Electricity

It’s a race to failure between rogue states and global oil output

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Dwindling global oil supplies are leaving the world ever more reliant on a group of unstable countries – many of which are themselves facing major domestic problems right now.
Believe it or not, many of the world’s major oil exporters cannot maintain their own domestic energy requirements. Venezuelan consumers endure electricity blackouts of “seven or eight hours a day,” but less well known is the situation in the Middle East, where residents are facing rolling power outages just as summer temperatures soar, and with it, the demand for air conditioning.

EROEI of electricity generation

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“Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) is calculated as the ratio between energy inputs and energy outputs for an energy generating technology. A process that uses more energy than it produces is by definition unsustainable in the long term. Technologies which require fuel generally have a lower EROEI than those which can extract “free” energy from the environment (wind, waves, tides, sunlight). As part of this study we have a carried out a review of published EROEIs and have found a high EROEI for marine technologies, lower EROEIs for solar and nuclear power, and still lower for coal and gas.

Renewables & efficiency – July 16

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-Germany targets switch to 100% renewables for its electricity by 2050
-Report sees need for 500 additional biofuels plants
-No link between wind turbines and health: report
-Residents reject wind farm health findings
-Locally Owned Wind Power: Quaint it Ain’t

How not to fry: Keeping cool without air conditioning

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The northeast is having its first heatwave of the year, and I thought it was a good time to re-run a piece I wrote about what to do in extreme heat if you don’t have air conditioning. Because we all know what heatwaves mean – not just physical stress, health crises and unnecessary deaths from heat, but also blackouts and brownouts as everyone charges up their a/c. So what do you do when the power is out and the heat is on? These suggestions include, I think, the most important strategy – be aware of other people.

Creating a post-peak future you will want to live into

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The future most people are living into is beginning to disappear. The financial crisis threw the first punch, but oil depletion will deliver the knockout blow. The moment people realize that the society they have known their whole life can no longer function the same way without the energy provided by oil, it will become glaringly apparent that the future will be very, very different.

Natural gas – June 21

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-The Costs of Natural Gas, Including Flaming Water
-Marcellus Shale gas drilling put under microscope: Moratorium weighed as towns, people wary of potential mishaps
-Struggle for Central Asian energy riches
-Russia Cuts Gas Deliveries to Belarus

A tepid plea for unspecified change

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Last night’s presidential speech on the Gulf oil spill had been pre-billed by the Washington Post as Barack Obama’s “Jimmy Carter moment.” But reading any of Carter’s speeches (a good one to start with is that of April 18, 1977) side by side with last night’s bromide is an invitation to nostalgia and bitter disappointment.

Review: Thriving Beyond Sustainability by Andrés R. Edwards

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Given what a sweeping category sustainability is, author and noted sustainability expert Andrés Edwards is to be commended for distilling it down into two easily digestible volumes for lay readers: The Sustainability Revolution and Thriving Beyond Sustainability.