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Covid is at the center of world’s energy crunch, but a cascade of problems is fueling it

Covid is at the center of world’s energy crunch, but a cascade of problems is fueling it

“It’s like a car that’s been taken off the road for a while and now we want to restart it quickly — it takes time,” according to an expert.
A man uses his smartphone flashlight to light up his bowl of noodles at a restaurant during a blackout in northeastern China.

A man uses his smartphone flashlight to light up his bowl of noodles at a restaurant during a blackout in northeastern China.Olivia Zhang / AP

LONDON — Much of the world is suffering a punishing energy crisis.

Homes and factories across China are shrouded in darkness. India’s coal-fired power stations are running on scraps. Dozens of British utilities firms have gone bust. Spain announced emergency legislation after household utility bills shot up more than a third in one year. And there are fears that a harsh winter in the United States could deliver Americans’ most expensive heating costs in years.

Energy shortages are sweeping the world even before winter’s cruelest months freeze the Northern Hemisphere, and officials and experts point out that the multiple issues behind the crunch will make solutions harder to come by.

This cocktail of causes is a mix of bad weather, China trying to kick its addiction to dirty coal and even allegations that Russia is throttling the natural gas market for political gain. But most experts agree the central driving force has been the Covid-19 rebound. Stirring out of lockdowns, people are simply consuming energy faster than production can be rekindled after a year of idling.

“It’s like a car that’s been taken off the road for a while and now we want to restart it quickly — it takes time,” said Jianzhong Wu, a professor specializing in energy infrastructure at Wales’ Cardiff University.

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The age of fossil fuel abundance is dead

Workers at Buncefield oil depot, known as the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal. British military personnel have begun delivering fuel to gas stations after a shortage of truck drivers disrupted supplies for more than a week, leading to long lines at the pumps as anxious drivers scrambled to fill their tanks.
JOE GIDDENS/AP
Workers at Buncefield oil depot, known as the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal. British military personnel have begun delivering fuel to gas stations after a shortage of truck drivers disrupted supplies for more than a week, leading to long lines at the pumps as anxious drivers scrambled to fill their tanks.

ANALYSIS: For much of the past half-decade, the operative word in the energy sector was “abundance”.

An industry that had long sought to ration the production of fossil fuels to keep prices high suddenly found itself swamped with oversupply, as America’s shale boom lowered the price of oil around the world and clean-energy sources, such as wind and solar, competed with other fuels used for power generation, such as coal and natural gas.

In recent weeks, however, it is a shortage of energy, rather than an abundance of it, that has caught the world’s attention. On the surface, its manifestations are mostly unconnected. Britain’s miffed motorists are suffering from a shortage of lorry drivers to deliver petrol.

Power cuts in parts of China partly stem from the country’s attempts to curb emissions. Dwindling coal stocks at power stations in India are linked to a surge in the price of imports of the commodity.

Yet an underlying factor is expected to make scarcity even worse in the next few years: a slump in investment in oil wells, natural-gas hubs and coal mines. This is partly a hangover from the period of abundance, with years of overinvestment giving rise to more capital discipline. It is also the result of growing pressures to decarbonise.

This year the investment shortfall is one of the main reasons prices of all three energy commodities have soared.

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An energy crisis is gripping the world, with potentially grave consequences

How China and Europe are catching the brunt of it

The cooling towers at the coal-fired NTPC Ltd. Dadri Power Plant in Uttar Pradesh, India. The country, which relies on coal for about 70 percent of electricity generation, has already seen signs of power shortages. (Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg News)

Energy is so hard to come by right now that some provinces in China are rationing electricity, Europeans are paying sky-high prices for liquefied natural gas, power plants in India are on the verge of running out of coal, and the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States stood at $3.25 on Friday — up from $1.72 in April.

As the global economy recovers and global leaders prepare to gather for a landmark conference on climate change, the sudden energy crunch hitting the world is threatening already stressed supply chains, stirring geopolitical tensions and raising questions about whether the world is ready for the green energy revolution when it’s having trouble powering itself right now.

