First Anniversary of The Energy Blog

On the first anniversary of The Energy Blog I thought it would be appropriate to share some of my thoughts on where we stand in The Energy Revolution, where we are headed and some of the things that I have learned during the past year.

My initial interest in starting the blog was that I was concerned that the price of oil was increasing because of a shortage of oil. I wanted to learn more about it.  I soon became interested in the peak oil phenomena and was immediately sold on the idea that there was a finite amount of oil and that we were approaching the period of peak oil.  What took me quite a bit of time to get through my thick skull was that the term peak oil was used rather loosely and misleading conclusions were being reached by many.  What I have concluded is that we have passed the peak production of cheap,  easy to produce conventional oil and we are now entering an era where oil is going to be increasingly more expensive.  We have vast amounts of oil reserves in what is called sour oil, heavy oil, oilsands oil and shale oil.  The quantity of conventional sweet conventional oil is declining, but is being replaced by the more costly oil at a rate that is keeping up with demand.  Shale oil is still uneconomical and it will remain so for several decades, assuming no technological breakthrough in production costs.

Per capita demand is still increasing at very high rates in developing countries, especially China and India.  Demand in developed countries seems to be holding fairly steady but the per capita consumption is expected to decrease gradually.  In my opinion we will undergo fairly volatile price swings in oil with a bottom of $50 to $55 in the immediate future with the price escalating to $80 to $100 by 2015. Political unrest, tight supplies of production and tight refinery capacity all interact with each other to cause price volatility.  We are also faced with increased prices of natural gas, as the amount of LNG we have to import into the US every year increases.  The effect of high energy prices is beginning to show up in throughout our economy not only at the gas pump.  The understanding of this has led me to use the phrase increasingly expensive oil instead of the phrase declining supplies of oil.

Our immediate need is too develop alternate means of powering our vehicles that now depend almost exclusively on petroleum products.

The past year has brought about several important developments.  One of the first was the publication of the Hirsch report which was the first report that I saw that presented a plausible explanation of where we stood in the a looming energy crisis and what could be done about it.

LIQUID FUELS

It takes about 15 years after a technology is introduced into our vehicular fleet before it becomes mainstream.  Therefore I believe we must supplant our petroleum based fuels for the present, because we have no other solution in hand.  Although still controversial, increasing supplies of ethanol is the only short term solution.  We are now producing enough ethanol to have a significant impact on fuel supplies.  In fact we now have a shortage of ethanol, as ethanol is the only viable source for an oxidant in gasoline to replace MBTE.  Producing ethanol from corn is an unrealistic approach in the long run, because it would require too much land to grow the required quantities, but it is an interim solution that I support.  The fact that it is now being subsidized does not concern me, all fuels are subsidized.  It is a small price to pay to get an industry started.  Development of cellulosic ethanol that will increase the amount of ethanol that can be produced per acre of land is the longer term solution. A report by Oak Ridge was released during the past year indicating that up to 30% of our liquid fuels could be produced from cellulosic materials.

Technologies to produce cellulosic ethanol are available, but have not been demonstrated on a large enough scale to allow large scale adaptation.   DOE, as widely publicized by President Bush, has initiated a program to demonstrate this technology.  Private industry is going ahead on it own.  Xethanol Corporation (OTCBB:XTHN) has two plants in Iowa which they are using for development work on the process. Using enzyme pretreatment they can produce cellulosic ethanol and have announced plans to build several plants in the Southeast that will  produce ethanol from wood biomass residues. Colusa Biomas Energy Corporation (OTC: CLME.PK) is constructing a pilot plant in California to produce ethanol from rice straw using an acid pretreatment process. Producing ethanol from switchgrass is not at all competitive, as of this writing, and further development of enzymes is required for that feedstock.

The technology that is necessary to produce cars that don't depend or have minor dependency on liquid fuels are plug-in hybrids and all electric cars. The idea of plug-ins was almost unheard of when the blog was started, but now has become the buzzword of the cleantech community. Current lead-acid batteries are two heavy and have too short a life cycle to be useful in these vehicles. NiMH batteries, that are used in hybrids, are an improvement, but are still not good enough for plug-ins.  The two technologies that have come to the forefront are lithium-ion batteries and a new lead-acid battery being developed by Firefly, a spin-off from Catipillar.  Both of these battery types offer higher energy density, lower weight, smaller size and potentially lower cost than NIMH batteries.  Several companies are developing lithium ion batteries including A123, Altair, Johnson Controls, Kokum, LG Chem, NEC, Saft, Sanyo Electric and Valence.  More can be found in my, somewhat outdated already, post About Batteries. A123 appears to be the early leader in commercialization, but it could be anyone's game.

