EcoRadio

Category: Energy Matters

  • IEA calls for global push to end energy poverty

     

    Energy firms have no incentive to build power plants or connect remote areas to the grid if people are too poor to pay the bills. “It’s not likely to happen unless there’s a major international concerted effort by rich countries,” Birol said. “We will start to push it on to the main agenda at Copenhagen.”

    Birol will appeal for international support on the issue ahead of the Copenhagen summit when he delivers a speech at the UN in New York on 23 November.

    today, the IEA outlined its annual World Energy Outlook, which forecasts that global oil supplies could increase by more than a fifth from just under 85m barrels a day last year to 105m by 2030.

    The Guardian revealed on the eve of the report’s publication that senior figures within the organisation disagreed with its forecast, believing that it would be impossible for the world to maintain oil supplies even at 90m-95m barrels. They claim that the IEA, under pressure from the US and to prevent panic on global stock markets, is deliberately exaggerating the level of accessible new supplies of oil.

    The IEA responded today by publishing on its website a key chapter from last year’s outlook report detailing how it estimates the decline in the rate of production from the world’s largest oilfields. The information is normally only available to those who buy the entire report for €150 (£134). The agency, which dismissed the Guardian’s report as “groundless”, said it wanted to show the public that its research was independent. Birol said: “We are very proud of our analysis and independence. We have a lot of critics. It’s not possible to make everyone happy.”

    The IEA’s forecast of global oil supplies hitting 105m barrels in 2030 represents its “doomsday” scenario, which, it said, would result in catastrophic global warming and energy supplies becoming increasingly vulnerable to terrorists or accidents. This is based on Copenhagen failing to reach a deal that ensures a higher carbon price, which would make the consumption of fossil fuels such as oil and coal more expensive and encourage the use of low-carbon forms of energy such as renewables and nuclear instead.

    This business-as-usual scenario would leave the west even more dependent on oil from the Middle East, it said. Emissions would soar by more than a third from 2007 levels and global temperatures rise by up to 6C over the next two decades.

    Birol said: “The reason why we showed it is to say this is the way that we are going and we should not go there otherwise there will be an accident in terms of climate change and energy security. We do not want it to happen.”

    The IEA, set up to advise its 28 member countries, said that the alternative scenario would see oil consumption only increase slightly between now and 2030. This is based on countries agreeing at Copenhagen to stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million. This would give the world a 50% chance of limiting temperature increases to 2C, it said.

    Birol admitted that there was “lots of resistance” to such a “450 scenario”, particularly among Opec nations which stand to lose trillions of dollars in revenue from lower consumption of oil and gas. But he said the global economic downturn provided a “window of opportunity” for the world to take tough action. Many companies and countries had shelved investment in power plants because of the fall in energy demand. “But in the absence of a signal from Copenhagen, in 2010, or 2011, they will be built,” he warned. “If a coal plant is built, it will emit for 50 years.”

    He added that last summer’s record $147 a barrel oil price had “traumatised” many developing countries into looking for less volatile and costly forms of energy. Birol said oil prices, which had since fallen back to about $80, would continue to be volatile and would rise over the long term.

  • Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

     

    The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

    ‘There’s suspicion the IEA has been influenced by the US’ Link to this audio

    In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

    Now the “peak oil” theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. “The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year,” said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. “The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today’s number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

    “Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,” he added.

    A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. “We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.

    The IEA acknowledges the importance of its own figures, boasting on its website: “The IEA governments and industry from all across the globe have come to rely on the World Energy Outlook to provide a consistent basis on which they can formulate policies and design business plans.”

    The British government, among others, always uses the IEA statistics rather than any of its own to argue that there is little threat to long-term oil supplies.

    The IEA said tonight that peak oil critics had often wrongly questioned the accuracy of its figures. A spokesman said it was unable to comment ahead of the 2009 report being released tomorrow.

    John Hemming, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, said the revelations confirmed his suspicions that the IEA underplayed how quickly the world was running out and this had profound implications for British government energy policy.

