Danish Researchers Attempt to Match Biomass Resource to Markets

GCC
It is important for healthy economies to match their resources to their markets as carefully as possible, to avoid waste, misallocations, and shortages. In the case of biomass, there is some debate among chemical engineers about the preferred suitability of biomass -- either for biofuels or for renewable chemicals. Certainly the high value chemicals market would provide a quicker payoff for a newly developing biomass to chemicals industry, which is just beginning to scale up. That is the argument of Danish researchers, who claim that the chemistry and quantity of available biomass makes it more suitable for renewable chemicals than for biofuels.

Switching to broad use of biomass for chemicals will require divergence from the established value chains, the authors say. Instead of using brute force to convert these raw materials into specific platform chemicals that were originally selected because of their easy accessibility when starting from fossil resources, it would be better to use the interesting chemical characteristics already available in the biomass resources themselves and to optimize the use of favorable catalytic reaction pathways.

Because the development costs will be high and the first processes inefficient, it makes sense to initially concentrate on high-value products, thereby allowing for faster widespread adoption. _GCC

GCC

It is also not the most sensible solution to convert biomass into fuels. In the first place, the amount of biomass available does not meet the demand for fuels; in the second, the chemical characteristics of fuels and biomass are too different, so the processes would be too complex and uneconomical.

In contrast, it really makes sense to use biomass as the feedstock for chemical industry. The available biomass should suffice to replace the fossil feedstocks used in the production of chemicals. The chemical characteristics of biomass and many bulk chemicals are also very similar, so the processes should be more economical than those for the conversion into fuels.

—Esben Taarning _GCC

Long time readers of Al Fin Energy might expect Al Fin energy analysts to agree with some points of the argument, and disagree with others. That is the case.

In the short and medium term, the Danish researchers are correct that high value chemicals are a better market to aim for than the very competitive fuels market. This is the case for all the reasons mentioned by the Danes in the article above.

In the longer term, with improved catalysts and processes -- as well as a vastly enlarged biomass production infrastructure -- biomass is likely to play an important role in the liquid fuels market. Whether that role will be to supply sugars for fermentation into hydrocarbons, or whether the biomass will be converted directly into hydrocarbons using catalysts and process heat from gas-cooled nuclear reactors, biofuels will almost certainly be ready to jump into the arena at the same time that demand for hydrocarbons will begin to drop -- sometime after the year 2020.

The coming biofuels and chemicals-from-biomass infrastructures are likely to yield lower profits than the petrofuels and petrochemicals markets have yielded. But one of the main reasons for that -- besides the diffuse nature of the bioenergy resource -- is the distributed nature of the new bioenergy infrastructure itself. This means that a lot more people will be involved, collecting more modest incomes than oil executives, but making a fair living nonetheless.

The bioenergy economy is most likely to succeed in regions such as SubSaharan Africa, large numbers of tropical islands, and other third world areas in the tropics. But bioenergy and renewable chemistry are also likely to cut out significant and viable niches in the emerging and the developed world, over time.

More interesting work from some of the same authors

What is the Frack to Earthquake Ratio?

A lot of people have become frightened by a possible link between oil & gas drilling and fracking, and small earthquakes. It might be helpful to determine what the ratio between fracking and quaking has been, over the years;

Stefan Baisch, one of the authors of the Cuadrilla report, is also general manager of the German deep-drilling research firm Q-Con. He has a PhD in seismology and has spent 10 years researching induced seismicity. Baisch points out some hard facts about fracking that confirms Cuadrilla’s ‘worst-case scenario’ assessment. Referring to Cuadrilla’s operation, Basich states, “There have been more than a million similar treatments in the world over the last 50 years or so, and there are only two cases where similar seismic reactions occurred.” _EnergyTribune

According to that particular German expert, the odds from 50 years of experience with similar treatments are roughly 500,000 : 1, or lower. The risk of falling down at home and dying is higher than that. Here's more:

... in September 2011, a report by the economic development agency Regeneris Consulting on the economic impact of shale gas for the UK underscored just what shale gas development would mean in the UK. The Regeneris report states that Cuadrilla’s operations alone could create up to 5,600 highly-paid skilled jobs in the UK, with 1,700 of those based in Lancashire, a region of high unemployment. Other parts of Britain are thought to be sitting on large reserves of shale gas, too. Regeneris states that experience from the United States shows that shale gas development would have a significant downward pressure on domestic wholesale gas prices. In short, the shale gas revolution offers the social holy trinity of real jobs, regional regeneration and national economic revival.

Micro-quakes and acts of urban terrorism may make the headlines, but the real substance of the global shale gas phenomenon is its potentially enormous socio-economic impact. To borrow scale from Richter: while environmental concerns are at a magnitude of 1 to 2, the socio-economic benefits threaten a seismic 8 to 10. _EnergyTribune

Most persons are willing to accept a vanishingly small risk of tiny earthquakes in exchange for "real jobs, regional regeneration, and national economic revival." How about you?

Another Saudi Arabia of Oil Discovered Off Coast of China?

To China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, another Saudi Arabia of oil may lie beneath the ocean to its south. Escalating regional tensions mean large-scale drilling may be slipping further into the future. _Bloomberg_via_BrianWang

Brian Wang China Offshore Oil ClaimsYou may wonder how it is possible that such a large quantity of oil could sit there all this time, without having been discovered.

The world has barely begun to be explored for hydrocarbon deposits. The only partial exception to that rule is North America. But even in North America, significant new finds are coming in both under land and under sea. More from Vaclav Smil:

...until the sedimentary basins of the entire world (including deep offshore regions) are explored with an intensity matching that of North America and the U.S. sector of the Gulf of Mexico, I see no persuasive reason to prefer the most conservative estimate of the ultimately recoverable conventional oil offered by Campbell & Company (no more than 1.8 trillion barrels) rather than substantially higher totals favored by other geologists, including those at the U.S. Geological Survey (their latest estimate is just over 3 trillion barrels)._Peak Oil PDF

More about the recent revelations on the China Sea discovery:

Chinese estimates of oil reserves cited by the U.S. energy agency compare with 264.5 billion barrels of proven reserves held by Saudi Arabia at the end of last year, data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy show.

The region may hold 2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s more than five times the 350.8 trillion cubic feet of gas held in North America, according to BP.

The Chinese numbers dwarf a 2010 United States Geological Survey assessment of the entire Southeast Asia region which calculated a mean undiscovered reserves estimate of 21.6 billion barrels of oil and 299 trillion cubic feet of gas, including onshore deposits.

“There are definitely oil and gas deposits in the South China Sea, but there’s no confirmation how much until actual drilling happens,” said Hooman Peimani, Principal Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Energy Institute. _Bloomberg_via_BrianWang

And this is likely to be only the beginning of large new discoveries, as humans range farther and deeper in their quest for valuable energy deposits.

Most of the world's oil & gas remains undiscovered and untapped. If we are wise in the development of new energy sources -- such as advanced nuclear -- those vast and rich deposits will likely never be touched. If only the energy starvationists would get out of the way.

South China Sea may hold 213 billion barrels of oil

Are Eco-Terrorists Injecting Fracking Fluids Into Aquifers?

The US EPA has been monitoring wells in an aquifer of Pavillion, Wyoming, in response to local complaints about the quality of well water. The area has been the location of natural gas drilling for at least 20 years, with hundreds of gas wells located nearby.

