Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Fighting peak oil with electric transport....

Today's post: Wednesday, 6-30-2010


We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

This post has three parts.

1. Peak oil and increases in the cost of fuels based on oil look to be sooner and more certain than many have thought them to be -- even counting in the slowdown of demand caused by the global recession.

Last week we posted that the Kuwaiti scientists now predict peak oil in 2014. Earlier today I read information that suggests this is close to correct.

Worse, it suggests that the availability of oil will fall and it will begin to cost far more by 10 years or so from now or sooner.

Today, NPR online news had some information from a new book by a writer who has been closely following the oil industry that shows why that is so.

The information in the article is from his book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet by Michael Klare.

The article points out that this author has already said that the oil that it is easy and inexpensive to get and get from safe and politically stable countries is already gone.

So, after acknowledging that the current global recession has lowered the demand for oil, the article quotes him as saying this,

"....while the crisis" (the current global recession & credit cut back) " has eliminated the threat of an immediate energy shortfall, it does not follow that the global struggle will be any less acute in the years to come. In fact, there is good reason to conclude the reverse: that the crisis will only intensify the struggle.

There are a number of reasons to believe that the reduction in competition will be relatively short-lived. First, the depletion of existing oil reserves continues to accelerate rapidly. Second, as a result of the financial crisis, the major energy firms appear to be scaling back their investments in costly new development projects, including alternative energies. Finally, the leading producing countries, fearful of losing their privileged status as a result of the drop in energy prices, seem determined to take steps to extend their control over valuable production and delivery assets.

For years, energy experts have been warning that the world’s biggest oil fields — many of which have been pumping crude for 30 years or more — have been substantially depleted and are on the verge of rapid decline. As indicated in chapter two, just 116 giant fields — all but four of which were discovered more than a quarter of a century ago — account for nearly 50 percent of the daily international oil output. Among those that are now — or will soon be — in decline are some of the world’s largest and most prolific, including Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Burgan in Kuwait, and Cantarell in Mexico. As recently as 2005, when oil expert Matthew R. Simmons warned that Ghawar and other key fields were on the brink of decline, such pessimistic assessments were widely derided by industry officials, who typically claimed that the fields were still capable of robust production.

But recent developments have tended to confirm the pessimist outlook: In August 2008, for example, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) reported that production at Cantarell had dropped by 36 percent over the previous year — an extraordinary rate of contraction in such a short period of time. Significant declines have also been reported in large fields in the North Sea area and Russia.

In an effort to better gauge the extent of the global loss in output, the IEA in 2007 undertook a comprehensive study of the world’s top 800 producing fields. The results of this investigation — the first of its kind — are included in the agency’s World Energy Outlook 2008. Based on their analysis of data on day-by-day production, the study’s authors concluded that the natural decline rate of major existing fields is not 4 to 5 percent per year as previously thought, but an astonishing 9 percent. At this accelerated pace, existing fields will be pumping out substantially less oil every year, requiring a vast increase in output from whatever new fields are discovered simply to keep the level of global output steady, let alone satisfy any growth in international consumption."

In more direct words, the drop in the reserves in the existing oil fields will soon begin to both cut the overall world output of oil and cause the output that remains to come from locations and techniques that cost more than what we have been paying.

That combination ensures that oil prices will increase strongly even if demand remains low by recent standards.

That means the prices for gasoline and diesel fuel made from this oil will go up.

2. The good news is that the prospects are beginning to look better of having electric cars and plug-in hybrid cars available soon that can operate with as little as 5 to 10 % of the oil we use for powering our all gasoline or all diesel cars now.

Yesterday, Tesla Motors had their initial public offering for stock, issued more shares at a higher price than they earlier expected & then saw their share price bid up by almost 50%.

They earned this in part by doing deals with Diamler-Benz and Toyota. So that means that not only will Tesla provide upscale and technically advanced electric cars, those two larger & world-wide companies will soon be making electric cars or plug-in hybrids using Tesla’s technology in part or even partnering directly with Tesla.

Nissan and General Motors are about to begin delivery of an all electric car and a partly electric car respectively.

Ford and Saab are also close to entering this market too.

And, that’s not all. Coulomb Technologies is developing multiple ways to support building networks of charging stations for electric and plug-in hybrids. They have a large deal with Ford and also are ready to support the Nissan Leaf and are working with Siemens to support an EV (electric vehicle) Siemens is developing.

A company called Better Place is setting up a combination of fast charging stations and electric cars that work with them in several places.

And, Amprius in the Silicon Valley says they have a technology to increase the charge lithium batteries can take and deliver by 40%. If they do and get it into production, that will either increase the range cars can drive using only electricity or lower the cost and weight of their battery packs or both.

And there are also many new advanced technology battery companies as well. These include A123 Systems and Boston Power both in Boston plus the high technology companies in China that venture capitalist, John Doerr says are doing well despite very little coverage here.

3. In addition, we can now make electicity from natural gas with less pollution and possibly more efficiently with fuel cells from Bloom Energy.

Hopefully, we will also switch to cleaner ways to use coal to generate electricity such as making methane with it & using the methane to make electricity with less pollution and possibly more efficiently with fuel cells from Bloom Energy.

We also will soon be able to feed the CO2 from those power plants to algae to make biofuels.

And, even more helpful yet if we can do it, is to:

Build massive amounts of photovoltaic solar installations both in hundreds of thousands of onsite locations and in hundreds of large and medium sized power plants;

Install massive amounts of wind power electicity generation;

And, build several hundred very large solar thermal plants in the Southwest and West part of the United States and all through Mexico.

Conclusion,

The rising real cost of using oil for fuel and the development of electric and plug-in hybrid cars and the development and increased building of clean and cleaner ways to generate electricity mean that it begins to look like we will have a way to power our transportation system that will no longer use oil.

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