LP97S posted:

Personally, anyone who would put aside personal politics and a few dozen votes for Harry Reid to re-open and loving use Yucca Flats for what it was built for.

Palicgofueniczekt posted:

Locking away fuel taken from nuclear reactors that still have 95% of their useful energy remaining?

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Unsubsidised solar PV is at socket parity in Europe.

Kaal posted:

Interesting post GulMadred. Could you talk a bit about what the feed-in tariff is and how it interacts with the various power source options?

GulMadred posted:

Lamdo posted:

Man... No esta bien. How the gently caress is this problem so complicated... There is so much going on here that trying to orchestrate a goddamned thing with actual individual personal interests is just hosed. I guess we'll burn coal. Might make my climate up here better...

Stew Man Chew posted:

At a dinner function last night I was introduced to a man who just recently retired from his job with Santee Cooper as one of their nuclear technicians. When I showed great enthusiasm for his career and wanted to pick his brain about nuclear development in this country, his response was "The young folks I talk to tend to think we're some sort of monster and down here especially the perspective is that VC Summer is some sort of ticking time bomb!" Dude said he had enlisted in the Navy's submarine school back in the 50s expecting a sweet vacation on diesel units in the Caribbean, and was real mad when they punted his rear end to the middle of nowhere working on a nuclear ship.

South Carolina is installing two 1,117 MW Gen III Westinghouse reactors. They've started pouring concrete after about 8 years of siting / licensing / regulatory crap. Of all the states I would have thought we would be on the wrongest side of the issue, but apparently it's only us and Georgia currently building new nuclear plants. awesome!

quote:

US is on fast-track to energy independence, report suggests

U.S. oil and gas production is evolving so rapidly — and demand is dropping so quickly — that in just five years the U.S. could no longer need to buy oil from any source but Canada, according to Citigroup's global head of commodities research.

Citigroup's Edward Morse, in a new report, projects a dramatic reshaping of the global energy industry, where the U.S., in a matter of years, becomes an exporter of energy, instead of one of the biggest importers.

The shift could sharply reduce the price of oil, and therefore limit the revenues of the producing nations of OPEC, as well as Russia and West Africa. Those nations face new challenges: Not only are the U.S. and Canada increasing output, but Iraq increasingly is realizing its potential as an oil producer, adding 600,000 barrels a day of production annually for the next several years.

"OPEC will find it challenging to survive another 60 years, let alone another decade," the report by Morse and other Citi analysts said. "But not all of the consequences are positive, for when it comes to the geopolitics of energy, the likely outcomes are asymmetric, with clear cut winner and losers."

The U.S. is a winner in many ways. Its super power status could be prolonged because of this new growth in oil and shale gas production, made possible by "fracking" and other non-conventional drilling technologies.

Crude oil generated the largest single annual increase in liquids production in U.S. history last year, with an increase of 1.16 million barrels per day. Oil production is booming in places like Texas and North Dakota, which has the lowest unemployment in the country at just 3 percent last September, compared to the national rate of 7.8 percent then.

Citi analysts also foresee a new era of U.S. industrialization, fueled by cheaper power. They cite dozens of industrial projects across America that have already begun or are planned, in such industries as auto, chemicals and steel.

The oil producing nations of OPEC, and others, will have to adjust to a world of lower prices.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, could trade in a new lower range of $70 to $90 per barrel by the end of the decade, from its recent range of $90 to $120 per barrel, Citi projects. That would be below the break-even levels required by many producing countries. The price required by Saudi Arabia is $71, and Kuwait is $44 per barrel, but many other countries have break-even levels of $110 or greater.

"This is a momentous year for what's happening, and we're having almost two million barrels a day of pipeline capacity built out in the U.S.," Morse said on "Fast Money." "The U.S. is actually going to push out about 700,000 barrels a day of light sweet crude imports this year. We think as a result of that, plus production elsewhere, we think the price is going to average, by the time you get to December, $10 less than where it is right now."

As the U.S. and Canada rise, some oil producing countries could face the threat of becoming "failed states" as their leadership grapples with greater pressure for economic and political reform while resource revenues decline, the report said. Others, especially China, could make up for some of the demand, but not all.

