LOWERING the cost of energy...
Today’s post: Wednesday, 7-30-2008
1. The cost of energy for the heat and electricity and light we use and for transport do depend somewhat on the cost of producing them and delivering them to us. But often of far more importance is the balance between supply and demand.
If supply stays the same or grows very little while demand soars, prices will go up. You cannot wish that away or pass laws against it that will keep it from happening.
2. Drilling for more oil will increase global warming -- which it looks like threatens to destroy our economy and ability to grow food. And, it will produce a very small percentage gain in the energy and oil available to us. In fact, it may well produce increases LESS than the increase in demand. So, it will do very little to reduce gasoline prices or reduce our cost to get where we need or want to go and to transport our food and do business.
It will make the global warming problem worse instead of better. And, it will NOT solve the problem of prices many people find too high.
3. Huge increases in renewable energy to generate electricity; huge increases in the use of electricity to power our cars, and huge increases in nonfood, cost effective biofuels will probably take quite a bit more time than 10 years.
BUT, they are doable. Even better, the advances in technology in each of these areas ALREADY in place or to be available commercially within five years makes these increases VERY doable & realistic.
T Boone Pickens has found that we can very likely get to 22 % of our electricity from wind power alone.
Ausra, the thermal electric power company, has found that we can generate 100 % of the electricity we now use by installing enough thermal electric power installations in just part of the Mohave Desert in Southeast California.
(Note that this does NOT include also installing such thermal electric power installations in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas, or Northern Mexico. Nor does it include installing thin film or advanced photovoltaic cells on roofs over parking lots, and on buildings throughout the United States.)
All three of these things are doable. The bad news is they will have no effect on energy prices if we fail to do them.
4. I don’t personally believe we can get all three of these things done plus convert to electric cars, plug in hybrids, and generate commercial quantities of nonfood, cost effective biofuels within 10 years.
BUT, if we make the kind of effort Al Gore suggests to make ALL these changes happen fully in as close to 10 years as we CAN achieve, the magnitude of the effect on supply WILL be enough to LOWER our costs for gasoline and transport AND meet greater demand as well.
Further, to me, it looks doable to do enough to begin to lower energy and gas prices FOR SURE within 10 years.
And, if we do not do this, there simply aren’t enough new places to drill for oil to have 5 % of this effect.
5. Since the economics of this depend on supply and demand, which is something business people tend to understand better than non-business people AND business people tend to be Republicans, you’d think that it would be the Republicans who would back the conversion to renewables MORE than drilling for more oil which cannot increase supply as much.
The polls show the reverse. It seems today’s Republicans either believe that more of what we have been doing will solve problem or that renewables cannot increase by more than one or two percent or both.
Unfortunately, the facts are the reverse of both of those beliefs.
Last week, on 7-22, the political news and polling company Rasmussen Reports said that “only 33% of American voters believe Al Gore's proposal to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources in 10 years is realistic.”
(The 10 years is what we need to do, I think, rather than what we CAN do. 10 years IS probably too optimistic. But it DOES look doable in 20 if we start soon and work hard enough at achieving it.)
They also found that that 62% of Republicans -- and over half (52%) of unaffiliated voters -- believe that Gore's approach will drive the cost of energy even higher. Even among Democrats, 26% hold that view. “
And, they said that: “Overall, 44% think Gore's proposals would drive up the price of energy while just 26% believe they would have a more positive economic impact.”
As our readers likely know, the week before last, Al Gore challenged the United States to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other renewable energy sources within 10 years.
It was recently predicted that world energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next 20 years.
This means that even if we meet his challenge in 20 years instead of 10, we will need to produce about 129 percent of the electricity we produced in 2005 from renewable sources alone.
Since, in my estimation, the 5 percent or so we got from hydroelectric sources in 2005 is likely to go down, perhaps falling as much as in half due to drought conditions from global warming already in place, that means solar, wind, & geothermal will need to go from the 3.6 percent or so it did produce in 2005 to something like 131.5% of all the electricity we produced in 2005 to achieve his goal. This means a 100 fold increase in electricity from solar, perhaps 20 times as much from geothermal, & about three times as much from wind.
The good news is that each one of these increases may well be doable, particularly as new technologies ramp up & the costs come down per unit with the much increased production AND as the costs of the alternatives begin to double once or twice in that same time period.
6. One cautionary note is worth adding however. We look likely to try cap & trade methods to give businesses funding and incentives to make these changes.
The good news is that the achievable increases in renewables will eventually bring down energy prices by massively increasing supply.
However, using cap and trade systems very well might make the prices of energy go up MORE in the short run than other ways of doing things.
In fact, an MIT study found that gaming and speculating in a cap and trade system are almost certain to cause quite rapid and substantial increases in energy prices if we use cap & trade systems. Their simulations found that effect to be extremely strong.
7. In summary, massive increases in renewable energy, particularly to replace coal, oil, and natural gas burning as ways to generate electricity WILL LOWER energy prices. Drilling for more oil will have little effect on prices. But if we use cap and trade systems to boost renewables, it may look initially as if the reverse is happening.
8. Also, here are some thoughts from last week’s post that are worth repeating.
They are relevant to today’s post.
In particular, they predict $300 a barrel for oil and gasoline at $9 to 10 a gallon if we fail to massively increase renewables.
(T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman and wind-power booster T. Boone Pickens, an oilman for over 20 years said that this is ..”one problem we can’t drill our way out of.” And, he warned that “….oil could cost $300 a barrel in 10 years as supplies drop, if the nation continues to "drift" on energy policy.”)
And, if these increases come to pass we will also need, as Al Gore & his group emphasizes, to sharply increase & improve our national electricity distribution grid to get the electricity from where it’s generated to where it is being used.
Gore said that:
“The nation's electric grid is still not sufficiently developed to move solar power from sunny states out West or wind power from windy states to power-hungry markets.”
The other piece of good news is that when oil goes over $300 a barrel, it will then be cost effective to use the coal we no longer burn for electricity production to make gasoline, diesel fuel, & jet fuel. Then by adding alcohols & biodiesel from nonfood biofuels to that plus producing new cars to be electrics & plug in hybrids and retrofitting existing vehicles to operate as plug-in hybrids, we can also totally stop using oil to run our cars, trucks, & buses.
(This will also give today’s coal producers and coal producing regions an economic role in the transition instead of simply bankrupting them by using no coal at all.
