OPEC, Russia, and Green Dieoff.Orgy Biggest Losers in Coming Age of Energy

For nearly four decades, OPEC -- the cartel formally known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries -- has been a major economic and geopolitical force in our collective lives, driving nations to war, otherwise self-respecting world leaders to genuflect, and economists to shudder....Russia's Vladimir Putin has strutted the global stage, bolstered by gas and oil profits, and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez has thumbed his nose at los Yanquis. _FP

And green dieoff.orgy fundamentalists have pushed governments to abandon reliable and clean forms of energy such as nuclear, in a gigantic, potentially catastrophic scam to force dependency upon exorbitantly expensive intermittent unreliable forms of energy such as big wind and big solar.

But something happened along the way to the great OPEC / Russia / Green dieoff.orgy celebration: humans discovered that clean and affordable energy was not nearly as scarce as they were being told by their green tainted leaders.

Still, one should never underestimate the ability of bad government to convert a great opportunity into an even greater problem. If greens cannot be removed from power, they are likely to continue to overtax, overregulate, and misallocate resources within their unfortunate jurisdictions.

A growing number of key energy analysts say that technological advances and high oil prices are leading to a revolution in global oil. Rather than petroleum scarcity, we are seeing into a flood of new oil supplies from some pretty surprising places, led by the United States and Canada, these analysts say. Rather than worrying about cantankerous petrocrats, we will need to prepare for an age of scrambled geopolitics in which who was up may be down, and countries previously on no one's A-list may suddenly be central global players.

One primary takeaway: North America seems likely to become self-sufficient in oil. "This will be a huge potential productivity shock to the U.S. economy," says Adam Sieminski, director of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency. "It could grow the economy, grow GDP, and strengthen the dollar." _FP

And what is true for North America, could also be true for multiple parts of Europe, South America, East Asia, the Levant, and even Africa.

The big losers are:

LOSERS

Unenlightened petrocrats: Oil prices could be lower and volatile in a world of surplus. So for states relying on a single economy such as oil or gas, "it is not a pretty picture," said Morse. He forecasts much political turmoil, and a struggle to keep market share. That includes Chàvez for sure, but could also jostle Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the allegedly corrupt president of Equatorial Guinea, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini.

Russia: Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations led the panelists, plus many audience members, in singling out Russia as a key loser since Putin shows no sign so far of genuine economic diversification. For his state budget to break even, Putin requires an estimated oil price of $117 a barrel. Right now it is 12 percent below that threshold, or about $103 a barrel. Struggling to make up the difference but with no tools other than oil and gas to do so, Putin seems headed for a tougher political experience than in his previous tenure as president in the 2000s, when he rode a wave of public popularity based on a growing and optimistic middle class. When Russians realize their living standard is static or diminishing, they will not be happy.

The green edifice: ...The bar was already high for green-tech companies to compete against the economics of fossil-fuel energy; with lower oil and gas prices, the bar rises higher....

OPEC: With prices dropping and competing supplies flowing from numerous new producers, OPEC will lose much relative influence, and may simply cease to be a pivotal economic player. "OPEC will descend into chaos as an organization," said John Hofmeister, former president of Shell USA. "They don't know now how much they are hated by the entire world. But they will find out as things unfold." ... _FP

Of course, if Barack Obama is re-elected president of the US, all bets are off. Obama's war against energy was necessarily curtailed by the need to win re-election. In a second term, no such constraints would be present. In such an event, expect an unending flurry of executive orders tailored to constrict the US energy sector and the US private sector in general.

If you think Obama's first term was a stagnant disgrace, wait until he has carte blanche to go off the rails in any direction he chooses.

An Abundant Future Awaits

Onstage at TED2012, Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism -- that we'll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. "I’m not saying we don’t have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down.”

Peter Diamandis runs the X Prize Foundation, which gives rich cash awards to the inventors and engineers who'll get us back to the moon, build a better car and explore the genome. And watch for more prizes to come. _TED

It is difficult to get an audience for abundance these days, given how popular doom has come to be in the movies, the news media, in academia, and global politics. But there is reason to believe that some of the more popular dooms -- such as peak oil doom, climate catastrophe doom, overpopulation doom, resource scarcity doom, etc -- are not due to take place anytime soon.