Chemical analysis has detected several fracking compounds in both the aquifer and in the well water of several local residents. There appears to be a direct correlation between the contaminants in the aquifer, the contaminants in residential well water, and some of the compounds often used in fracking for gas and oil within hydrocarbon bearing rock. Here's more:

A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, according to new water test results released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The findings are consistent with water samples the EPA has collected from at least 42 homes in the area since 2008, when ProPublica began reporting on foul water and health concerns in Pavillion and the agency started investigating reports of contamination there.

...The information released yesterday by the EPA was limited to raw sampling data: The agency did not interpret the findings or make any attempt to identify the source of the pollution. From the start of its investigation, the EPA has been careful to consider all possible causes of the contamination and to distance its inquiry from the controversy around hydraulic fracturing.

Still, the chemical compounds the EPA detected are consistent with those produced from drilling processes, including one -- a solvent called 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE) -- widely used in the process of hydraulic fracturing. The agency said it had not found contaminants such as nitrates and fertilizers that would have signaled that agricultural activities were to blame.

...The EPA said the water samples were saturated with methane gas that matched the deep layers of natural gas being drilled for energy. The gas did not match the shallower methane that the gas industry says is naturally occurring in water, a signal that the contamination was related to drilling and was less likely to have come from drilling waste spilled above ground.

...The EPA's research in Wyoming is separate from the agency's ongoing national study of hydraulic fracturing's effect on water supplies, and is being funded through the Superfund cleanup program.

The EPA says it will release a lengthy draft of the Pavillion findings, including a detailed interpretation of them, later this month. _SciAm

The facts as reported appear to have a straightforward explanation, although it would be best to await the final EPA report, as well as further corroboration from other entities than the EPA.

Emotions are running high around issues of all forms of reliable energy today -- whether shale gas & oil, coal, nuclear, offshore oil, oil sands, oil shales, methane hydrates etc. Big money green organisations, in collaboration with governmental and inter-governmental agencies, with the collusion of the mass media, have stirred emotions among certain segments of the public to a fever pitch.

Would eco-terrorists spike aquifers with fracking fluid so as to discredit shale drilling? Of course they would. Did they in this case? There is no reason to believe so at this time. In fact, it is almost certain that poor drilling procedures and defective casings and seals are responsible for this problem -- which should have been taken care of by the gas company when the complaints about water quality first came to the surface.

Those responsible for ignoring this problem should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law as an example to other drilling and production companies of all sizes.

Superstitions and fears are high enough without careless and unscrupulous operators dirtying the waters in this way.

As an afterthought, would an activist EPA such as that under US President Obama, falsify analyses of water samples? It might, if it thought it could get away with it. But it is not at all likely that such a thing occurred in this case, given the long history of the problem.

These are all things that must be kept in mind with regard to an issue which has been hyped to high heaven by energy starvationists in the media, in big money green lobbies, in activist governmental and inter-governmental organisations, and by the other usual suspects.

Every situation has to be looked at on its own merits, keeping all possibilities in mind.

This Is How Biofuels Can Make Monkeys Out of Energy Analysts

Image Source
Using the IH2 (integrated hydropyrolysis and hydroconversion) technique developed by GTI, and licensed by Shell subsidiary CRI, making high quality gasoline and diesel directly from cheap biomass has suddenly become a viable prospect.

So far, New Zealand based company Aquaflow (PDF) appears to be taking the lead in developing practical uses for this technology. Aquaflow has an agreement with CRI to develop waste biomass to gasoline and diesel plants, and is planning the first of these plants in Queensland, Australia.

EERE PDF Image Source
Aquaflow is developing the use of a mixed feedstock approach to IH2 conversion, which is able to incorporate wood waste, agricultural waste (such as cane bagasse), and micro-algae biomass, among other forms of cellulosic biomass. Such an approach allows for a versatile approach to feedstock supply, allowing such plants to negotiate the best pricing for feedstock from a wide array of sources.

EERE PDF Image SourceWhile there are plenty of other approaches to producing high quality hydrocarbon fuels from waste biomass, the IH2 approach as approached by Aquaflow appears to be the frontrunner.

According to Al Fin energy analysts, micro-algae and macro-algae are the most prolific biomass crops available. They can be grown in salty and brackish water, as well as waste water. In fact, over 80% of the Earth's surface is suitable for growing algae biomass, due to the ability to grow algae in saltwater (oceans), in the deserts, or in freshwater.

It makes sense to combine the most prolific form of biomass with the most efficient process for converting biomass to high value fuels, at least in the short to intermediate term.

Long-term, we are likely to see synthetic biological approaches to producing fuels and chemicals which will be very difficult to compete against, for thermochemical approaches such as pyrolysis or gasification. On the other hand, once advanced nuclear energy technologies are finally adopted, there should be no shortage of cheap process heat available for driving a wide range of clean thermochemical conversions to fuel and chemicals -- including biomass to liquids, gas to liquids, coal to liquids, kerogens to liquids, bitumens to liquids, gas hydrates to liquids, etc etc.

A Gallery of Solar Capture Technologies

The Earth is deluged with vast amounts of energy from the sun on a constant basis. Humans have utilised solar energy from their earliest days, living on the proceeds of photosynthesis either directly or indirectly. As humans discovered fire, they cleverly enlarged their utilisation of solar energy to keeping warm on cold winter nights.

Modern humans have set their sites on powering a large part of their commercial and industrial infrastructure with solar energy, and have become extremely ingenious toward that end. Pictured below are several unconventional approaches to solar energy, which go beyond the simple silicon photovoltaic approach:

Plasmonic Photovoltaics

“The greatest significance thus far is to show an alternative method to rectennas and PV devices for IR and visible light conversion,” Melosh [Stanford U.] told PhysOrg.com. “The conversion efficiencies aren't amazingly high compared to a PV in visible, so it’s not going to replace PVs, but it could be used for energy scavenging later on.”

The new device’s MIM architecture is similar to that of a rectenna. However, whereas rectennas operate with long-wavelength light such as microwaves and radio waves, the new device operates with a broad spectrum of infrared to visible wavelengths. _Physorg

Northwestern U. Plasmonic via Brian Westenhaus
Another type of plasmonic super-absorption device comes from Northwestern U. Brian Westenhaus has more.

Nanowire Photovoltaics

The [U. Illinois] researchers found conditions for growing nanowires of various compositions of the III-V semiconductor indium gallium arsenide. Their methodology has the advantages of using a common growth technique without the need for any special treatments or patterning on the silicon wafer or the metal catalysts that are often needed for such reactions.

The nanowire geometry provides the additional benefit of enhancing solar cell performance through greater light absorption and carrier collection efficiency. The nanowire approach also uses less material than thin films, reducing the cost. _Physorg

Solar Antennas
A promising approach to solar antennas from Caltech
Another approach to solar antennas from Stanford

Super Light Absorber Nanotube Coating

The team of engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., reported their findings recently at the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference, the largest interdisciplinary technical meeting in this discipline. The team has since reconfirmed the material's absorption capabilities in additional testing, said John Hagopian, who is leading the effort involving 10 Goddard technologists.

"The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material’s absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared," Hagopian said. "No one else has achieved this milestone yet."

The nanotech-based coating is a thin layer of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny hollow tubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. They are positioned vertically on various substrate materials much like a shag rug. The team has grown the nanotubes on silicon, silicon nitride, titanium, and stainless steel, materials commonly used in space-based scientific instruments. _Physorg

Thin Film Nanopillar

The cells designed by Solasta are built on a substrate forested with long, thin, vertically arrayed nanopillars. The pillars are coated first with metal, then with a thin layer of semiconducting material such as amorphous silicon, and then with a layer of transparent conductive oxide. Though the silicon layer is thin, a photon still has a relatively long path to travel down the length of the nanopillars, and a good chance of transferring its energy to an electron. Freed electrons then travel perpendicularly over a very short path to the metal at the core of each pillar, and shimmy down this electrical pole off the cell. "Electrons never have to travel through the photovoltaic material," says Zhifeng Ren, professor of physics at Boston College. "As soon as they're generated, they go into the metal." _TechnologyReview

This is only the beginning of the ingenious designs which are intended to shift Earthlings into a grand new solar age.

