Sales of the GM Volt.

[Wiglaf]

I'm not sure how much it was talked about in the thread, but this was a good article I've read:
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679391/t...ciency-records

This is great news, that's about TWICE the efficiency that current mass-produced cells are giving us.

And for solar we can use flywheel energy storage. Weight is of no concern since these aren't going on a vehicle.

And no, before anyone asks, even 100% efficient cells would not produce enough energy to power an average car for daily use.

[gwb72tii]

that still doesnt answer my question, and that scenario doesnt take place for decades, if not centuries, and during that time alternative energy can be sourced (not rammed down our throats), but who decided 'green' was the new go to? the market sure as hell didnt

Obama's political donor's for one

Anyone here know what the breakeven point is for a wind mill power generator, power delivered vs cost?
Something north of 15 years because of the energy needed in the manufacturing the various pieces of steel, wire etc
But its been blessed as green so its a go

[KenC]

Obama's political donor's for one

Anyone here know what the breakeven point is for a wind mill power generator, power delivered vs cost?
Something north of 15 years because of the energy needed in the manufacturing the various pieces of steel, wire etc
But its been blessed as green so its a go

They're expensive to make, and current carbon-based electricity rates are quite low. They're a long term strategy anyway.

[rwh11385]

"So, is this an historic anomaly? No. Let’s look at more recent data. In 1980, according to the Energy Information Administration, the United States had 31.3 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. However, between 1980 and 2010, the United States produced 77.8 billion barrels of oil and still had 20.7 billion barrels of oil reserves left. In other words, between 1980 and 2010, the United States produced 2.5 times the amount of oil as it has proven oil reserves in 1980."


http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/45229

You did read where two of the scenarios included a 5% discovery rate, right?

5% new discoveries each year, in 30 years (1980-2010) would be 4.32 times the original amount, or 135B (compared to 98.5 of reality).

Even if you spend all of your energy and wanting the federal government to support "drilling, baby, drilling", to chase ever more elusive and difficult and expensive to find and process oil, we'll probably reach the point of uneconomical in our life times.

At some point, the returns won't merit the costs, and instead of investing all that time and energy into oil, which would yield a massive panic and depression... why not put some effort and research into minimizing our demand and finding the technology that allows us to succeed in the future, not just remain happy in our glory days of "cheap oil"? Europe is working hard to ready itself for a post-fossil world, and the middle-east is living it up while they can...

[nando]

that still doesnt answer my question, and that scenario doesnt take place for decades, if not centuries, and during that time alternative energy can be sourced (not rammed down our throats), but who decided 'green' was the new go to? the market sure as hell didnt

I think the transition will happen faster than you expect. Right now the infrastructure isn't there, but working in the oil industry - the writing is on the wall. it's not just straight line consumption, but energy demand grows every year too, and there are still billions of people on earth with no electricity, or roads, or cars, or any of the things that consume vast amounts of energy.

I seriously doubt we have a century of "cheap" oil production left when you consider growth rates. It could happen in the next 20 years, which is short given the technical challenges we face.

plus there are a lot of other negatives that come with oil use, both environmental and geopolitcal. Could you imagine if we could tell Chavez and Iran etc. to go fuck themselves, because we have our own renewable energy sources? Their governments would crumble without oil profits.

[rwh11385]

Energy storage is a different beast than its capture from environmental sources. It's essentially electron storage no matter the source. Battery technology is the bottleneck in the system. Right now, as far as I know, Tesla uses the "best" batteries available, but the cost is astronomical. If we had the ability to effectively store solar and wind power, North and South Dakota would be one large wind and solar "farm."

The solution is within the link Bobby posted. We need cheap and efficient capture/conversion devices. Placement of these devices at the home (or commercial building) of the end-user where the produced energy is used immediately is going to be the best solution.

Yup, one of the challenges of solar / wind generation is they are not on-demand resources, and will need a 'smart grid' to utilize them. But on the plus side, once we include enough energy storage devices on the grid, brown-outs should be a thing of the past.

Fortunately, batteries have only seen their start of technological progress, compared to oil and IC engines which have had many more years of research and development. The costs will come down, as will we develop better alternatives such as kinetic energy storage (flywheel).

They're expensive to make, and current carbon-based electricity rates are quite low. They're a long term strategy anyway.

Yup. 15 years is a common number, but it depends a lot on the turbine size, the wind, the local cost of electricity, etc. But there's some counties here that have both sides of the interstate lined with wind turbines all along the corn fields. 15 is still a reasonable amount less than usable life of them so profitable.