Oil companies have lots of money now & still have time to invest in owning some of the new energy producing companies plus it will take more than 20 years to wean the whole world away from using oil. So they have plenty of cushion now, IF they act in time.)
The bad news is that NOT doing this over the next 20 years guarantees gasoline will hit $20 a gallon, food prices will also triple, & fires, floods, and droughts will get even worse world wide.
We may even have our coastal cities begin to need to invest in dikes or relocate to higher ground. This will be caused by burning the coal, natural gas, & coal NOT converting to carbon free sources will add to the CO2 that is already in the process of causing these exact climate changes.
The other piece of bad news is that neither the man on the moon analogy that Gore used in his speech nor the Manhattan project analogy New York Times columnist Tom Friedman uses are as large in scope or scale as Gore’s challenge or the very real problem it aims to solve.
To get the job done will require massive action by almost everyone in the United States over the initial 5 or 10 years to adequately get this huge change into place.
The only historical precedent of comparable size is the effort the entire United States made to win World War II. Virtually everyone in the country was involved and made strong and focused efforts to get the job done and did so over a several year time period.
The other thing that will be necessary, according to Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities that produce 70 percent of the nation's electricity. He said this.
"We cannot do the job with renewables and energy efficiency alone," he said. "We have …. to include nuclear. And we frankly think that nuclear should be increased."
I agree with Al Gore that we can get to his goal of using renewables only. But it may well take longer than 20 years. And to begin to approach replacing all coal, oil, & natural gas for generating electricity in 20 years, let alone in 10 years, I suspect Jim Owen is correct. It will be necessary to produce the speed of this change we look to desperately need, to at least double our generation of nuclear power over the next 20 years.
John McCain looks to plan to carry on the other policies of the Bush administration that helped get us into this mess. So I plan to vote for his opponent. But I think his nuclear policy is a good idea. I hope Obama adopts it in addition to doing his best to make exactly the changes Gore suggests.
Can we make all these changes in 10 years?
I personally suspect it will take 20 years if we do an excellent job with all the national effort we can muster.
But that’s the WRONG question. Since it’s desperately needed and clearly the right thing to do, we need to ask instead:
1. Presuming making these changes IS doable within 10 years, what are some of the ways we might get it done?
(Gore pointed out that the United States gets more than enough solar energy to the job alone & the mid-Western United States gets enough wind to do it with wind alone. So it is doable in theory at least.)
2. How can we make as much progress right away as we can?
We’re 30 years too late in starting; & the results of that are beginning to hurt us economically. So we need a FAST start.
3. And, if we cannot get there in 10 years, how can we get it done in as close to 10 years as possible?
By the way, gasoline in the United States will very likely go to nine or ten dollars a gallon as this transition happens.
The key thing to remember is that this transition will cause the price of gasoline to go DOWN once that happens and to provide alternatives that cost LESS than gasoline to power cars and trucks.
If we don’t do as Gore suggests, twenty dollar a gallon gasoline plus rationing plus gas lines will result. And, world wide economic depression or collapse is possible.
(Drilling for more oil would mean $18 or $19 dollars a gallon instead of $20.)
If anything, I think Gore UNDERSTATED the problems that will occur if we fail to do as he suggests.
Former Rep. Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate: "None of us can walk away from this issue without agreeing with him that we do have a very serious problem, and it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it. ... I hope to be a part of that, and I would like to see the free market take the lead, not the government."
Gore believes in the entrepreneurial businesses we have to rise to this challenge. And, I think he knows that many already are. But he understated how important it is to have government support and speed this process as a part of the solutions he recommends.
Businesses CAN help do the job. But they respond much more and dramatically faster to incentives for doing the right thing than they do from penalties for doing the wrong thing. So, to get the job done, I think we need to dramatically boost the incentive side more than Gore suggested.
One good effect of the recent run up in gasoline prices is that they begin to make it cost effective to put the changes Gore recommends in place.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: Gore “…. pointed out that the only way we have a chance to drive down oil prices is if we become free of the slavery of oil. If we can give Americans choices of electrical cars or ... biodiesel cars, then and only then do we have a chance of dealing with this cost issue. That is why $4-a-gallon gas is not an enemy of action, it's an ally of action."
The other thing that Gore said that I like is that if we do this in the United States and take the lead in it, it will have two very desirable effects.
It will at least partly restore the United States in the eyes of people in other countries to being thought of as a country that takes the lead in making good things happen.
And, as the methods we use and the positive economic effects of these changes happen and begin to be copied and emulated, we will also help solve these problems world wide.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Renewable Energy Challenge...
Today’s post: Weds, 7-23-2008
Last week, Al Gore challenged the United States to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other renewable energy sources within 10 years.
His Alliance for Climate Protection estimates the cost of transforming achieving this at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build greenhouse gas-polluting coal plants to produce that much electricity.
In 2005 in the United States, coal produced slightly more than half of our electricity generation while nuclear power accounted for 21 percent of it, natural gas 15 percent, & renewable sources, including wind and solar, about 8.6 percent.
It was recently predicted that world energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next 20 years.
This means that even if we meet his challenge in 20 years instead of 10, we will need to produce about 129 percent of the electricity we produced in 2005 from renewable sources alone.
Since, in my estimation, the 5 percent or so we got from hydroelectric sources in 2005 is likely to go down, perhaps falling as much as in half due to drought conditions from global warming already in place, that means solar, wind, & geothermal will need to go from the 3.6 percent or so it did produce in 2005 to something like 131.5% of all the electricity we produced in 2005 to achieve his goal. This means a 100 fold increase in electricity from solar, perhaps 20 times as much from geothermal, & about three times as much from wind.
The good news is that each one of these increases may well be doable, particularly as new technologies ramp up & the costs come down per unit with the much increased production AND as the costs of the alternatives begin to double once or twice in that same time period.
(T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman and wind-power booster T. Boone Pickens, an oilman for over 20 years said that this is ..”one problem we can’t drill our way out of.” And, he warned that “….oil could cost $300 a barrel in 10 years as supplies drop, if the nation continues to "drift" on energy policy.”)
And, if these increases come to pass we will also need, as Al Gore & his group emphasizes, to sharply increase & improve our national electricity distribution grid to get the electricity from where it’s generated to where it is being used.
Gore said that:
“The nation's electric grid is still not sufficiently developed to move solar power from sunny states out West or wind power from windy states to power-hungry markets.”