The problem, of course, is the diffuse and intermittent nature of sunlight. The invention of cheap and efficient electrical storage would partially solve that problem -- especially for desert areas near the equator, which receive plentiful sunlight on a regular schedule.

But even with cheap, efficient storage, the diffuse nature of sunlight requires large areas of land to be covered by solar collectors. At this time, even at 100% conversion efficiency, and at a cost of $0.00 per panel, large scale solar energy would not be practical or affordable for most parts of the globe.

Solar photovoltaic energy is instead a niche field, more suitable for small scale applications. Solar thermal is another matter. Solar thermal principles should be incorporated into the construction of every home and building which is built in the developed world from now on.

Did Andrea Rossi Jump the Gun with His 1 MW E-Cat LENR?

New information from fusion physicist George Miley (Vortex via EcatSite and Ecatnews.net) helps to clarify a few matters regarding recent developments in LENR research.

Professor Miley and his students are proceeding with their own line of research into LENRs, and are making what is described as dramatic improvement. Miley's slides are available for download.

The slides show early runs. Recently they made a batch of material that
works dramatically better. However, they only made one batch so far and
they have run samples from it four times. They will need to make more
batches to confirm that they can reproduce this improved performance. Miley
is "optimistic but cautious" that the next batch will work as well as this
one did.

In the four runs they have achieved fairly stable output ranging from ~75
to ~200 W. The runs last around six hours. As shown in slide 48, the sample
first self-heats from the chemical reaction. Because the sample is well
insulated this heat is enough to trigger the anomalous reaction -- when the
anomalous reaction occurs. You do not usually need external heating
although the cell is equipped with a heater (slide 47).

The samples are ZrO2 with 35% Pd loaded with deuterium at 60 psi. They
range from 15 to 30 g. The starting material is of high purity and comes
from Ames National Laboratory. Additional processing is done at the
University of Illinois. Miley thinks that recent success is due to their
increased attention to material purity and improved manufacturing methods,
and a better vacuum pump. Quote slide 49: "Most effort has been to develop
improved nanoparticles by comparing and down selecting a series of triple
alloys."

They are also making ZrO2Ni, to be loaded with hydrogen. I do not think
they have done this yet. We did not talk about that much.

...Based on Mizuno's data, I agree this is very complicated but on the other
hand it is also probably reliable, stable and repeatable. Mizuno tested
hydrogen, deuterium, helium, air, and a vacuum. He tested the gases over a
range of pressures. He found that when you use the same kind of gas at the
same pressure, a given power level always produces the same temperature
difference between the inside and the outside. So, when anomalous power
produces a certain temperature you can find that point on the output curve
and you can say with confidence that it is producing that much power.

Because of this complexity, Miley et al. do not know with accuracy how much
power the sample is producing. On the other hand they can be sure it is
producing heat because the sample chamber is much hotter than the outer
chamber. We know the energy is anomalous, because it produces a much larger
temperature difference than the chemical effect, and it lasts much longer:
21600 s compared to 150 s. The anomalous power continues when the heating
coil is turned off, so there is no possibility that they are mistaking
conventional electric heating with anomalous heating.

In other words, they can be sure there is anomalous heat but they cannot
say with assurance what the magnitude of it is. I think they would have to
do more calibration with a joule heater to establish exactly what the power
level is.

...Miley’s researchers are young. See slide 46. This kind of research should
be done by young people. Frankly, I would rather have one young person than
5 elderly scientists.

The material supplied by Ames Laboratory can be documented in great detail,
and probably reproduced. The additional processing performed by Miley et
al. can also be documented in detail.

Unlike Rossi, Miley et al. are willing to reveal all details of their work
and to share materials with other qualified researchers, so this material
can be independently tested by other laboratories _Vortex_via_EcatSite_and_Ecatnews.net

And so on. It is worth reading both the Vortex link above and the EcatSite link.

The impression one gets from all the information available so far, is that the science is still poorly defined, and the technology is still at an infantile stage.

It is not likely that Andrea Rossi's E-Cat reactors are ready for commercialisation or mass production. But Rossi has performed an important role by bringing this science and technology to the attention of the public and the media. Now, scientific researchers such as George Miley and others should more easily obtain funding for their research into both the science underlying LENRs and the technology required to efficiently develop efficient and reliable reactors to useful scale.

More Shale Oil than First Believed & Gas That's Cleaner than Wind

EIA Shale Reserves via Brian Wang
North America is glutted with shale gas. But the new energy boom in mainland North America is shale oil -- a much more profitable play. New discoveries of rich shales in the middle of the US high plains are drawing a lot more attention, because these shales appear to be loaded with oil.

The Niobrara Shale formation covers parts of four western states – Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota and Nebraska...Geologists have known about the oil in Niobrara for about 80 years. But no one ever thought it could be recovered economically… until now. Like the Barnett, Fayetteville, Marcellus, Haynesville and Bakken – the Niobrara is another shale play that’s been known about for some time.
But it’s only recently that some of the major exploration and production companies shifted capital and drill rigs to explore the Niobrara.
And it’s only since the advent of hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling that it’s possible for this formation to be exploited for the oil and natural gas it contains.
According to El Paso County assessor Mark Lowderman, there have been over 2,200 leases signed with oil companies since 2009.

...A September report from the U.S. National Petroleum Council (NPC) said that U.S. shale oil reserves are “proving to be much larger than previously thought.” The NPC indicated that shale oil production could rise to as much as three million barrels per day “depending on access to new plays and continued technology development.”
That’s significant, but still nowhere near enough to wean the country off foreign oil. But it’ll provide a significant chunk of our current consumption of 19 million barrels per day.

...Keep an eye on the Niobrara. It’s another hot new play in shale oil, and could be a significant contributor to U.S. oil production in the years ahead. _InvestmentU_via_GWPF

In the meantime, the glut of North American natural gas will be waiting for technologists and entrepreneurs to develop new uses and new markets. And why not? According to Matt Ridley, natural gas is cleaner than big wind energy:

The gas well requires no subsidy – in fact it pays a hefty tax to the government – whereas the wind turbines each cost you a substantial add-on to your electricity bill, part of which goes to the rich landowner whose land they stand on. Wind power costs three times as much as gas-fired power. Make that nine times if the wind farm is offshore. And that’s assuming the cost of decommissioning the wind farm is left to your children – few will last 25 years.

Decided yet? I forgot to mention something. If you choose the gas well, that’s it, you can have it. If you choose the wind farm, you are going to need the gas well too. That’s because when the wind does not blow you will need a back-up power station running on something more reliable. But the bloke who builds gas turbines is not happy to build one that only operates when the wind drops, so he’s now demanding a subsidy, too.

...The International Energy Agency reckons there is quarter of a millennium’s worth of cheap shale gas in the world. A company called Cuadrilla drilled a hole in Blackpool, hoping to find a few trillion cubic feet of gas. Last month it announced 200 trillion cubic feet, nearly half the size of the giant Marcellus field. That’s enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it’s just the first field to have been drilled.

...The best thing about cheap gas is whom it annoys. The Russians and the Iranians hate it because they thought they were going to corner the gas market in the coming decades. The greens hate it because it destroys their argument that fossil fuels are going to get more and more costly till even wind and solar power are competitive.

