Art Berman, 40-year veteran in the petroleum production industry and respected geological consultant, returns to the podcast this week to talk about oil.
After the price of oil fell from its previous $100+/bbl highs to under $30/bbl in 2015, many declared dead the concerns raised by peak oil theorists. Headlines selling the “shale miracle” have sought to convince us that the US will one day eclipse Saudi Arabia in oil production. In short: cheap, plentiful oil is here to stay.
How likely is this?
Not at all, warns Berman. World demand for oil shows no signs of abating while the outlook for future production looks increasingly scant. And the competition among nations for this “master resource” will be much more intense in future decades than we’ve been used to:
Since the 1980s, we simply have not been replacing reserves with new discoveries. So how does that work? Well, obviously, we’ve got a lot of oil on production and in reserves, so we’re essentially drawing down our savings account if you want to think about it that way. You can do that for a long time if you’ve got a whole lot of money in your savings account, and we as a planet do. But you can’t do it forever.
Eventually, you either have to stop spending as much so you don’t draw down your savings, or you need to put some money back in the account. And it doesn’t seem like we’re doing much of either, and haven’t been doing much of either for a long time. So the concern is tremendous, at least, in my estimation(…)
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In my previous Going off-grid post I reviewed the question of whether Tesla Powerwalls or overgeneration, considered separately, might allow a UK homeowner with a rooftop solar array to go off-grid. In this post I consider the two in combination. Once more using 10 Mossbank Way as an example I find that there are circumstances in which it might make marginal economic sense for Mossbank to install up to one Powerwall, but that again that there is no realistic combination of Powerwalls and overgeneration that would allow Mossbank to power itself year-round with solar alone. Going off-grid is again found to increase Mossbank’s electricity costs substantially no matter what combination of the two is adopted.
It’s becoming progressively more obvious that 100% renewables-powered grids will never work without adequate energy storage, and at present the storage system of choice is the Tesla battery. I therefore make no apologies for presenting the third post in a row on Tesla Powerwalls. This post, however, evaluates their performance in more detail than did the previous two by reviewing the impacts of varying the number of Powerwalls and the amount of solar overgeneration at the same time. To do this I had to construct a rather complex spreadsheet algorithm which after checking appears to give the right answers but which I can’t guarantee to be 100% correct in all cases. Having made this necessary disclaimer, on to the results.
First a brief recap. Mossbank’s rooftop solar array has an installed capacity of 4kW(p). I have again used Mossbank’s hourly solar generation data for 2016 (total 3,809kWh) and have again assumed that this was equal to Mossbank’s 2016 demand. The hourly demand curves are the same as those used in the previous post. Sixteen cases are considered – zero to eight Powerwalls and either 4kW or 8kW of installed capacity.
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In my recent post featuring a residence in Tucson, Arizona (latitude 32 north) I found that no reasonable number of Tesla Powerwalls would allow the homeowner to go off-grid using a combination of solar and battery storage. In this post I review a residence in UK (latitude 52 north) and find, unsurprisingly, that its prospects for going off-grid with solar and Powerwalls are likewise non-existent. Further reviews show that the overgeneration approach does not work well in the UK either. The only presently-available option for a UK homeowner with a solar array who wants to go off grid is to combine solar with a backup generator.
Solar Generation
The solar array I chose as my UK example is on the roof of 10 Mossbank Way, Shrewsbury (data from Sunny Portal). With a capacity of 4kWp (16 Sanyo HIT-H250E01 panels), total 2016 generation of 3,809 kWh and a capacity factor of 10.8% it’s about as average as you can get for a rooftop UK system:
10 Mossbank Way, Shrewsbury
Daily average solar generation from Mossbank during 2016, the last full year for which data are available, is shown in Figure 1. Average power output was highest in May (0.71kW) and lowest in January and December (0.13kW) – a seasonal range of more than a factor of five:
Figure 1: Mossbank average daily solar generation, 2016 (a plot of hourly solar generation for the entire year is hard to interpret). The red lozenges are monthly means
Hourly solar generation data for May and January are shown in Figure 2 for illustration purposes. The large differences in total generation and the abundance of January days with minimal solar generation are apparent:
Figure 2: Mossbank hourly solar generation, January and May 2016
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The ecological and humanitarian destruction of Puerto Rico has left the world aghast. But there is a hopeful green-powered opportunity in this disaster that could vastly improve the island’s future while offering the world a critical showcase for a sane energy future.