Long-term forecasts are rarely sunny or even middling. In fact, they’re often fairly dystopian: Peak oil, peak gas, peak water, peak food, mass hysteria, zombie apocalypse.

Yet, to believe such specific long-term forecasts, you must believe that, now, folks have the never-before-seen ability and technology to accurately make long-term forecasts based on far distant supply pressures, unknowable future innovations and myriad other factors in the complex beast that is the global economy. Consider just one example: The (always moving) Peak Oil date certain has come and gone many, many times. Why? Extracting from easy-to-find conventional sources may slow. But there was just no way for folks in the 1950s to know that, 60 years later, we’d still be finding caches of oil (and natural gas) and innovating new ways to get at said energy sources more cheaply. Every decade, the world consumes more energy, yet every decade, the known energy reserves increase.

...The belief the future will be unmitigated disaster isn’t new to this generation. Humanity is prone to be hypersensitive to unknown future risk. Our brains evolved through tens of millennia to be keenly focused on survival—hence our tendency to focus on the negative. This was handy when one was trying to stay three steps ahead of giant hungry predators and gather enough sustenance to survive a snowy winter in the wilderness, but is probably less useful in helping us think more clearly about the future.

Over the past 100 years average human lifespan has doubled, average per-capita income (inflation adjusted) has tripled and childhood mortality is down by a factor of ten. The cost of basic necessities has fallen—sometimes radically. (If you haven’t watched that video yet, stop and do it now.)

And the future likely only features still more health- and wealth-creating innovations—in the US and elsewhere. _Forbes Doom is not coming

The author of this optimistic Forbes article is probably right, as long as the governments of the world are not allowed to shut down free markets based upon their misguided senses of doom -- or for any other reason.

When Russia became the USSR, many authors and journalists were highly optimistic about the future of the new country. And for a while, things seemed to be going well for the USSR.... until the reality of a failed centrally planned economy set in. The same disaster happened in China with Mao's totalitarian government, and the malaise continued until a new set of rulers opened up China's markets.

It is fine and good to be optimistic about the future of a free people in an opportunity society. But never forget how eager some government officials always seem to be, to shut it all down for reasons of power and ideology. It has happened before and it could easily happen again in your home country, if you let it.

More optimism:

Peak oil is dead

How Canada is adjusting to the North American energy boom

China's big new shale energy wealth

New Era of Discoveries

Untapped Unconventional Fields to Meet Demands

And so on, from South Africa to Argentina to Israel to Vietnam. New resources are being found and better ways to utilise old resources are being developed. The potential for a huge new global energy and industrial revolution is there, and would undoubtedly proceed unmolested -- if it were not for dysfunctional governments.

The most acute shortage is human ingenuity, followed by skilled manpower. But bad government trumps almost everything else, at least on the national and international scale. On a local and regional scale, human capital can often hold out long enough for the dysfunctional governments to be overthrown or voted out or otherwise disposed of.

Cross-posted from Al Fin blog

Physcist Tom Murphy Reveals Malthusian Peak Oiler Proclivities

Tom Murphy is a UCSD physicist who has been featured here more than once, as an example of one of the more intelligent and rational peak oilers. At the end of yesterday's piece on the 93rd Nuclear Blogging Carnival, we took a quick look at Murphy's latest article and confession.

Tom Murphy
It is important to follow the thinking of persons such as Murphy, who are apparently open-minded, intelligent, and at the same time display Malthusian peak oiler tendencies. The table above was featured prominently in Murphy's most recent essay, in which he confesses to Malthusian fears of the end of civilisation, due to the exhaustion of ready energy sources. The curious thing about the table is its ranking of energy sources in terms of "superiority" or "inferiority." It goes without saying that Murphy's "threat matrix" obscures a large number of questionable assumptions and blindspots of various kinds. That would be true of all such constructs. But let's look further, in to "Pascal's Wager-esque" nature of Murphy's thoughts:

