphere. The computation of CO2 from the options is not difficult. The EPA web site entitled Green Power Equivalency Calculator Methodologies[1] states: "The national average carbon dioxide output rate for generated electricity in 2005 was 1,329 lbs CO2 per megawatt-hour (EPA 2009), which translates to 1,422 lbs CO2 per megawatt-hour for delivered electricity (assuming 7 percent in transmission and distribution losses)." This is equal to 1.422 lbs of CO2 per kilowatt hour. Three miles per kWh is a reasonable approximation for the electrical cars analyzed as shown in Table 4-1. Dividing the 1.422 lbs. of CO2 per kilowatt hour by 3 gives about .47 lbs of CO2 per mile. Compare this to a 50 mpg 2011 Prius. Burning a gallon of gasoline generates 19.4 pounds of CO2. [2] A 50 mpg Prius will generate 19.4/50 or .39 lbs of CO2 per mile. It appears that the Prius generates less CO2 per mile driven than the electric models. However there is an advantage for the Prius in that the approximately 17% of energy used to refine and deliver the gasoline is not included.[3] This was pointed out in part 2 in the derivation of the data in table 2-3. To adjust for this, the .39 lbs. of CO2 per mile must be divided by .83 (100% -- 17%) giving a new number of .47 lbs. of CO2 per mile for the Prius, very close to that of the electric cars. Applying the same normalizing principle, the mileage of the Prius after considering the embodied energy of gasoline is 41.5 (50 mpg times .83). This is close to the mpg equivalent of the average of old and new EVs. From this cursory analysis, the Volt, Prius and Leaf show similar performance in terms of mileage per energy expended as well as for CO2. In February 2011 the prestigious American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) gave a rating to the top 13 cars. [4] The Leaf was 2nd with a "green" score of 54, the Prius was 4th with a score of 52 and the Volt was 13th with a score of 48. Wisely the ACEEE did not put a mpg number on the Leaf but listed miles per kWh (mpkWh) -- 3.15 mpkWh for city and 2.72 mpkWh for highway, with an average of 2.93 mpkWh, very close to my number of 3.02 derived in column 5 of table 4-1. The CO2 Utility and Future Mix Argument Figure 4-1 is from a European study that shows CO2 emissions are a function of power plant generating fuel mix.[5] The top horizontal line represents emissions for a new gasoline car. The lower horizontal line represents emissions from a new diesel car. (There is no line for a new hybrid car).  The numbers are displayed in grams of CO2 per kilometer rather than the pounds of CO2 per mile as discussed previously. Thus the charts use is limited to showing EV emissions compared to non hybrid cars in different countries. The differing levels of CO2 generated in the different countries are a reflection of their fuel mix and power plant efficiency. China, with the fastest growth in car usage, has high emissions because of its heavy use of coal. India is not shown on the chart but is another coal dependent country that is experience rapid car population growth. This illustrates the importance of understanding that electric car success is very limited by the existing infrastructure of power plants as well as available fuels. Figure 4-1: CO2 from EVs by Nation Might the CO2 output of an electric car change if more renewables were available? Yes, to some extent, but consider the estimates for electricity from future renewables. The following projection (figure 4-2) shows the energy history and projections for electricity from different fuels. Recall that cars last on average about 14 years so the initial Volts will have been scrapped while renewable energy's part of the mix will have only increased 4% – from 10% to 14%. [6] Figure 4-2: Annual Energy Outlook 2011 Early Release Overview Sources of Electricity Mileage performance for new cars typically increases about 1.5% per year.[7] But the number of cars being added to the world car fleet, particularly in the third world, is increasing much faster than the miles per gallon performance. It is doubtful if the CO2 decrease from EVs and PHEVs will even be measurable. Figure 4-3 illustrates this concept of an increasing car population compared to increasing mileage performance. Figure 4-3: Comparison of fleet growth and gasoline use It is not easy to understand the implications of figure 4-3 because it is counterintuitive to our normal mode of thinking. This situation of increasing energy consumption with energy efficiency improvements (illustrated in figure 4) was described by economist William Jevons in 1865. The proposition, called the Jevons paradox or the Jevons effect, says the technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase, rather than decrease, the rate of consumption. Contrary to common intuition technological improvements will not always reduce fuel consumption. Therefore as cars get more efficient with better gas mileage, more people in the third world will replace their bicycle or moped with a small car. The Solar Electricity Option -- Capital Costs It could be argued that the electricity for Volt or Leaf will be supplied by solar panels. If a Leaf gets 3 miles per kWh and is driven 15,000 miles per year, then the annual electricity usage would be 4,500 kWh per year. In Ohio, a 1 kW PV system delivers about 1,300 kWh/year. A 4 kW system would be necessary to support an electric car. Assuming an installation cost of $10,000/Kw, the cost to supply a 4 kW system would be about $40,000 which should be added to the initial capital costs of the car. Of course gasoline savings would offset this. At 9 cents per mile, the gasoline savings per year would be about $1,350. Who will Kill the Electric Car This Time? This analysis is a continuation of earlier analysis of the Plug In Hybrid (PHEV) and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) first discussed in New Solutions #9, June 2006.[8] It was developed further in my books Plan C (published in 2008) and Spinning Our Wheels (published in 2010). Little has changed in five years in terms of how mileage is computed for electric vehicles. In reviewing that 2006 paper, I was reminded of how many well known national leaders -- including U.S. Senators -- were quoting mileage numbers such as 500 mpg for PHEVs. Today the Volt label -- the first commercial PHEV -- shows 60 mpg, well below those claims and well below the 100 + mpg claimed by CalCars for its modified Prius. It is also well below President Obama's 150 mpg goal. Furthermore the Volt 60 mpg number is too high – the actual number as derived in the parts of this blog will likely be in the range of 35-40 mpg. The hyperbole associated with the PHEV was (and is) excessive. There does not seem to be a major improvement in miles per kWh for the Leaf, the current representative of BEVs. Nor is there a major improvement in the Volt when operating solely as a BEV running off its grid charged batteries. The older RAV4 EV is still performance competitive with the newest BEVs. The major changes in the latest EVs are increases in battery storage capacity and increases in range rather than an improvement in miles per kWh. When fairly evaluated the cars get about the same miles per gallon equivalent of fuel (considering generation and transmissions energy costs) and generate about the same amount of CO2 as that of the newest 2011 Prius. This is not surprising when one considers their size, weight and rolling resistance which are similar. The performance is still very questionable. And it's hard to trust the manufacturers. Consumers Report suggests that the mileage is about 2 miles per kWh for the Volt and 3 miles per kWh for the Leaf.