By all accounts Hurricane Maria has leveled much of the island, and literally left it in the dark. Puerto Rico’s electrical grid has been extensively damaged, with no prospects for a return to conventionally generated and distributed power for months to come.
In response Donald Trump has scolded the island for it’s massive debt, and waited a full week after the storm hit to lift a shipping restriction requiring all incoming goods to be carried on US-flagged ships. (That restriction is largely responsible for the island’s economic problems in the first place.)
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is a state-owned operation that hosts a number of solar and wind farms, as well as a network of hydroelectric dams. But the bulk of its energy supply has come from heavy industrial oil, diesel and gas burners. It also burns coal imported from Colombia at a plant in Guyama.
The fossil burners themselves apparently were left mostly undamaged by Maria. But the delivery system, a traditional network of above-ground poles and wires, has essentially been obliterated. Power authority officials say it could take at least 4-6 months to rebuild that network.
And of course, there is no guaranteeing such a pole-and-wire set-up would not then be obliterated by the next storm.
Among the most serious casualties have been the island’s hospitals. According to reports, 58 of Puerto Rico’s 69 medical facilities have been blacked out. At least two people died when intensive care units went dark.
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While the UK government has vowed to end the sale of all new conventional gasoline and diesel cars by 2040, as part of a wider plan to fight air pollution, there is talk that electricity demand will lead to a fast and dirty response to a strained power grid.
But here’s what everyone’s missing in that debate: While EV sales are going to rise and electricity demand to power them will strain the grid and lead to less-than-ideal power generation solutions, the whole plan will help clean power generation to increase its market share.
Nothing is black and white. And big transformations are never immediate. We’re not talking about an overnight elixir that will magically clean up the air; we’re talking about a step-by-step process that is gradually less dirty.
Overloading the Grid (Mind the Gap)
The UK’s National Grid anticipates peak demand from electric vehicles alone being around 5 GW, which represents an 8 percent increase from today’s peak demand.
This peak demand forecast assumes what the National Grid calls the “Two Degrees” scenario, in which most cars would be EVS, with only 6 percent of them hybrids. But by 2045, only pure EVs would be on sale.
According to Wood Mackenzie, the UK plan to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars by 2040 “will have a massive impact on the refining sector and the oil markets.”
To handle the extra peak demand, the most flexible way is to build open-cycle gas power plants.
One of the options for a “rapid response” plug-in capacity to make up for shortfalls could come from certain open-cycle gas-fired plants that are more polluting and less efficient.
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Fifteen years ago, when I joined the early ranks of clean energy entrepreneurs, we were nearly dead in the water on climate. Oil was $15 per barrel, Al Gore’s groundbreaking movie An Inconvenient Truth hadn’t come out, and a solar panel was something that powered a calculator.
In the year 2005, I went to my first “Alternative Energy Conference” in Aspen, Colorado. I was asked to speak at the event, and hadn’t paid much attention to the agenda. Upon arrival I found the audience consisted of coal, oil and gas executives.
It turns out that “alternatives” in the energy space in 2005 actually meant new methods for extracting old fossil fuels: tar sands, “clean coal,” and a new thing called fracking. This, according to all of the other speakers, was the future.
In the first quarter of 2017, renewable energy accounted for 20% of all U.S. electricity while fracking has gone mainstream. On the flip side, six publicly traded coal companies declared bankruptcy from April 2015–2016 while coal production had its steepest annual decline since 1958. And after much hype, the number of operational clean coal power plants in the U.S. remains firmly stuck at…zero.
A coal plant built today would not be competitive with a combination of wind and solar in virtually any location in the country. And nowhere would it be competitive with natural gas.
In the end, these fossil sources, particularly coal, look increasingly like the new “alternative energy sources,” since there’s simply no economic justification for them.
The speed of this transformation may surprise some readers. That’s understandable. For years, traditional energy analysts have completely misforecast the transformation.