Which is worse? If I advocate a path of restraint and careful transition to a possibly lower-energy future and I am ultimately shown to be wrong about the limits we face, what’s the damage? In this scenario, we’ve stabilized our system into something approximating sustainability. If we learn later that we have more resources available, we can make the choice to spend them profligately, use them sparingly, or ignore them. But we do so from a position of stability. If, on the other hand, the critic convinces us that the future is up, up, up, and we don’t take resource limits seriously then their being wrong is disastrous because we charge into overshoot, overextension, hit resource limits hard, and run a serious risk of societal collapse. _Tom Murphy

Definitely a Pascal's wager approach, of a quasi-religious type. That is not meant as criticism, but rather as observation. More of Murphy's underlying feeling:

My hunch is that human nature, political realities, economics (including economic hardship) combined with technical shortcomings of alternatives will get in the way of our shiny future. I would like to be convinced that this isn’t the case so I can stop worrying and go full-force on my experimental physics career, but the arguments for why things will be alright often strike me as narrow or simplistic. “It’s obvious: we’ll go to space where resources are unlimited.” “You’re forgetting something very important: human ingenuity—an unlimited resource.” “More sun hits the Earth in an hour than we use in a year: it’s obvious we’ll solve this problem.” “We have enough fuel sitting in nuclear waste pools to power us for millennia.” “Peak oil will not be a problem because we have tons more hydrocarbons in the ground beyond conventional petroleum.” You get the picture: a key idea that will make everything work out. It has the same ring as “Home prices in San Diego can never go down because it is such a desirable place to live,” which I ignored in 2005 in favor of data and more complex analyses.

...What hit home for me personally is the notion that a worst-case collapse of civilization (not unknown to history, let us recall) would be damaging to the thing I hold dearest: our accumulated knowledge of how the world works—science. Science is a luxury of highly functional societies. It is no coincidence that scientific advance is most rapid in this day and age when surplus energy is at its peak. How many computer records, tapes, CDROMs, etc., risk destruction or degradation in a collapse—even if it lasts only a century. In the more dismal collapse scenarios, how many science journals are burned for warmth? (It’s fairly certain that volumes of the Astrophysical Journal will disappear from the library before Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is sacrificed: ApJ does not make for entertaining fireside reading.)

It was always implicit for me that work invested into science will stand for all time. But the notion that my contribution to science—however incremental—may be irrevocably lost has taken some of the appeal away, I must admit. It would seem prudent, then, for scientists to devote time and talent toward our impending energy challenges. The first step is to convince people that we must swing our attention hard-over toward understanding exactly how we wean ourselves off of the fossil fuel lifeblood of our society. Either we figure it out or Mother Nature will do it for us. I for one want to fight to keep humanity’s most impressive achievements intact and understood!

... I do not want to accept defeat. I have a similar urge when it comes to our future challenge: this predicament requires all-out commitment. The problem is, commitment on an individual scale does not amount to much. That’s why I started Do the Math: to convey my sense of just how challenging our future will be, so that we might increase the chances of some collective action that can make a difference. My path started with hope, but was largely supplanted by fear. I apologize for resorting to similar tactics for my audience, but fear sure made me change my behaviors and expectations, and it may turn out to be an effective tool for us all. _Tom Murphy

One can sympathise with these emotions and forebodings. But one should not be ruled by them. And while Murphy himself is not likely to remain in this quagmire of defeatism forever, it is clear by reading the comments after the piece, that many of his readers are quite prepared to wallow in the mire of doom for the duration.

We remarked in yesterday's AFE posting that Tom Murphy's crisis moment, or "moment of truth," is a good thing for Murphy himself -- since it presents him with the motivation to achieve an extraordinary transformation of thinking. Such "road to Damascus moments" are rare in a humdrum everyday life of routine duties and obligations.

One is always given the choice to give up. That is the easy choice. It is the way of the doomer, the way of the defeatist. Mediocre minds -- once having made the choice -- tend to remain in the state of defeatism. Better minds, such as one should presume Tom Murphy's to be, are just as likely or likelier to convert the defeatism into something far more powerful -- power solving skills, and a hardening of internal grit.