    He said he had also been contacted by some IEA officials unhappy with its lack of independent scepticism over predictions. “Reliance on IEA reports has been used to justify claims that oil and gas supplies will not peak before 2030. It is clear now that this will not be the case and the IEA figures cannot be relied on,” said Hemming.

    “This all gives an importance to the Copenhagen [climate change] talks and an urgent need for the UK to move faster towards a more sustainable [lower carbon] economy if it is to avoid severe economic dislocation,” he added.

    The IEA was established in 1974 after the oil crisis in an attempt to try to safeguard energy supplies to the west. The World Energy Outlook is produced annually under the control of the IEA’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, who has defended the projections from earlier outside attack. Peak oil critics have often questioned the IEA figures.

    But now IEA sources who have contacted the Guardian say that Birol has increasingly been facing questions about the figures inside the organisation.

    Matt Simmons, a respected oil industry expert, has long questioned the decline rates and oil statistics provided by Saudi Arabia on its own fields. He has raised questions about whether peak oil is much closer than many have accepted.

    A report by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) last month said worldwide production of conventionally extracted oil could “peak” and go into terminal decline before 2020 – but that the government was not facing up to the risk. Steve Sorrell, chief author of the report, said forecasts suggesting oil production will not peak before 2030 were “at best optimistic and at worst implausible”.

    But as far back as 2004 there have been people making similar warnings. Colin Campbell, a former executive with Total of France told a conference: “If the real [oil reserve] figures were to come out there would be panic on the stock markets … in the end that would suit no one.”

     

  • Space-Based Power System Needed to Solve Earth’s Energy Woes.

     

  • The next Industrial Revolution will be people powered

    The next Industrial Revolution will be people-powered

    Miguel Mendonça

    5th November, 2009

    Switching to decentralised renewable energy doesn’t just mean a new source of power – it means a revolution that will be both social and economic

    The way the world appears to work is as follows. Those with influence, generally at the centre of concentrations of wealth and power, are able to influence public policy. This goes deep into the core mindset of the policymaking machinery, and shapes whole nations on many levels. Contemporary governments in industrialised nations have become little more than facilitators for big business – businesses so big that they have little-to-no national allegiance, sometimes become ‘too big to fail’ and can hold governments to ransom over the creation of conditions wherein they will deign to operate and provide jobs.
     
    Dealing with such disempowering and destructive power relations is critical, and some have suggested that decentralised energy may play a key role. But the transition may be more difficult than ‘simply’ swapping the energy sources we use to power the whole show from conventional to renewable.

    The good news is that in doing so we can not only begin to get at the roots of some key problems of the modern world, but also create a whole swathe of positives that conventional energy generation can never achieve. 

    First, it can allow true citizen and community participation in climate- and environment-protecting activities.

    Secondly, renewable energy involvement creates an automatic awareness of, and hence improvement in, energy efficiency.

    Thirdly, the awareness-raising and job and industry creation that it drives creates a much wider stakeholder group in the proliferation of green policies and practices – no longer will decisions be made solely by a clique of policy wonks and industry reps.

    Fourth, it creates a democratisation of energy production, which can break up the monopoly stranglehold on markets and allow more innovation and progress.

    Fifth, it controls long-term energy costs, protecting against supply interruption, especially through geopolitical influence.

    And sixth, the creation of a new industrial economy, based on renewables and their attendant technological, supply chain and service requirements, can generate enormous earnings, exports, tax receipts and other economic activity. 
     
    When steam engines, computers and mobile phones were first developed, the potential was regarded by many as fairly niche, being outside of their direct experience. As technology, knowledge and experience developed, people far and wide began to understand how this could benefit them, and how they could profit from it.

