World Energy Use

"Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it."
- attributed to Mark Twain

There is much talk about converting to renewable energy resources but what has the world accomplished?
A report by British Petroleum, 2011 Statistical Review of World Energy, reveals that while renewable usage grew at an amazing rate, Fossil fuels gained market share overall. How can wind & solar increase at a greater rate but lose ground? Consider: would you rather have 70% interest on $100 or 1% interest on one million dollars?

Wind grew by 24.6% and solar by 73%. This is a fantastic increase but the total energy from wind and solar remains very small; Solar amounts to only 0.1% of global electric power, Wind is now 1.6% of global electric power. So even if these had grown by 400% they would still be dwarfed by even a modest increase in coal or oil.

An interesting offshoot of the study. China used 2/3 of the coal consumed last year and has surpassed the US as the world's #1 energy consumer. China passed the US for CO2 emissions five years ago.

For the 11th straight year, oil has a smaller slice of the global energy pie (now 33.6%). This is not to say oil usage went down. In fact it increased by 3.1% last year. But coal grabbed more of the pie with an increase of 29.6% for a total of 25.6%. We may see coal surpass oil if China continues on its present course.

Bottom Line

There are some who believe that high oil prices are here to stay. They point to ever increasing energy demands from China (up 11.2% last year ). Another indicator: while global oil use increased by 3.1%, the production of oil only increased by 2.2%. This was the strongest increase in production in 16 years but not enough to meet a growing demand.

How Green is Your Car?

A pedestrian is someone who thought there were a couple of gallons left in the tank.

- Unknown

HotAir.com has a great article titled, Electric cars not so green after all?

It's wonderful to say you're saving the environment by not burning oil, BUT are you aware of the impact of the technology and resources that went into making an electric car? A new study by the British Government examined the full lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal.

An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km (80,000mi) before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km (90mi) on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes.  ...  Emissions from manufacturing electric cars are at least 50 per cent higher because batteries are made from materials such as lithium, copper and refined silicon, which require much energy to be processed. Many electric cars are expected to need a replacement battery after a few years. Once the emissions from producing the second battery are added in, the total CO2 from producing an electric car rises to 12.6 tonnes, compared with 5.6 tonnes for a petrol car. Disposal also produces double the emissions because of the energy consumed in recovering and recycling metals in the battery. The study also took into account carbon emitted to generate the grid electricity consumed.

Here are some other items to consider.

Where will we store all of the dead batteries that are discarded?

What is the impact of mining the Lithium needed for the batteries? Why is it bad to drill for oil or coal but OK to mine for Lithium?

Bottom Line

I read a wonderful comment the other day in which a father objected to the phrase, "Americans are addicted to oil." Nonsense, he replied. I'm addicted to driving my son to school and to soccer games. He did not care if the car ran on oil or cow piss. It's a good thing that we are finally seeing realistic alternatives to burning oil in hundreds of millions of cars. Just don't blindly assume that electric is "cleaner". Where is that electricity coming from to power the car?

I wonder which is more efficient? Turning oil into gasoline, transporting it and then burning it in a car? Or turning oil into electricity, transmitting the energy over power lines, storing the energy in batteries, and using that to power a car? I would not be surprised if it required MORE energy overall to run electric cars.

Ethanol

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.” - President Dwight David Eisenhower

It's rare for a politician to admit he was wrong...

Gore: On second thought, I was just pandering to the farm vote on ethanol, from http://hotair.com/

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Al Gore speaking at a green energy business conference. “First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small."

Worse, the ethanol subsidies have sparked a price war as we shove corn byproducts into our gas tanks.  Gore now admits that “the competition with food prices is real.” So why did he promote Ethanol while a Senator? "I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.” This fondness for farmers and their votes cost the US almost $8 billion in subsidies last year.

According to a recent report by two professors, ethanol contains 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that ethanol from corn takes 98,000 BTUs. So instead of saving energy, we lose energy by using ethanol. By comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains 116,000 BTUs per gallon but only costs 22,000 BTUs to drill the well, transport it, and refine it for a net energy gain.

You may have noticed in Gore's quote above, a mention of  "first generation ethanol." What's that? First generation means fuel from corn and was the first ethanol process to go into wide scale production. Gore is switching his support to 2nd generation ethanol that is made from wood, waste fibers, and grass so as not to drive up the price of food. That's great for food prices but still bad energy policy. Turning wood and grass into ethanol is less effective than corn so the country will lose even more energy.

Bottom Line

Don't forget that politics is rarely about the good of people. "Follow the money" as they say and see who is really profiting from new laws and polices.

BTW - I read a story recently that "Follow the money" was never said by Deepthroat to the two reporters covering the Watergate break in. The line was created for the movie, All the President's Men.

Bottled Water

"Water is the only drink for a wise man."
-Henry David Thoreau

http://www.onlineeducation.net/bottled_water/water_full.jpg

Bottom Line

Should a wise man drink bottled water?

Nuclear or Coal?

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.”-Malcolm S. Forbes

When one thinks of the dangers of Nuclear power, thoughts immediately go to Chernobyl or Three Mile Island (in NY). But interestingly those are the worst and pretty much the only disasters from 50 years of nuclear power. A plant disaster can happen with any technology – an explosion at a hydroelectric dam seriously injured my grandfather in the 1960’s.

Given the rarity of “meltdowns” my concerns for nuclear power have focused upon the long-term disposal of nuclear rods and other waster. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was supposed to solve the problem but after spending 8 Billion dollars for studies and construction and fighting a decade of lawsuits to prevent the Yucca Repository from opening, the facility is now officially “dead” thanks largely to the efforts of Nevada Senator Harry Reid.

Now nuclear plants have no better option than continuing to keep waste in rusting barrels on plant property and rods in containment pools. Even if the plants were closed (unlikely since 14% of world power is nuclear with the percentage increasing) the waste and rods remain. I happen to live near the Indian Point nuclear plant which is itself only 40 miles from New York City and a population of over 12 million people. It’s amazing how politics can protect the 2.6 million residents of Nevada from a remote risk in exchange for actual risk to tens of millions of residents near active plants.

I hadn’t intended to rail against nuclear storage when I started this essay. What caught my eye was an article about coal ponds on newsobserver.com. There is much talk today about “clean coal” but in fact coal is very dirty and may be more dangerous to the environment than nuclear power. When coal is burned, 10% of the coal becomes coal ash that must be disposed of. The US alone produces about 100 million tons of coal ash a year. Some of that ash is lightweight (fly ash) and used to float out the pipe stacks into the air and eventually into human lungs (not good). When the industry speaks of “clean coal” they mean that due to government regulation they now have filters on the exhaust vents to catch the fly ash.

But the caught ash still must go somewhere. Today 46% of fly ash is recycled into cement and bricks while the remaining ash is buried in landfills or kept in sludge ponds. In 2008, the pool impoundment at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee broke and 1.1 billion gallons of fly ash slurry poured over 300 acres damaging homes and fields and flowing into local rivers. Since fly ash contains traces of heavy metals like arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, radium, selenium, thorium, uranium, vanadium, and zinc the spill was a major environmental disaster. Ash landfills also pose a serious threat should rainwater leak through the fill and into the local water supply carrying the heavy metals with it.

Bottom Line

Today coal supplies most of the electricity for the US. We may have solved “acid rain” but issues remain. Coal mining still creates giant holes and is a dangerous occupation for miners. Coal burning creates a deadly ash in huge quantities that must be safely stored forever. So which poison is better, coal waste or nuclear waste? I suspect history will show that coal, due to its vast quantity and lower level of confinement was the bigger threat.