...Wind cannot even help cut carbon emissions, because it needs carbon back-up, which is wastefully inefficient when powering up or down (nuclear cannot be turned on and off so fast). Even Germany and Denmark have failed to cut their carbon emissions by installing vast quantities of wind.

...To persist with a policy of pursuing subsidized renewable energy in the midst of a terrible recession, at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane. Nothing but bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it. _Matt Ridley_via_HotAir_via_ GWPF

Both articles linked above are worth reading in their entirety. One item of note in Matt Ridley's article on shale gas, is the anticipated bonanza of natural gas at the continental margins. When these discoveries start coming, they are likely to eclipse all the news of discoveries of other types of energy. Why? Because for billions of years, oil has been forming under sediments beneath the oceans, then being inevitably moved toward continental margins to be subducted into the mantle, under the continental margins. It is at those subduction points where hundreds of millions of years worth of oil & gas -- particularly gas -- are likely to be made available for exploitation -- with an ongoing conveyor belt of unlimited and renewable production on the way. For as long as life on earth continues, and the tectonic machinery of the planet operates.

Six Misconceptions About Peak Oil

Robert Rapier has recently returned home from a Peak Oil Summit in Washington DC. He gives some of his impressions of the conference in an article entitled "Five Misconceptions About Peak Oil." After excerpting Robert's listed five misconceptions below, I will add a sixth, which I believe to be Robert's own misconception.

Misconception 1: Peak Oil = Running Out of Oil

This one is surely the most common. Many articles that seek to debunk the notion of peak oil start with that premise, and then respond by highlighting other historical instances where someone influential suggested that we could be running out of oil. In fact, anyone concerned about peak oil will readily acknowledge that we are going to be producing oil for a very long time, and when we stop there is still going to be a lot of oil left in the ground.

So what then is the definition of peak oil? In its simplest form, peak oil means that just as oil production in the United States peaked in 1970 and began to decline, so shall the rest of the world.

...Misconception 2: Peak Oil Beliefs are Homogeneous

The beliefs among people who are concerned about resource depletion cover a wide span. There are those who believe that a peak is imminent, followed by a catastrophic decline. Included in this group are people who have vocally and (to this point) wrongly predicted dates and catastrophic consequences as a result of peak oil.

...Misconception 3: Peak Oil is a Theory

It is also common among those writing articles seeking to debunk peak oil to refer to the “peak oil theory.” As in the previous example, this paints with a very broad brush. When someone describes peak oil as a theory, what they are really referring to is the belief that a production peak is both imminent and the results promise to be catastrophic.

...Misconception 4: Peak Oil was Dreamed Up By Big Oil to Inflate Prices

In fact, most of the major oil companies argue that oil production will not decline for decades. This has been the public view of ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute.

...Misconception 5: Peak Oil is Denied by Oil Companies Worried about Alternatives.

This view is the opposite of the previous misconception. The idea is that if oil companies acknowledge peak oil, governments will redouble their efforts to develop alternative fuels, hastening the end of Big Oil. _Five Misconceptions About Peak Oil

Misconception 6: The drop in production after Peak Oil will be due to the inability of supply to keep up with exponential growth in demand. But in reality, it will be the drop in demand for dirty messy stinking crude oil which will lead to the drop in production after a long term "global peak."

There are many possible reasons for a sustained drop in demand for crude oil. Some are political, some are economic, but the most likely are due to the development of alternative methods of energy, fuels, and power, over time.

The main obstacle to the development of viable alternative fuels, energies, and power, is the powerful global green movement, which is well integrated into national governments and international intergovernmental bodies. The policies of energy starvation promulgated by large, big-money green groups through governments and intergovernments have largely obstructed a smooth transition from an oil economy to a post-oil economy. Perhaps the motives of many green believers are honest. It doesn't matter. They are causing hardship beyond measure on a global basis.

Robert Rapier's apparent beliefs in carbon catastrophe and exponential growth in demand for crude oil, have led him -- like many others in the peak oil camp -- to see an impossibility of a relatively smooth transition to a post-combustion energy economy. There is no reason to doubt Robert's sincerity.

A belief in anthropogenic carbon catastrophe, however, precludes a wide range of options for transitioning from crude oil to a post-combustion energy infrastructure. The mental pressure of all of that weight of CO2 on the brain prevents one with such a belief from thinking clearly through the many possible pathways between here and there.

That is unfortunate, but it is an obstacle which the problem-solvers will have to face, since such beliefs are well entrenched at the very highest levels of academia, politics, the media, and philanthropy.

New Approach to Converting CO2 to Chemicals and Fuel

GCC
Z French team of scientists working with Thibault Cantat at the Institut Rayonnement Matière de Saclay in Gif-sur-Yvette have developed a new method to convert carbon dioxide into useful building blocks for chemical synthesis and fuels. Rather than taking one of two previous approaches to synthesise either chemicals or fuels, the team has taken a hybrid approach capable of producing either chemicals or fuels in one dual step.

In the diagonal method, the carbon dioxide is both reduced and functionalized in one step. This allows the synthesis of a much greater number of chemicals, directly from CO2. This reaction requires three things:

a reducing agent (e.g. a silane);

an organic molecule to be attached to the carbon atom of the carbon dioxide (e.g. an amine); and

a special catalyst that catalyzes both the reduction and the functionalization.

The successful catalyst is a special organic base consisting of a nitrogen-containing ring system. Cantat says that varying the reaction partners should allow the manufacture of a whole series of chemical compounds that are normally obtained from petrochemical feedstocks, such as formamide derivatives, which are important intermediates for both chemical and pharmaceutical industries. _GCC

The problem with this approach is twofold: 1. CO2 is not abundantly available in pure and concentrated form 2. Cheap methane is apt to be available for hundreds of years, and will supply alternative pathways to chemicals and fuels inexpensively.

Widespread public misconceptions of fuel shortages and carbon hysteria have led people to assume that the facts of the carbon cycle are different than they really are. As long as we are living in this age of popular delusion -- fueled by politics, academia, and the media -- expect many more such ingenious solutions to non-existent problems.

But in the meantime, it is quite possible that the methods developed by the French team of scientists will find profitable niche applications.

Global Gas to Liquids Market Set to Skyrocket, CTL & Shales to Follow

According to Visiongain's The Gas to Liquids Market 2011-2021 report, the global gas to liquids market is set to reach about $6 billion in 2011. From there, it is set to skyrocket.

Visiongain's The Gas to Liquids Market 2011-2021 report details the prospects for this dynamic energy sector with detailed forecasts from 2011-2021. The report includes 141 tables, charts and graphs quantifying, analysing and forecasting the market in detail, and providing quantitative and qualitative information on the 7 regional markets and 13 leading national markets. In addition, the report offers profiles of 38 of the leading companies involved in the gas to liquids business. Furthermore, the analysis has been informed by extensive consultation with industry experts. Two full transcripts of interviews with leading companies are included from Syntroleum Corporation and Velocys Inc. The report will be valuable to those already involved in the gas to liquids market or to those wishing to enter this important market in the future.

To view sample pages please visit www.visiongain.com/Report/709/The-Gas-to-Liquids-Market-2...

For further information please contact sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com
_openPR

The global coal to liquids market is likewise set to take off, in an attempt to partially compensate for the capricious nature of pricing and supply from OPEC and other oil dictator states such as Russia.

Converting coal to a liquid fuel (CTL) – a process referred to as coal liquefaction – allows coal to be utilized as an alternative to oil.