Why were these analysts so wrong? What drove this profound shift with such speed? This did not happen because of Paris. This didn’t even happen because of Kyoto before it. It didn’t happen because of something Trump did or undid. It didn’t even happen because of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
The Real Change Agents of the Energy Transformation
Three drivers of change set us on this course. It started first with the growing chorus of concerned citizens, scientists, and activists coming together to seek out solutions — often at a local level. This was catalyzed by inflection points like An Inconvenient Truth, but the sources of inspiration were everywhere as the evidence of change mounted. Second, local and state leaders in the U.S. started to listen. Across party lines, real leadership showed up to pass Renewable Portfolio Standards, enhanced automotive standards, and air quality improvement plans. Third, in reaction to the first two, businesses started playing an increasingly important role.
Broadly speaking, businesses have played two key roles in cementing our direction on climate. First, large companies have finally started to internalize the will of their customers. Five out of the top six most valuable public companies in the world are U.S.-based technology companies: Google (Alphabet), Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. They are also the source of the greatest amount of electricity demand growth in world. All of them have now committed to 100% clean energy in the near future — Google is there today. The others behind them will follow suit.
Leading companies have committed to 100% clean energy to save money, show leadership, and meet the growing cries from their customers and employees to be part of the solution. The magnitude of this commitment cannot be overstated. These companies have a combined market capitalization of nearly $2.3 trillion — exceeding the size of nearly every economy that signed the Paris accord.
The second way business has played a key role is innovation and entrepreneurialism. The impact of buying power is the domain of the large multinationals. The impact of innovation is the domain of startups. From SunPower and First Solar to Tesla and Nest, we have continually seen the unbounded creativity of startups and founders prove the impossible. And we’re just getting warmed up. Electric buses, large-scale energy storage, autonomous cars, electric planes, and the myriad software solutions to help make our energy more efficient and effective are launching daily.
On September 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard oral arguments in a major challenge to the Clean Power Plan, West Virginia v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — an enormously high-stakes legal battle, that could determine whether Obama’s climate plan is ever put into effect.
The stakes are high not only for the environment, but for fossil fuel companies — and those companies have poured enormous sums of money into efforts that would help ensure the Clean Power Plan never goes into effect, according to a report issued this week by four members of Congress.
The report is formatted as an amicus curie — or friend of the court — brief but was not filed with the court, and it takes a detailed look at the money that has moved behind the scenes. It’s entitled, “The Brief No One Filed.”
It was issued by U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, and Edward J. Markey — some of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate. Senators Whitehouse, Boxer, and Markey serve on the Environment and Public Works Committee, while Sen. Reid is the Senate Democratic Leader.
“The American public is aware of and alarmed by the massive influx of special interest money and considers this a top problem with elected officials in Washington,” the four senators wrote. “More than 80 percent of Americans believe the government cannot be trusted to do what is right most of the time.”
Large sums of money — over $100 million — have been funneled from the fossil fuel industry to key players in the litigation, the report concludes.
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But the cost of a solar system can be written off over a period of years
The solar panels on Mike Brigham’s roof in Toronto allow him to sell power back to the grid. He says solar provides power when Ontario most needs it — when the sun is hot and air-conditioners are pushing up power demands. (Mike Brigham)
Mike Brigham got interested in solar power by accident in 1985 when he bought a tiny island in Georgian Bay with a quaint cottage with no electricity.
After learning he would have to pay to up to $15,000 to bring in electricity via cable and pay a bill year-round despite using the cottage for only a few months, he decided to install his first solar panel.
Since then, he’s upgraded the system at the cottage several times and when he went looking for a lot in Toronto in 2008, he sought out one with ample access to the sun’s rays.
‘When solar generates the most is on summer days when days when aircon loads are really driving up the peaks and the cost of power in the middle of the day goes way up.’– Mike Brigham, Solar Share Co-op
He now has a 5.8-kilowatt solar system on the roof of the home he built in Toronto and sells the power back to the grid under Ontario’s MicroFIT program.
And like every homeowner and farm property owner who has taken advantage of Ontario’s FIT, or feed-in tariff, program for solar, he has to pay income tax on the cash he earns from selling power back to the local utility.
Solar and provincial incentives
It’s not just Ontario where small operators are dealing with the tax implications of small solar projects.
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A wind farm sprouts alongside the Interstate 10 road near Whitewater, California Image: Chuck Coker via Flicker
Scientists say interstate energy “highways” would allow current wind and solar technologies to deliver electricity where and when it’s needed throughout the US.