We know that big wind and big solar are not workable solutions to the needs of modern societies. For example:

Without government mandates and taxpayer subsidies, wind would be toast

Materials needs for a big wind and big solar infrastructure are enormous, and enormously underestimated

The countries that have already committed themselves to big wind and big solar are already having serious second thoughts

Allocating scarce resources to building a big wind and big solar infrastructure means neglecting the building of an infrastructure that could save modern civilisation

A rational look at renewables PDF

We will not rely on hydrocarbon fuels forever, but there are plenty of hydrocarbons left to serve as a bridge to longer-lasting power sources

Sure, Tom Murphy is worried about CO2 induced climate change, which biases the assumptions he uses for his matrix. But given the total misallocation of resources that big wind and big solar represent in terms of meeting practical power demands for modern civilisations, how in the world does Murphy use his fear of civilisational collapse to justify ranking wind and solar at or near the top of his hierarchy?

Only deep human emotion can explain the choices that Murphy made in designing such a "solutions matrix." There is nothing wrong with a physicist displaying deep human emotions. If not for emotions, human cognitive abilities would be much less capable of problem-solving.

But when planning the future of all mankind, one must be careful to balance reason with emotion. It is not enough to claim to "do the numbers" or to "exhaustively calculate all the possibilities." No one can exhaustively calculate all the possibilities -- it is delusional to believe that one has done so.

According to his words, Murphy is at a crisis point. He can either choose to go forward, or choose the easy path of defeat. He claims that he is using "fear" as a tool to influence his readers' behaviours -- presumably in the ballot box and in their daily lives. But that is the strategy of any street-corner soap-box doomsayer. We want Tom Murphy to be better than that.

We want Tom Murphy to meet his own crisis himself, and to come through on the other side a more honest, rational, and competent combatant in the war for the human future. One cannot hide behind consensus or crowds or readers' comments, when one confronts his own personal crisis moment.

Good luck, Tom.

Brian Wang Presents Carnival of "Nucular" Bloggers #93

Brian Wang presents the 93d edition of the Nuclear Blogging Carnival at his home blog, Next Big Future. Here is a short teaser excerpt:

1. Idaho Samizdat - Small modular reactor vendors seek investors and customers. First they have to prove they can build one. This report, the 2nd in a series, looks at opportunities to develop prototypes at the Department of Energy's Savannah River site.

2. Science and Technology at Newsok has an article about Uranium Enrichment.

When carrying out uranium enrichment, there are many safety aspects unique to the radiological process which are present in addition to the expected industrial hazards of a factory setting. This includes the radioactive decay emissions of the uranium and its decay products. When uranium atoms undergo radioactive decay, they emit both gamma and alpha particle radiation. In doing so, the uranium atom loses a couple of protons and becomes a different element (thorium). This thorium decay product is also radioactive as are its decay products and so on. Eventually this decay chain results in the creation of a final lead atom with the alpha particles all becoming (very quickly) neutral helium atoms. The gamma radiation given off in this decay process does not tend to be extremely large due to the very long half life of uranium (which is measured in billions of years) and so very little of the uranium undergoes radioactive decay at any given time.

The enrichment process will increase the U235 content in the uranium hexafluoride by up to as much as 5% for commercial nuclear reactors. This means that by weight, 5% of the enriched uranium would be U235 as opposed to the natural case where only 0.7% of any uranium is this isotope.

3. ANS Nuclear Cafe - The 11th Annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day was celebrated Thursday February 23. Dr. Jane LeClair of Excelsior College discusses aspects of her own career in nuclear high technology and the importance of encouraging and mentoring prospective young women of science and technology.

4. Yes Vermont Yankee has a guest post by Vermont State Senator Joe Benning, An Open Letter to Attorney General Sorrell. Benning is a lawyer as well as a legislator. He tells the Vermont AG why Vermont should NOT appeal the recent legal ruling in favor of Vermont Yankee. Benning shows that if the AG appeals, he will lose.

5. Yes Vermont Yankee has a second post that dissects and debunks parts of the biased CNN program about Vermont Yankee. (Debunking the whole program would take a very long post indeed!). CNN had Hatchet Job about Vermont Yankee. _NextBigFuture Nuke Carnie 93

Is the UK getting serious about taking an intelligent approach to nuclear power?