There are two different methods for converting coal into liquid fuels like direct liquefaction and indirect liquefaction. An array of products can be made via these processes – ultra-clean petroleum and diesel, as well as synthetic waxes, lubricants, chemical feedstock’s and alternative liquid fuels such as methanol and dimethyl ether (DME).CTL fuel is readily useable today in existing transportation markets and can be delivered through existing pipelines in countries like USA.

Higher volatility in crude oil prices would lead to more investments in this new coal to liquid (CTL) market. This report segments CTL market by technology and geography. The report covers the following: Executive Summary, production process, Key drivers, constraints and opportunities, technology trends and raw materials trends. Competitive information includes profiles of leading manufacturers, M & A’s trends and patent analysis.

Releated Report : Energy and Power Market
http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/energy-power-supplies-market-research-4.html

Global Coal to Liquid (Ctl) By Technology, Applications, Geography Trends & Forecasts 2016
http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/ctl-market-360.html _sbwire

The US is putting itself in a better transition to move from combustion energies to post-combustion energies such as nuclear energy, by taking advantage of the abundant unconventional fossil fuels in North America.

Rather than rely on an increasingly insecure source of oil and gas from the turmoil-ridden Middle East and remain subject to the high probability risks of an oil supply cutoff like 1979’s, the United States now has the opportunity to develop a national energy surplus. By staying the course of tightening automobile efficiency standards and encouraging environmentally sensitive development of the massive reserves of shale gas, shale oil, deepwater oil and kerogen oil shale, the United States has the opportunity to eliminate the vast majority of its energy imports and thereby prevent any future Middle East oil crisis from causing financial turmoil and further loss of American jobs. _NYT

Rich US and Canadian unconventional resources are drawing producers from around the world, including Australia, China, Brazil, and several other regions.

And it looks as if huge new deposits of shale energy are just waiting to be found.

For the US energy industry and the US economy to rebound from its current Obama doldrums, it will first need to expel all traces of the energy starvation regime from Washington DC and all positions of authority. At that point, vigorous efforts to remove all traces of the energy starvation agenda from all government offices must be made. Only then will both the US and Canada be in a better position to take advantage of these "second chance" energy resources.

The Nonsense of EROEI: Opiate for the Masses?

Peak oil doomers wallow in the confusion of EROEI as if it were an addictive drug. The simplistic concept feeds into a new generation of doom predictions, despite the abysmal failure of peak oil predictions over the last 150 + years. When will they learn?

The quote below looks at EROEI calculations in regard to the growing of wheat, demonstrating that EROEI in food production has never been of particular concern. The author extends the argument to the relative irrelevance of EROEI for other, less important concerns.

...the reason that ERoEI doesn’t mean very much is that we’re not, an any kind of human scale, limited by the availbility of energy. The Sun simply pumps in so much energy that total energy availability simply isn’t a binding constraint upon us. What we’re interested in is usable energy and we’re quite happy to waste total energy in order to get usable. As in the growing wheat example, there’s 35 times more energy going into the system than energy we get out of it and yet we’re all just entirely delighted with said system. _Forbes

What most EROEI enthusiasts fail to comprehend is that unless the government prevents entrepreneurs from seizing opportunities, in a market economy the pricing (and potential pricing) of technologies and resources dictates where the action will go.

The reason that so many peak oil predictions of the past have gone so badly wrong, is that doomsayers (and lawyers & bureaucrats) focus on the negative at the expense of the potential positive. Entrepreneurs in the private sector tend to do the opposite, for reasons of opportunistic greed and ambition -- or merely for the sake of wanting to support a family in comfortable and secure style. If the balance of power within a nation shifts to the legal and bureaucratic sectors -- typically government regulators and private & public litigators -- opportunities for entrepreneurs tend to dry up. Public sector growth tends to choke off private sector activity -- despite the fact that a prospering private sector grows government revenues far beyond what a choked off private sector could do.

This antagonism between the negativity and limited vision of the public sector, environmental sector, litigation sector, political activism sector, tenured academic sector, labour union sector, doomer sector etc. VS. the imaginative entrepreneurial private sector, defines the future of any given society. If negativism and limited imagination wins the day, the economy contracts and opportunity disappears.

This is what happened in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Chavez' Venezuela, Ortega's Nicaragua, etc etc.

The problem with EROEI addicts is that doom is powerfully salient to the human brain. When doom is entrenched, it is almost impossible for any other idea to gain traction. And yet, the history of doomsday predictions should still give pause to doomers and would-be doomers.

Here is where Al Fin energy analysts show their doomer side: Peak manpower within the developed world is a far greater problem looming on the horizon than EROEI, peak oil doom, carbon hysteria doom, overpopulation doom, resource scarcity doom, pollution doom, or any other form of doom which is able to make it into print these days. Peak manpower is a reflection of the demographic contraction within the populations of the world that have the potential to raise and educate persons who can plan, build, and maintain the new technologies which will be necessary to move from a combustion energy economy to the post-combustion economy.

It is not the shortage of materials, equipment, energy, water, phosphates, or any other mere material that is the threat. It is instead the shortage of human capital, human ingenuity, human optimism combined with human competence. Because without that human capital, we could be floating in oil and still be mired in an energy crisis, in real terms.

But addicted people tend not to think constructively, in realistic terms. And EROEI is nothing if not an addiction for doomers.

Hey Peak Oil! Meet Global Peak Demand

Peak oil doom is finding it more and more difficult to get any respect among informed persons. The most recent blow to the boogey man of global peak oil collapse is an increase in evidence for an impending "peak demand" for oil globally. Ricardo Strategic Consulting has released a recent report predicting that global demand for oil will peak before 2020, and drop below 2010 levels by the year 2035.

The study predicted that evolutionary change in automotive technology will bring a revolutionary change in fuel demand, including an increasing disparity of demand between fuel types: diesel volumes will be buoyed by heavy duty transportation use while gasoline will decline due to increasing powertrain efficiencies and higher pump blends of bio-ethanol. Further, improved supply prospects for natural gas are likely to lead to decoupling of oil and gas markets, according to the study.

...Summary of key findings of the research project:

The approaching peak in oil demand. The study findings suggest that there is a strong chance of oil demand reaching its peak before 2020, at no more than about 4% above 2010 levels, before falling into a long-term decline trend, with demand in 2035 back down to some 3% below 2010 levels. This would also involve significant changes in the geographic distribution of demand and the mix of refined products required by the market. After incorporating a greater take-up of first-generation biofuels, demand for hydrocarbon oil by 2035 may actually be more than 10% below its 2010 level, and its share of global energy demand fallen below 25% (from circa 33% today).

Regional differences and legislation. Oil demand growth will have its limits in every country. Ricardo believes that there has been a general underestimation of the future impact of government policies to improve fuel efficiency and promote alternatives to oil. This will be the case everywhere, including, very importantly, in China, where although demand is projected to grow by nearly 60% in the meantime, the study assesses that a peak could be reached as early as 2027, before starting to fall back thereafter.

The effect of fuel-efficient technology. Evolutionary change in the automotive sector will bring about a revolutionary change in fuel demand. The transportation sector will continue to see significant growth in the vehicle fleet, increasing by over 80% from 2010 to 2035. However, the results of a detailed modeling exercise suggest that efficiency improvements in the internal combustion engine will more than offset the rise in fuel demand deriving from the increase in the number of vehicles.

Although new technologies, such as the battery electric vehicle, will be introduced and will have an increasing impact over time, the projected reduction in road transport oil demand does not derive primarily from the rapid penetration of such technologies.