LONDON, 31 January, 2016 – The US could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by 80% below 1990 levels within 15 years just by using renewable sources such as wind and solar energy, according to a former government research chief.
The nation could do this using only technologies available right now, and by introducing a national grid system connected by high voltage direct current (HVDC) that could get the power without loss to those places that needed it most, when they needed it.
He and colleagues at the University of Colorado report in Nature Climate Change that instead of factoring in fossil fuel backup, or yet-to-be-invented methods of storing electricity from wind and solar sources, they took a new look at the simple problems of supply and demand in a nation that tends to be sunny and warm in the south and windy in the north, but not always reliably so in either place.
Their reasoning was that storage technologies could only increase the cost of renewable energy, and increase the problem of reducing carbon emissions.
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Prime Minister Tony Abbott says it is “no secret” he wants the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) abolished, but while it is still in place it should be as useful as possible.
The Opposition and the Greens have accused the Government of trying to get rid of the taxpayer-fundedauthority by stealth, by issuing a new directive to stop the CEFC from investing in wind farms and household rooftop solar projects.
“The Parliament set up this corporation with a very expert board and very expert staff to make these decisions free of political interference,” Opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler said.
“What we see now is Tony Abbott trying to nobble this corporation for his own ideological purposes.”
But Mr Abbott says it is not useful for the CEFC to invest in established technologies that can easily attract private funding.
“The best thing that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation can do is invest in new and emerging technologies, the things that might not otherwise get finance,” he said.
“That’s why we’ve got this draft direction there.”
The directive on wind and solar stems from the deal the Government struck with crossbench senators earlier this year to reduce the Renewable Energy Target.
Part of that agreement said the Government would write to the CEFC to ensure “significantly” increased uptake of large-scale solar, emerging renewable technologies and energy efficiency.
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Divestiture movement continues as organizations clean carbon holdings from portfolios
If you thought the divestiture movement was losing steam, Norway’s recent announcement shows there still is momentum around the world to stop investing in fossil fuels.
The country has confirmed that its hefty $900-billion government pension fund, considered the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, will purge some of its fossil fuel stocks.
Many other organizations have made similar moves in past years.
Concordia University in Montreal launched a $5-million fund dedicated to divestment, social and ethical investing. Stanford University in California pledged not to make direct investments in companies whose principal business is coal for energy. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund pledged to reduce investments in coal and the oilsands projects to less than one per cent of its portfolio.
But in Canada, divestiture may not be the best method of promoting renewable energy development.
Traditional oil, gas and coal companies are creating the majority of renewable energy in Alberta. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
The reason is that, outside of government, it is the traditional oil and gas companies that are constructing much of the green energy projects in the country, such as wind, hydro and solar.
For instance, the largest wind and hydro projects in Alberta are owned in whole or in part by traditional oil, gas and coal companies.
Capital Power is an example of a private sector company with a mixed bag of energy projects. It’s a leader in renewable energy development and uses fossil fuels too. The Edmonton-based company has more than 20 wind and solar power plants in North America. It also operates a coal mine as well as several coal- and natural gas-fired plants.
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Elon Musk, Silicon Valley’s poster-boy genius replacement for the late Steve Jobs, rolled out his PowerWall battery last week with Star Wars style fanfare, doing his bit to promote and support the delusional thinking that grips a nation unable to escape the toils of techno-grandiosity. The main delusion: that we can “solve” the problems of techno-industrial society with more and better technology.
The South African born-and-raised Musk is surely better known for founding Tesla Motors, maker of the snazzy all-electric car. The denizens of Silicon Valley are crazy about the Tesla. There is no greater status trinket in Northern California, where the fog of delusion cloaks the road to the future. They believe, as Musk himself often avers, that Tesla cars “don’t burn hydrocarbons.” That statement is absurd, of course, and Musk, who holds a degree in physics from Penn, must blush when he says that. After all, you have to plug it in and charge somewhere from the US electric grid.