...the UK Nuclear Fission Technology Roadmap Preliminary Report has been prepared by the UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) on behalf of a project team consortium comprising government agencies, public bodies and industry representatives: the Energy Research Partnership (ERP); the NNL; the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA); the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); and the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).

The report starts with the premise that nuclear power will have to play a much greater role if the UK is to enjoy a secure, low-carbon energy mix by 2050. This requires a long-term strategic approach that focuses on a secure supply of fuel, management of additional waste arising and also maximising supply chain opportunities.

The report looks in depth at two possible but, it claims, realistic scenarios for UK nuclear deployment: a replacement scenario, envisaging the replacement of the UK's existing nuclear park with 16 GWe of new nuclear generation capacity by 2025, and an expansion scenario, seeing the same 16 GWe to 2025 and further expansion to reach 40 GWe by 2050. It then considers the facilities, infrastructure and skills that will be needed to maintain and develop the necessary expertise and capabilities from a technology standpoint.

Ensuring the availability of relevant skills, especially within the regulatory sector, will be vital, the report notes. To ensure the necessary skills are available to build and operate the required facilities, "the UK needs a skills pipeline starting now," it warns, adding that any delays or gaps in delivering a coordinated program will lead to unnecessary costs and delays to future new build programs. _WorldNuclearNews

Finally, physicist Tom Murphy outs himself as a Malthusian peak oiler -- albeit an MPO of the more rational and open-minded type, who is more likely than most to grow out of that phase.

When the descent stage of petroleum hits and production drops by several percent per year, the economic shocks and global reaction will be significant, and we will be scrambling to find our exits—only then to realize that nothing is as easy as it seemed during times of surplus, and that all new infrastructure efforts require the very energy that is in short supply (the Energy Trap). It’s true that shortage of one form of energy does not mean shortage of all types of energy. A liquid fuels shortage won’t directly translate into electricity shortage, for instance. But virtually every facet of our modern society requires our transportation capabilities to remain intact. Without that, virtually everything becomes hard.

...I firmly believe that Malthus will ultimately be proven right that growth collides with finite resources so that growth must stop. His timing was off because he did not see fossil fuels coming, and I could likewise be accused of not seeing the next big wave of energy that will wash over us and “kick the ladder” of fossil fuels out from under us—a compelling notion, to be sure.

...I only fell into this “limits” camp because practically every time I performed quantitative analyses on this, that, or the other alternative energy proposal, I came up disappointed. I really did want the pleasure of personal discovery that we have an obvious path forward. I am delighted by the abundance of solar energy input to the planet. I am reassured by the vastness of thermal energy in the oceans and crust. I am tentatively excited about the vast energy represented by uranium in the oceans and by thorium using functional molten salt reactors. I truly do see these as positive lights in the darkness.

Yet over and over, quantitative analysis knocks out many of the “exciting” ideas we hear about in the sensationalized media world. Already, this is a damaging blow to our collective perception that solutions abound.

...What hit home for me personally is the notion that a worst-case collapse of civilization (not unknown to history, let us recall) would be damaging to the thing I hold dearest: our accumulated knowledge of how the world works—science. Science is a luxury of highly functional societies.

...I do not want to accept defeat. I have a similar urge when it comes to our future challenge: this predicament requires all-out commitment. The problem is, commitment on an individual scale does not amount to much. That’s why I started Do the Math: to convey my sense of just how challenging our future will be, so that we might increase the chances of some collective action that can make a difference. My path started with hope, but was largely supplanted by fear. _Tom Murphy

While it may not seem logical to many readers, this "moment of truth" which Murphy is facing is actually a good thing -- for him. Being both intelligent and open-minded, Murphy has a good chance of making the transition which many of the rest of us have made, when confronted by the same dilemma. It is a moment-of-truth which Murphy should have faced a decade or two earlier, in a more rational society that possessed more competent methods of child-rearing and education. But better late than never. Good luck, Tom.

Limits? What Limits?

How would an advanced galactic empire generate its power?

Some fraction of the radiation seething from the disk would be reflected and focused onto the power plants. Each power plant would transmit collected energy as a collimated microwave beam from a 100-mile diameter antenna. _Discovery

Discovery
A truly advanced civilisation on the Kardashev scale would harness the power of black holes to drive starships (PDF), power their industries, and gain control over both matter and time. We may have a few years to go before reaching that level.