The economic recovery from the pandemic recession lies behind the crisis, coming after a year of retrenchment in coal, oil and gas extraction. Other factors include an unusually cold winter in Europe that drained reserves, a series of hurricanes that forced shutdowns of Gulf oil refineries, a turn for the worse in relations between China and Australia that led Beijing to stop importing coal from Down Under, and a protracted calm spell over the North Sea that has sharply curtailed the output of electricity-generating wind turbines.

“It radiates from one energy market to another,” said Daniel Yergin, author of “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.”

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Australia’s diesel imports on record high Update June 2021

Australia’s diesel imports on record high Update June 2021

Australia’s monthly diesel imports reached a record of 2,360 ML (495 kb/d) in June 2021. While it is common for imports to vary from month to month there is a long term increasing trend. This is caused by diesel consumption on a continuing growth path while Australian refineries are shutting down.

Fig 1: Diesel imports timeline – by country

We see that under the increasing trend there are other structural changes taking place. Imports from Japan went down.

Fig 2: Diesel imports from Japan dropped by 75%

Japan’s refining capacity and throughput is on a long-term decline

Fig 3: Japan’s refining sector (sixth largest in world)

The reasons for the reduction in oil demand are Japan’s declining and aging population, high energy efficiency measures and an expanding fleet of hybrid and electric vehicles. Refinery throughput dropped by 550 kb/d in 2020 due to Covid.

In February 2021 there was an earthquake which hit 20% of Japan’s refining capacity
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-refinery-operations-fuji-oil-co-idUSKBN2AF0YZ

Fig 4: Diesel imports from North East Asian countries and China’s refinery in Brunei

Australia’s declining diesel imports from Japan and to a certain extend from South Korea have been replaced by imports from China, Taiwan and a brand new Chinese refinery in Brunei, thereby creating new dependencies in a concerning context:

7/9/2021 Taiwanese air force responds to incursion by 19 Chinese warplanes as Beijing stays silent
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-07/chinese-warplanes-enter-taiwanese-air-space/100439132

Fig 5: Diesel imports from China

Fig 6: Diesel imports from Brunei

More details are in this post:

25/3/2021 Brunei peak oil – golden opportunity for China’s Belt and Road Initiative
https://crudeoilpeak.info/brunei-peak-oil-golden-opportunity-for-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative

Let’s zoom into the last 4 ½ years:

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How will 500,000 products made with fossils as feedstock & process energy be created post fossil fuels?

How will 500,000 products made with fossils as feedstock & process energy be created post fossil fuels?

Preface. It is quite likely that after fossils are gone, plastics will no longer be made, since they are incredibly complex – PhDs in numerous fields make them possible – and most kinds have been around for only 50 years or less. Thwaites (2011) showed how hard replicating a complex process that we take for granted would be by performing a simple exercise:  He tried to make an ordinary toaster from scratch. Even the simplest toaster had 404 parts of plastic, steel, mica, copper, and nickel. After a great deal of struggle, he was able to make the metal pieces, which mankind has made since the Iron Age. But plastics were beyond him. He’d have had to refine crude oil to make propylene, which takes at least six chemical transformations to make into the simplest plastic, polyethylene.

Crude oil is the feedstock for half a million products. What follows is a description of how plastic is made. My book “Life After Fossil Fuels” discusses plastic in more depth — how much biomass is needed, how to replace asphalt and lubricants, and recycling.

***

We consume about ONE BILLION TONS of products a year. We live like kings. Of all the fossil fuels we use in a year, about seven percent – 500 million metric tons of oil equivalent, the weight of all the people on earth – is used as both feedstock and energy to make these one billion tons of products (IEA 2018).  Mostly its oil for high-value chemicals. Natural gas and coal are used to make ammonia and methanol, but difficult to turn into other products because they require multiple energy-intensive steps (IEA 2018, KAUST 2020).

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Energy Crisis May Unleash Winter Blackouts Across US, Insider Warns 

Energy Crisis May Unleash Winter Blackouts Across US, Insider Warns 

The energy crisis that is rippling through Asia and Europe could unleash electricity shortages and blackouts in the U.S., according to Bloomberg.

Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC., told energy research firm IHS Markit that U.S. utilities quickly turn to more coal because of soaring natural gas prices.

We’ve actually had discussions with power utilities who are concerned that they simply will have to implement blackouts this winter,” Thrasher warned.

He said, “They don’t see where the fuel is coming from to meet demand,” adding that 23% of utilities are switching away from gas this fall/winter to burn more coal. 

With natgas, coal, and oil prices all soaring is a clear signal the green energy transition will take decades, not years. Walking back fossil fuels for unreliable clean energy has been a disaster in Asia and Europe. These power-hungry continents are scrambling for fossil fuel supplies as stockpiles are well below seasonal trends ahead of cooler weather.

A similar story is playing out in the U.S., where increased demand for coal might not be reached by mining companies. We noted Thursday morning that boosting output might be challenging due to years of decommissioning mines to reduce carbon emissions and transition the economy from fossil fuels to green energy. There’s also been a steady decline of miners over the last three and a half decades.

 “That whole supply chain is stretched beyond its limits,” Thrasher said. “It’s going to be a challenging winter for us here in the United States.”

Utility company Duke Energy Corp.’s Piedmont Natural Gas unit, covering North and South Carolina customers, warned power bills this winter are set to rise due to high natgas prices and low production.

Coal for Christmas

Coal for Christmas

China’s Supply Chains in an Energy Crisis

In mid-April 2021, I began receiving reports from sources in China and the United States that certain regions in China had begun to experience ongoing power disruptions at their warehouses and manufacturing facilities. Most notable of these was in south China’s Guangdong megaregion, where in June operations at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant had become disrupted by a small number of faulty claddings for the fuel rods, ultimately forcing state-owned General Nuclear Power Group to shut down Unit 1 (there are two units) for maintenance and repair. Concurrently, available power imported to the Guangdong region from Yunnan province’s considerable hydroelectric capacity was reduced due to drier-than-expected weather throughout the spring.

Taken together, some estimates are that total power available to the region fell by as much as 15% by June. In response, officials began quietly rationing power to factories, cutting business operation days by 1 or 2 days depending on the facilities’ power requirements.

In recent weeks, however, officials have begun a much more aggressive rationing program (Figure 1), with factories in much of Guangdong now seeing only 1-2 days per week of power use allowed. Similar situations are reportedly occurring in Jiangsu, Hubei, and Fujian provinces, all major manufacturing regions. As just one example, one of my US-based import customers has reported that a key supplier in Jiangsu is down to a single day per week of power availability. Limited-but-expanded power rationing is also occurring in Zhejiang, Shandong, Liaoning, and other important heavy industrial, chemical, and energy-product hubs.

Map

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Figure 1 – Chinese Province Power Rationing Regime – Courtesy of The Lantau Group

The primary causes of power disruptions are the aforementioned reduced availability of hydroelectric power in much of southern China, as well as limited supplies of coal due to the ongoing China/Australia trade dispute…

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Energy Crisis Hitting for the Winters of 2021 and 2022

The greatest problem I have is that those in power are evolving to the lowest possible denomination. Thirty years ago, I would have intelligent conversations with heads of state. Those days are gone. If I met with Biden, I would probably have to bring a napkin to wipe the drool from his face.

I think it is time we nominal “Dumb & Dumber” for President/Vice President. I think they have a better than 50/50 chance of doing a far better job than this crop of politicians on both sides of the fence on a global level. We have had Biden immediately cut off oil production because he is for saving the planet, but the alternative energy is not ready. Then he turns to OPEC to increase production. How many Americans lost their lives in Cheney’s war to get control of oil?

Then in Europe, the government was against being reliant on Russia and the whole gas pipeline dispute. Because of the Japanese reactor crisis, Merkel outlawed nuclear energy. Wind power has failed so the result is that now the Civil Protection Office has unveiled an ad campaign focusing on all aspects of crisis preparation! They are soon to release a targeted strategy addressing stockpiling, extreme weather, power failure and emergency baggage. Then these amazing officials are releasing a new book entitled “Cooking Without Electricity.”