"Nigeria, the picture is fairly bleak. Venezuela is pretty bleak," Morse said.

As for Russia, "if it is the case that what is now a $90 Brent floor price becomes a $90 Brent ceiling price, given the dominance of hydrocarbon exports in Russian revenue, there could be a three percent hit to GDP which is by no means insignificant over the next five years, because that's how critical hydrocarbons are," he said. "Here you have a country that requires, on its own public record, $117 per barrel Urals crude, on average, to balance their budget. If the price of oil collapses to only as low as $90 a barrel, it does have that order-of-magnitude effect."

At the same time, Citi sees a big impact on the U.S. economy. The current account deficit is about 3.2 percent of GDP, and the oil import bill is 1.7 percent of GDP. Citi expects that energy self-sufficiency, combined with the impact of low natural gas prices, could cut the current account deficit by up to 2.4 percent of GDP, with an associated improvement in the dollar of 1.6 to 5.4 percent.

To realize this production boom, the energy industry's near-term challenge is moving the U.S. and Canadian oil that is locked in the heart of the continent because of insufficient pipeline transportation. Citi expects that to improve but in the meantime, the railroad industry is helping pick up the slack, shipping U.S. crude across the continent, and creating big demand for rail tanker cars.

Interdependent North America
The Citi report, titled "Energy 2020: Independence Day," also projects a larger and quicker decline in demand for oil in the U.S. over the next decade or two, due to efficiency and the shift to cheaper natural gas.

For instance, Citi expects 30 percent of the U.S. heavy duty truck fleet to turn to natural gas-based fuel by 2015, well above the 10 percent it previously forecast. That would reduce diesel demand by an estimated 600,000 barrels per day. It also expects new automotive efficiency standards to reduce U.S. oil production by two million barrels per day, up from the one million forecast last year.

"Starting this year, North American output, as we indicate in this report, should start to have tangible impacts both on global prices and trading patterns, and will eventually turn the global geopolitics of energy on its head," the report said.

Morse surprised markets a year ago with a report that envisioned the U.S. as part of an energy independent North America. Since then, the view has become mainstream. The International Energy Agency forecast last fall that the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia as the top oil producer by 2017. The IEA also forecast that North America could become a net oil exporter by around 2030 and the U.S. could become nearly self-sufficient by 2035.

Morse's latest report, released Tuesday, has an even more aggressive view of the U.S. move to dominance as an energy producer.

If crude oil and field condensates, natural gas liquids, renewable fuels and refinery processing gains are counted, the report put U.S. production at 11.2 million barrels per day at the end of 2012, making the U.S. the biggest oil producer already last year.

Canadian production is expected to increase to 6.5 million barrels per day, and even Mexico is now expected to join the North America energy renaissance under a new government interested in exploiting its resources.

In the past six years, oil imports into the United States have been cut in half, after peaking in 2006.

"The numbers are striking. The month of peak was 12.6 million barrels a day in October 2006 and ... now it's under six, and by late 2012 totaled 6.8 million bpd," Morse said in an interview.

Since 2006, U.S. oil field production of crude, plus natural gas liquids and bio-fuels has grown by three million barrels a day, about the same as the total output of Iran, Iraq, or Venezuela. In the same period, Canadian production has grown by 510,000 barrels a day.

"The impact of this extraordinary production growth is becoming increasingly apparent and even if the growth rate subsides in the years ahead the mushrooming impacts of this growth will have dramatic impacts," the report said. "A half decade from now combined US and Canadian output will be in surplus of projected needs. Over the next five years, demand for natural gas in the US should catch up with supply, opening up unexpected opportunities in transportation and igniting a re-industrialization of the country."

Morse, in an interview, said the U.S. could in theory need to import only from Canada within five years. "Our projection of U.S. supply growth and U.S. demand collapse is to levels where the U.S. will not need to import oil from any other country except for Canada," he said.

He expects to see a fight for market share in the U.S. and the ultimate result will be that the U.S. could re-export some Canadian crude. "But technically there should be no room for anyone else's crude," he noted.