[9] Using site energy versus source energy this means an equivalent of about of 24 -- 28 mpg. Consumer reports noted in their tests: "While in electric mode, the dash display shows 250 mpg, which is a little misleading because in that mode the car isn’t using any gasoline. It’s like reporting a kid’s perfect grade-point average on the first day of school." [10] So the answer to the question of Who Will Kill the Electric Vehicle This Time? is the same answer to the question posed in the 2006 documentary film entitled Who Killed the Electric Car? The original Prius, as a partial ZEV (PZEV), undermined the case for the CARB ZEV program which lead to CARB changes and finally the so-called "killing" of the electric car. It is still the hybrid car, best exemplified by the 2011 Prius (50 mpg versus 41 mpg for the 2002 Prius and 46 mpg for the 2004 model) that will challenge the new generation of BEVs as well as the PHEVs. Other high mileage conventional hybrids have been recently announced including a hybrid version of the Toyota Yaris car that utilizes the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) technology from the Prius in the B-segment (subcompact) cars. This marks Toyota's first downsizing of its HSD technology. The popular Honda Fit (Jazz in Europe) is now available in a hybrid version in the subcompact market in Europe.[11] [12] A new movie by the director Chris Paine of Who Killed the Electric Car? fame, entitled Revenge of the Electric Car is near release and extols the virtues of the products previously discussed such as the Leaf and the Tesla.[13] The film may be an example of premature triumphalism. The success for EV options (battery or pluggable hybrid) is not certain. The misrepresentations of both kinds of designs generated great enthusiasm but claimed miles per gallon (mpg) have never been verified. It would be helpful of the mileage claims that might appear in this film had been carefully considered to deal with the misrepresentation issues discussed here. In a recent WSJ article[14] Toyota again repeated its commitment to the hybrid car, noting that the company built 3 million hybrids from 1997 through 2010. In April 2011, Toyota sold its one millionth Prius in the United States. Two million Prius' have been sold world wide.[15] A larger model of the Prius will be shipped in 2011 and a smaller one in 2012. Hopefully the small model will be in the 55-60 mpg range. Toyota created a new standard of auto efficiency in 1997 with gasoline hybrid technology (HEV) that is now marketed in some form by just about every automobile manufacturer. Toyota also has committed to major improvements in its next generation of gasoline engines for hybrids.[16] Toyota is not against improvising. It has already announced a PHEV Prius but one with technology that is much less risky that the approach that taken by GM[17]. Before the GM Volt was even shipped, Toyota had placed 600 prototype PHEV Prius' around the world. It has been tested more than the Volt, is built on the existing Prius platform and has much more modest performance goals. It provides 13 kWh of battery storage rather than the 35 kWh of the Volt. The maximum speed will be 62 mpg. But most important it will have the high Prius gas mileage when operating in conventional mode.[18] To some extent, GM has taken a "bet your company approach" with the unique Volt while Toyota is being much more conservative and taking smaller steps building on proven designs. It may distress many should conventional hybrids continue to outperform electric cars. But the important news is that such cars are already at high performance levels. They are also proven with many different models and high numbers of such cars on the highway. We might hope for 60-70 mpg cars in the next ten years which will help us to deeply cut our CO2 emissions. The government and U.S. car manufacturers might better focus their attention on smaller cars, lower speed limits and mass transportation rather than a hi tech risky endeavor to electrify transportation. [1] http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/pubs/calcmeth.htm [2] http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm [3] [3] Fuel Economy Numbers for Electric Vehicles, Prepared by: MIT Electric Vehicle Team, March 2008 http://mit.edu/evt/summary_mpgge.pdf [4] Latest Technologies Place But Don’t Win In This Year’s Greenest Vehicles List  February 16, 2011  http://www.aceee.org/press/2011/02/latest-technologies-place-dont-win-years-greenest-vehicl [5] http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/03/ecometrica-20110328.html Technical Paper – Your new electric car emits 75 gCO2/km (at the power station) by Gary David, ecometrica, March 2011 http://d3u3pjcknor73l.cloudfront.net/assets/media/pdf/electric_car_emits_75_gCO2_per_km.pdf [6] Annual Energy Outlook 2011 Early Release Overview http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383er%282011%29.pdf [7] John German Testimony to Congress <http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Testimony&Hearing_ID=287981fa-c472-4862-857d-3913d416297e&Witness_ID=e2050b74-5cff-4f6f-9832-fec00f3ab26c> [8] Salting the Earth by Pat Murphy, Jun2 2006 http://www.communitysolution.org/pdfs/NS9.pdf [9] Electric Cars, Consumer Reports April 2011 page 15 [10] http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2011/01/just-in-2011-chevrolet-volt-living-with-our-test-car.html [11] Toyota's Yaris hybrid concept anticipates B-segment hybrid strategy with first downsizing of HSD; Prius + March 2, 2011 http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/03/yarishsd-20110302.html [12] http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/03/geneva-auto-show-honda-jazz-hybrid/ [13] "Chris Paine Returns with 'Revenge of the Electric Car'" by Jim Motavalli , New York Times, December 15, 2010, http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/chris-paine-returns-with-revenge-of-the-electric-car/ [14] WSJ article March 10, 2011 Toyota Hones Focus, Top Ranks [15] http://www.energyboom.com/transportation/toyota-sells-one-millionth-prius-united-states [16] Toyota targeting thermal efficiency of more than 45% for next-generation gasoline engines for hybrids, Green Car Congress, April 11, 2011 http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/04/nakata-20110411.html#more [17] 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid – Editors’ take By: Wayne Cunningham Published on: 02/11/2011 http://reviews.cnet.com/coupe-hatchback/2012-toyota-prius-plug/4505-10867_7-34497768.html [18] The 2011 Guide to Automotive Enhancements by Toyota, WSJ April 27, 2011