The other piece of good news is that when oil goes over $300 a barrel, it will then be cost effective to use the coal we no longer burn for electricity production to make gasoline, diesel fuel, & jet fuel. Then by adding alcohols & biodiesel from nonfood biofuels to that plus producing new cars to be electrics & plug in hybrids and retrofitting existing vehicles to operate as plug-in hybrids, we can also totally stop using oil to run our cars, trucks, & buses.
(This will also give today’s coal producers and coal producing regions an economic role in the transition instead of simply bankrupting them by using no coal at all.
Oil companies have lots of money now & still have time to invest in owning some of the new energy producing companies plus it will take more than 20 years to wean the whole world away from using oil. So they have plenty of cushion now, IF they act in time.)
The bad news is that NOT doing this over the next 20 years guarantees gasoline will hit $20 a gallon, food prices will also triple, & fires, floods, and droughts will get even worse world wide. We may even have our coastal cities begin to need to invest in dikes or relocate to higher ground. This will be caused by burning the coal, natural gas, & coal NOT converting to carbon free sources will add to the CO2 that is already in the process of causing these exact climate changes.
The other piece of bad news is that neither the man on the moon analogy that Gore used in his speech nor the Manhattan project analogy New York Times columnist Tom Friedman uses are as large in scope or scale as Gore’s challenge or the very real problem it aims to solve.
To get the job done will require massive action by almost everyone in the United States over the initial 5 or 10 years to adequately get this huge change into place.
The only historical precedent of comparable size is the effort the entire United States made to win World War II. Virtually everyone in the country was involved and made strong and focused efforts to get the job done and did so over a several year time period.
The other thing that will be necessary, according to Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities that produce 70 percent of the nation's electricity. He said this.
"We cannot do the job with renewables and energy efficiency alone," he said. "We have …. to include nuclear. And we frankly think that nuclear should be increased."
I agree with Al Gore that we can get to his goal of using renewables only. But it may well take longer than 20 years. And to begin to approach replacing all coal, oil, & natural gas for generating electricity in 20 years, let alone in 10 years, I suspect Jim Owen is correct. It will be necessary to produce the speed of this change we look to desperately need, to at least double our generation of nuclear power over the next 20 years.
John McCain looks to plan to carry on the other policies of the Bush administration that helped get us into this mess. So I plan to vote for his opponent. But I think his nuclear policy is a good idea. I hope Obama adopts it in addition to doing his best to make exactly the changes Gore suggests.
Can we make all these changes in 10 years?
I personally suspect it will take 20 years if we do an excellent job with all the national effort we can muster.
But that’s the WRONG question. Since it’s desperately needed and clearly the right thing to do, we need to ask instead:
1. Presuming making these changes IS doable within 10 years, what are some of the ways we might get it done?
(Gore pointed out that the United States gets more than enough solar energy to the job alone & the mid-Western United States gets enough wind to do it with wind alone. So it is doable in theory at least.)
2. How can we make as much progress right away as we can?
We’re 30 years too late in starting; & the results of that are beginning to hurt us economically. So we need a FAST start.
3. And, if we cannot get there in 10 years, how can we get it done in as close to 10 years as possible?
By the way, gasoline in the United States will very likely go to nine or ten dollars a gallon as this transition happens.
The key thing to remember is that this transition will cause the price of gasoline to go DOWN once that happens and to provide alternatives that cost LESS than gasoline to power cars and trucks.
If we don’t do as Gore suggests, twenty dollar a gallon gasoline plus rationing plus gas lines will result. And, world wide economic depression or collapse is possible.
(Drilling for more oil would mean $18 or $19 dollars a gallon instead of $20.)
If anything, I think Gore UNDERSTATED the problems that will occur if we fail to do as he suggests.
Former Rep. Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate: "None of us can walk away from this issue without agreeing with him that we do have a very serious problem, and it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it. ... I hope to be a part of that, and I would like to see the free market take the lead, not the government."
Gore believes in the entrepreneurial businesses we have to rise to this challenge. And, I think he knows that many already are. But he understated how important it is to have government support and speed this process as a part of the solutions he recommends.
Businesses CAN help do the job. But they respond much more and dramatically faster to incentives for doing the right thing than they do from penalties for doing the wrong thing. So, to get the job done, I think we need to dramatically boost the incentive side more than Gore suggested.
One good effect of the recent run up in gasoline prices is that they begin to make it cost effective to put the changes Gore recommends in place.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: Gore “…. pointed out that the only way we have a chance to drive down oil prices is if we become free of the slavery of oil. If we can give Americans choices of electrical cars or ... biodiesel cars, then and only then do we have a chance of dealing with this cost issue. That is why $4-a-gallon gas is not an enemy of action, it's an ally of action."
The other thing that Gore said that I like is that if we do this in the United States and take the lead in it, it will have two very desirable effects.
It will at least partly restore the United States in the eyes of people in other countries to being thought of as a country that takes the lead in making good things happen.
And, as the methods we use and the positive economic effects of these changes happen and begin to be copied and emulated, we will also help solve these problems world wide.
Today’s post: Weds, 7-23-2008
Last week, Al Gore challenged the United States to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other renewable energy sources within 10 years.
His Alliance for Climate Protection estimates the cost of transforming achieving this at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build greenhouse gas-polluting coal plants to produce that much electricity.
In 2005 in the United States, coal produced slightly more than half of our electricity generation while nuclear power accounted for 21 percent of it, natural gas 15 percent, & renewable sources, including wind and solar, about 8.6 percent.
It was recently predicted that world energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next 20 years.
This means that even if we meet his challenge in 20 years instead of 10, we will need to produce about 129 percent of the electricity we produced in 2005 from renewable sources alone.
Since, in my estimation, the 5 percent or so we got from hydroelectric sources in 2005 is likely to go down, perhaps falling as much as in half due to drought conditions from global warming already in place, that means solar, wind, & geothermal will need to go from the 3.6 percent or so it did produce in 2005 to something like 131.5% of all the electricity we produced in 2005 to achieve his goal. This means a 100 fold increase in electricity from solar, perhaps 20 times as much from geothermal, & about three times as much from wind.
The good news is that each one of these increases may well be doable, particularly as new technologies ramp up & the costs come down per unit with the much increased production AND as the costs of the alternatives begin to double once or twice in that same time period.
(T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman and wind-power booster T. Boone Pickens, an oilman for over 20 years said that this is ..”one problem we can’t drill our way out of.” And, he warned that “….oil could cost $300 a barrel in 10 years as supplies drop, if the nation continues to "drift" on energy policy.”)