The impact of biofuels. When considering the outlook for biofuels, the study concludes that the food vs. fuel argument may be poorly supported; for much of the last three decades, the agricultural sector has been constrained more by under-investment than by supply. If crop yields increase at historic rates, there will be enough surplus conventional fuel crops to displace a significant amount of fossil fuels. More than likely, the higher current selling prices will drive investment in production and research to further increase yields, making more sugar, starch and biomass available for conventional biofuels production.

As a result, the study projects that the production of first-generation biofuels may increase by 5-6 times over today’s levels, without allowing for any additional contribution from advanced biofuels, whose prospects remain uncertain.

Improved gas supply outlook decouples the oil and gas markets. Ricardo believes the improving supply outlook for natural gas, with the potential for the surge in shale gas production in North America to be replicated elsewhere over time, and a gradual introduction of a more competitive market pricing dynamic in world gas trade, is likely to drive an increasing disconnect of the gas price from the oil price, encouraging substitution of oil in both stationary and on-road transportation (i.e. natural gas vehicles) sectors.

Diesel and gasoline demand disparity. As regards the downward pressure on transportation fuels, the study assesses the impact as being far more pronounced in terms of gasoline demand than diesel, which will provide a supply side challenge to the world’s refining business. The industry may need to make significant investments to match production with demand, particularly to balance gasoline and distillate production. _GCC

Al Fin energy analysts see much to agree with in the Ricardo report. Betting on an exponential increase in demand for oil -- despite all the countervailing factors -- has always been a sucker's bet, suited for the echo choirs and circled jerkles of the doomer set.

We do feel that the influence of advanced biofuels -- particularly after the year 2020 -- is being understated by the Ricardo group. It is also likely that sometime between now and 2020, the "energy starvation mentality" of governments in the US and Europe will be overthrown by popular sentiment, as the folly of the green dieoff.orgy agenda becomes more apparent. With the demise of the green energy starvation agenda, greater supplies of energy from all sources -- including nuclear, CTL, GTL, BTL, bitumens, kerogens, gas clathrates, shale gas & oil, and more -- will be forthcoming.

Combining increased supplies of energy and fuels with a gradually decreasing demand will result in reduced retail and wholesale pricing, with likely catastrophic results for the governments of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia, and other energy dictatorships.

More from the Telegraph

Will Putin Panic, Punked by Shale Oil & Gas?

Vladimir Putin is a man on a mission, aiming to return Russia to its glory days as a superpower. Mr. Putin plans to achieve this goal using Russia's vast oil & gas reserves. During the buildup in energy prices prior to August 2008, Putin was riding high -- going so far as to invade and partially ethnically cleanse the neighboring nation of Georgia.

But something annoying is getting in the way of Mr. Putin's grand plans of becoming Russia's first superpower tsar. The energy chokehold which Putin held over most of Europe is beginning to slip away. Abundant unconventional energy resources are beginning to pop up where least expected -- taking advantage of high global energy prices. And the unconventionals are just getting started:

The cost of developing these unconventional resources, meanwhile, continues to drop. In the case of Israel, which has developed an unusually clean and efficient drilling technology, oil is expected to flow at a cost of US$35 to US$40 per barrel, or less than half today’s world oil price of US$90 a barrel.

The diversified democracies of the world — the U.S. and European countries among others — will profit big time from the world’s endowment of unconventional oil and gas, partly because many of them will become energy exporters instead of importers and mainly because low energy prices will spur their advanced economies. Not so for today’s undiversified, energy-export dependent countries.

Russia, a largely undeveloped country that relies on energy exports to meet half of its federal government budget, would be dealt a crippling blow. In 2009, with falling energy prices following the 2008 financial crisis, Russia’s GDP fell by 8% as its energy export earnings dropped by 60%. As oil prices recovered following the crisis, so did Russia, but in a new world energy order of sustained low prices, Russia’s predicament would be dire.

Because Russia depends on its energy exports to the EU to meet its needs for manufactured goods, for food and for the capital required to maintain its energy infrastructure, its standard of living would plummet, along with its aspirations for status as a global or even regional superpower. As one example, Russia will have lost its ability to cow Europe, as it has on previous occasions by threatening to withhold, or actually withholding, gas deliveries. According to a study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the market share of Russian gas exports to Western Europe could be cut in half in the coming decades.

Iran’s government, perhaps the greatest threat to world peace today, would likewise be crippled, perhaps fatally. With millions of Iranians living on $2 or less per day, with high unemployment, high inflation and an economy even more energy dependent than Russia’s, the Iranian government could be unable to keep calls for its overthrow at bay, let alone continue in its role as the world’s premier financier of terrorism. Other mischief-making Middle Eastern governments, and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, too, would find their sails trimmed in a world of plentiful energy. _GWPF Lawrence Solomon

It would not be the first time that western environmental organisations, and other anti-energy activist groups, had their strings pulled by foreign interests. Various entities both foreign and domestic would like to bring energy starvation to the west, for reasons of profit, power, and influence.

Much of the propaganda and protest with regard to unconventional energies such as oil sands, shale oil & gas, oil shale kerogens, etc. is influenced by persons with less than pristine motives. But that is the way of the world. Idealistic and gullible individuals are often lured into acting as cats paws and cannon fodder for the sake of other interests with more ambitious plans in mind.

How far would Putin go, when faced with the possibility of a Russian economic collapse in the face of abundant foreign unconventional energy and fuels?

New Tools for Understanding Shale -- The Economy Re-igniter

Finding Petroleum
North American shale oil & gas are considered a chance for re-igniting the US economy -- if the US political establishment will allow it to happen.

Shale is where gas is actually created. Energy men call it “the kitchen,” where hydrocarbons “cook,” and where large amounts of gas remains trapped. [George P.] Mitchell wondered: Why not drill all the way down to the kitchen? His exploration company probed the Barnett Shale, a slab sprawling 7,000 feet beneath Dallas and Fort Worth. Competitors scoffed. “We we running low on gas, and I had to find another reservoir somewhere,” Mitchell, now 92, told Bloomberg News. “So I said let’s drill a well and see what this thing is about.”

He invested his faith and capital in hydraulic fracturing, which had been introduced in rudimentary form in the late ’40s. Injected at enormous pressures and in huge volumes, fracking fluid creates narrow cracks in the shale. Sand diffused in the fluid stays behind and props open the cracks, allowing gas to flow out and up through the well. “Mitchell Energy,” the industry consultant Daniel Yergin writes in his new book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, “cracked the code.”

In 2002, after 60 years in the business, George Mitchell decided to cash out. Devon Energy (DVN), a better-capitalized independent in Oklahoma City, acquired his company for $3.5 billion. Devon brought to the Barnett a knack for horizontal drilling. Improvements in equipment controls and measurement methods allowed its crews to drill down and then turn the gnawing diamond-tipped bit sideways. Drillers penetrate the shale laterally rather than just vertically. This exposes more of the surface area of the formation to extraction and enables multiple wells to be created from each drill pad. _BusinessWeek

But not all shales contain the same amount of oil & gas. And even a promising shale might ruin an oil & gas company if they went about drilling it the wrong way. You have to know where to drill, what frac fluids to use, and what direction and depth to turn your drill.

A company called Paradigm specialises in subsurface software for integrating seismic and log data to help you find the best place and way to drill your shale. The image at the top is an example of how Paradigm's tools integrate geoscience information to help drillers.

Other crucial information about a shale can be obtained via micro-structural and nanoscale imaging.

These tools not only tell you where the oil & gas are likely to be, but how much petroleum is in place, how much you are likely to be able to get out, and which method is likely to be most effective.