Who Will Kill the Electric Car this Time? Part 3 The Pluggable Hybrid PHEV

Pat Murphy             April 29, 2011 Extending the BEV Concept Part 1 summarized the early history of the CARB Zero Emissions Program, the development of Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEVs) and their miles per gallon ratings. Part 2 discussed the latest reincarnation of BEVs, the Nissan Leaf, first shipped in December 2010. The miles per kWh of the Leaf are in the same range as those of the CARB cars of the late 1990s. Miles per gallons overstatements were described and analyzed. The Pluggable (or Plugged In) Hybrid (PHEV) The GM EV1, delivered in late 1996, was the first Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) available for mass purchase/lease. In the following year, 1997, the first hybrid, the Prius, was delivered. The concepts of electric cars, hybrid cars and PHEVs are not new. The Plug In Hybrid concept was first demonstrated by Victor Wouk in 1974 when he combined a Buick Skylark body with a Mazda Wankel engine and lead acid batteries.[1] The project was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and achieved its performance objectives; however, the EPA declined to provide additional funding. In 1976 Congress passed the Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Act for research purposes with much of the funding allocated to the U.S. national labs.[2] About two decades after Wouk's prototype, Professor Andrew Frank of the University of California at Davis (UC -- Davis) began converting conventional vehicles into PHEVs. Frank, who is said to have "re-invented" the modern Plug-In Hybrid, modified nine vehicles (six passenger sedans, SUVs, sport cars, and a GM EV1), to demonstrate the PHEV concept.[3] His program was supported by government agencies as well as by U.S. automobile companies. A modified GM EV1 prototype, which included PHEV features, was built around 1998.[4] Electric Power Research Institute The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a research and lobbying arm for the electric power industry, is a major advocate for the PHEV concept. EPRI has supported and funded Dr. Frank’s work. In 2000 EPRI sponsored the broad-based Hybrid Electric Vehicle Alliance (HEVA), to promote PHEVs. Alliance members included major automakers, Department of Energy (DOE) national labs, utilities, and the University of California at Davis (UC-Davis). In 2001 the Department of Energy (DOE) created the National Center of Hybrid Excellence at UC Davis, with Dr. Frank as Director. Figure 3-1 is based on an EPRI graphic that illustrates that organization's view of the relationships of conventional cars to hybrids to pluggable hybrids. It shows about a hybrid provides a 30% fuel savings over a conventional car. An example would be the 2010 Honda Civic hybrid, that gets 41 mpg, compared to a 2010 Honda Civic non-hybrid that gets 29 mpg. Figure 3--1: Gasoline Use Projections-Conventional, Hybrid and PHEVs[5] In this figure, the PHEV20 and PHEV60 show an improvement for the hybrid. But the PHEV columns do not show the electricity generating fossil fuels that substitute electricity for the gasoline. Thus the fuel savings of a PHEV20 and PHEV60 compared to a hybrid are misleading. In the case of the conventional and hybrid vehicle gallons consumed represent all the energy used in driving the cars. The PHEV20 and 60 columns do not show the fossil fuels used to generate electricity. Unfortunately misleading charts like this have been used to support the popularization of a new technology paradigm. In 2002, a non profit organization called CalCars began lobbying for the so called "Pluggable or Plug-In Hybrid" [6] receiving some of its funding from electrical utilities. In 2004, CalCars modified a standard Toyota Prius, placing additional batteries in the trunk. They called this Plug-In Hybrid the "PRIUS+".[7] The added batteries could be charged from the electricity grid and the Prius could be driven operate on these batteries alone without using the gasoline engine. Using batteries, the car could go no faster than 35 mph, a fact glossed over by its supporters.[8] CalCars claimed that the mileage was greater than 100 mpg -- their slogan was "100 mpg +." [9] In May 2006 CalCars flew a plug-in Prius+ to the nation's capital from California. Together with two other organizations, Set America Free and the Plug-In Hybrid Consortium, CalCars put on a marketing blitz of the Prius 100+ mpg car, demonstrating it to Senators, Representatives, congressional staff, reporters, builders, and tourists. The mantra was "It's here now!" Four and one half years later the first commercial plug-in hybrid shipped -- the Chevrolet Volt -- with a performance level well below 100 mpg +.  CalCars and EPRI and other interested parties continue to promote the supposedly 100+ mpg vehicle even though this performance claim was never substantiated and in some cases it was refuted.[10] U.S. Government Support for the PHEV During the Clinton/Gore years the government formed and directed the Program for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). One result of the eight year PNGV program were three concept diesel hybrids that obtained from 60-80 mpg. They were shown at the Detroit Auto Show in 1998.[11] In 2001, the Bush administration redirected the PNGV program away from the development of high mileage diesel hybrids to a new program, FreedomCAR, which emphasized fuel cell propulsion. In 2002, the CARB ZEV program began changing its ZEV standards. With the decline of the CARB ZEV program and the redirection of the PNGV program, Detroit and the government turned their attention (again) to the ill fated fuel cell car on which it had expended so much time and energy years before. Just as Bush changed the car propulsion direction set by Clinton so did Obama change the car propulsion direction set by Bush. While campaigning in 2008, presidential candidate Obama, in his "New Energy for America" speech given in August of 2008, set a goal to put one million 150 mpg PHEVs on the roads by 2015.[12] [13] He proposed a $7,000 tax credit for such cars that would be built in America. He also proposed that $4 billion be allocated to the development and manufacturing of the 150 mpg pluggable hybrid. In May 2009 [14] President Obama cancelled the fuel cell FreedomCar program in order to focus the nation's resources on electric cars, with an emphasis on PHEVs. On January 25, 2011 President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to the U.S. electric car industry in his State of the Union speech.[15] His latest proposal called for a $7,500 on-the-spot rebate for new electric car purchases, replacing the earlier tax credit. The 2008 goal of 1 million 150 mpg PHEVs was restated (and modified) for the U.S. to become the first nation with 1 million "advanced technology vehicles," a terminology change from PHEVs lauded in 2008. