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Lord Browne speaks, Beyond Petroleum?
Dave, The Oil Drum
Today NPR’s Morning Edition business report featured an interview with Beyond Petroleum’s CEO.
Morning Edition, December 1, 2005 · Oil prices are destined to slip somewhat in the coming years, according to British Petroleum CEO Lord John Browne. Browne says that high inventories of crude oil prove “that the global supply system works rather well.”
But as new technology and consumer preferences are changing the energy market, British Petroleum is adapting by investing heavily in alternative energy sources like wind and solar power.
British Petroleum is America’s largest oil and gas supplier.
You can find the link to the audio (Real Player) here. For those of you who may not be able to hear the story, I’ll provide a brief summary and some commentary.
(2 December 2005)
Also see: Global Energy Challenges In The Coming 30 Years by Lord Browne
(“Text of the Dewhurst Lecture, delivered by BP’s Group Chief Executive Lord Browne to an audience at the World Petroleum Congress in Johannesburg on 29 September.”)
from Middle East Economic Review 17-October-2005
Alberta oil sands growing source of pollution: report
Sarah McGregor, Embassy (Canada’s Foreign Policy Newsweekly)
Lucrative energy industry accounts for Canada’s failure to curb emissions, but environmental NGO hopes the sector can become carbon neutral by 2012.
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Rapid production of the Alberta oilsands will account for nearly half of the projected rise in greenhouse gas emissions in Canada by 2010, making it the country’s fastest growing source of pollution, according to data released yesterday by the Pembina Institute.
“It’s striking that Canada is saying it’s committed to reducing emissions but in sharp [contrast] it is allowing this sector to become a bigger emitter,” says Matthew Bramley, Director of Climate Change at the Pembina Institute, a Canadian-based environmental NGO focused on the energy sector.
The Pembina Institute released the findings during a side event at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal, which runs until Dec. 9. In his role as chair of the conference, Canadian Environment Minister Stéphane Dion is marshalling international delegations towards cooperating on a pact to curb global warming when the Kyoto Protocol phases out in 2012.
However, Mr. Dion is also faced with an uphill domestic battle to follow through on commitments in Kyoto’s first phase.
(30 November 2005)
Our greed for energy will be our downfall
New Statesman
The question is not: can we sustain our energy supply without learning to love nuclear? It is, or at least should be: can Britain and similar countries sustain present levels of energy consumption without causing economic instability and environmental disaster? Politicians look at this issue from the wrong end of the telescope. The public is equally culpable.
The six-month energy review initiated by Tony Blair is welcome. It will raise the quality of the debate about a subject on which views are polarised but often ill-informed. Both sides employ widely divergent statistics on the economic efficiency and the ecological effects of nuclear power. The industry – one of the most sophisticated lobbyists in the corporate world – claims that new-generation nuclear stations provide “clean” energy and that they perform enviably, producing few carbon emissions. Fact or fiction? Meanwhile, advocates of renewable energy, particularly wind turbines, argue that only a combination of government lethargy and local nimbyism is preventing rapid expansion of surely the least unlovable form of energy production. They point out that the government is withholding a £50m investment in wave power – a tiny sum, given the predicted tens of billions that will be required for eventual storing of nuclear waste.
The debate raises inevitable suspicions about the Prime Minister’s approach. Such is the government’s track record of launching commissions, only to prejudge, distort or ignore their findings, that it seems hard to imagine that Blair has not already made up his mind. He has dropped enough hints to suggest that, whatever else it says, he wants the review to conclude that nuclear power continues to have a foothold in our energy policy.
(5 December 2005 issue)
Poison + Water = Hydrogen
The Institute for Genomic Research
Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas. It sounds like a recipe for a witch’s brew. It may be, but it is also the preferred environment for a microbe known as Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans. …
In sequencing the microbe’s genome, Eisen and his collaborators discovered why C. hydrogenoformans grows more rapidly on carbon monoxide than other species: The bug boasts at least five different forms of a protein machine, dubbed carbon monoxide deyhydrogenase, that is able to manipulate the poisonous gas. Each form of the machine appears to allow the organism to use carbon monoxide in a different way. Most other organisms that live on carbon monoxide have only one form of this machine. In other words, while other organisms may have the equivalent of a modest mixing bowl to process their supper of carbon monoxide, this species has a veritable food processor, letting it gorge on a hot spring buffet all day. …
(2 December 2005)
India joins nuclear fusion club
BBC
India has become the latest nation to join the global project building a prototype nuclear fusion reactor.
It joins China, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) team.
At a meeting on the Korean island of Jeju, Iter also named a new director-general, Kaname Ikeda. The 10bn euro (£6.7bn) Iter project is designed to produce electricity using nuclear fusion, as happens in the Sun. It will be built at Cadarache in France; construction will take at least a decade. …
After decades of experimentation at national and regional level, it should demonstrate once and for all whether it is possible to harness the tremendous potential of nuclear fusion in a practical and economic way. …
(6 December 2005)
