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A growing global power crisis looks to be greater economic and political danger than oil
Energy Tech Stocks
How many stories have you seen about high oil and gasoline prices? Now how many have you seen about global electricity shortages?
Lost in all the attention oil is receiving, reports from around the world indicate that 100 or more countries may be suffering, many acutely, from shortages of electricity. Given who is in trouble, both the economic and the political danger of this growing global power crisis are starting to look greater than oil’s. China and India, two of the biggest engines of economic growth, look to be in serious trouble. Pakistan and Afghanistan, hotbeds of terrorism, are routinely plunged into darkness. South Africa’s mining industry is vexed. Even some countries that can afford high oil prices don’t have sufficient electricity to run refineries.
While not facing shortages, many developed countries on whose consumers the world economy depends are increasingly facing what is called “fuel poverty,” a combination of rising electricity and home heating oil costs. The problem is already acute in Great Britain and is starting to take hold in the United States.
(2 September 2008)
ASPO Newsletter for September (PDF)
C.J.Campbell, ASPO-Ireland
CONTENTS
1077. Spain reacts to Peak Oil
1078. 33rd International Geological Conference
1079. A Fall in Oil Price
1080. A Sense of Direction
1081. The Golden Zone
1082. The Good News
1083. ASPO-USA Conference
1084. Russia Re-evaluated
1085. Estimating Discovery and Reserve Growth
(September 2008)
The Archdruid nails it: Energy conservation, not efficiency, is key
Mark Ontkush, TreeHugger
A good read for the eco-serious is The Archdruid Report, a collection of perspective on industrial society which is written by John Michael Greer. The posts are characteristically druid-like – long, thoughtful, laden with wisdom – and although sometimes grim, are superb. The one on “Net Energy and Jevons’ Paradox” targets the problem of peak energy and is a charmer.
Greer begins with a whammy; to build the infrastructure to produce a new energy source in meaningful quantities (“the production cost”), a great deal of energy will be needed. Additionally, if the new source can’t be delivered via an existing distribution network (“the system cost”), we’ll need to invest even more energy to build this out as well. Immediately, one can see why some alternative energy options are being tried; for example, ethanol and windpower have some production costs but negligible additional distribution costs. In contrast, hydrogen requires both new production and distribution networks, so is proving to be a bust.
How will we come up with the surplus energy to make the transition? The Druid looks at two oft-thought methodologies, conservation and efficiency, lauding the first and laughing the second. Greer acknowledges that both approaches boost the net energy of the system but, unlike conservation, as efficiency goes up it also becomes economically feasible to apply the energy resource to new uses, and so people have reason to use more of it. This is known as the Jevon’s Paradox, and just take a lookie ’round to see it in action – multiple TVs per household, the McMansions, more miles driven due to increases in automobile fuel efficiency, meat consumption. In every case advancements in efficiency not only encouraged more use, but also depleted the surplus in energy we require to make the transition to a new energy economy.
(28 August 2008)
Shocklets
Mobjectivist
The Oil Shock Model uses a simple rather unbiased multiplier to estimate the oil production response to a discovery input. To demonstrate this, let us take a particular sub-case of the model. If we assume that a discovery immediately becomes extractable, then the multiplying factor for instantaneous production becomes a percentage of what remains. This turns into a damped exponential for a delta discovery (delta meaning a discovery made at a single point in time). In practice, this means that for any particular discovery in the Oil Shock model, we immediately enter a regime of diminishing returns. You can see this in the following plot.
… The mantra of the Oil Shock Model still holds — every year we always extract a fraction of what we think lies underground. The role of reserve growth acts to provide a long-term incentive to keep pumping the oil out of certain regions. As the estimates for additional reserve keep creeping up over time, a fraction of the oil consistently remains available. And by introducing the concept of shocklets, we essentially provide a different perspective on the utility of the Oil Shock Model.
(28 August 2008)
Much more at the original and at Mobjectist’s site. I **think** the work that Mobjectivist is doing is important, but I would need a translation from the technical-mathematical to understand the implications. Even with my limited math skills, I suspect he is right that much Hubbert analysis is simplistic. -BA