And, if these increases come to pass we will also need, as Al Gore & his group emphasizes, to sharply increase & improve our national electricity distribution grid to get the electricity from where it’s generated to where it is being used.
Gore said that:
“The nation's electric grid is still not sufficiently developed to move solar power from sunny states out West or wind power from windy states to power-hungry markets.”
The other piece of good news is that when oil goes over $300 a barrel, it will then be cost effective to use the coal we no longer burn for electricity production to make gasoline, diesel fuel, & jet fuel. Then by adding alcohols & biodiesel from nonfood biofuels to that plus producing new cars to be electrics & plug in hybrids and retrofitting existing vehicles to operate as plug-in hybrids, we can also totally stop using oil to run our cars, trucks, & buses.
(This will also give today’s coal producers and coal producing regions an economic role in the transition instead of simply bankrupting them by using no coal at all.
Oil companies have lots of money now & still have time to invest in owning some of the new energy producing companies plus it will take more than 20 years to wean the whole world away from using oil. So they have plenty of cushion now, IF they act in time.)
The bad news is that NOT doing this over the next 20 years guarantees gasoline will hit $20 a gallon, food prices will also triple, & fires, floods, and droughts will get even worse world wide. We may even have our coastal cities begin to need to invest in dikes or relocate to higher ground. This will be caused by burning the coal, natural gas, & coal NOT converting to carbon free sources will add to the CO2 that is already in the process of causing these exact climate changes.
The other piece of bad news is that neither the man on the moon analogy that Gore used in his speech nor the Manhattan project analogy New York Times columnist Tom Friedman uses are as large in scope or scale as Gore’s challenge or the very real problem it aims to solve.
To get the job done will require massive action by almost everyone in the United States over the initial 5 or 10 years to adequately get this huge change into place.
The only historical precedent of comparable size is the effort the entire United States made to win World War II. Virtually everyone in the country was involved and made strong and focused efforts to get the job done and did so over a several year time period.
The other thing that will be necessary, according to Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities that produce 70 percent of the nation's electricity. He said this.
"We cannot do the job with renewables and energy efficiency alone," he said. "We have …. to include nuclear. And we frankly think that nuclear should be increased."
I agree with Al Gore that we can get to his goal of using renewables only. But it may well take longer than 20 years. And to begin to approach replacing all coal, oil, & natural gas for generating electricity in 20 years, let alone in 10 years, I suspect Jim Owen is correct. It will be necessary to produce the speed of this change we look to desperately need, to at least double our generation of nuclear power over the next 20 years.
John McCain looks to plan to carry on the other policies of the Bush administration that helped get us into this mess. So I plan to vote for his opponent. But I think his nuclear policy is a good idea. I hope Obama adopts it in addition to doing his best to make exactly the changes Gore suggests.
Can we make all these changes in 10 years?
I personally suspect it will take 20 years if we do an excellent job with all the national effort we can muster.
But that’s the WRONG question. Since it’s desperately needed and clearly the right thing to do, we need to ask instead:
1. Presuming making these changes IS doable within 10 years, what are some of the ways we might get it done?
(Gore pointed out that the United States gets more than enough solar energy to the job alone & the mid-Western United States gets enough wind to do it with wind alone. So it is doable in theory at least.)
2. How can we make as much progress right away as we can?
We’re 30 years too late in starting; & the results of that are beginning to hurt us economically. So we need a FAST start.
3. And, if we cannot get there in 10 years, how can we get it done in as close to 10 years as possible?
By the way, gasoline in the United States will very likely go to nine or ten dollars a gallon as this transition happens.
The key thing to remember is that this transition will cause the price of gasoline to go DOWN once that happens and to provide alternatives that cost LESS than gasoline to power cars and trucks.
If we don’t do as Gore suggests, twenty dollar a gallon gasoline plus rationing plus gas lines will result. And, world wide economic depression or collapse is possible.
(Drilling for more oil would mean $18 or $19 dollars a gallon instead of $20.)
If anything, I think Gore UNDERSTATED the problems that will occur if we fail to do as he suggests.
Former Rep. Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate: "None of us can walk away from this issue without agreeing with him that we do have a very serious problem, and it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it. ... I hope to be a part of that, and I would like to see the free market take the lead, not the government."
Gore believes in the entrepreneurial businesses we have to rise to this challenge. And, I think he knows that many already are. But he understated how important it is to have government support and speed this process as a part of the solutions he recommends.
Businesses CAN help do the job. But they respond much more and dramatically faster to incentives for doing the right thing than they do from penalties for doing the wrong thing. So, to get the job done, I think we need to dramatically boost the incentive side more than Gore suggested.
One good effect of the recent run up in gasoline prices is that they begin to make it cost effective to put the changes Gore recommends in place.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: Gore “…. pointed out that the only way we have a chance to drive down oil prices is if we become free of the slavery of oil. If we can give Americans choices of electrical cars or ... biodiesel cars, then and only then do we have a chance of dealing with this cost issue. That is why $4-a-gallon gas is not an enemy of action, it's an ally of action."
The other thing that Gore said that I like is that if we do this in the United States and take the lead in it, it will have two very desirable effects.
It will at least partly restore the United States in the eyes of people in other countries to being thought of as a country that takes the lead in making good things happen.
And, as the methods we use and the positive economic effects of these changes happen and begin to be copied and emulated, we will also help solve these problems world wide.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Solar electricity from windows sounds good...
Today’s post: Weds, 7-16-2008
A recent story says that researchers at MIT have developed a coating that enables windows you can still see through to efficiently focus light on solar cells around the edges.
This is particularly good news since the more electricity that can be made from solar at the location of the home, office building, or store that will use it, the sooner we will be an economy that runs mostly on renewable energy.
Further, this means that a bigger percentage of the sunlight at any given location can be converted into electricity so the percentage of the electricity needed in any building that can come from solar will be increased.
Since the company is apparently in the very early stages, this looks like it might be a promising green venture capital investment.
Here is the article itself. :
From MIT News
“MIT Opens New Window On Solar Energy
July 15, 2008
Imagine windows that not only provide a clear view and illuminate rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently help power the building they are part of. MIT engineers report a new approach to harnessing the sun's energy that could allow just that.
The work, reported in the July 11 issue of Science, involves the creation of a novel "solar concentrator." "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," explains Marc A. Baldo, leader of the work and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering.
As a result, rather than covering a roof with expensive solar cells (the semiconductor devices that transform sunlight into electricity), the cells only need to be around the edges of a flat glass panel. In addition, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell "by a factor of over 40," Baldo says.