    A whole new energy system, from domestic to large-scale applications, will yield a fantastic array of possibilities, not just in products and services, but in the embedding of direct knowledge and experience throughout society. The feed-in tariff policy which I wrote on, then campaigned for, will come into force in April 2010 in the UK. This will allow anyone to invest in small-scale renewable energy generation and get a guaranteed return for the energy they feed in to the grid. This is a perfect example of an empowering policy which promotes engagement with these issues and possibilities. The interaction and benefits of all of the above can be illustrated in the diagram below.

     
    What is needed next is this integrated move to a renewables-based economy and society. It will require several key features.

    Somewhere near the top would be that old cliché, joined-up thinking. Departments need to collaborate with all relevant stakeholders to produce a concrete plan – accounting for technology, infrastructure, institutional operation, administration, public participation, funding, public and private sector collaboration, and other key considerations.

    Mixed messaging from government must end. One cannot vigorously promote energy saving light bulbs as well as airport expansion without expecting to confuse and disillusion people. 

    NGOs and other civil society actors are more trusted sources of information than government, to my understanding, so they can work together on bringing the critical awareness and information to society at large.

    We need to make clear decisions on which technologies to support (given their infrastructural needs), as well as leave the door open for innovation. We need to connect top-down policy with the emergent bottom-up movement, typified by the Transition movement, and remove the political ceiling on which they keep hitting their heads.

    Our world is merely a construct, however complex. It is shaped by many things, but we can reshape it if we choose to do so. We can move from centralisation to democratisation, disempowerment to empowerment, confusion to engagement, and get where we need to go in time.

    Miguel Mendonça is a researcher, author and campaigner. His new books are A Renewable World – Energy, Ecology, Equality (Green Books, £14.95) and Powering the Green Economy: The Feed-in Tariff Handbook (Earthscan, £24.95). You can order A Renewable World at the special price of £12.95 (post-free in the UK) from Green Books’ website using the offer code ECORW, or phone 0845 4589910 quoting the Ecologist reader offer. All major credit cards accepted.

  • Peak oil before 2020 a ‘significant risk’, say experts

    Peak oil before 2020 a ‘significant risk’, say experts

    David Strahan

    8th October, 2009

    A new report highlights how woefully unprepared the Government is for a looming peak in oil production

    There is a ‘significant risk’ that conventional oil production will peak before 2020, and forecasts that delay the event beyond 2030 are based on assumptions that are ‘at best optimistic and at worst implausible’.

    So says a major new report that puts the excitement over recent ‘giant’ oil discoveries into perspective and directly contradicts the British government’s position. It also warns that failure to recognise the threat of peak oil could undermine efforts to combat climate change.
     
    The report, entitled ‘Global Oil Depletion: An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production’, comes from the UK Energy Research Centre, an independent group funded by the Research Councils, whose mission is to resolve contentious technical issues and deliver clear guidance for policymakers.

    This report is significant because it is the first dispassionate academic attempt to reconcile the highly polarised debate over whether and when oil supplies will start to decline, yet its conclusions chime with a growing number of recent forecasts that warn of an early peak in production.

    ‘This is an important conclusion,’ says Steven Sorrell, of Sussex University’s Science Policy Research Unit, and lead author of the report, ‘because the worst impacts of oil depletion could come sooner than the worst impacts of climate change. Both are important, but depletion has been largely ignored by policymakers’.

    What’s the evidence?

    The UKERC set out to assess the evidence that conventional oil production will be limited by physical depletion of the geological resource, as opposed to ‘above-ground’ constraints such as a lack of investment or resource nationalism, before 2030.

    After reviewing the data, they found there were large uncertainties, and that peak oil forecasting techniques were often too pessimistic about future supply. Yet they concluded the information was good enough to assess the risk of global oil depletion, and that the peak of conventional production was ‘likely’ before 2030.
     
    The main reason is the relentless treadmill imposed on the industry by the falling output of most existing fields, as a result of falling reservoir pressures and a long-term decline in the size of the fields being discovered. The UKERC found that total production from existing fields is declining at 4 per cent or more each year, meaning the world has to add 3 million barrels of daily production capacity annually just to stand still, equivalent to developing a new Saudi Arabia every three years. This will present ‘a major challenge, even if ‘above-ground’ conditions are favourable’, says the report.