More importantly, if people don't adopt early now when the technology just barely is economical, then we won't have progress and innovation BEFORE we really need it.

Frankly, you can absolutely count on energy prices to continue to increase, as well as fossil resources to eventually decline, and technology to improve more in green energy and cost to come down. Now you might laugh at 15 year payback period, but it'll be shortened in the future as we continue on.

[rwh11385]

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/technology_and_impacts/impacts/farming-the-wind-wind-power.html

Wind power is the fastest-growing energy source in the world,with annual average growth of 32 percent between 1998 and 2002.

http://www.20percentwind.org/AWEA20percentReportCard09.pdf

The report required annual installations of 3,260 MW in 2008, bringing the cumulative total at the end of 2008 to 17,970 MW. In actuality in 2008, the U.S. wind energy industry brought online over 8,500 MW of new wind power capacity, increasing the nation’s cumulative total by 50% to over 25,300 MW.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/02/global-wind-installations-boom-up-31-in-2009

The Global Wind Energy Council this week announced that the world's wind power capacity grew by 31% in 2009, adding 37.5 gigawatts (GW) to bring total installations up to 157.9 GW. A third of these additions were made in China, which experienced yet another year of over 100% growth. The main markets driving this significant growth continue to be Asia, North America and Europe, each of which installed more than 10 GW of new wind capacity in 2009.
...

The U.S. wind energy market installed nearly 10 GW in 2009, increasing the country's installed capacity by 39% and bringing the total installed, grid-connected capacity to 35 GW. In early 2009, some analysts had foreseen a drop in wind power development of as much as 50%, but the implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with its strong focus on wind energy development in the summer reversed this trend.

That 50% drop happened in 2010, but what industry wasn't affected by the recession?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...awea-says.html
U.S. Wind-Turbine Installations Rose 31% in 2011

http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/world-wind-power-climbs-new-record-2011.html

World Wind Power Climbs to New Record in 2011

Wind energy developers installed a record 41,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity in 2011, bringing the world total to 238,000 megawatts. With more than 80 countries now harnessing the wind, there is enough installed wind power capacity worldwide to meet the residential electricity needs of 380 million people at the European level of consumption.


China led all countries in annual wind power gains for the third straight year, installing a jaw-dropping 18,000 megawatts for a total wind capacity of 63,000 megawatts. This country’s rise to the top of the world rankings has been swift: after doubling its wind capacity each year from 2005 to 2009, China surpassed the United States in 2010.

Now trailing well behind China, the United States installed 6,800 megawatts of wind generating capacity in 2011. The U.S. wind fleet now totals nearly 47,000 megawatts across 38 states, enough to meet the electricity demand of more than 10 million homes. Another 10,000 megawatts could be on the way in 2012. The outlook for 2013 is not as upbeat, however. If an important tax credit expires at the end of 2012, as scheduled, the industry fears a precipitous drop in new wind capacity. This would put thousands of jobs at risk in what has been a welcome success story in U.S. manufacturing.

Texas, now with 10,400 megawatts installed, has been atop the U.S. wind leaderboard since 2006. Next in line is Iowa, with 4,300 megawatts. In share of electricity generated from wind, Iowa and South Dakota lead at 20 percent each. Texas, home to 25 million people, gets 8 percent of its electricity from wind farms.

In the end, the installations may be costly, but the source is free (wind). No digging, no drilling, not much labor but maintenance or the original manufacturing. The wind won't charge more for its services. On the other hand, oil price can climb and so can other fossil-based energy prices.

In the competitive global environment, if a nation is better prepared for the futurescape of expensive fossil fuels, then they will outmatch us. We might have soared during the industrial revolution, and trade, and harnessed our agricultural assets, but if we have our economy built on cheap oil and can't compete with expensive fossil fuels, we'll be hardpressed to keep up with the rest of the world in the coming century without plentiful renewable energy sources.

Using up all our possible reserves to lower gas prices for consumers = not strategic.
Finding technological advances that give us the upper hand in the future of expensive fossil fuels = strategic
We could keep paying to subsidize finding the last bits of oil so oil companies can make profits and we can enjoy cruising around as we do in our status quo, but we could be far out-prepared by Germany and other European countries as well as China in the future if we stick die hard to oil, a resource we don't even dominate the world in.

[z31maniac]

My point in posting the article was not to say we shouldn't be exploring renewable/responsible/green sources of energy, just that all the hysteria around "peak oil" and the like is just that, hysteria.

[rwh11385]

My point in posting the article was not to say we shouldn't be exploring renewable/responsible/green sources of energy, just that all the hysteria around "peak oil" and the like is just that, hysteria.