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and battery cars from other countries were added to the list of supported technologies. The Department of Energy (DOE) supports the Nissan Leaf BEV as an example of foreign non PHEV. In addition, Recovery Act investments have included $2.4 billion in U.S. funding for battery and electric drive component manufacturing, and for electric drive demonstration and infrastructure, [16] including support for Nissan Leaf U.S. manufacturing facilities. [17] For sixteen years the nation's car companies and government agencies vacillated from fuel cell to diesel hybrid to fuel cell again and now to the PHEV. Yet the PHEV concept has still not been proven to be sound. The first PHEV -- the GM Volt -- has a mileage rating of 60 mpg. This is probably exaggerated but even that optimistic number is well below the 150 mpg goal set by the president. A million "advanced technology vehicles" may be on the road by 2015 but their mileage will be much closer to 50 mpg than 150 mpg. The nation has made a massive commitment to a technology that has not been thoroughly analyzed or demonstrated. It has certainly been marketed -- particularly by the electric utilities and their research arm, EPRI. But with production cars now available for testing by a large number of people, more realistic performance numbers should be forthcoming. Hyping the Volt GM expressed regrets within a few years of cancelling the EV1 program. CEO Rick Waggoner, when asked in 2006 what his most-regretted decision was, responded that it was "axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids".[18] A year later GM R&D chief Larry Burns said, in reference to a prototype plug-in hybrid based on the GM EV1 his engineers had developed, “If we could turn back the hands of time, we could have had the Chevy Volt 10 years earlier.”[19] In August of 2009, GM President and CEO Fritz Henderson (who had replaced Waggoner) announced that the Volt mileage would be 230 mpg[20] initiating a  public relations campaign using a cutesy logo to market the number (Figure 3-2). The 230 mpg was quickly analyzed by different experts, who exposed its falsity.[21] GM was ridiculed and four months later Henderson was replaced. Figure 3-2: GM Exaggeration of Volt Performance The EPA did not challenge this hyperbole but made an innocuous statement invalidating the number while praising GM for its efforts saying: "EPA has not tested a Chevy Volt and therefore cannot confirm the fuel economy value claimed by GM. EPA does applaud GM’s commitment to designing and building the car of the future – an American-made car that will save families money, significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create good-paying American jobs. We’re proud to see American companies and American workers leading the world in the clean energy innovations that will shape the 21st century economy." [22] Part 2 of this series analyzed the Nissan Leaf in the context of being a decade later reincarnation of the EVs of the late 1990s. The Volt is representative of a conceptual PHEV, which did not exist in the period when CARB was looking for a low emissions automotive solution. A few conventional vehicles had been modified to be PHEVs by Andrew Frank of UC-Davis one of them a GM. But there were no real tests made and Frank's efforts were interesting but by no means a proof of concept. PHEV hyperbole increased with the CalCars statement of "100 mpg +" for its modified Prius. The UC-Davis automotive center, CalCars and EPRI have been the sources for most of the claims that have generated public interest. Unfortunately, there has never an independent unbiased analysis. And in some actual cases there have been disappointments.[23] The PHEV has been marketed more than it has been engineered. Supposedly the December 2010 shipment of the GM Volt has now provided a mass produced model for the PHEV concept. A critical question is how relevant are the newer performance claims. EPA and Volt Performance Labels: The EPA finally provided mpg figures for the Volt in November, 2010, only one month before the first shipments in December 2010. [24] The Volt information from the EPA web site is shown in Figure 3-3. [25] Figure 3-3: EPA Website Volt Mileage The Volt label includes two operational modes – one as a BEV like the Leaf (Electricity Only heading) and one as a conventional gasoline car (Premium Gas Only heading). The label that is affixed to the car is shown in Figure 3-4. Unfortunately, the all electric value of 93 mpg and 36 kWh for 100 miles has less information than the EPA website since it does not show city and highway mileage separately. The combined mileage of 60 mpg is given in smaller print in the lower left hand corner of the label (heading-How This Vehicle Compares) but does not refer to combined city and highway which has been the format for cars in the past. Rather it uses a new term "combined composite" which is some unknown combination of the mileage of gasoline and electrical. The label also shows an MGPequivilence of 33.7 kWh per gallon of gasoline (2nd line from bottom), which has been discussed in previous parts of this series.  Also shown on the label is a price of $3.20 per gallon of gasoline and $.11 per kWh of electricity. This is used to calculate the fuel costs in the middle of the label ($601 and $1,302). The distance that can be traveled on a fully charged battery is shown to be 35 miles. Figure 3-4: Volt Window Label The label has a section in the lower right entitled "Examples: Charging Routines". Much of the information in this section is not explained but it can be derived. Table 3-1 includes the information from this section as well as additional information that provides the derivation of Fuel Economy MPG. Table 3--1: Extended Volt Label "Charging Routines" The first four columns of table 3-1 contain the same contents as the Examples: Charging Routines from figure 3-4. Some simplifications are: The first column of the table (Mdbfc – which stands for Miles Driven Between Full Charges) lists four unique trip miles -- 30, 45, 60 and 75 miles -- and a fifth "Never Charge" option. The second column (FE MPG – which stands for Fuel Economy MPG) shows mpg numbers well above the numbers on the rest of the label (93 mpg for electric and 37 mpg for engine). This is explained later. Column 3 (EC-kWh – which stands for Electricity Consumed in kilowatt hours) shows 10.9 kWh for 30 miles. This is computed by taking 30% of the 36 kWh per 100 miles shown in the upper left quadrant of on the label. Column 4 (EFEC which stands for Electricity + Fuel Energy Cost) shows for the 30 mile trip a cost per mile of 4 cents, calculated by multiplying 11 cents per kWh times 10.9 kWh and dividing that result by 30 miles. The other mileage numbers are greater than the 35 mile range so each mileage number assumes that the total capacity of the battery (12.9 kWh) was used. The rest of the mileage numbers in column 4 can be calculated by dividing the mileage into electricity and gas, multiplying the electricity miles by 11 cents per kilowatt hours, multiplying the gas miles by 9 cents per gasoline mile, summing the two costs and dividing the total costs by the total trip miles. Misleading and Missing Information The determination of the fuel economy mileage (column 2 -- FE MPG) is not explained on the label. Columns 5-6 are added which are used for the derivation of the EPA in calculation mileage. Their contents are: Column 5 is headed MDUG which stands for Miles Driven Under Gasoline Column 6 is headed %MG,  which is the percent of the total miles driven Column 7 is headed MPG which is the miles per gallon to be calculated. These are the calculated numbers given without explanation in column 2. Since the Volt can be driven 35 miles on the electricity in the battery, determining the "Miles Driven Under Gasoline" (column 5) is simply a matter of  subtracting 35 miles from the total miles in column 1. (Note this applies only to the rows with trip miles of 45, 60 and 75). To determine the percent of the total distance driven using gasoline (column 6 – %MG) the numbers in column 5 are divided by the corresponding number from column 1.  