Coal liquefaction was identified by Hirsh as a major technology to get us through The Energy Revolution.  Synthetic diesel will be required to power our diesel engines which will remain a mainstay of our vehicular fleet for a long time. The process was invented in Germany in the 1920's, used by the Nazi's and then reduced to commercial practicality by predecessors of Sasol in South Africa.  It is now being developed in the US and China.  It is said to be competitive with oil when prices are above $40/bbl.  Two projects are underway in the US, the Gilberton project and the Medicine Bow project.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Renewable energy is primarily aimed at producing electricity, huge amounts of which will eventually be required to power our cars.  Wind power has been developed to the point where it is commercially viable and will play an important role in our future energy supplies.  Solar power, despite all its publicity, on the other hand still has quite a ways to go before it can contribute significantly to our energy supply. 

Thermal solar energy which uses the radiant energy of the sun to produce heat, which in turn is used to drive generators is the most advanced of the solar technologies.  A large number of sizable thermal solar power plants have been announced in the last year for construction in Israel, Spain and the US.  These plants still require substantial subsidies to compete with coal plants, but appear to be competitive with natural gas plants at at $0.12-$0.15 per kW for peaking duties. 

Photovoltaic solar energy is still quite expensive, at least $0.25 per kWhr.  Costs have actually gone up, in the last year, due to a shortage of silicon, for silicon cells that are used in the vast majority of solar panels. It is not expected that production of silicon will match demand until late 2008. Thin-film PV solar appears to be coming in to its own after several years of development.  Daystar and United Solar Ovionics are developing large scale production plants that will compete in capacity with the larger silicon cell producers and will probably produce solar cells at a lower price due lower cost manufacturing techniques.

Concentrating PV solar seems to have come to age in the last year and the industry is making noises that it will be the technology of the future.  I remain undecided.  Concentrating PV solar plants use a mirror or lens to concentrate the suns energy onto a small area where a PV cell is located.  An very high efficiency and expensive solar cell is place in the focus of the lens which converts the solar energy to electricity.  The lens or mirrors are much less expensive than an equivalently sized array of solar cells and more than compensate for the high cost of the solar cell.  This technology, like thermal solar, must track the sun to obtain sufficient efficiencies.  Studies have indicated that some concepts could have installed costs of $1 per kW, about the same value as have been indicated for thin-film solar panels .  A few, rather small units are coming into commercial production and I will have to wait for the tests of time to be totally convinced. SolFocus is developing a module that is claiming the lowest price.

Ocean power has emerged during the last year as another competitor in the renewable energy arena.  It offers the advantage of being less obtrusive than wind power whose obtrusiveness has become a major stumbling block in increasingly more proposed installations.  It offers the additional advantage in that it is somewhat less intermittent that wind power.  Its disadvantage seems to be that it is more mechanically complex. At least three companies have deployed full sized commercial prototypes in the last year  Ocean Power Delivery, Marine Current Technologies and Ocean Power Technologies .

COAL AND NUCLEAR POWER 

The only two sources for new generation capacity in the next 15 years (or some similar period whether it be 10 or 20 years) are going to be either coal or nuclear. Renewables cannot be developed at a fast enough pace to have any significant impact prior to that.

IGCC power plants are starting to emerge from the demonstration plant stage to the commercial stage by the announcement of ten or more commercial plants in the past year.  These plants are more expensive that clean coal plants, but offer even lower emissions of species pollutants.  If CO2 sequestration should be required in the future, the total cost including sequestration, would be lower than from clean coal plants.

It is inevitable that nuclear power is going to be a part of our energy mix, the question is how big a role will it play.  Several proposals have also been made for new nuclear plants using third generation technology which is inherently safer and less costly than the plants now in operation. The plants will be safer because they are designed to be fail safe.  Also contributing to the safety is that they are less complex, having fewer parts that could fail.  Studies have indicated that the electricity produced from these plants will be the lowest cost of any form of production. The Westinghouse AP1000 is one of two nuclear power plant designs that are expected to be built in the US.

