Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We’re not talking about slamming the brakes on fossil fuels. Even as our contribution to creating Peak Oil awareness begins to see a little light (at least in some circles), I am concerned that we will be so worried about saving our own bacon or appearing to be rational that we will fail to take posterity into account. If we are to save just a little oil for our children, we need to just plain stop using oil (gas, coal).
Newly accessible natural gas from deep shale deposits around the world has been touted as a solution to everything from oil dependence to climate change. But our actual experience with shale gas extraction is telling another story.
Read the transcript from our live webchat about natural gas. David Hughes (author of ‘Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?’), Michael Bomford and Richard Gilbert answer questions from readers.
Read the transcript from our live webchat about natural gas. David Hughes (author of Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?), Michael Bomford and Richard Gilbert answer questions from readers.
Traditional price hawks Iran and Venezuela ganged up with Libya, Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Venezuela and Iraq to defeat the increase, proposed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, with voting largely determined by the distribution of spare capacity.
I was recently asked to participate in an energy roundtable at Focus on China’s Energy Future and the Shale Gas Question. It is no secret that I feel that China’s moves stand to continue sending shock waves through the energy markets over the upcoming years. In fact, energy news from China warranted inclusion in My Top 10 Energy Stories of both 2009 and 2010. In 2009, I stated my belief that “China will be the single-biggest driver of oil prices over at least the next 5-10 years.” In 2010, the news was reported by the International Energy Administration (IEA) that China had become the world’s top energy consumer. BP confirmed this in their just-released Statistical Review of World Energy 2011.
As supply and demand factors increasingly point to a future in which natural gas plays a greater role in the global energy mix, the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Monday released a special report exploring the potential for a “golden age” of gas. The new report, part of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2011 series, examines the key factors that could result in a more prominent role for natural gas in the global energy mix, and the implications for other fuels, energy security and climate change.
– Floating LNG: The Final Frontier Of The Gas Age
– GE Sees Solar Cheaper Than Fossil Power in Five Years
– Jolt of energy is bringing landfill mining to life
I’m not popular with environmentalists when I tell them that renewables can only provide a small fraction of the energy that fossil fuels do in powering industrial civilization. In fact, I was recently called a liar at the screening of an anti-nuke film for suggesting so.
Here’s one simple fact without which our deepening energy crisis makes no sense: the world economy is structured in such a way that standing still in energy production is not an option. In order to satisfy the staggering needs of older industrial powers like the United States along with the voracious thirst of rising powers like China, global energy must grow substantially every year. Even if usage grows somewhat more slowly than projected, any failure to satisfy the world’s requirements produces a perception of scarcity, which also means rising fuel prices. These are precisely the conditions we see today and should expect for the indefinite future. It is against this backdrop that three crucial developments of 2011 are changing the way we are likely to live on this planet for the foreseeable future.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-China
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
A recent Post-Carbon Institute paper, “Public Health Concerns of Shale Gas Production,” (contained in: Natural Gas Report Supplements: Public Health Agriculture & Transportation) is plagued by irony: the authors’ (Brian Schwartz and Cindy Parker) commitment to protect public health nonetheless defaults into placing business interests ahead of the public interest.