Because the system is simple to manufacture, the team believes that it could be implemented within three years — even added onto existing solar-panel systems to increase their efficiency by 50 percent for minimal additional cost. That, in turn, would substantially reduce the cost of solar electricity.
In addition to Baldo, the researchers involved are Michael Currie, Jon Mapel, and Timothy Heidel, all graduate students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Shalom Goffri, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.
"Professor Baldo's project utilizes innovative design to achieve superior solar conversion without optical tracking," says Dr. Aravinda Kini, program manager in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, a sponsor of the work. "This accomplishment demonstrates the critical importance of innovative basic research in bringing about revolutionary advances in solar energy utilization in a cost-effective manner."
Solar concentrators in use today "track the sun to generate high optical intensities, often by using large mobile mirrors that are expensive to deploy and maintain," Baldo and colleagues write in Science. Further, "solar cells at the focal point of the mirrors must be cooled, and the entire assembly wastes space around the perimeter to avoid shadowing neighboring concentrators."
The MIT solar concentrator involves a mixture of two or more dyes that is essentially painted onto a pane of glass or plastic. The dyes work together to absorb light across a range of wavelengths, which is then re-emitted at a different wavelength and transported across the pane to waiting solar cells at the edges.
In the 1970s, similar solar concentrators were developed by impregnating dyes in plastic. But the idea was abandoned because, among other things, not enough of the collected light could reach the edges of the concentrator. Much of it was lost en route.
The MIT engineers, experts in optical techniques developed for lasers and organic light-emitting diodes, realized that perhaps those same advances could be applied to solar concentrators. The result? A mixture of dyes in specific ratios, applied only to the surface of the glass, that allows some level of control over light absorption and emission. "We made it so the light can travel a much longer distance," Mapel says. "We were able to substantially reduce light transport losses, resulting in a tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by the solar cells."
This work was also supported by the National Science Foundation. Baldo is also affiliated with MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.
Mapel, Currie and Goffri are starting a company, Covalent Solar, to develop and commercialize the new technology. Earlier this year Covalent Solar won two prizes in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The company placed first in the Energy category ($20,000) and won the Audience Judging Award ($10,000), voted on by all who attended the awards.
SOURCE: MIT”
X* X* X* X* X* X* X*
Sunpower’s installation division, GE, Kyocera in Japan, &/or the major glass companies in the United States might be good joint venture partners for this company.
With these kinds of windows, thin film solar installations on the exterior walls, & solar cells on the roof surfaces; & solar cells on the roof surfaces of the parking, all of which is roofed over – AND with everything in the building that uses electricity made as energy efficient as possible, most buildings may be close to 100 % self sufficient & many in good locations for solar may even be able to feed more electricity into the grid than they use.
I certainly see the day coming when the costs of electricity generated this way will be less than the costs of generating it with solar at a distance or nuclear energy –AND when every country requires that all utilities pay for any net electricity they receive from these buildings at the rate the electricity costs them to generate elsewhere.
Then, if night-time electricity is provided from wind, batteries, nuclear power, &/or heat saved from solar thermal installations, we can have ALL electricity generated with NO oil, coal, or natural gas burned at all.
I see this window technology as a step towards this world & would like to see these kinds of windows commercially available in a few years everywhere in the world.
Today’s post: Weds, 7-16-2008
A recent story says that researchers at MIT have developed a coating that enables windows you can still see through to efficiently focus light on solar cells around the edges.
This is particularly good news since the more electricity that can be made from solar at the location of the home, office building, or store that will use it, the sooner we will be an economy that runs mostly on renewable energy.
Further, this means that a bigger percentage of the sunlight at any given location can be converted into electricity so the percentage of the electricity needed in any building that can come from solar will be increased.
Since the company is apparently in the very early stages, this looks like it might be a promising green venture capital investment.
Here is the article itself. :
From MIT News
“MIT Opens New Window On Solar Energy
July 15, 2008
Imagine windows that not only provide a clear view and illuminate rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently help power the building they are part of. MIT engineers report a new approach to harnessing the sun's energy that could allow just that.
The work, reported in the July 11 issue of Science, involves the creation of a novel "solar concentrator." "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," explains Marc A. Baldo, leader of the work and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering.
As a result, rather than covering a roof with expensive solar cells (the semiconductor devices that transform sunlight into electricity), the cells only need to be around the edges of a flat glass panel. In addition, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell "by a factor of over 40," Baldo says.
Because the system is simple to manufacture, the team believes that it could be implemented within three years — even added onto existing solar-panel systems to increase their efficiency by 50 percent for minimal additional cost. That, in turn, would substantially reduce the cost of solar electricity.
In addition to Baldo, the researchers involved are Michael Currie, Jon Mapel, and Timothy Heidel, all graduate students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Shalom Goffri, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.
"Professor Baldo's project utilizes innovative design to achieve superior solar conversion without optical tracking," says Dr. Aravinda Kini, program manager in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, a sponsor of the work. "This accomplishment demonstrates the critical importance of innovative basic research in bringing about revolutionary advances in solar energy utilization in a cost-effective manner."
Solar concentrators in use today "track the sun to generate high optical intensities, often by using large mobile mirrors that are expensive to deploy and maintain," Baldo and colleagues write in Science. Further, "solar cells at the focal point of the mirrors must be cooled, and the entire assembly wastes space around the perimeter to avoid shadowing neighboring concentrators."
The MIT solar concentrator involves a mixture of two or more dyes that is essentially painted onto a pane of glass or plastic. The dyes work together to absorb light across a range of wavelengths, which is then re-emitted at a different wavelength and transported across the pane to waiting solar cells at the edges.
In the 1970s, similar solar concentrators were developed by impregnating dyes in plastic. But the idea was abandoned because, among other things, not enough of the collected light could reach the edges of the concentrator. Much of it was lost en route.
The MIT engineers, experts in optical techniques developed for lasers and organic light-emitting diodes, realized that perhaps those same advances could be applied to solar concentrators. The result? A mixture of dyes in specific ratios, applied only to the surface of the glass, that allows some level of control over light absorption and emission. "We made it so the light can travel a much longer distance," Mapel says. "We were able to substantially reduce light transport losses, resulting in a tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by the solar cells."
This work was also supported by the National Science Foundation. Baldo is also affiliated with MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.