So do you believe that in a point beyond the near future (say, a generation, 20 years) in which the world will be producing more oil than they were the previous year? Do you expect oil to be produced at an ever increasing amount forever?

[z31maniac]

So do you believe that in a point beyond the near future (say, a generation, 20 years) in which the world will be producing more oil than they were the previous year? Do you expect oil to be produced at an ever increasing amount forever?

Depends on if they allow development of lands that are known to hold substantial reserves.

No, of course not. But the peak oil, the sky is falling rhetoric has been happening since the 70s.

[rwh11385]

Depends on if they allow development of lands that are known to hold substantial reserves.

No, of course not. But the peak oil, the sky is falling rhetoric has been happening since the 70s.

So, the US should 'burn up' all the oil it make have at its feet in order to placate its cheap-oil-hungry populace? Disregarding any notation that a long, drawn-out war with limited oil supplied from outside powers would cripple some of our resources because of oil shortage? Until we have more of our military vehicles running on biofuels or other forms of energy (obviously military ships are covered already), then I'd not sacrifice oil on federal lands to satisfy voters in gas guzzlers just yet.


So who said the sky is falling? Ignoring global trends completely will leave the US absolutely unprepared for the future. You might as well assume food prices are momentary and not a result of growing global demand either.

[rwh11385]

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_inte...ok_booklet.pdf

Even an oil company is doubtful that the US will produce much more oil than it already is, and North America may see some oil sand production... but not nearly as much as biofuel.

Oil is expected to be the slowest-growing fuel over the next 20 years.

[Demand] Growth comes exclusively from rapidly-growing non-OECD economies. NonOECD Asia accounts for more than three-quarters of the net global increase, rising by nearly 13 Mb/d. The Middle East and South & Central America will also grow significantly.

OECD demand has likely peaked (in 2005), and consumption is expected to decline by just over 4 Mb/d

Non-OPEC supply will continue to rise, albeit modestly. A large increase in biofuels supply, along with smaller increments from Canadian oil sands, deepwater Brazil, and the FSU should offset continued declines in a number of mature provinces.

Non-OPEC output will rise by nearly 4 Mb/d. Unconventional supply growth should more than offset declining conventional output, with biofuels adding nearly 5 Mb/d and oil sands rising by nearly 2 Mb/d.

The growth of oil in transport slows even more dramatically, largely because of displacement of oil by biofuels and is likely to plateau in the mid-2020s. Currently, biofuels contribute 3% on an energy basis and this is forecast to rise to 9% at the expense of oil’s share.

The US and Brazil will continue to dominate production; together they account for 68% of total output in 2030 (from 76% in 2010). Firstgeneration biofuels are expected to account for most of the growth.

After 2020, roughly 40% of global liquids demand growth will be met by biofuels – up from 13% in 2010 – with the US and Europe leading consumption growth. By 2030, this figure approaches 60%.

Overall consumption growth will be restrained by the increase in crude oil prices seen in recent years and by the continued, gradual reduction of subsidies in non-OECD countries.

[z31maniac]

So, the US should 'burn up' all the oil it make have at its feet in order to placate its cheap-oil-hungry populace? Disregarding any notation that a long, drawn-out war with limited oil supplied from outside powers would cripple some of our resources because of oil shortage? Until we have more of our military vehicles running on biofuels or other forms of energy (obviously military ships are covered already), then I'd not sacrifice oil on federal lands to satisfy voters in gas guzzlers just yet.


So who said the sky is falling? Ignoring global trends completely will leave the US absolutely unprepared for the future. You might as well assume food prices are momentary and not a result of growing global demand either.

It's amazing the way you will try twist and deconstruct a statement so that you can prove it wrong.

Read what you quoted again, I did not imply any of that.

[rwh11385]

It's amazing the way you will try twist and deconstruct a statement so that you can prove it wrong.

Read what you quoted again, I did not imply any of that.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/45229

Then what did you imply? You included a link which concluded that federal land and waters should be opened up to oil exploration. Hence, my rebuttal that oil under the control of the federal government shouldn't be offered up as a means to perpetuate our spoiled expectations of cheap gas.

[z31maniac]

I was refuting your assertion of 20bbl in "proved" reserves, and how the amount of "proved" reserves changes with exploration and improved drilling techniques.

And if you compare the price 10 years ago to now, and what it will be 10 more years form now, I'm not sure the alternatives will catch up quickly enough to offset what will likely be $225-250 a barrel oil, possibly even higher.

So more exploration now, could help make it an easier transition.