But this does not mean the U.S. will be immune to price spikes, even with its growing supply. "Disruptions actually affect the price of oil globally and the more integrated we are in the world oil economy, the more we're going to be impacted by it. If there's a price spike, we're going to feel the price spike but the weight of our production is going to make that prices pike come from a much lower base in the future than it is now," Morse said on "Fast Money."

2013 — a year of change
U.S. oil has been landlocked in the Midwest, lacking a strong transportation system to bring supply to refining areas. A hodge podge of pipeline and rail transport has taken over, as the industry awaits further pipeline development, including the stalled Keystone pipeline.

But Citi points out that 2013 brings big change, what it calls "the most dramatic year of change ever in light sweet crude flows." Pipeline capacity in the U.S. will expand by 1.7 million barrels a day, and up to 600,000 barrels of new rail capacity will be opened between the U.S. and Canada. The report said there is an expected near doubling of receiving capacity of rail-shipped oil from 2012 to 2013.

The industry has innovated where necessary. Lacking pipelines, over half the North Dakota crude production, of 480,000 barrels a day at the end of 2012, was estimated to have been moved by rail. Much of it went to St. James, La., and Port Arthur, Texas and Mobile, Ala. Bakken is also being railed to facilities in Albany, N.Y., and New Brunswick, Canada.

The report also points out the big backlog in rail cars, many of them tank and hopper railcars. Citi said American Railcar Industries last fall said backlog for rail-cars at the end of September was 61,400, and 75 percent were tank rail-cars. Tank rail-cars transport materials like crude, chemicals, propane ethanol and asphalt.

Independent North America
The report describes how shipments of oil from West Africa have been waning and as early as this summer, West African crude shipments into the U.S. Gulf Coast could be unnecessary. East Coast refiners could also decrease dependence on West African crude, replacing more imports with midcontinent oil, brought in by rail from Pennsylvania and Virginia to upstate New York and New Jersey. That would also have a likely impact on gasoline prices, currently at record highs for this time of year because of refining issues.

There is also pressure to move light sweet crude from the Gulf Coast to higher value locations. For instance, Morse expects to see light sweet crude move form the U.S. Gulf Coast to eastern Canada, displacing more West African imports to North America.

Citi expects that within two years, there could be pressure for more exports to other destinations or for pipelines on the East Coast or to change laws that would allow shipping of crude from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast by non-U.S. flagged ships.

By the end of 2014, Citi expects that sour Canadian crude should make its way to the Gulf Coast by way of new pipelines and that should provide a challenge for other producers shipping to the Gulf Coast, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait , Venezuela and Mexico. Morse says they could be pushed out by Canadian crude, or these producers could preserve market share by cutting prices.

Canadian and U.S. crude should be delivered in greater quantities to the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast by mid-decade. A happenstance of poor transportation for all this energy wealth leaves Canadian crude locked in North America, but with exporting ability through the U.S. Gulf Coast until pipelines are approved and built in Canada. Morse said if that were to happen, Canada could see an export boom to the Pacific basin, turning Canadian crude into the benchmark for that region.

The report notes that even before Canada builds pipelines to the Pacific: "There should be exports of crude from the U.S. Gulf Coast -- Canadian crude for sure and potentially U.S. crude if the U.S. succumbs to economic logic and lifts current multiple bans on exports," the report said.

Asked how his report has been received so far, Morse said, with an ironic laugh, that he's had some "push back but not as much as last year."

Charlz Guybon posted:

Citigroup has released an 85 page report projecting that US will achieve energy indepence (with the exception of canada) within 5 years.

For those more interested in the ecological impact, there is some good news in that the trucking industry seems to be converting from diesel to natural gas much quicker than expected. However that good news will likely be offset by the fact that achieving energy independence will likely cause alternate energy projects to lose political support.