Here is a look at our more recent climate data. The lowest temperature in Oxford England since 1853 took place in 1895 and the highest temperature was in 1990. In part, the global warming people only look at the data post-1850 and conclude the Industrial Revolution is to blame. However, temperatures peaked in 1990 and have been gradually declining. With a solar minimum, there will be more volcanoes and colder temperatures. This warns that their cutting of all fossil fuels is coming at the worse possible time.

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Winter’s discontent

Winter’s discontent

“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”
Shakespeare, Richard III

This may become the winter of our discontent as people around the world face a widening energy crisis, rationing because supplies are limited due to delivery shortages, production limits, cost, or by government mandate.  We likely face a severe reduction in the amount of energy and goods available.  We need to understand a simple truth…the path to renewable energy was never going to be easy.  The only way to reduce green house gas emissions is to reduce the combustion of higher carbon fuels, but this will not be easy because fossil fuels are needed to create a renewable energy system.  The transition is likely to cause imbalances in the energy supplies, and this has many ramifications for the goods upon which we depend. Yes, we use energy to heat and cool our homes and businesses, but we also use energy to manufacture goods, transport goods, and produce food.  We need to understand how much fossil energy our lifestyle requires.  We must make drastic cuts in energy consumption if we are to create an economy that runs off renewable energy,  particularly while we are building an entirely new system.  If we cut fossil energy supplies too quickly, where will the energy and goods we need today come from?

Renewable energy sources such as wood, solar, wind, and water power are all driven by the sun’s energy which is free.  To capture free renewable energy we rely on trees that produce wood, on the movement of the atmosphere that creates wind, and the water that falls from the sky to fill rivers and reservoirs…

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The Hidden Costs of Solar Photovoltaic Power

The Hidden Costs of Solar Photovoltaic Power

Introduction

Despite many optimistic predictions, solar photovoltaic (solar PV) power still represents only a small fraction of the global electricity supply as of 2020. More than two decades of nearexponential growth and investment in solar PV development have taken place, yet the amount of fossil fuels being burned for power is still increasing. [1] This apparent paradox has been attributed to a variety of economic or political issues, but a critically important factor may be missing from the discussion.

All modern technologies are dependent upon the supply of fossil fuels and fossil energy that made them possible. Similarly, every step in the production of solar PV requires an input of fossil fuels – as raw materials, as carbon reductants for silicon smelting, for process heat and power, for transportation, and for balance of system components. Regardless of any intentions, no quantity of banknotes or any number of mandates can yield a single watt of power unless a significant expenditure of raw materials and fossil energy takes place as well.

Therefore, the author of this article invites all interested parties including environmentalists, consumers and policy makers to consider the wider environmental impact, and the great debt of resources that actually must be paid before a PV system can be installed at any utility, workplace, or home. If we wish to recognize the hidden costs of this highly engineered industrial technology, we must first examine the non-renewable reality of the PV manufacturing process itself. To be even more realistic, we must also consider the additional consequences resulting from the fossil-fuel- powered global supply chains that are necessary for the mining, production, and implementation of PV power systems.

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Could we be hitting natural gas limits already?

Could we be hitting natural gas limits already?

Many countries have assumed that natural gas imports will be available for balancing electricity produced by intermittent wind and solar, whenever they are needed. The high natural gas import prices recently being encountered in Europe, and especially in the UK, appear to be an indication of an underlying problem. Could the world already be hitting natural gas limits?

One reason few people expect a problem with natural gas is because of the immense quantities reported as proven reserves. For all countries combined, these reserves at December 31, 2020 were equal to 48.8 times world natural gas production in 2020. Thus, in theory, the world could continue to produce natural gas at the current rate for almost 50 years, without even trying to to find more natural gas resources.

Ratios of natural gas reserves to production vary greatly by country, giving a hint that the indications may be unreliable. High reserves make an exporting country appear to be dependable for many years in the future, whether or not this is true.

Figure 1. Ratio of natural gas reserves at December 31, 2020, to natural gas production for the year 2020, based on trade data of BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy. Russia+ is the Commonwealth of Independent States. It includes Russia and the countries to the south of Russia that were included in the former Soviet Union.