The final calculation, column 7, is done by dividing the number 37 (which is the mileage on the label (upper right) for gas only) by each of the numbers in column 6. Note that the results in this column are the same (with rounding) as the numbers in column 2. A Manufacturer's Explanation The reader may question the scientific rationale for this approach. The techniques were determined by marketers of the PHEV cars. An example is the Trinity car described in the book Spinning Our Wheels.[26] Figure 3-5 is from that book. Figure 3--5: AFS Trinity MPG model Recall that the algorithm process is to determine what part of a trip is driven using gasoline and dividing the miles per gallon for the gasoline part by that number. Figure 3-5 shows how the calculation is done. It gives the part driven using gasoline (Hybrid) as 20%. Dividing the 30 mpg by .2 gives the 150 mpg number. The web site for this AFS Trinity has a Frequently Asked Questions Section which includes the following question and answer[27]: Q – Why do you call this a 150mpg car if it is mostly electric? Does it really get 150 miles per gallon? A – When discussing plug-in hybrid cars, mpg figures require deeper explanation. We have calculated gasoline mileage by using average American driving patterns estimated by the U.S. Department of Transportation and simulating the EPA combined urban/highway driving cycle of the host vehicle operating only with its conventional hybrid drive train. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported that 78% of Americans drive less than 40 miles a day. On those days, drivers of Extreme Hybrids will need no gasoline at all — even driving an SUV. Assuming that someone drives 40 miles a day, 6 days a week and 80 miles on one weekend day, total weekly distance traveled will be 320 miles. The first 280 miles are electric. The next 40 miles, on one weekend day, will use gas alone. Even if the car, while running only on gas on day 7, were to get only 20 mpg because the car were heavily laden and the driver has a "lead foot," that would still mean the driver will use just a little more than two gallons of gasoline for the week. Although this translates into 160 MPG, we use a more conservative 150 MPG to take into account that mileage will vary depending on where and how a car is driven, but we are comfortable that 150 miles per gallon of gasoline is a good number for 78% of American drivers driving the way most Americans drive The important data from the answer is that the distance traveled is 320 miles with 280 miles electricity driven and 40 miles driven using gasoline. The miles per gallon given is 20 mpg. And the calculated number given is 160 MPG (reduced to 150 MPG to be "conservative"). The formula derived above is to take the percentage of trip miles driven and divide it into the mpg. In this case the percent driven is 12.5 percent or .125 which is the result of 40 miles divided by 320 miles. Dividing the miles per gallon (20) by the percent (.125) gives 160 mpg. Readers may feel incredulous at this explanation. And wonder about the veracity of the developers.  A startup company in a garage may take this approach out of marketing desperation. But this technique is now used by the EPA and the president of the country has accepted it. Making the Volt Table Table 3- 2 is similar to the table for the RAV4 EV and Leaf provided in part 2 (table 2-3). This table shows the electric only part of the analysis. Information is from the window label upper left figure 3-4 where the 36 kWh for 100 miles is obtained. The city and highway are obtained from the website label shown in figure 3-3. Table 3-2: Volt calculations for Electric Drive Component Since the Leaf, RAV4 EV and Volt cars are in the same weight range, it is no surprise to see similar mpg. From table 2-3 (part 2) the RAV4 EV mileage is 41 mpg and the Leaf mileage is 36 mpg. The Volt combined mileage in column 7 is lower (34 mpg) which may be because it carries a gasoline engine and batteries. Using this modified view of the electrical usage of 34 mpg and combining it with the gasoline mileage from the label of 37 mpg (figure 3-4) one might assume the Volt is probably a 35 or 36 mpg car. Contrast this to the CalCars PHEV claim of "100 mpg +" and President Obama's goal of 150 mpg. The next part will show the comparison of the EV and PHEV cars to the latest Toyota Prius hybrid. [1] Victor Wouk -- The Father of the Electric Car by Sean Callery, Crabtree Publishing Company, 2009. [2] Electric and Hybrid Cars -- A History by Curtis Anderson and Judy Anderson, McFarland and Company 2005 page 67. [3] CalCars – Plug-In Hybrids: State of Play, History & Players http://www.calcars.org/history.html [4] http://electricvehiclesnews.com/History/Companies/General_Motors_EV1.htm [5] http://www.plugincenter.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Electrify_Transportation_Briefing_Book.pdf [6] CalCars -- The California Cars Initiative -- 100+ MPG Hybrids http://www.calcars.org/ [7] CalCars -- 100+ MPG Hybrids http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html [8] http://www.calcars.org/priusplus.html [9] http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/46.html [10] Spinning Our Wheels, Page 34-35 [11] The Machine That Could -- PNGV, A government-industry Partnership by Robert M. Chapman Critical Technologies Institute, RAND, 1998 [12] http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf [13] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec08/obamaenergy_08-04.html [14] U.S. Drops Research Into Fuel Cells for Cars By Matthew L. Wald, May 7, 2009, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/science/earth/08energy.html?_r=2 [15] http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/26/us-obama-speech-text-idUSTRE70P09N20110126 [15] One Million Electric Vehicles By 2015, February 2011 Status Report Department of Energy,   http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/1_million_electric_vehicles_rpt.pdf [17] Nissan breaks ground on U.S. Leaf production site May 26, 2010 http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20006031-48.html Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20006031-48.html#ixzz1EycJ5gQJ [18] http://www.grist.org/article/well-no-kidding [19] http://www.newsweek.com/2007/03/11/comin-through.html [20] Chevy Volt to get 230 mpg rating – Ultra-high mileage for GM’s electric-drive Volt could give it a marketing boost by Peter Valdes-Dapena, August 11, 2009: http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/11/autos/volt_mpg/?postversion=2009081108 [21] Nissan couldn't Leaf well enough alone by Jesse, August 15, 2009. http://www.obscurecraft.net/obscureblog/2009/08/word-problems-nissan-couldnt-l.html [22] EPA backs away from GM claim of 230 mpg for Volt by Jeremy Korzeniewski , Aug 11,  2009 http://green.autoblog.com/2009/08/11/epa-backs-away-from-gm-claim-of-230-mpg-for-volt/ [23] Spinning Our Wheels [24] EPA label for Chevy Volt: 93 MPGe EV Mode, 60 MPG Combined http://electric-vehicles-cars-bikes.blogspot.com/2010/11/epa-labels-for-chevy-volt-93-mpge-ev.html [25] Accessed April 2011. [26] Spinning Our Wheels, Page 19 [27] http://afstrinity.com/company/faq.htm#mileage