The technology has come quite a ways since George P. Mitchell pioneered hydraulic fracturing and Devon Energy improved horizontal drilling methods. A higher proportion of wells are likely to be producing wells, making the process more efficient and profitable. And this technology has just gotten started.

Can shale oil & gas re-ignite the US economy? As long as the US and state governments allow oil companies to work, shale energy is likely to boost those economies for a number of decades.

Only Governments Can Dictate Peak Oil

People talk about peak oil, but there is also peak government take. How much more can the governments take? Look at Libya; it was taking more than 97% of oil proceeds. In Iraq, it's somewhere north of 92%. A company, after taking on all the exploration risk, gets about $4 for every $80 per barrel (bbl) in Iraq. That's a high government take. The risks are there. _MarketOracle

The capricious actions of governments can make it difficult for energy companies to produce their product. From the energy starvation agenda of the US Obama agenda, to the neglectful maintenance of oil field equipment by national oil companies in the middle east, Mexico, Venzuela, and Russia, governments tend to have an adverse effect on the production of oil, gas, bitumens, coal, kerogens, nuclear power, and virtually all forms of energy.

The big themes that dominated the opening years of the century (prosperity, markets, peak oil, global warming and clean technology) are giving way to a different set of concerns centred on inequality, affordability, regulation and techniques for extracting oil and gas from tight rock formations and ever-deeper below the surface.

...A decade of soaring real oil prices is at last beginning to transform the long-neglected supply side of the industry, encouraging widespread employment of technologies such as ultra-deepwater drilling and hydraulic fracturing to extend conventional oil and gas reserves.

...At the root of all these issues are political rather than economic questions. There will be no shortage of oil, gas or power in the next two decades. _Reuters

Advanced societies need to turn away from leftist-Green policies of energy starvation, and take advantage of the reprieve from energy shortages which they are being granted. If nations refuse to build safe new advanced nuclear power systems while they have the chance, their shrinking future generations will suffer for their green dieoff.orgy stupidity.

But the nations that do learn to build the safe new modular reactors in large numbers, using new generation technologies which allow them to burn nuclear "waste" as valuable fuels -- those nations will be able to leverage the abundant power and process heat from new nuclear, into centuries' worth of hydrocarbons for whatever use they choose to make of them.

Real peak oil is political peak oil. That is the only meaningful kind of peak oil that you will ever see. The way to doom is by way of government policy.

The mainstream of peak oil doom is a cult, a way to kill time for those with nothing important or productive to do. If these believers were problem solving people, they would be solving problems rather than circling and jerkling in their echo choirs.

Of course, the leaders of the cult are able to prosper from the gullibility of the true believers, but such opportunism is to be expected. Likewise the political leaders who institute government policies of political peak oil and political energy starvation -- they will prosper from having done what their backers wanted them to do. They will get their backdoor payoffs. But again, opportunism and greed in high places has always been the norm.

A Casual Walk Down EROEI Lane

Wikipedia EROEI
EROEI -- or energy return on energy investment -- is an interesting concept. A simple equation for calculating EROEI is provided by Wikipedia:
EROEI = Usable Acquired Energy / Energy Expended

But beware of the false simplicity of equations and charts. The denominator for the equation above: "Energy Expended," can be devilishly difficult to quantify in simple terms.

EROEI is never quite well-defined because you don't know how "deeply" you should go in your energy audit. If Joe Sixpack works for a hydroelectric power plant, should you include the energy expenses that his grandfather had to make to get laid with his grandmother? What about the projector in the cinema in 1934 before they had the first intercourse? :-) These things were needed for the power plant to work. My example is meant to be amusing but the essence is very serious. _Lubos

When it comes to EROEI, only a range of values is acceptable. If you are given a point estimate of EROEI without error bars or a range -- as in the Wiki chart above -- you are being lied to.

Robert Rapier is going to delve into the treacherous topic of EROEI in a talk at the ASPO-USA Conference. Robert discusses various ways in which an investment with a low EROEI can be superior to one with a higher EROEI. For example:

... it is possible for a lower EROEI process to be more attractive than a higher EROEI process if the former returns the energy over a shorter time interval. Think of it in terms of interest. Consider an investment that returns 3% on a daily basis versus one that returns 50% on an annual basis. If you invested $1 in each, the 3% daily return will earn you more than $47,000 at the end of one year (assuming you reinvest the returns) while the 50% annual return will earn you 50 cents. But EROEI would simply say that one return is 1.03 to 1 and the other is 1.5 to 1. So, if someone says that a process has an EROEI of 1.5, the first question needs to be “Over what time interval?” _RobertRapier

In fact there are many situations where other factors will trump the narrow EROEI consideration. Environmentalists, for example, may disqualify hydroelectric, coal, nuclear, oil sands, and oil shale, simply on environmental concerns -- regardless of EROEI. Utility manager may wish to disqualify wind and solar, based upon their intermittency, expense, requirement for expensive backup facilities, and the fascist way that green governments are forcing such unreliable forms of power production down their throats.

EROEI and Cents per kilowatt-hour

Energy mechanism	EROEI	Cents/kWh
Hydro	11:1 to 267:1	1
Coal	50:1	2 to 4
Oil (Ghawar supergiant field)	100:1
Oil (global average)	19:1
Natural gas	10:1	4 to 7
Wind	18:1	4.5 to 10
Wave	15:1	12
Solar Photovoltaic	3.75:1 to 10:1	21 to 83
Geothermal	2:1 to 13:1	10
Tidal	~ 6:1	10
Tar sands	5.2:1 to 5.8:1
Oil shale	1.5:1 to 4:1
Nuclear	1.1:1 to 15:1	2 to 9
Biodiesel	1.9:1 to 9:1
Solar thermal	1.6:1	6 to 15
Ethanol	0.5:1 to 8:1

Table Source
Imagine you are driving through downtown Santa Fe, running low on fuel, and you see two gasoline stations on opposite sides of the street. One sells fuel for $3.85 a gallon, and the other for $10.99 a gallon. The higher priced fuel boasts an EROEI of 10:1, whereas the lower priced fuel can only claim an EROEI of 3:1. Which fuel will you buy, and on what basis?

In fact, we base our energy decisions on price, not EROEI. The fact that prices can change erratically, while EROEI may stay the same, is not a black mark against economics. It is rather a commentary on how simplistic the concept of EROEI is compared to the complexity of life. Pricing in markets reflects far more dimensions of reality than the deceptively simple calculation of EROEI.

Biodiesel- 3:1
Coal- 1:1 to 10:1
Ethanol- 1.2:1
Natural Gas- 1:1 to 10:1
Hydropower- 10:1
Hydrogen- 0.5:1
Nuclear- 4:1
Oil- 1:1 to 100:1
Oil Sands- 2:1
Solar PV (2) - 1:1 to 10:1
Wind (2) - 3:1 to 20:1 _Energy Bulletin

If you can produce and sell power reliably and profitably over a long period of time using a relatively low cost method of production -- but the EROEI was only 1.5 to 1 -- would you do it? It depends on a lot of things, the EROEI being one of the least important.

EROEI can be important in some contexts, irrelevant in others, and downright misleading in most. I have included three different charts or tables comparing EROEI for various forms of energy production or energy source. Notice that the range of estimates for EROEI is quite wide -- where ranges are provided. These ranges are more honest than a simple point estimate, but even such wide ranges can be made obsolete.

As technologies change, EROEIs necessarily change as well. What was once not economically viable suddenly becomes viable, with the introduction of new technologies. 20 year old EROEIs given for deep sea oil, oil sands, shale oil & gas, methane clathrates are less than meaningless today, and will be even less worth considering in 20 years time.