ENERGY STORAGE

Flow batteries are the emerging energy storage technology that has the capability to store energy for long periods and in large quantities, that do not depend on geological formations, as required for compressed air energy storage. They may be the technology that enables renewable energy sources to overcome their intermittency and by making it possibe that their energy will be available when needed.  They also serve an important purpose in the electric utility industry by enabling them to have more reliable distribution and to deliver power at the time when demand is the greatest. The vanadium redox battery (VRB) energy storage system is a flow battery that is capable of storing energy in multi megawatt ranges and for durations of hours or days - from any available input source such as the grid, renewable resources or a diesel generator.

Ultracapacitors are starting to be used in applications that will have a serious impact on fuel consumption of vehicles.  They offer the advantages because 1)they can absorb more power from regenerative braking than a battery 2) they have a longer lifetime, 3) they have excellent performance, much better than batteries, at low temperatures and 4) they increase the lifetime of batteries if they are used in parallel with a battery.  They have proven themselves in applications such as light rail vehicles, buses, concept cars and fork lift vehicles.  Although they perform well, they are currently too expensive to use in cars, but prices are coming down with higher volume production. Another criticism of current ultracapacitors is that they do not have a high enough energy density to be easily packaged in smaller vehicles which may prevent them from replacing batteries which they have been shown to be able to do in large vehicles.    Only one manufacturer, Maxwell, is currently furnishing them for vehicular use.  A second manufacturer EEStor is developing an ultracapacitor that is believed to have a much higher energy density.

RESEARCH

Direct carbon fuel cells are a long shot at the present, but their potential to use coal directly, at an efficiency comparable to an IGCC plant, without the need for carbon sequestration makes them the major basic research candidate on my list.

HYDROGEN

I have come to the conclusion that the hydrogen economy, as far as providing a way to power vehicles is a very wasteful use of energy.  Producing and distributing hydrogen for vehicles uses much more energy than is required to produce and distribute electricity to charge batteries and we already have an infrastructure for distributing electricity.  The advances being made in batteries far outstrips the advances being made in producing fuel cells.  Their is a clear path to the battery technology required for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, where their still are major unknowns in the development of fuel cells.  Many billions could be saved by reducing federal expenditures for the hydrogen economy and using a small portion of it to develop better batteries and other renewable technologies.  There are benefits to developing the solid oxide fuel cell and other fuel cells for CHP applications and for use in IGCC power plants, but that is all I see at the present.

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The Energy Blog: First Anniversary of The Energy Blog

Comments

[Cervus]

I first encountered Peak Oil almost a year ago. And I have to say that I obcessed about it so much it nearly ruined my life.

Then I discovered Green Fuel Technologies. And this article from Mike Briggs of the UNH Biodisel Group. GreenFuel Tech is one of three companies researching algae as a fuel source. The growth rates and volumes get you thousands of gallons per acre/year of oil that can easily be turned into biodiesel. If the emissions from our powerplants were utilized, we'd get 40 billion gallons per year. GreenFuel hopes to start full scale production by 2009.

From reading your blog and others, I now have hope for the future. I expect to pay $4 a gallon for gas soon, though. We have a rough patch to get through.

[Rod Adams]

There are sure a lot of players in the game, providing lots of opportunities for interesting articles and for government subsidized research and demonstration projects.

Of course, the nuclear industry loves its subsidies, but the payback has been a little different. Despite focused and intense opposition that is not faced by any other new energy source, the nuclear industry managed to build about 450 commercial reactor plants that produce the equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil per day. They do this without producing any pollution at the plants and with very minor impact on land and transportation systems.

Though you only briefly mentioned new projects and talked about 3rd generation plants, there are a number of very real 4th generation plant projects in the works that will also add to the total energy picture in ways that most other alternatives can only dream about.

The decreasing quantity of easy oil would definitely concern me more if we did not have much uranium, plutonium or thorium. Fortunately, those heavy metal resources are quite abundant and we now know a lot more than we did 50 years ago about how to put them to work for the benefit of mankind.

[amazingdrx]

"They do this without producing any pollution at the plants"

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/17/1825975.html

Have a glass of tritium? Anyone?

[amazingdrx]

Jim I think you overlooked a very important battery development. It goes on the market any day now in the form of power tool batteries.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/12/9/1442710.html

DeWalt power tools will feature this battery very soon. Then estimates of weight, cost, and range in electric cars can be specified.