Who Will Kill the Electric Car this Time? Part 2

Pat Murphy         April 22, 2011 The Return of the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) Most of the ZEVs (or BEVs) from the late 1990s were manufactured at the beginning of the CARB ZEV program. There were no additional new designs during that time period. There was a change from Lead Acid batteries to Nickel Metal Hydride batteries which increased the mileage per charge. As noted earlier, the major manufacturers withdrew from the business as soon as CARB changed its rules, so 2001 or 2002 may have been the last year for any ZEV upgrades, marking the end of ZEV/BEV development. There were exceptions. A start up company, Tesla Motors, was formed in 2003 to make a new version of the BEV using a different battery technology. (Note that all ZEVs made under the CARB program were also BEVs). Lithium Ion battery technology offers a much higher density of charge, about twice that of Nickel Metal Hydride. Lithium batteries had become widely used for consumer products. The first Tesla car was shown to the public in 2006 and its first product, the Tesla Roadster was delivered in early 2008. By the end of 2010, the company had shipped over 1,500 cars, more than any other BEV model from any of the seven companies that offered a CARB ZEV. In 2009, BMW developed the Mini-E program which provided 450 of its Mini car converted to BEVs using Lithium Ion batteries. These were not production models but test cars. 200 were shipped to Southern California and 250 to New York and New Jersey. [1] After the dormant period of the early 2000s, large manufacturers began developing new models of the EV, based possibly on Telsa's success but more important on a renewed push from the U.S. government. If the RAV4 EV represents the best model of the first generation EVs from the late 1990s, the representative for a second generation mass produced BEV is the recently shipped Nissan Leaf (December 2010), a car whose size is close to that of the RAV4 EV. Nissan sold about 4,000 Leafs in the first quarter of 2011,[2] sizable compared to 5,000 -- 6,000 ZEV sales of all manufacturers over the five year period from 1997-2001. The U.S. government loaned Nissan $1.4 billion for its Smyrna, Tennessee manufacturing facility.[3] Nissan is not the only recipient of U.S. government financial support. The Department of Energy (DOE) has approved direct loans to Nissan, Ford, Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive totaling about $8 billion out of a budget of $25 billion. Other DOE campaigns include $2.4 billion given to battery and electric vehicle component manufacturers and $4 billion for "smart grid" projects to support EV charging. [4] [5] The electric car was born when California's CARB agency passed laws requiring manufacturers to build Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEVs). The Bush administration supported the revocation of the CARB mandate in 2002, thereby helping kill the program. The Obama administration has reversed that position. Rather than simply requiring that manufacturers offer the cars, the U.S. government today is financing the development and the marketing, with a $7,500 rebate for every electric car purchased. Climate change was the main rationale for the Obama redirection. But electric cars are not as effective in reducing CO2 emissions as is popularly thought. Reviewing mileage numbers: The EPA fueleconomy.org web site shows the mileage numbers for the Leaf (Figure 2-1)[6]. It is similar in style to the label for the 2003 RAV4 EV shown in Part 1 of this blog  series (figure 1-3 Part 1). Figure 2-1: Leaf EPA Website Label Figure 2-2 shows the EPA label that is glued onto the car window of the Leaf. It has a slightly different format than the one from the EPA web site (figure 2-1) and contains more information, including cost estimates for electricity. The kWh per 100 miles is not included for the city (32 kWh) and highway (37 kWh) but only for the combination of the two (34 kWh). The two labels contain different information, which is unfortunate since the consumer must study two labels to get complete information. The EPA could do a better job of providing consistent information across all its label offerings. Figure 2-2: Leaf EPA car label The label illustrated in figure 2-2 shows the energy consumption in the same way as labels for earlier electric cars, that is, the number of kWh necessary to travel 100 miles. Note that the label on the car includes a reference to MPGequivilent (MPGe) saying at the bottom in fine print: MPGequivilent: 33.7 kW-hrs = 1 gallon gasoline energy The use of the term MPGequivilent (MPGe) and its value is extremely significant; in fact it is at the heart of the government's mileage computation mechanism and it is vital to understand it as noted in Part 1. It has been in use by the EPA at least since 2008 when it was used to determine the mileage for the BMW Mini E electric version of its small Mini car.  (Figure 2-3) [7] Figure 2-3: BMW Mini E from Fuel Economy Guide The calculation for MPGe is simple. Recall that the mileage numbers on electric car labels are given in kWh (kilowatt hours) per 100 miles or kWh/100 miles. This was discussed in computing the mileage for the 2003 REV4 EV (figures 1-2, 1-3 in part 1). I use the same analysis for the Leaf. The combined highway and city electricity usage is shown on the Leaf label as 34 kWh per 100 miles. The MPGe is computed by first dividing the 34 kWh by 100 (result = .34), inverting the answer (result = 2.94) and multiplying this number by 33.7 (the number of kWh in a gallon of gasoline). The final result is 99.1 mpg which is truncated to 99 mpg. Note that the city mileage of 106 mpg and highway of 92 mpg is calculated by using the information from the Web site (information which is not on the window label) of  32 kWh for 100 miles city and 37 kWh  per 100 miles highway. Using the same way of calculating gives a result of 105.3 mpg and 91.1 mpg. These are rounded up to 106 mpg and 92 mpg.  (As noted in Part 1, the EPA does not seem to have a consistent way of dealing with fractions, either truncating or rounding up for fractions or simply picking the next highest integer if there is a fraction of any size, as appears to be the choice in this example). This calculation can be further simplified. The MPGe is calculated by dividing the kWh/100 miles number into 3,700. For example the combined Leaf miles per gallon is 3370/34 or 99 mpg. For city and highway (33 kWh/100 miles and 37 kWh/100 miles) the MPGe is 102 mpg (3700/33) and 94 mpg (3700/36). Table 2-1 shows the derivation of the MPGe. It is the same format and method that was developed for the RAV4 EV in part 1 (Table 1-2). Misleading Methodology Still Used The method of calculating mpg seems consistent for both the EVs of the late 1990s and the newest electric cars of the 2010 decade. But, as noted in Part 1, this method misrepresents the cars energy use it ignores the physics of electricity generation. It does not account for the substantial energy loss of converting fossil fuels to electricity. About 2/3 of the energy from coal, natural gas, or oil in a power plant is lost in heat, with the remaining third converted to electrical energy. Another portion is lost in transmission of the electricity from the power plant to the home or building. The terminology used to explain the loss is "source energy" and "site energy." These terms are explained in an EPA paper "Energy Star Performance Ratings Methodology for Incorporating Source Energy Use."