Looks like this will have lots of good short term economic impact for the US, but what do you guys think about the global economic and geoploitical impact? Sounds like it could be quite destablizing. Seems like it could lead to civil conflict due to economic distress in nations that depend on oil exports to fund their budgets. Nigeria, where there is already quite a bit of religious strife between Christians and Muslims, would seem quite vulnerable.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/us-fast-track-energy-independence-report-suggests-1C8344034

Charlz Guybon posted:

Citigroup has released an 85 page report projecting that US will achieve energy indepence (with the exception of canada) within 5 years.

For those more interested in the ecological impact, there is some good news in that the trucking industry seems to be converting from diesel to natural gas much quicker than expected. However that good news will likely be offset by the fact that achieving energy independence will likely cause alternate energy projects to lose political support.

Looks like this will have lots of good short term economic impact for the US, but what do you guys think about the global economic and geoploitical impact? Sounds like it could be quite destablizing. Seems like it could lead to civil conflict due to economic distress in nations that depend on oil exports to fund their budgets. Nigeria, where there is already quite a bit of religious strife between Christians and Muslims, would seem quite vulnerable.

Beowulfs_Ghost posted:

I also find it to be kind of dishonest, to out right bullshit, when people mention the oil boom in North Dakota and the low unemployment there.

It is a state of about 700,000 people. It is also one of the few states to ever experience a sustained population decline. Moving the unemployment rate there doesn't take a whole lot of hiring.

NBC News comes off as a free market shill of the conservative AM radio variety for even bothering to mention it. As if every state could just drill and frack its way to jobs and prosperity. Why can't we all be more like North Dakota?

Hobo Erotica posted:

Also quickly, 228 TWh is current consumption, but the ZCA plan produces 325 TWh/year. So the American cost is (theoretically) down to $4.3 trillion, or $425 billion per year.

But also, that plan is specifically for Australia, so we'd need to do a proper analyis of America's needs to compare them properly.

quote:

The nine-year-old Iraq war came to an official end on Thursday, but paying for it will continue for decades until U.S. taxpayers have shelled out an estimated $4 trillion.

Dengue_Fever posted:

This is wild speculation, but perhaps the military resources and budget will be diverted to building emergency power plants when oil and coal really starts to dwindle.

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

That isn't a risk in the foreseeable future. The US has for all intents and purposes limitless coal reserves, a shitload of gas, and plenty of oil if we're willing to give a little on extraction costs. Prices may go up, but that's about it. Burning all that stuff will ruin the environment before it runs out.

quote:

Are Published Reserve Figures Overstated?

Several analyses of coal reserves have concluded that published figures are too high.

Energy Watch Group: In 2007, Energy Watch Group, a private research group initiated by the German member of parliament Hans-Josef Fell, completed an analysis of worldwide reserve figures.[11] The study concluded that "data quality of coal reserves and resources is poor, both on global and national levels." Although published reserve figures were lowered by 50 percent between 1980 and 2005, the study argued that the worldwide reserve estimates still appeared to be too high. In a number of countries, careful evaluation of published reserve figures had resulted in a downgrading of those figures, in several cases by 99 percent. For example:

Germany: In 2004, without explanation, Germany downgraded its estimate of proven hard coal reserves from 23 billion tons to 0.183 billion tons, a 99 percent reduction.
United Kingdom: The "proved recoverable coal reserves" were of the United Kingdom were reported at 45 billion tons in 1980. In 2004 the figure was reduced to 0.22 billion tons, a 99+ percent reduction.
Botswana: In 1980 Botswana reported 3.5 billions tons of "proved recoverable reserves." In the WEC 2004 Survey the "proved recoverable reserves" were lowered to 40 million tons, a 99 percent reduction.

Another problem was that published figures had not been revised to account for production over time. For example, China's official coal reserve figures have not been revised since in 1992, "in spite of the fact that about 20 percent of their then stated reserves have been produced since then."

Dengue_Fever posted:

I agree that it'll ruin the environment before it runs out, but it will run out, the sticky question is how fast?

What do you base your statement on?

I have not read too much into the different data sets but here are some facts about reassessment of estimated reserves (via Wikipedia)

The numbers are hardly reliable, and are easily subject to really anyone's manipulation. The 'anyones' who have a lot of money and power and are pretty high up on the corporate/governmental ladder probably manipulate the most effectively though.