As I see the issue, these reserves are unlikely to be produced unless world oil prices rise to a level close to double what they are today and stay at such a high level for several years. I say this because the health of the oil and gas industries are closely intertwined…

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These Are The ‘Good Old Days’

If you prefer to listen to the author read this article, Click Here.

Bill was 48 when his wife stunned him with a request for divorce.  Right up until that moment, he’d thought everything was fine.

He’d been pouring all his energy into his work to provide a very comfortable life for his wife and 2 children.  But she was unhappy and fell out of love while Bill wasn’t paying attention to matters at home.  He’d taken her for granted and forgot to be present for the most important people in his life, and to be grateful in the moment.

After she was gone, Bill was filled with emptiness and regret. All he wanted was to get her back, but it was too late.  The damage had been done.  What he had before was now in the past.

This parable of Bill’s loss serves as a reminder to all of us that, with all that’s awry in the world, it’s all too easy for those of us who are paying attention to gripe about everything that’s going wrong.

Yes, there are many trends that are headed on the wrong trajectory.  But this tumultuous period of history also affords each of us the fantastic opportunity to contribute positively to the new future that’s on the way.

Please take this article an invitation to be grateful for what you have, and to notice just how wonderful our current lifestyle truly is.  It won’t remain this way, as I’ll expound on in a moment.

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WEIRD – Thinking Beyond Technology: Issue no.5, “Research for the End of Your ‘Normal’ Everyday Existence” Mabon 2021

WEIRD – Thinking Beyond Technology:

Issue no.5, “Research for the End of Your ‘Normal’ Everyday Existence”
Mabon 2021

Go to ‘WEIRD’: Thinking Beyond Technology – Main Index

Click here for a brief explanation about the ‘WEIRD’ newsletter.

issue-004

Download this edition

  • A4 format PDF – for printing at A4, single- or double-sided, stapled in the top-left corner; or
  • A3 brochure format PDF – for printing as an A3 double-sided, folded and stapled brochure, or (with very small text) scaling-down for double-sided A4.

Contents

Note: Breaking with our usual ‘no linking’ convention,
this edition of WEIRD, each of the article headings contains a list of the academic studies referenced in it
for you to download & read.

☮ ‘Introduction’
Introducing the science for the end of your ‘normal’ everyday existence.
☮ History file: Bill Devall – ‘The Deep Ecology Movement’
Published in 1980, this tract was the first to outline the split between ‘eco-reformers’ & ‘deep ecologists’.
References:

☮ “It’s the economy, stoooopid!”
Environmentalism uses tech. as a sticking plaster; research says it’s affluence.
References:

☮ ‘Are humans a virus?’
In these times of disruptive pandemic, it might be interesting to figure how all other life on Earth looks at us.
References:

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Crisis by design

Crisis by design

Believe it or not, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has every right to stand before the nations of the world and lecture them on climate change.  Not that Johnson himself has done much to address the crisis (indeed, given that having children is the single biggest cause of climate change at this point, Johnson’s inability to keep his willy in his pants makes him an exemplar of much that is toxic in our culture).  But as the current political head of a country which has done more than most to pursue the bright green vision of a world without fossil fuels, he has every right to ask others to follow Britain’s lead.

They won’t do it, of course.  US President Biden has already restated American motorists’ God-given right to cheap gasoline.  Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping may be promising to cut other people’s access to coal-power, but China still consumes half of the world’s coal and shows no sign of curbing its own coal-fired growth.  Germany talks a good Energiewende, but it still depends upon fossil fuels for two-thirds of its electricity, and is not pledged to end coal-fired generation until 2038.

In fact, Britain appears to be the only developed state to swallow the Big Green Lie at face value:  The claim that it is entirely possible to operate a fossil fuel-based industrial economy without fossil fuels.  Starting with the smallest, and easiest to transform, sector of the economy – electricity generation – we were promised not only that a seamless transition was possible, but that it would be cheap and easy.  Indeed, it was precisely the promise that wind turbines and solar panels were getting cheaper which persuaded the Blair government to sign up to a policy to generate 20 percent of the UK’s electricity from renewable sources.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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