[8] The explanation points out that most of the source energies (coal at the power plant) are lost in heat and the site energy (electricity at the plug) is only a fraction of the original source energy. Although prepared for buildings, it is relevant because essentially all electric cars are charged from a plug in a building somewhere -- a house, an office building, or some other location. For us to use electricity, it is necessary to convert the source energy to site energy. It is important to understand that no matter how high the efficiency of the electric devices using electricity, the inefficiency of a power plant and transmission of electricity significantly reduce total energy efficiency. A MIT report on EV mileage[9] gives the efficiency of electricity generation as 32.8% and the efficiency of electricity transmission as 92.4%. Multiplying these two numbers gives a total efficiency of 30.3%. If the car labels were accounting for energy loss in generation and transmission, the MPGequvilent number would be 10.2 kWh per gallon of gasoline (30.3% of 33.7) (a measure of the site energy) not 33.7 kWh per gallon of gasoline (a measure of the source energy). This new MPGe is shown in column 7 of table 2-2, which includes the information from table 1-2 of Part 1 (the RAV4 EV) and table 2-2 below (the Leaf). Column 7 represents a far more accurate way of looking at miles per gallon equivalency since it takes into account the energy losses associated with generation and transmission. And column 7 compared to column 6 shows how much the electric car performance is overstated. However, this is still not a perfect comparison to gasoline cars since it does not include the penalty associated with deriving gasoline from oil in a refinery process nor does it include the energy transportation costs of moving gasoline from refinery to gas station. Oil refining and surface transportation from refinery to gasoline station are analogous to power plant generation from coal (and natural gas) and the transmission of electricity from power plant to building. However, the energy loss for refining oil into gasoline is much less than the energy loss for converting coal or natural gas to electricity. Comparing Electricity and Gasoline The same MIT report on EV mileage[10] that shows electricity generation and transmission efficiency at 30.3% also addresses the energy lost in shipping oil across the oceans, refining it and transporting the gasoline to the gasoline station. The corresponding oil to gasoline refining with transportation efficiency is 83%. Dividing 10.2 kWh (the value in column 7) by 83% provides a more accurate comparative ratio of 12.3 kWh. This decreases the performance of the gasoline car relative to the electric car. Table 2-3 incorporates this change. Inconsistent EPA Reporting of RAV4 EV efficiency From one year to another, the EPA changed the performance numbers of the RAV4 EV on its fuel economy website. (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/) For the years 2000 and 2001 the EPA listed the performance numbers as 29 kWh/100 miles for city and 37 kWh/100 miles for highway, which were the numbers on the RAV EV window label (Figure 1-2, part 1). The EPA reported the RAV4 EV in its Fuel Economy Guides, available on the website. In the 2002 Fuel Economy Guide, the numbers were left blank. In the 2003 Fuel Economy Guide, they were changed to 27 kWh/100 miles city and 34 kWh/100 miles highway, the numbers used for table 1-2 in Part 1.There were no numbers published in the Fuel Economy Guides after 2004 for the RAV4 EV. [11] But the current rating on the EPA web site for the 2003 RAV4 – EV is 39 city and 49 highway (Figure 2-4).[12] Figure 2-4: EPA restated RAV4 EV mileage It is important to reflect on the different EPA numbers for the RAV4 EV since it addresses a key argument of this paper. Table 2-3 adds the calculations for the values in figure 2-4 to the information in table 2-2.  In the "Early RAV4 EV" rows of table 2-3, the information from the original RAV4 EV window label is used (figure 1.2 of Part 1). In the "Late RAV4 EV" rows of table 2-3, the numbers from figure 2-4 are used. Column 3 shows the different performance numbers. All the data in Columns 4 -- 7 are derived from the data in column 3. Depending on which values for the RAV4 EV are chosen will determine the estimates of electric car mileage performance improvements in the 13 years from first shipments of the RAV4 EV in 1997 to the Leaf in late 2010. I tend toward the earlier numbers. It seems to me that the EPA may be changing the numbers for political reasons, not because the RAV4 EVs suddenly became less efficient. Whatever the case, the numbers in column 7 are not dramatically different. The average combined number for early and late RAV4 EV is 35 mpg (average of 29 and 41) versus 36 mpg for the Leaf.  Many had hoped there would be a major miles per kWh improvement between the two different EV generations. But this is not the case. It is unlikely that there has been a major change in electric motor efficiency in the past 13 years. Electric motors are already highly efficient (75% versus 20% for internal combustion engines).[13] Nor have there been major improvements in power plant efficiency in the same period. On a worldwide basis power plant efficiency has only increased 16% since 1974.[14] Power plants and transmission combined is approximately 30% efficient. Combining the efficiency of power plant and electric motor gives approximately 22%. (30% of 75%). This is close to the 20% of the gasoline engines. It is quite likely that the same power plants that generated electricity for the EV1 are now generating it for the Leaf. So a major performance improvement of electric cars between the generations is not to be expected. The modern EV is represented by an increase in battery capacity, the Lithium Ion batteries having about twice the capacity (in terms of weight and volume) to store energy than the nickel metal hydride ones they replaced. But there is no clear efficiency advantage or CO2 reduction; there is no "breakthrough" in electric motors. Thus the recent EVs are analogous to adding a larger gas tank to a car so it can be driven more miles. There is no doubt that the mpg numbers for electric cars are grossly overstated. And that in any evaluation that reflects energy used to generate electricity, the electric cars are actually less efficient than high mileage hybrid cars, a topic that will be analyzed later. The hyperbole for the electric vehicle is excessive and it is questionable if these cars, BEV or PHEV, will ever replace the internal combustion engine. The next section will discuss the evolution and performance numbers of the PHEV. [1] http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/2009symposium/presentations/steinberg.pdf [2] Nissan Leaf sales hit 3,657; that’s like four times more than the Chevy Volt by Eric Loveday, March 11,  2011 http://green.autoblog.com/2011/03/11/nissan-leaf-sales-3657-four-times-more-chevy-volt/ [3] Plant for Nissan’s Leaf Gets a $1.4 Billion DOE Loan by Saqib Rahim, New York Times, January 29, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/01/29/29climatewire-plant-for-nissans-leaf-gets-a-14-billion-doe-13657.html [4] In Role as Kingmaker, the Energy Department Stifles Innovation by Darryl Siry, Wired, December 1, 2009 http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/12/doe-loans-stifle-innovation/ [5] First Fisker Karma Plug-In Rolls Off the Line by Chuck Squatriglia, Wired, March 22, 2011 http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/03/first-fisker-karma-plug-in-rolls-off-the-line/ [6] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm [7] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/pdfs/guides/FEG2008.pdf [8] Energy Star Performance Ratings Methodology for Incorporating Source Energy Usage, August 2009, http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/evaluate_performance/site_source.pdf [9] Fuel Economy Numbers for Electric Vehicles, Prepared by: MIT Electric Vehicle Team, March 2008 http://mit.edu/evt/summary_mpgge.pdf [10] Fuel Economy Numbers for Electric Vehicles, Prepared by: MIT Electric Vehicle Team, March 2008 http://mit.edu/evt/summary_mpgge.pdf [11] Download Fuel Economy Data Years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004-2009 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/download.shtml [12] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/calculatorSelectEngine.jsp?year=2003&make=Toyota&model=RAV4%20EV [13] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml [14] (Energy Technologies Perspective 2006 Scenarios and Strategies to 2050 International Energy Agency./OECD 2006 table 4.5 page 179