My view is that these numbers are all inflated to boost market confidence, share prices, etc. Actually, that's really why the freely available info wouldn't be accurate. If you had such valuable information in relation to markets, would you dump it willy-nilly? Well, maybe you would, but first you'd have to not be a greedy industrialist/stock holder.

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

I'm not going to claim that current estimates are entirely accurate, but you're thinking too far into the future. Current estimates of recoverable reserves don't matter much beyond a generation or so, mining technology specifically and energy technology generally will have completely changed by then.

Beowulfs_Ghost posted:

The fact that we are actually producing from tar sands and oil shale means we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. There really isn't much "too hard to get to right now" oil after that stuff is gone, and we aren't doing a whole lot to curb our consumption either.

Alkydere posted:

Biomass

satan!!! posted:

This article by Vaclav Smil provides an alternative viewpoint to the one being discussed here.

The takeaway is that oil production hasn't peaked, probably won't for at least a decade and probably will be non-catastrophic, to say the least, given the huge and varied forcing functions to adopt alternative energy sources. I think there is a lot of room for optimism on the oil.

Alkydere posted:

Out of curiosity has there been any talk about using biomass (basically burning anything from manure to weeds) for power?

Dengue_Fever posted:

Well, I don't want to cast dispersions on Mr. Smil, but he wrote that for the "American Enterprise Group," the conservative think tank also known for offering to bribe scientists to criticize the man-made global warming theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute#Global_warming

Look there's so much conflicting information out there that varies so much I wonder how, with our technology, something as simple (but I'm not a geologist, so what do I know) as a geological survey could yield such drastically different information. It almost makes one wonder if there's any money at play, shadowy brokers, hmmm..gee I wonder.

Dusseldorf posted:

There's been a ton of research into producing energy from biomass. The huge problem all of this has is that producing energy from very low energy density materials is that the total energy produced has to compete with the amount of energy it takes to harvest and ship to a power plant. In the case of something like corn ethanol production you get less energy out than it takes to produce it.

askholic posted:

Here are some facts, in year 2006 3.3 quads of biomass energy was produced and the same year EIA estimated 1.4 quads energy in total spent in US farms including fertilizers, labors, electricity, other source of energy etc. This 1.4 quads energy invested not only returned the food you and other people eat but also the 3.3 quads biomass energy...so I guess it should be pretty clear that we are not wasting our time and money on biomass.

About the corn ethanol, it is true this is an extremely low efficient solid to liquid conversion as yeast consumes glucose as food and give us ethanol as waste, thus resulting a further 50% energy lost in this process. However, only less than 10% of biomass energy nowadays is coming from biofuel and my gut tells me biofuel is still profitable and even economic competitive even though it might not be produced in the most energy efficient process .

BigBobio posted:

~2/3 of that 3.3 quads of biomass energy is from wood and wood-derived products, which are not things (for the most part) used to make biofuels. Generating power from woody biomass is old technology, obviously. But it makes a poor transportation fuel, and unfortunately, the technology for transforming lignocellulosic material into liquid fuels at a cost competitive with petroleum-derived fuels is simply not there right now, and most likely won't be for a while. The only reason cellulosic ethanol is blended into gasoline is government mandate.

askholic posted:

and even if technology is no longer a difficulty the feedstock itself is problematic: where to grow these energy crops? who would grow them?( Assume we are not going back to cutting woods!) And even if we utilize all the farm land now in the states to grow energy crops(switchgrass)we will only get about 70 quads out before conversion, so biomass is simply not the savior for the energy shortage here.

About the cellulosic ethanol thing, I am not sure but I think it is pretty standard to mix 10% ethanol into gasoline nowadays and that hit the maximum an average US car can stand, so basically from 2009 the production and consumption have flattened out. For sure EIA would push for more but I don't think the percentage of ethanol would be further increase in the near future.

redshirt posted:

For example, why not mandate any new house must have a solar panel system for power and hot water, in addition to a geothermal heating/cooling system.