Robert Rapier

The Key to Running the World on Solar and Wind Power

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of solar and wind power is their intermittency. In locations like Hawaii, where I live, wind and solar power are already competitive on price. My fossil-fuel supplied electricity typically costs above 40 cents a kilowatt-hour, and wind and solar power can compete with that. But since they can’t supply power that is available on demand (firm power) they …

Book Review: Reinventing Fire

While I disagree with Amory Lovins on many topics, the man is definitely a visionary. In his latest book Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, Lovins and his coauthors make the case for retrofitting 120 million buildings, and for fundamentally changing our transportation infrastructure, the way our industries use energy, and the way electricity is produced and consumed.

Hofmeister: A difficult decade ahead for oil prices and supplies

I, along with my editor Sam Avro, recently conducted a broad-ranging interview with John Hofmeister, former President of Shell Oil. The topics touched upon included future oil supplies and prices, climate change, U.S. energy policy, and topics familiar to R-Squared Energy readers such as Peak Lite and the Long Recession. I will present this interview in a series of stories covering some of the …

Aaron Wissner interviews Robert Rapier after ASPO 2011

Following last year's ASPO conference, I was interviewed by Aaron Wissner of Local Future, which is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to issues of energy, the environment, and sustainability. Aaron just made that interview available, and instead of an R-Squared Energy TV episode this week, I thought I would share this interview with readers.

Climate change and developing countries

This post continues a theme I covered in my book Power Plays. Part 1 covered the impact on oil price and supply in Petroleum Demand in Developing Countries. Here I discuss some of the climate change implications.

Petroleum Demand in Developing Countries

Conventional wisdom might suggest that as oil prices rise, developing countries would be less able to afford oil, leaving wealthier countries to bid against each other for increasingly higher-priced supplies. But that is not at all what happened over the past decade, and the trend may give developed countries a reason for concern.

Renewable energy — Facts and figures

Today's article is the 5th and final installment of my graphical look at the recently released 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. This article looks at the explosive growth of renewable energy, but also places it in the context of our overall energy demands.

Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions — Facts and Figures

In the first installment of this series, I reviewed U.S. and global oil reserves according to the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The second installment covered oil production, and the third looked at global consumption trends. Today, I look at the growth of global carbon dioxide emissions since 1965. A great deal has changed over the past 46 years.

World Energy Consumption Facts, Figures, and Shockers

In the first installment of this series, I reviewed U.S. and global oil reserves according to the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The second installment covered oil production. Today, I want to examine the changes in consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas since 1965 in the three major consuming regions of the world: Asia Pacific, the United States, and European Union countries.

Enough oil to fry the planet?

In this weeks episode of R-Squared Energy TV, I discuss the recently released paper by former Eni executive Leonardo Maugeri -- in which he suggests global oil supplies will increase by 17 million barrels per day by the end of the decade -- as well as George Monbiot's highly publicized reaction to the report.