Mapel, Currie and Goffri are starting a company, Covalent Solar, to develop and commercialize the new technology. Earlier this year Covalent Solar won two prizes in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The company placed first in the Energy category ($20,000) and won the Audience Judging Award ($10,000), voted on by all who attended the awards.
SOURCE: MIT”
X* X* X* X* X* X* X*
Sunpower’s installation division, GE, Kyocera in Japan, &/or the major glass companies in the United States might be good joint venture partners for this company.
With these kinds of windows, thin film solar installations on the exterior walls, & solar cells on the roof surfaces; & solar cells on the roof surfaces of the parking, all of which is roofed over – AND with everything in the building that uses electricity made as energy efficient as possible, most buildings may be close to 100 % self sufficient & many in good locations for solar may even be able to feed more electricity into the grid than they use.
I certainly see the day coming when the costs of electricity generated this way will be less than the costs of generating it with solar at a distance or nuclear energy –AND when every country requires that all utilities pay for any net electricity they receive from these buildings at the rate the electricity costs them to generate elsewhere.
Then, if night-time electricity is provided from wind, batteries, nuclear power, &/or heat saved from solar thermal installations, we can have ALL electricity generated with NO oil, coal, or natural gas burned at all.
I see this window technology as a step towards this world & would like to see these kinds of windows commercially available in a few years everywhere in the world.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
3 Poor ideas to lower rising fuel prices...
Today’s post: Weds, 7-9-2008
When a commodity is rising in price, you can stop the rise by increasing the supply or lowering the demand.
Here are 3 current ideas to do that to lower gasoline & diesel prices in the United States.
1. Increase oil drilling in environmentally & now prohibited areas.
2. Reinstate the 55 mph national speed limit.
3. Take oil from the national oil reserve.
We now have two huge & deadly serious problems in addition to the rise in fuel prices.
A. We have that price rise precisely because we now are massively over-dependent on petroleum for fueling transport -- & at a time when the cheap & easy growth in petroleum supply is over AND a time when the supply itself may begin shrinking. At the same time economic growth & population growth have increased demand.
Producing vehicles that are much more energy-efficient or which run in whole or in part on electricity or on biofuels produced in an energy efficient way from nonfood sources, unlike the 3 ideas above, will solve this problem.
We have the rise in fuel prices because we haven’t already done these things. Increases in drilling for oil, help continue the problem & distract time & money from accelerating the real solutions.
Taking oil from our national oil reserve also does nothing to solve this real problem. Worse, it’s like spending savings needed for much more serious emergencies on continuing to go to the movies twice a week. If we use it now for something that would be nice but is not that serious, it won’t be there when it’s desperately needed.
A revival of the 55 mph speed limit also does nothing to solve the real problem. And, by slowing the delivery of goods & services it will brake the economy & tend to increase inflation in a different way.
Lastly, each of these ideas might create some price reductions in fuel prices or temporarily slow their increase. Unfortunately, they will tend to SLOW DOWN the solutions which can prevent MUCH worse price increases later.
At current levels, fuel prices are producing elimination of waste & improving the market & profit incentive for the development of long term solutions we so desperately need. So, as long as we can accelerate the development & deployment of the needed long term solutions soon, some increase in fuel prices now may actually save us from even worse problems as soon as 10 years from now & dreadfully worse problems 20 years from now.
B. It looks like we are already more than 5 years too late in reducing the global increase in CO2 emissions. We cannot afford to slow converting our energy sources to renewable ones or nuclear sources or both.
Increasing the supply of fuels based on oil by drilling in new places for oil & using our national oil reserve, will make this part of the problem worse. They will result in more oil being turned into CO2 than if we do not do them.
Producing vehicles that are much more energy-efficient or which run in whole or in part on electricity or on biofuels produced in an energy efficient way from nonfood sources unlike the 3 ideas above will solve this problem. This is particularly true if we begin to switch totally to electricity produced by solar or other renewable sources or nuclear & to dramatically speed up this process.
Each of these 3 ideas will distract from solving these two really serious problems, the now frightening overdependence on oil & the equally frightening overproduction of CO2.
They are like taking an aspirin to bring down a fever when we have just contracted bubonic plague.
At these levels, we are more likely to survive if we leave the fever alone since fevers short of the harmful level act to warn us of the problem & boost our immune response.
And, we are MUCH more likely to survive if we focus only on finding out & using what will get rid of the bubonic plague.
None of these 3 ideas pass this test in my view.
I think we will be much better off if we do not do any of them. We should be entirely focused nationally on speeding the real solutions into place.
That being said, politically we may need to compromise with the people who think these 3 ideas are a worth doing.
One possible compromise might be to set the national posted speed limit at 65 mph with extra fines for exceeding 70 in more populated areas & for exceeding 75 on highways.
Another compromise might be to pass that law with a national posted limit of 60 mph. We may need one day to go to 55 mph again. But I’m not sure we are at that point now.
That would reduce fuel consumption from current levels without slowing the economy too much.
We could also drill for oil in all or most parts of Alaska. The oil companies have developed technologies to minimize the environmental impact of doing this. If it were only allowed when oil companies produced plans that also found solutions to the worst of the remaining impacts that environmentalists say is lacking now, it might be doable without causing excessive harm. Oil prices as they are now would support spending the extra money to do the drilling this way.
But I think the trade that must be made for these two compromises should be that we spend at least 10 percent annually of the money we have been spending on the wars in the Middle East to help ensure our oil supply be spent to put the real solutions into place & to get that done quickly.
Today’s post: Weds, 7-9-2008
When a commodity is rising in price, you can stop the rise by increasing the supply or lowering the demand.
Here are 3 current ideas to do that to lower gasoline & diesel prices in the United States.
1. Increase oil drilling in environmentally & now prohibited areas.
2. Reinstate the 55 mph national speed limit.
3. Take oil from the national oil reserve.
We now have two huge & deadly serious problems in addition to the rise in fuel prices.
A. We have that price rise precisely because we now are massively over-dependent on petroleum for fueling transport -- & at a time when the cheap & easy growth in petroleum supply is over AND a time when the supply itself may begin shrinking. At the same time economic growth & population growth have increased demand.
Producing vehicles that are much more energy-efficient or which run in whole or in part on electricity or on biofuels produced in an energy efficient way from nonfood sources, unlike the 3 ideas above, will solve this problem.
We have the rise in fuel prices because we haven’t already done these things. Increases in drilling for oil, help continue the problem & distract time & money from accelerating the real solutions.