Culture Change

Culture Change is unique / Update on Sail Transport Network

In the interests of keeping the show on the road and the doors open, we need you as a supportive reader to help Culture Change cover basic costs in February. Here's why: At Culture Change we aren't giving our readers and supporters a part-time, share-our-feelings service. No, we are full-time activists living a low-consumptive, engaged lifestyle. Cutting-edge projects have been our hallmark: Pedal Power Produce, banning plastic bags, depaving, initiating or participating in protests, the Sail Transport Network (STN), multi-media materials and events, arts, networking nonstop, and more --

Direct Fossil Fuel Subsidies Worldwide: Half a Trillion Dollars Annually - commentary and findings

CORRECTED EDITION - Here are disturbing numbers from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, by Lester R. Brown, and its excerpt "Governments Spend $1.4 Billion Per Day to Destabilize Climate" released by Earth Policy Institute on Jan. 19, 2012. First, Culture Change provides critical comment: It is a public service that Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown, now with his Earth Policy Institute, has helped expose the huge, ongoing financial subsidies to fossil fuels industries. Governments' and corporations' persisting with this policy -- legal corruption of the worst order at a time of out-of-control climate change -- is nothing short of insane or criminal.

The Imperative of Revolutionary Nonviolence

[Essay originally published as a chapter in World Without Violence, edited by Arun Gandhi (India: Wiley Eastern Limited/New Age International Limited, 1994)] Nonviolence is a way of life, an external manifestation of an internal peace. Nonviolence is mindfulness and consciousness of the sacred, of the interconnectedness of ourselves with everything and every being. It is an attitude, an awareness, an understanding, a manner of expression and interaction operating from a deep internal integration that honors this sacred interconnectedness.

DeGrowth

Democracia

Baptiste Mylondo

THEMES DE RECHERCHE Revenu inconditionnel et systèmes de redistribution Sociologie du travail Économie solidaire et consommation engagée PUBLICATIONS Ouvrages : Ne pas perdre sa vie à la gagner. Pour un revenu de citoyenneté, Paris, Homnisphères, mars 2008. Des caddies et des hommes. La consommation citoyenne contre la société de consommation, Paris, La Dispute, octobre 2005. Ouvrages collectifs dirigés : La décroissance économique. Pour la soutenabilité écologique et l'équité sociale, (dir.), Bellecombe-en-Bauges, Le Croquant, octobre 2009. Pour une politique de décroissance, (dir.), Lyon, Golias, octobre 2007. Articles dans des ouvrages collectifs : « Peut-on être payé à ne rien faire ? », dans Paul Ariès (dir.), Viv(r)e la gratuité. Une issue au capitalisme vert, Lyon, Golias, mai 2009. « Travailler moins, trois fois moins ! », dans Jean-Pierre GELARD (dir.), Travailler plus, travailler moins, travailler autrement, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, mars 2007. Articles et tribunes : « Imbécile valeur travail ! », dans Politis du 27 août 2009. « Le salaire du labeur. Souffrance au travail et consolation consumériste », sur Mouvements.info, mai 2009. « Revenu d'existence : ni pauvres ni soumis ? », dans Silence !, mars 2009. « Face à la crise, peut-on payer les gens à ne rien faire ? », dans Le Sarkophage, janvier 2009. « La chasse aux fraudeurs », dans Le Sarkophage, mai 2008. « Le revenu de citoyenneté peut-il être suffisant ? », sur Revue du Mauss Permanente, décembre 2007. « Le RMI est mort, vive le RMI ! », dans Le Sarkophage, octobre 2007. « Contrôle de productivité. La travail comme instrument de contrôle social », dans Silence !, juin 2007. « Travailler ni plus, ni moins, bien au contraire ! », dans L'Humanité du 14 avril 2007. « Revenu maximum autorisé ou revenu inconditionnel de citoyenneté », sur decroissance.info, février 2007. « Consommer moins pour travailler moins », dans L'Humanité du 28 décembre 2005. EXPERIENCE PROFESSIONNELLE 2009 : Chargé de cours d'économie à L'ITECH et l'ECAM de Lyon 2004 - 2008 : Créateur et animateur de la Société Coopérative d'Intérêt Collectif Alter-Conso, système de distribution de produits agricoles locaux en circuit court sur l'agglomération lyonnaise.

Local organizing committee

Local organizing committee (preliminary) Joan Martinez-Alier, François Schneider, Giorgos Kallis, Mario Giampietro. Amalia Cardenas, Beatriz Labajos, Christian Kerschner, Claudio Cattaneo, Christo Zografos, Cristina Madrid, Elisabeth Gsottbauer, Federico Demaria, Filka Sekulova, Giorgio Mosangini, Leah Temper, Mariana Walter, Marta Condé, Monica Vargas.

PostPeak Living