Wind, water, and solar electric power charging these batteries in electric vehicles can provide national distributed energy storage for the grid as well as a cost effective solution to global climate disaster, energy wars, and the economic decline of these US of america.

This is the KEY technology in this energy revolution.

[JN2]

Congratulations on your blog's first year! I read it every day :)

But as for nuclear, would it really be viable without (socialist) government backed insurance and waste disposal?

[amazingdrx]

You got it Jim! Nice article.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/03/altairnanos_lit.html

I think this could be THE electric car design. Too bad Toyota or Honda (forget Detroit they are being outsource to China) did not get the job of developing it.

I'm afraid this Nevada company may be designed to bury this technology. Just as the Cape Wind project seems to be designed to bury wind power.

[amazingdrx]

"...would it really be viable without (socialist) government backed insurance and waste disposal?"

Nope. Nuclear power poses uninsurable risks.

No insurance company would ever touch 'em. Without that legislated pass on liability nuclear power would be shut down tomorow.

This latest leak of tritium in Illinois should be the death knell of nukes. There is NO economical way to get that tritium out of groundwater once it is in it.

Separating heavy water (containing tritium)from water is so energy intensive it would use up orders of magnitude more energy than ever was produced by nuclear power.

[amazingdrx]

Jim do you have any news on large scale superconducting energy storage?

It would seem to be the ultimate solution to the variability problem of renewable energy.

[Cervus]

drx:

And what would you replace the nukes with? Coal? Dams? A hundred square miles of wind turbines?

The fact is that we need it. And we need more of it.

[amazingdrx]

No, I am suggesting 15,000 square miles of wind,over a national prairie restoration park. That would replace half of current electric power needs.

Then solar cogeneration on every suitable roof and over every suitable parking lot. Along with small and medium wind power in home and small business installations.

And offshore floating wind power stations that incorporate wave power in their base.

Electric plugin vehicles that store power and superconducting energy storage would even out the supply and demand.

With solar heating/cooling and geothermal heat pumps the energy load would be reduced precipitously.

Nukes are not needed. The catastrophic pollution that they create and the very high cost compared to renewable sources makes them obsolete and way too dangerous.

[Rod Adams]

amazingdrx:

I would willingly drink the water coming out of the wells to which you refer where there is a slight amount of tritium. The levels are far below the EPA's own drinking water standards, which are quite conservative in the first place. There is no grounds whatsoever for thinking that tritium leaks should spell the "death knell" for nuclear power.

Tritium is a dangerous sounding term, but it is a naturally occurring isotope that emits a very low energy beta particle. Since water moves through human bodies quite rapidly, there is little retention or build up of this isotope even if it is consumed.

If you want real information about tritium - rather than scare tactics like those used in many posts by people like amazingdrx, you can find it at

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/tritium.htm

Here is a sample quote from that page: "However, tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides because it emits very weak radiation and leaves the body relatively quickly."

[amazingdrx]

What about the cancer incidents rod?

That "it passes right through" dodge would be fine if this contaminant was only spread through one glass of water, but when it permeates all our groundwater it will pass through all of us everyday in the food we eat and drink.

Tritium will not be removed by filtration or even distillation. To quote General Ripper in "Dr. Strangelive", tritium will contaminate all of our precious bodily fluids. No laughing matter!

[JesseJenkins]

Congratulations on an excellent year of blogging, Jim. Your blog was the first and still the best energy blog I've found and it inspired me to start my own. You do an excellent job. Keep it up; I look forward to the coming year full of posts.

And thanks for a nice summary of where we currently stand.

One question: you write, "These plants [IGCC plants] are more expensive that clean coal plants, but offer even lower emissions of species pollutants."

I'm not sure what your comparison is here. I was under the impression that IGCC plants with sequestration was what 'Clean Coal' referred to? What do you mean here by 'clean coal'?

[amazingdrx]

This so-called "sequestration" by pumping CO 2 down old oil wells is pure propaganda.

It will depend upon industry "self regulation". Which means no regulation. We will be told to just accept industry/government claimds with zero proof.

Even if CO 2 is ever pumped into the earth, no one will moniter it to see it is not leaking out somewhere else.

Only renewable electric powered transportation will save us from global climate disaster.