Taking oil from our national oil reserve also does nothing to solve this real problem. Worse, it’s like spending savings needed for much more serious emergencies on continuing to go to the movies twice a week. If we use it now for something that would be nice but is not that serious, it won’t be there when it’s desperately needed.
A revival of the 55 mph speed limit also does nothing to solve the real problem. And, by slowing the delivery of goods & services it will brake the economy & tend to increase inflation in a different way.
Lastly, each of these ideas might create some price reductions in fuel prices or temporarily slow their increase. Unfortunately, they will tend to SLOW DOWN the solutions which can prevent MUCH worse price increases later.
At current levels, fuel prices are producing elimination of waste & improving the market & profit incentive for the development of long term solutions we so desperately need. So, as long as we can accelerate the development & deployment of the needed long term solutions soon, some increase in fuel prices now may actually save us from even worse problems as soon as 10 years from now & dreadfully worse problems 20 years from now.
B. It looks like we are already more than 5 years too late in reducing the global increase in CO2 emissions. We cannot afford to slow converting our energy sources to renewable ones or nuclear sources or both.
Increasing the supply of fuels based on oil by drilling in new places for oil & using our national oil reserve, will make this part of the problem worse. They will result in more oil being turned into CO2 than if we do not do them.
Producing vehicles that are much more energy-efficient or which run in whole or in part on electricity or on biofuels produced in an energy efficient way from nonfood sources unlike the 3 ideas above will solve this problem. This is particularly true if we begin to switch totally to electricity produced by solar or other renewable sources or nuclear & to dramatically speed up this process.
Each of these 3 ideas will distract from solving these two really serious problems, the now frightening overdependence on oil & the equally frightening overproduction of CO2.
They are like taking an aspirin to bring down a fever when we have just contracted bubonic plague.
At these levels, we are more likely to survive if we leave the fever alone since fevers short of the harmful level act to warn us of the problem & boost our immune response.
And, we are MUCH more likely to survive if we focus only on finding out & using what will get rid of the bubonic plague.
None of these 3 ideas pass this test in my view.
I think we will be much better off if we do not do any of them. We should be entirely focused nationally on speeding the real solutions into place.
That being said, politically we may need to compromise with the people who think these 3 ideas are a worth doing.
One possible compromise might be to set the national posted speed limit at 65 mph with extra fines for exceeding 70 in more populated areas & for exceeding 75 on highways.
Another compromise might be to pass that law with a national posted limit of 60 mph. We may need one day to go to 55 mph again. But I’m not sure we are at that point now.
That would reduce fuel consumption from current levels without slowing the economy too much.
We could also drill for oil in all or most parts of Alaska. The oil companies have developed technologies to minimize the environmental impact of doing this. If it were only allowed when oil companies produced plans that also found solutions to the worst of the remaining impacts that environmentalists say is lacking now, it might be doable without causing excessive harm. Oil prices as they are now would support spending the extra money to do the drilling this way.
But I think the trade that must be made for these two compromises should be that we spend at least 10 percent annually of the money we have been spending on the wars in the Middle East to help ensure our oil supply be spent to put the real solutions into place & to get that done quickly.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Frightening prediction on global warming...
Today’s post: Weds, 7-2-2008
Last week two stories were in the online news.
One was by a man who is an expert on global warming saying that in his opinion we are running out of time and that it is imperative to cut CO2 emissions from current levels to ensure that they stop rising very soon. We risk serious and severe coastal flooding world wide & economically damaging weather effects otherwise.
That certainly give us motivation to put solutions in place as fast as we can. But for those of us looking at the development & growth of those solutions & who see some progress, it can be easy to stop there & just work to help that process continue.
The second story and its prediction gives a much more frightening picture. It seems we will also need to take some kind of action to prevent it from happening in a more direct way.
We need not only to increase the good things we are doing. It looks as if we also need to STOP the increase of the things that do the reverse.
Here’s that second story from AP from last week.:
“No end seen on reliance on oil, fossil fuels
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 25, 2:50 PM ET
WASHINGTON - World energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next two decades, oil prices could rise to $186 a barrel and coal will remain the biggest source of electricity despite its effect on global warming, government experts predict.
The Energy Information Administration's long-range forecast to 2030 said the world is not close to abandoning fossil fuels. They will continue to be at the core of energy production in transportation and electricity generation, according to the report released Wednesday.
It said the steepest increases in energy use will come in China and other developing economies, including some in the Middle East and Africa, where energy demand is expected to be 85 percent greater in 2030 than it is today.
"What jumps out is the very strong growth in the emerging economies," said Guy Caruso, the head of the agency that serves as the government statistical and forecasting arm on energy.
The outlook largely assumes no mandatory international agreements on capping greenhouse gases, especially heat-trapping carbon dioxide, which comes from burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use "could be altered substantially" by such deals, the report said.
Without such limits, the annual amount of carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere would be 51 percent greater in 2030 than it was three years ago, the study said.
It said fossil fuels are expected to continue supplying much of the energy used worldwide despite the growth of renewable energy sources, including wind and biofuels.
The report assumes oil prices ranging from a low of $113 a barrel to as high as $186 a barrel by 2030; a barrel was trading above $133 on Wednesday. Adjusted for inflation, the $113 price would be about $70 in 2006 dollars, the report said.
"We're not going back to the historically low prices we saw in the '80s and '90s," Caruso said, while acknowledging the uncertainty of trying to peg prices so far into the future.
Global demand for liquid fuels — mostly oil — will grow to 113 million barrels a day by 2030, nearly one-third more than is consumed today, the report said. But high prices could have an impact, shaving demand by as much as 13 million barrels a day.
China and other developing countries that are powering the anticipated rise in energy demand should see sustained economic growth over the next two decades.
Coal use is expected to jump by nearly two-thirds by 2030; China alone will account for nearly three-fourths of that increase, the report said.
Despite coal's effect on climate change, Caruso said "it's the fuel of choice for electricity production in the emerging economies, especially China."
Petroleum products such as oil sands, biofuels and ethanol should grow to nearly 10 percent of total liquid fuels. Yet with the demand for conventional crude oil, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to increase production at a pace that will keep its 40 percent market share, the report predicts. It said OPEC would accept a decline in market share only if prices are high.
The report also projects:
_Electricity production from nuclear power plants will grow by one-third with the addition of 124 new nuclear power plants by 2030. As many as 45 could be in China, 18 in Russia, 17 in India and 15 in the United States.
_Natural gas "will replace oil wherever possible" especially in industrial uses, causing demand to grow for the fuel.
