Category: Energy Matters

The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it

admin /17 November, 2009

The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it

The challenge of feeding billions of people as fuel supplies fall is staggering. And yet leaders’ heads remain stuck in the sand

I don’t know when global oil supplies will start to decline. I do know that another resource has already peaked and gone into free fall: the credibility of the body that’s meant to assess them. Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world’s oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets. Three days later, a paper published by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden showed that the IEA’s forecasts must be wrong, because it assumes a rate of extraction that appears to be impossible. The agency’s assessment of the state of global oil supplies is beginning to look as reliable as Alan Greenspan’s blandishments about the health of the financial markets.

Surf’s up for Cornwall’s wave hub

admin /16 November, 2009

Surf’s up for Cornwall’s Wave hub

Work to begin next week on undersea socket for Cornwall’s pioneering marine energy test centre. From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network

A PowerBuoy wave energy converter wave Hub project in Cornwall

The PowerBuoy wave energy converter, which is to be used as part of the Wave Hub project, which will see a giant national grid-connected socket built on the seabed off the coast of Cornwall. The project, which will become the world’s largest wave farm, also received the official go-ahead today from the South West Regional Development Agency (RDA) and could create more than 1,800 jobs. Photograph: Handout/PA

Construction on the £42m Wave Hub project off the coast of Cornwall is to start next week with the goal of having the flagship facility up and running by the end of next year.

(Partly) Renewable Ethanol

admin /14 November, 2009

Partly) Renewable Ethanol

Posted Nov 13, 2009 by Michael Bomford

Dried distiller's grainYou might expect the Renewable Fuel Association to deal with fuel that’s mostly renewable. It doesn’t.

The Renewable Fuel Association is the US ethanol industry’s national trade association, so is — not surprisingly — a tireless promoter of corn ethanol. Its website offers plenty of useful information about the US ethanol industry. You can go there to learn that in 2008 the US made 9 billion gallons of ethanol from 3.2 billion bushels of corn grown on 21 million acres. In other words, a quarter of the nation’s corn fields generated enough feedstock to displace 4% of the nation’s gasoline consumption.

You will also find this remarkable fact, in boldface:

Ethanol has a positive net energy balance.

That means we get more energy out of burning ethanol than we invest in the form of fossil fuels to make it. That makes corn ethanol at least partly renewable. But how renewable is it?

Researchers: “Upconversion” Creates “Super-efficient” Solar Cells

admin /13 November, 2009

Researchers: “Upconversion” Creates “Super-efficient” Solar Cells

by Jim Montgomery
New Hampshire, United States [Photovoltaics World online]

Researchers at the U. of Sydney say they have come up with a way to boost solar cell efficiency limit of c-Si and a-Si solar cells to 50% under the standard solar spectrum — an increase of roughly a third — using a process called “upconversion.”

The future of oil

admin /12 November, 2009

Series: Guardian Environment Network

Previous | Index

The future of oil

New market dynamics created by climate change, geological and geopolitical pressures will transform our hydrocarbon economies, write John Elkington and Gary Kendall. From ChinaDialogue, part of the Guardian Environment Network

The race for the world’s remaining oil reserves could get very nasty. Recently, Nigerian militants announced their determination to oppose the efforts of a major Chinese energy group to secure six billion barrels of crude reserves, comparing the potential new investors to “locusts”. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told journalists that the record of Chinese companies in other African nations suggested “an entry into the oil industry in Nigeria will be a disaster for the oil-bearing communities”.

Whatever the facts, the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century is likely to be seen by future historians as the beginning of the final chapter of a unique, unrepeatable period in human development. Even oil companies now see the Age of Oil in irreversible decline – even if that decline spans decades. International oil companies (IOCs) increasingly accept that they must transform themselves completely – or expire – by mid-century.

UK carbon capture competition ‘dead on its feet ‘says expert

admin /11 November, 2009

UK carbon capture competition ‘dead on its feet’ says expert

Professor Stuart Hazeldine warns only Scottish Power can deliver carbon capture and storage within the government’s timetable. From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network

A proposed carbon capture and storage cluster

A proposed carbon capture and storage cluster. Photograph: EON

The UK’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition is “dead on its feet” with only one of the three projects in the running capable of delivering a full scale working demonstration plant by the 2014 deadline, a leading expert has warned.

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