    Once the economy comes out of recession, satisfying demand growth would usually require another 1 million barrels of daily production capacity each year.

    The report also puts the breathless reporting of recent discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Brazil into a more sober context. BG’s Guara field, discovered last month, contains 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil and was lauded as a ‘supergiant’, prompting some pundits to claim such finds would banish peak oil for decades.

    However, the UKERC argues that each additional 1 billion barrels delays peak oil by less than a week. To postpone the peak by a year would take 7 times what was discovered in 2007. ‘We’re unlikely to explore our way out of this,’ says Sorrell.

    Heads in the sand

    The report also implicitly challenges the British Government’s position on peak oil. In response to an online petition last year, the Government insisted there is enough oil for the ‘foreseeable future’, and that reserves will meet rising demand until ‘at least 2030’.

    The Government also refuses to conduct a risk assessment that peak oil might come before 2020, despite maintaining a comprehensive risk assessment and rapid response network for an outbreak of smallpox, which it admits has already been eradicated.

    But the UKERC concludes the risk of a conventional peak before 2020 is significant and, given the long lead times needed to develop alternatives, requires serious consideration.

    ‘If you don’t even recognize the problem you will inevitably be unprepared,’ says Sorrell. ‘The Government needs to wake up to oil depletion and start planning, because it’s going to mean major changes infrastructure, investment and lifestyles’.

    The Government bases its view on the work of the International Energy Agency, which forecasts conventional oil will peak in 2020, but which argues that rising output from non-conventional sources, such as the Canadian tar sands, will push the overall production peak out to ‘around 2030’. The UKERC report does not address the potential for non-conventional oil, but the numbers in the report show how unlikely it is that they will defer the peak for long, because of the sheer size of the hole left by conventional depletion.

    The UKERC report shows that two thirds of current oil production capacity – 60 million barrels per day – must be replaced by 2030 before allowing for demand growth. By contrast, non-conventional resources are expensive and difficult to produce and unlikely to expand by anything like that much. One of the most optimistic industry forecasts for tar sands production, for instance, from energy consultancy IHS CERA, shows output reaching 6.3 mb/d by 2035.

    ‘But by then we’ll need to add around ten times that much capacity without allowing for any growth in demand,’ says Sorrell, ‘so it’s very hard to see non-conventionals riding to the rescue. We haven’t demonstrated it in the report, but I think it’s likely that conventional peak oil will turn out to be peak oil full stop’.

    Peak oil: bad for climate change?

    As the UN climate talks in Bangkok reach their climax tomorrow – the penultimate round before the crucial Copenhagen summit in December – the UKERC warns that running short of oil may actually be bad for global warming. The report notes that climate policy assessments generally make no reference to oil depletion and frequently rely on optimistic oil price assumptions, which Sorrell says are unjustified. Further oil price spikes could tip the economy into recession again, sapping climate change efforts to mitigate climate change of political will and financial resources.

    Peak oil could also hamper attempts to mitigate climate change by creating a strong incentive to exploit vast deposits of carbon intensive non-conventional oils – even though they are unlikely to fill the gap in time.

    The report comes amid a growing consensus that the oil supply will fail to meet demand far sooner than 2020 for ‘above-ground’ reasons. Both the IEA and Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of Total, have warned of a supply crunch in the next few years as demand recovers, because of shrinking investment in new production capacity following the collapse of the oil price. Bankers Morgan Stanley recently predicted that tightening supply will push oil price back up to $105 per barrel by 2012, while analysts Douglas-Westwood have noted that an oil price of more than $80/bbl sends the US into recession.

    Welcome words

    The UKERC report has been broadly welcomed by depletion experts, who urged the Government to act on it. Christopher Patey, chairman of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, and a former executive with Mobil, said ‘this excellent report exposes the British Government’s position on peak oil for what it really is – obstinate denial in the face of the growing evidence, and a reckless gamble on all our futures’.

