Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
How fast do we need to transition off of fossil fuels? What industrial capacity is available today for different alternative energy technologies and what is likely to be available in the future? What might we do if we can’t replace fossil fuels with alternatives fast enough, and what might the consequences be? I finally got around to re-doing these calculations, and wanted to go through the numbers.
It is becoming standard procedure these days to decry those who oppose you politically as radicals as in “radical agenda,” “radical views,” “radical friends,” and “radical past.” Often this refers to suggested changes in policies that are no more than a few decades old. But I’d like to do something that will seem truly radical to those who are narrowly focused on the contemporary world. I want to look at what might be regarded as radical when considering not the last few decades, but the last 100,000 years.
The key to the future of shale gas is its EROI. I’ve been unable to find estimates of the EROI of shale gas in the literature. However, I’ve made a preliminary first-order estimate that the EROI of shale gas is in the range of 70 to greater than 100. This is probably significantly better than most other energy sources available today.
Markets plunged again on Thursday as warnings of a double dip recession grow louder. Morgan Stanley described the eurozone and the US as “dangerously close to a recession”. Yet oil prices have softened only slightly, and Brent crude remains above $105/barrel…
-The explosive truth behind Fukushima’s meltdown
-Cracked Fukushima: Radioactive steam escapes danger zone
-Mushrooms Join Growing List of Radioactive Threats to Japan’s Food Chain
-5 Months After Meltdown, Fukushima Citizens Still Face Radioactive Risks
-Japan utility may face delay in Fukushima cleanup plan
-Fukushima Daiichi Radioactivity Down to 20% of July Levels
-Japan reopens first nuclear reactor since tsunami
-The Secretary of Energy Advisor Board Shale Gas Production Subcommittee Ninety-Day Report – August 11, 2011
-Gas Fracking Poses Serious Environmental Risks, Panel Finds
-Panel Seeks Stiffer Rules for Drilling of Gas Wells
Let’s face it! The whole fossil fuel thing – widespread use of coal, oil, and natural gas could not have happened without technological advances. Without the steam engine, the coal age would have been limited to a handful of people living near surface coal seams and burning coal for heat and cooking, and perhaps a little metal smelting. All the rest of the industrial age – the internal combustion engine and nearly everything else grew out of some technological development coupled and the abundant energy from fossil fuels.
In my last post, I looked at the Internet’s energy use, broadly construed, and contended that we might offload other societal functions onto the Internet. In this post I’d like to consider in what ways that might be an unwise approach given the dependencies of the Internet.
At the moment I’m using the Internet, as are you. In many ways, the Internet is the largest and perhaps most successful global system ever built by humanity. And yet because of the way it was built—haphazardly, over the course of a few decades—there are no maps, no records documenting its entire structure. Recently a colleague and I did a holistic study, the first of its kind to our knowledge, to understand the energy and embodied energy use of the Internet. Here I’d like to report on what we found.
Profits were up at the supermajors again in Q2 as high oil prices offset the rising cost of new production. Shell’s Peter Voser said that high prices were having an effect on demand for oil, especially in Europe – this could be seen reflected in flat UK growth figures and weak numbers even for major German manufacturing companies.
At a time when sustainability is key to future operations it can be questioned whether the injection of toxic chemicals in the underground should be allowed, or whether it should be banned as such a practice would restrict or exclude any later use of the contaminated layer (e.g. for geothermal purposes) and as long-term effects are not investigated. In an active shale gas extraction area, about 0.1-0.5 litres of chemicals are injected per square metre.
This holds even more as the potential shale gas plays are too small to have a substantial impact on the European gas supply situation.
The present privileges of oil and gas exploration and extraction should be reassessed in view of the fact that the environmental risks and burdens are not compensated for by a corresponding potential benefit as the specific gas production is very low.
Dreams of exploiting mineral wealth on other celestial bodies lurk not only in the minds of young boys, but also in the minds of intelligent and completely sane adults. The most recent iteration of this dream comes from scientists working on fusion energy.