The EROEIs given for wind energy are particularly misleading, given that wind is not dispatchable, has a capacity factor between 20% and 30% at best, and produces most of its power at non-peak demand times. Wind is not present in sufficient quantities for large areas of the globe. Throw away the EROEI for wind, or fool yourself, as you please.

Other forms of energy suffer from the same problem of EROEI irrelevancy. Solar, for example, is also intermittent, non-dispatchable, not suitable for most parts of the world due to issues of weather and latitude. Despite what solar advocates may say, solar energy is not a good match to peak loads most of the year, for most of the planet. Throw away EROEI for solar.

EROEI is a broad and deceptively simplistic measure of energy efficiency, is perhaps best thought of in connection with the broader concept of entropy in a closed system. In open systems, such as those which humans deal in, EROEI has only limited utility, and is most frequently misused and abused when used.

Thomas Malthus Neglected to Factor In Human Ingenuity

Thomas Malthus was an 18th century English scholar and clergyman. His theories on population growth have led several generations of academics to predict mass starvation and the doom of civilisation, but to no avail. The global human population continues to grow, for now, due to human ingenuity.

Can there be “unlimited progress” in food production? Not sure. But Malthus would never imagine that, with 6 billion more people than in his day, we have a holiday dedicated to handing total strangers handfuls of free food. Utterly non-nutritional food at that!

You can’t really blame Malthus for getting this so wrong. Long-term forecasts are right devilish. Example, the London Times columnist who predicted in 1894 that by 1950, London would be buried under 9 feet of manure likely died before he could have any egg on his face. (Though, no doubt, he had enough time to surmise that the horse-dropping build-up was going awfully slowly.) There was no way for him to know in a few short years, the combustion engine would make horse-drawn transport a cute relic for honeymooners.

And that’s how these long-term forecasts go. The peak oil date certain (the point at which oil production hits an apex and starts falling) has come and gone multiple times over the past decades. Yet, since the concept of “peak oil” was first popularized by Marion Hubbert in 1956, the amount of oil we produce has increased vastly. So too has the amount of known reserves in the ground. There was just no way for him to predict we’d be drilling in thousands of feet of water—or “fracking”! (Heck, in 1956, “frack” was still what polite Dads said after their thumbs got in the way of their hammers.) Or that we’d even have the technology to find the oil (or gas) to deep-water drill (or frack).

The popular 1968 book the Population Bomb posited that in the 1970s, hundreds of millions would starve to death. The theory was that if food production is growing at X rate and the population growing at much faster Y rate, that could pose quite a problem. But then, along came Norman Borlaug, who invented high-yielding, disease-resistant dwarf wheat. (Thank goodness Norman’s mom wasn’t a Malthusian.) Now, dwarf wheat may make those who shun “frankenfoods” mad, but it also meant the emerging world’s burgeoning populations didn’t all starve.

...I don’t care what it’s on—economies, capital markets, wheat yields, hemline trends—long-term forecasts are fraught with peril. And ones that underestimate humanity’s ingenuity and ability to problem-solve are particularly faulty. Yes, pockets of the world face famine—usually in regions with corrupt, despotic governments. But overall, the world hasn’t outgrown its ability to feed itself. Someone invented the steel plow, the tractor, the threshing machine, better fertilizers. Handily, someone also discovered penicillin, the pasteurization process, the Polio vaccine and DDT so we have a better shot at getting past age 5. (And the iPhone too, so we can live, not starve and be entertained all the while.) Malthus didn’t think about the iPhone anymore than he thought about dwarf wheat or the MMR vaccine. That doesn’t make him a bad person, just rather unimaginative. _Forbes

Humans are suffering from a scarcity of ingenuity, inventiveness, creativity, imagination, vision, wisdom, and practical competence. The fact that the global average population IQ of humans appears to be in decline is not exactly a comfort to Al Fin social analysts.

But the tools of knowledge acquisition, correlation, and conversion to practical devices, are getting better. That means that fewer persons can accomplish much more than in the past. That is a fortunate trend, given the progressive march toward the Idiocracy occurring within the mainstream.

E-Cat: If Real, "It Would Be a Sacrilege to Keep it Hidden"

According to the Italian science magazine nextme.it:

...before I praise or reject cold fusion, you must know its operation in detail. And when it does not seem possible, and that’s what, to some extent, increases the doubts of scientists and experts. Because if that was really discovered what we call the miracle of energy, it would be a sacrilege to keep it “hidden”. _ecatnews

To the end of "not keeping anything hidden," there is a movement afoot to make the E-Cat nickel-hydrogen technology "open source."

Can small groups of independent hobbyists and engineers hope to replicate and improve upon what Andrea Rossi has done?

So, is it a fantasy to imagine that a small group of far-flung enthusiasts could make such a thing happen? The odds against success are high. If it were easy, it would have been done by now. I have no doubt that many LENR researchers are quietly working away trying to find the secret sauce with the hope of eventually matching and then bettering it; even as most scientists doubt the thing exists. From NASA to SRI, Piantelli to Miley, scores of clever people furnished with equipment, expertise, space and money are hammering at the forge – just doing it.

According to Rossi, he tried thousands of permutations before the reaction fired at a usable scale and under control. If we suspend disbelief – and I am certain that many well-resourced individuals will do exactly that – then those who follow Rossi may not have to climb the same mountains to reach the top. There are many clues. Even if we discount the eCat, we have Miley and Piantelli and others telling us that it is possible. Knowing that one thing – that it is possible – can make all the difference.

The Buildecat.com appears to be in its early stages, but is meant to help independents to build LENR reactors.

Andrea Rossi is not particularly friendly toward the open source ideal, and wishes to keep control of the technology as long as possible. But once outsiders take possession of an E-Cat, the technology begins leaving his hands and his control. With so many groups having worked on this technology before Rossi, it is unlikely that Rossi can control the technology via either patents or trade secrets.

It seems clear that E-Cat technology is not ready to be sold commercially, with all the problems Rossi has had at every demonstration. Instead, they should only be sold as test devices, in the original basic modular size. Even if Rossi's technology "works" after a fashion -- which he has not proven satisfactorily -- he is clearly rushing the product to market long before it is ready.

Most observers of E-Cat apparently wish for a great global energy revolution. While that would be nice, Al Fin energy analysists are more interested in getting to the bottom of the science involved in LENRs, LANRs, or "cold fusion," whichever you prefer.

Cost of Energy Generation per Kilowatt Hour

Generation cost per kilowatt hour:

Natural gas: 3.5-4.5 cents
Coal: 4-5 cents
Hydro: 4 cents
Nuclear: 8 cents
Wind: 7-9 cents*
Solar: 15-50 cents

Question: Why as a country are we investing billions of dollars in the most expensive option (solar) and ignoring the cheapest (natural gas), especially when the U.S. is the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas"? _MJPerry

* Of course wind is not available on demand, and the capacity factor is only between 20% and 30% at best. Most wind occurs at other than peak demand times, making wind less than worthless. In other words, the 7-9 cents per kwh quoted for wind above is horse shit in terms of relevance.

Facts on the cost of generating electricity (per kilowatt hour):

video via CarpeDiem
Of course nuclear would be much less expensive to build and operate without government obstruction in new development, licensing, and permitting.
Carpe DiemAs we see that US import requirements for oil are declining, we should note that US natural gas imports have crashed much faster. If the US government would wake up and remove the impediments to oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and open up GTL, CTL, KTL, and other unconventional sources of liquid fuels, the oil import curve would drop even more quickly than it is already.

It is rather obvious that any improvements that occur in the energy picture, will occur in spite of Obama's policies, rather than because of them.