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The Week of The Beast Unplugged
The Week of The Beast Unplugged From 26th February to 5th March 2018, the UK and indeed most of Northern Europe was gripped by severe cold weather blowing in from Siberia. The event was Christened the Beast From the East by UK press. The conditions were harsh, not just sub-zero temperatures and snow but high […]
Pumped hydro energy storage in Australia – Snowy 2.0 vs. sea water
Pumped hydro energy storage in Australia – Snowy 2.0 vs. sea water To support a 100% renewable electricity sector Australia will need approximately 10 terawatt-hours of long-term energy storage. The multi-billion-dollar Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project will supply only 0.35 terawatt-hours, a small fraction of this, and conventional pumped hydro potential elsewhere in Australia, including […]
Global CO2 emissions forecast to 2100
Global CO2 emissions forecast to 2100 In his recent post Euan Mearns projected global energy requirements out to 2100. In this brief post I apply Euan’s methodology to carbon dioxide emissions, which are closely correlated with energy consumption. The projections show CO2 emissions peaking around 2075 under the UN low population growth scenario but continuing […]
The Beast from the East and European Energy Security
The Beast from the East and European Energy Security European energy security is a subject I return to time and again normally prompted by some kind of event. This time it is severe cold weather and snow that has spread from Siberia over the whole of North and Western Europe, rather late in the season, […]
The Cost of 100% renewables: The Jacobson et al. 2018 Study
The Cost of 100% renewables: The Jacobson et al. 2018 Study Proponents of a global transition to 100% renewable energy point to a number of studies which claim to show that such a transition is feasible, and arguably the most influential of these is the study of Jacobson et al. 2017, an updated 2018 version […]
The ERoEI of Mining Uranium
The ERoEI of Mining Uranium In 2009, in the comments to this post on The Oil Drum we stumbled upon a mine of information on the operation of the Rossing uranium mine in Namibia. The data table provided numbers for the amount of energy used on site together with the amount of uranium mined. This […]
Battery storage* in perspective – solving 1% of the problem
Battery storage* in perspective – solving 1% of the problem The energy world is fixated on the “huge” amounts of battery storage presently being installed to back up slowly-increasing levels of intermittent renewables generation. The feeling seems to be that as soon as enough batteries are installed to take care of daily supply/demand imbalances we […]
Global Energy Forecast to 2100
Global Energy Forecast to 2100 A global energy demand forecast is presented to 2100 based on historic growth of per capita energy consumption, 1965-2015 and on UN low and medium population growth forecasts. The low forecast sees energy demand growing from 13.15 billion tonnes oil equivalent (toe) per annum in 2015 to 19.16 billion toe […]
The pumped hydro storage potential of the Great Lakes
The pumped hydro storage potential of the Great Lakes The potential energy contained in the waters of the Great Lakes amounts to approximately six thousand terawatt hours, enough to supply the US and Canada with electricity for an entire year were the lakes to be drained to sea level. This of course will never happen, […]
Blowout Week 215
Blowout Week 215 This week’s lead story highlights the perils of basing policy decisions on speculative computer models. It seems that the ozone layer isn’t healing as predicted after all, so the dangers of man-made CFC radiation are still with us. And if radiation doesn’t do the job other computer models now tell us that […]
Wind and solar on Thursday Island
Wind and solar on Thursday Island While rummaging around the internet to see if I could find any information on the performance of wind farms in Queensland (and especially in Far North Queensland – Andrew Blakers’ supposed panacea for the rather more correlated wind farm outputs in the NEM area), I came across Thursday Island, […]
Oil Production Vital Statistics January 2018
Oil Production Vital Statistics January 2018 The oil price has begun 2018 strongly with Brent breaking through $70 / bbl for the first time since December 2014. OPEC+Russia+others’ discipline on production constraint remains high with ~ 1.7 Mbd production withheld from the market. The IEA reports an ~1 Mbpd stock draw in the OECD + […]
The Death of Sunspot Cycle 24, Huge Snow and Record Cold
The Death of Sunspot Cycle 24, Huge Snow and Record Cold My friend Alex is in Chamonix in the shadow of Mont Blanc in the French Alps. He sent some very snowy pics and mentioned that it was fair dinging down. The most snow since 2010. Knowing that sunspot cycle 24 was well-advanced I did […]
Cosmic Rays, Magnetic Fields and Climate Change
Cosmic Rays, Magnetic Fields and Climate Change In my recent post on The Cosmogenic Isotope Record and the Role of The Sun in Shaping Earth’s Climatean interesting discussion developed in comments where there was a fair amount of disagreement among my sceptical colleagues. A few days later, retired Apollo astronaut Phil Chapman sent me this […]
The Cosmogenic Isotope Record and the Role of The Sun in Shaping Earth’s Climate
The Cosmogenic Isotope Record and the Role of The Sun in Shaping Earth’s Climate The defining division between “climate sceptics” and “greenhouse gas warmists” is the role of the Sun in causing Earth’s climate to oscillate. The anecdotal evidence for a significant solar role comes from the observation that during the Little Ice Age (LIA) […]