_Demand will grow for liquefied natural gas, with production concentrated in the Middle East and Africa.
_There will be 2.1 percent annual growth in renewable energy for electricity generation, mostly because of increases in the use of hydroelectric power in developing countries.”
X* X* X* X* X* X*
As regular readers of this blog know, it is clear that we are likely to have increased demand for energy between now & 20 to 40 years from now. I think they are correct in that prediction.
But it’s critical that this increase come ONLY from nuclear or renewable sources or from sharply increased energy efficiency.
We cannot afford to add more coal burning electrical generation plants. And, new plants that burn natural gas or oil are also a very bad idea.
We not only need to avoid burning even more coal, oil, & natural gas, it’s imperative that we either sequester the CO2 emissions from the burning of these fuels we do now to produce electricity or to gradually take them offline & replace them with renewable sources or nuclear energy.
In the United States, it is imperative that we begin to set a good example in all this.
Adding some kind of tax on burning these fuels and/or requiring complete CO2 sequestering when using them or both will increase the cost of electricity generated from these sources.
But it will speed the development of cost effective electricity generation from renewable sources on a large scale. And, it will help make electricity from nuclear power cost competitive as well.
The good news is that both India & China are beginning focus on doing the right thing. Solar power & carbon neutral buildings are beginning to show up in China. And, India is ramping up to increase their electricity generated by nuclear power.
So there is hope.
But we also need to set a good enough example here in the United States soon to be taken seriously or listened to when we ask that these countries sequester CO2 from coal fired electricity plants they already have & to stop building new ones.
Today’s post: Weds, 7-2-2008
Last week two stories were in the online news.
One was by a man who is an expert on global warming saying that in his opinion we are running out of time and that it is imperative to cut CO2 emissions from current levels to ensure that they stop rising very soon. We risk serious and severe coastal flooding world wide & economically damaging weather effects otherwise.
That certainly give us motivation to put solutions in place as fast as we can. But for those of us looking at the development & growth of those solutions & who see some progress, it can be easy to stop there & just work to help that process continue.
The second story and its prediction gives a much more frightening picture. It seems we will also need to take some kind of action to prevent it from happening in a more direct way.
We need not only to increase the good things we are doing. It looks as if we also need to STOP the increase of the things that do the reverse.
Here’s that second story from AP from last week.:
“No end seen on reliance on oil, fossil fuels
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 25, 2:50 PM ET
WASHINGTON - World energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next two decades, oil prices could rise to $186 a barrel and coal will remain the biggest source of electricity despite its effect on global warming, government experts predict.
The Energy Information Administration's long-range forecast to 2030 said the world is not close to abandoning fossil fuels. They will continue to be at the core of energy production in transportation and electricity generation, according to the report released Wednesday.
It said the steepest increases in energy use will come in China and other developing economies, including some in the Middle East and Africa, where energy demand is expected to be 85 percent greater in 2030 than it is today.
"What jumps out is the very strong growth in the emerging economies," said Guy Caruso, the head of the agency that serves as the government statistical and forecasting arm on energy.
The outlook largely assumes no mandatory international agreements on capping greenhouse gases, especially heat-trapping carbon dioxide, which comes from burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use "could be altered substantially" by such deals, the report said.
Without such limits, the annual amount of carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere would be 51 percent greater in 2030 than it was three years ago, the study said.
It said fossil fuels are expected to continue supplying much of the energy used worldwide despite the growth of renewable energy sources, including wind and biofuels.
The report assumes oil prices ranging from a low of $113 a barrel to as high as $186 a barrel by 2030; a barrel was trading above $133 on Wednesday. Adjusted for inflation, the $113 price would be about $70 in 2006 dollars, the report said.
"We're not going back to the historically low prices we saw in the '80s and '90s," Caruso said, while acknowledging the uncertainty of trying to peg prices so far into the future.
Global demand for liquid fuels — mostly oil — will grow to 113 million barrels a day by 2030, nearly one-third more than is consumed today, the report said. But high prices could have an impact, shaving demand by as much as 13 million barrels a day.
China and other developing countries that are powering the anticipated rise in energy demand should see sustained economic growth over the next two decades.
Coal use is expected to jump by nearly two-thirds by 2030; China alone will account for nearly three-fourths of that increase, the report said.
Despite coal's effect on climate change, Caruso said "it's the fuel of choice for electricity production in the emerging economies, especially China."
Petroleum products such as oil sands, biofuels and ethanol should grow to nearly 10 percent of total liquid fuels. Yet with the demand for conventional crude oil, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to increase production at a pace that will keep its 40 percent market share, the report predicts. It said OPEC would accept a decline in market share only if prices are high.
The report also projects:
_Electricity production from nuclear power plants will grow by one-third with the addition of 124 new nuclear power plants by 2030. As many as 45 could be in China, 18 in Russia, 17 in India and 15 in the United States.
_Natural gas "will replace oil wherever possible" especially in industrial uses, causing demand to grow for the fuel.
_Demand will grow for liquefied natural gas, with production concentrated in the Middle East and Africa.
_There will be 2.1 percent annual growth in renewable energy for electricity generation, mostly because of increases in the use of hydroelectric power in developing countries.”
X* X* X* X* X* X*
As regular readers of this blog know, it is clear that we are likely to have increased demand for energy between now & 20 to 40 years from now. I think they are correct in that prediction.
But it’s critical that this increase come ONLY from nuclear or renewable sources or from sharply increased energy efficiency.
We cannot afford to add more coal burning electrical generation plants. And, new plants that burn natural gas or oil are also a very bad idea.
We not only need to avoid burning even more coal, oil, & natural gas, it’s imperative that we either sequester the CO2 emissions from the burning of these fuels we do now to produce electricity or to gradually take them offline & replace them with renewable sources or nuclear energy.
In the United States, it is imperative that we begin to set a good example in all this.
Adding some kind of tax on burning these fuels and/or requiring complete CO2 sequestering when using them or both will increase the cost of electricity generated from these sources.
But it will speed the development of cost effective electricity generation from renewable sources on a large scale. And, it will help make electricity from nuclear power cost competitive as well.
The good news is that both India & China are beginning focus on doing the right thing. Solar power & carbon neutral buildings are beginning to show up in China. And, India is ramping up to increase their electricity generated by nuclear power.
So there is hope.
But we also need to set a good enough example here in the United States soon to be taken seriously or listened to when we ask that these countries sequester CO2 from coal fired electricity plants they already have & to stop building new ones.
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