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Rising fuel prices hits Air Force, other services hard
Dave Montgomery, McClatchy Newspapers
You think your gasoline costs are high? Every time the price at the pump jumps a nickel, it causes budgetary heartburn for the U.S. Air Force, whose gas-guzzling fleet of nearly 6,000 aircraft devours about 7 million gallons of fuel a day.
The cost of a fill-up for a B-52 bomber, an eight-engine behemoth that holds nearly 48,000 gallons of jet fuel, can easily surpass $100,000. A sleek F-16 fighter sucks up more than $300 worth of fuel a minute when it kicks in its afterburners and blasts through the sound barrier.
“We burn a lot of gas,” acknowledged Assistant Air Force Secretary Bill Anderson, who oversees fuel consumption for the service.
The skyrocketing price of oil is causing a strain on the Defense Department, the largest petroleum consumer in the nation, if not the world. With combat forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. strategists are struggling to keep up with burgeoning fuel costs for a war machine that includes uneconomical fuel-eaters such as ships, tanks, helicopters and an array of fixed-wing aircraft.
The Army’s M-1 Abrams tank, in service in Iraq, gets less than a mile per gallon. The cost of fueling the Navy’s 278 diesel propelled-ships, including one non-nuclear aircraft carrier, has jumped by 10 percent over 2006.
The problem is particularly burdensome for the Air Force, which consumes more than half of all the fuel used by the government and purchases significantly more than the Army and the Navy. Every $10 increase for a barrel of oil costs the Air Force $600 million.
(10 July 2007)
Costs Surge for Building Power Plants
Matthew L. Wald, New York Times
…As talk of building new power plants rises sharply, so does the cost. A new fleet of coal-fired power plants and a revival of nuclear construction after three decades are both looking tougher lately.
For example, in late 2004, Duke Energy, one of the country’s largest utilities and most experienced builders, started planning a pair of coal-fired power plants to replace several built around the middle of the last century, at Cliffside, in western North Carolina. In May 2005, the company told regulators it wanted to spend $2 billion to build twin 800-megawatt units. But 18 months later, in November 2006, Duke said it would cost $3 billion. Then the state utility commission said to build only one of the plants, and in May of this year Duke said that would cost $1.83 billion, an increase of more than 80 percent from the original estimate.
Duke’s experience may be extreme but it is hardly isolated.
“There’s real sticker shock out there,” Randy H. Zwirn, president of the Siemens Power Generation Group, said in an interview. He estimated that in the last 18 months, the price of a coal-fired power plant has risen 25 percent to 30 percent.
Part of the problem is huge price increases for the raw materials that plants are made from, including copper and nickel, which is what makes steel stainless. But the cost of finishing those commodities into components is also rising.
(10 July 2007)
Germany to Stay Nuclear in Merkel U-Turn
Tony DPatterson, Telegraph/UK
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is preparing to perform a major U-turn by scrapping plans to abandon nuclear power.
The move would bring Berlin into line with many of its European neighbours, who are investing heavily in new and existing sources of atomic energy, but puts Mrs Merkel on a collision course with the country’s powerful green lobby and her coalition partners.
(8 July 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
Energy productivity the profitable path to sustainable growth
Jiri Maly, Globe & Mail
As global energy consumption soars, and as greenhouse gas emissions grow, the world needs to find realistic ways to cut energy waste and to use our limited resources more wisely. New research indicates that practical investments in energy productivity – the amount of energy required to achieve a given level of economic output – can help the world continue its economic growth and ensure a sustainable energy future. Better still, the research indicates that these investments have a quick economic payoff, producing savings that cover the initial costs and provide an annual rate of return above 10 per cent.
Overall global demand for energy is projected to increase by 2.2 per cent annually through 2020, according to a new report by the McKinsey Global Institute. This pace is significantly faster than the 1.3-per-cent rate since 1980.
Although the global economy is becoming more efficient at using energy, achieving a 1-per-cent annual increase in its rate of energy productivity, that modest pace alone will not slow overall growth in energy demand – or the associated greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet opportunities for improving energy productivity exist across all sectors. The largest is in the residential realm. As much as 5 per cent of the world’s total projected demand could be eliminated by using technologies such as high-insulation building shells, compact fluorescent lighting, and high-efficiency water heating. And in the industrial sector – in such areas as chemicals, oil refining, and steel manufacturing – investments could reduce projected demand by 7 to 10 per cent. If we could realize all the sectors’ opportunities, we could reduce the world’s projected energy consumption by a remarkable 20 to 24 per cent.
Doing so, however, will require correcting serious market inefficiencies and distortions that prevent consumers and companies from realizing savings linked to increasing their energy productivity. In particular, policy makers must let market mechanisms work effectively by removing subsidies that cushion consumers from the true impact of their energy waste.
(9 July 2007)