    Jeremy Leggett, convenor of the UK Industry Taskforce on peak Oil and Energy Security, said:
    ‘Having rejected the concerns of a cross-section of British industry about a peak in global oil production in the next decade, hopefully the government will listen to the concerns of the country’s premier energy research establishment.’

    ‘This is the right report at the right time,’ said Bernie Bulkin, Energy and Transport Commissioner at the Sustainable Development Commission and former chief scientist for BP, who introduced the report at its launch yesterday. ‘The Government should look at how we can run our economy effectively and efficiently without oil,’ he said in an interview. ‘It means electrification of road transport, and then making electricity zero carbon’.

    A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: ‘Government met with UKERC in July to discuss their initial findings – we’re interested in their report and will assess their conclusions closely’.

    David Strahan is author of The Last Oil Shock, a trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, and served on the Expert Group of advisors to the UKERC report.

    See also

     

  • CARBON TRADING’ THE NEXT SUB-PRIME- NEW REPORT.

    Online video clip of report’s author, Sarah-Jayne Clifton, is available from the Friends of the Earth press office in London.

    Plans to expand carbon markets at UN climate talks this December could trigger a second ‘sub-prime’ style financial collapse and fail to protect the world from global warming catastrophe, a new report from Friends of the Earth warns today (Thursday 5 November 2009).

    ‘A Dangerous Obsession’ focuses on the buying and selling of a new artificial commodity – the right to emit carbon dioxide – which the UK and other developed country governments want to see expanded into a massive worldwide market and are pushing in the negotiations running up to the big Copenhagen climate talks in December.

    The trade in carbon permits and credits, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126 billion in 2008 and is predicted to balloon to $3.1 trillion by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off.

    But the majority of the trade is carried out not between polluting industries and factories covered by carbon trading schemes, but by banks and investors who profit from speculation on the carbon markets – packaging carbon credits into increasingly complex financial products similar to the ‘shadow finance’ around sub-prime mortgages which triggered the recent economic crash.

    This risks the development of sub-prime carbon and the possibility of an eventual collapse in confidence in the market, with catastrophic consequences for the global economy and also for our prospects of avoiding runaway climate change.

    Friends of the Earth’s report warns that the UK Government’s obsession with carbon trading as a solution to climate change is high risk, irresponsible and dangerous.

    Existing carbon trading schemes are not delivering the emissions cuts promised, and relying on this mechanism to reduce emissions globally is gambling with the health of the planet and the future of billions of people.

    Carbon trading is also being used as a smokescreen by rich countries to avoid their legal and moral commitment to provide money and technology to developing countries to grow cleanly and adapt to climate change.

    The green campaign group is calling on the UK Government to use simple, direct and proven policy tools like regulation, a carbon tax, and major public investment in greening the economy to reduce our emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020, without offsetting.

    Friends of the Earth’s international climate campaigner and author of the report Sarah Jayne-Clifton said:

    “Pushing a world carbon market as part of a global agreement to tackle climate change risks a double whammy of financial and environmental disaster.

    “Carbon trading is failing dismally at reducing emissions, yet allows speculators to grow rich from the climate crisis and hands politicians and industry a get-out clause for polluting business as usual.

    “Science tells us rich countries must act first and fast to cut their emissions at home if we are to avert climate catastrophe – and support poorer countries
    with adequate public money to grow cleanly and adapt to the effects of climate change which they are already feeling.

    “The credit crunch has taught us that Governments, not markets are best placed to safeguard our future – at this critical point in the fight against climate
    change Ministers must step in and lead the way with a new, direct approach to tackling carbon emissions to create a safe and green future for us all.”

    Friends of the Earth is demanding in the UK that the UK Government changes its approach to climate change and is asking everyone to sign its international petition to world leaders for a strong and fair climate deal at www.demandclimatechange.org .

    ENDS