Only 6 percent of US electric power comes from “clean” hydro generation. Another 20 percent is nuclear. The rest is coal (48 percent) and natural gas (21 percent) with the remaining sliver coming from “renewables” and oil. (The quote marks on “renewables” are there to remind you that they probably can’t be manufactured without the support of a fossil fuel economy). Anyway, my point is that the bulk of US electricity comes from burning hydrocarbons, and then there is the nuclear part which is glossed over because the techno-geniuses and politicians of America have no idea how they are going to de-commission our aging plants, and no idea how to safely dispose of the spent fuel rod inventory simply lying around in collection pools. This stuff is capable of poisoning the entire planet and we know it.
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Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems generate “free” electricity from sunlight, but manufacturing them is an energy-intensive process.
It’s generally assumed that it only takes a few years before solar panels have generated as much energy as it took to make them, resulting in very low greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional grid electricity.
However, the studies upon which this assumption is based are written by a handful of researchers who arguably have a positive bias towards solar PV. A more critical analysis shows that the cumulative energy and CO2 balance of the industry is negative, meaning that solar PV has actually increased energy use and greenhouse gas emissions instead of lowering them.
This doesn’t mean that the technology is useless. It’s just that our approach is wrong. By carefully selecting the location of the manufacturing and the installation of solar panels, the potential of solar power could be huge. We have to rethink the way we use and produce solar energy systems on a global scale.
There’s nothing but good news about solar energy these days. The average global price of PV panels has plummeted by more than 75% since 2008, and this trend is expected to continue in the coming years, though at a lower rate. [1-2] According to the 2015 solar outlook by investment bank Deutsche Bank, solar systems will be at grid parity in up to 80% of the global market by the end of 2017, meaning that PV electricity will be cost-effective compared to electricity from the grid. [3-4]
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Larger version of battery has been tested in pilot program
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is trying to steer his electric car company’s battery technology into homes and businesses as part of an elaborate plan to reshape the power grid with millions of small power plants made of solar panels on roofs and batteries in garages.
Musk announced Tesla’s expansion into the home battery market amid a party atmosphere at the company’s design studio near Los Angeles International Airport. The festive scene attended by a drink-toting crowd of enthusiasts seemed fitting for a flashy billionaire renowned for pursuing far-out projects. For instance, colonizing Mars is one of Musk’s goals at Space X, a rocket maker that he also runs.
Now, he is setting out on another ambitious mission. “Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” Musk told reporters gathered in Hawthorne, Calif.
Although Tesla will make the battery called “Powerwall,” it will be sold by a variety of other companies. The list of partners includes SolarCity, a solar installer founded by Musk’s cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive. Musk is SolarCity’s chairman and largest shareholder.
I don’t believe this product in its first incarnation will be interesting to the average person.– Peter Rive, CTO of Tesla partner SolarCity
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Green energy has moved to the forefront of the national conversation on energy production even as oil prices sit near decade lows. The simple fact that solar power and wind power now command so much attention speaks to how the country’s views on energy have changed. But now some people are going one step further and actually looking to install enough solar panels on their homes to become energy positive – that is to generate more energy than they actually consume. Britain’s Guardian newspaper ran a recent story about this , but that story skipped over a few obvious issues. Issues that became clear to me after I recently talked to a solar company about making my home energy producing.
Producing more energy than a house consumes is very easy for some homes and essentially impossible for others. Most obviously, people in climates without a lot of sunlight will have a much more difficult time producing energy than people in sunnier climates. Even forgetting about that fact, the direction a house is facing, trees in the area, and angle of the roofline all dramatically impact the level of solar production that can be expected from a house.
Energy producing homes rely on creating large amounts of solar energy, while consuming relatively little energy. The consumption side of that equation is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial – having thick insulation and energy saving light bulbs are not generally a major inconvenience for most people. Unfortunately, producing solar energy requires a trade-off. For example, an individual could always produce more solar power by filling not only their roof with solar panels, but also their front yard, yet very few people want to give up their lawn for solar arrays.
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In my previous Going off-grid post I reviewed the question of whether Tesla Powerwalls or overgeneration, considered separately, might allow a UK homeowner with a rooftop solar array to go off-grid. In this post I consider the two in combination. Once more using 10 Mossbank Way as an example I find that there are circumstances in which it might make marginal economic sense for Mossbank to install up to one Powerwall, but that again that there is no realistic combination of Powerwalls and overgeneration that would allow Mossbank to power itself year-round with solar alone. Going off-grid is again found to increase Mossbank’s electricity costs substantially no matter what combination of the two is adopted.
In my 