A consortium of super-civilizations might pool resources to build a chain of power stations encircling the black hole. It would be the heart of a robust and fault-tolerant energy grid connecting numerous worlds like a fantasy scene out of the film "Tron."


However, I think it is more likely that a federation of expanding space colonies, spawned from a single mother civilization, would work together to maintain their viability. This wouldn't run into the thorny question of how two or more independent but similarly co-evolved species manage to contact each other and work out a practical energy infrastructure. _Discovery

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory believe that magnetic field lines extending a few million light years from galaxies into space may be the result of incredibly efficient energy-producing dynamos within black holes that are somewhat analogous to an electric motor....The energy in these huge magnetic fields is comparable to that released into space as light, X-rays and gamma rays. In other words, the black hole energy is being efficiently converted into magnetic fields.


Colgate and Los Alamos colleagues Vladimir Pariev and John Finn have developed a model to perhaps explain what is happening. They believe that the naturally magnetized accretion disk rotating around a black hole is punctured by clouds of stars in the vicinity of the black hole, like bullet holes in a flywheel. This, in turn, leads nonlinearly to a system similar to an electric generator that gives rise to a rotating, but invisible magnetic helix.
In this way, huge amounts of energy are carried out and away from the center of a galaxy as a set of twisted magnetic field lines that eventually appear via radio waves from luminous cloud formations on opposite sides of the galaxy. _SD

So you see, humans do not yet understand how black hole energy is converted into all the forms of energy that are propagated within and throughout the galaxy. But give us some time -- and a respite from all the energy starvationists hounding our steps -- and we just might take it to the next level.

Cross-posted from Al Fin blog

Rocky Mountain Confederation: Leading the World in Energy Assets

Rocky Mountain Confederacy
The "Rocky Mountain Confederacy" pictured above contains over a trillion barrels of bitumen oil equivalent from Alberta and Saskatchewan's oil sands; over a trillion barrels of kerogen oil equivalent from Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah; large deposits of shale oil in North Dakota, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan; huge crude oil deposits in the Arctic; large coal deposits throughout the region; and huge deposits of natural gas of both conventional and unconventional nature.

The Rocky Mountain Confederacy could easily become the largest energy exporting nation on the planet -- containing far more energy than Saudi Arabi, Iran, and Iraq combined, except for one thing -- it does not exist.

In order for such a nation to exist, something bad would have to happen to Canada and the US. Which means that something very, very bad will have happened to the rest of the world. Which means that the export market for all of that energy will not be very large.

You may consider that to be an extreme example of the "peak demand" theory, which states that demand for fossil fuels will collapse long before supplies are restricted enough to collapse the world economy. When the world economy collapses, it will be for other reasons than because all the affordable fossil fuels have been consumed.

When the fecal matter contacts the rotating blades does it really matter what caused it? Actually, it makes a great deal of difference in terms of re-starting a technological civilisation. If a re-born civilisation has both resources and blueprints available to jump-start technological infrastructure, the resumption of the path to beyond the stars will be that much easier.

In the meantime, should you ever wonder where the energy will come from, to transition to more advanced energy infrastructures, consider the many trillions of barrels residing within the Rocky Mountain Confederation. Should both of the governments in Washington and Ottawa ever descend into a full scale energy starvation at the same time, that may be one confederation of states and provinces which will choose to object.

Adapted from a previous Al Fin posting.

A North American Energy Inventory Report

The following images are taken from a recent report, North American Energy Inventory (PDF) from Institute for Energy Research. I encourage you to read the entire report, and download it for future reference. It is full of useful information, most of which is rarely found in the skankstream media.

These images are approximations of recoverable resources, sometimes accompanied by proven reserves. Proven reserves for both North America and the rest of the world will inevitably increase over time -- as they have continually increased since first estimated.

Undiscovered Resources: Refers to undiscovered oil and natural gas in currently unexplored areas estimated to exist based upon geologic characteristics.

Undiscovered Technically Recoverable Resources (UTRR): Portion of undiscovered resources recoverable with existing drilling and production technologies.

Undiscovered Economically Recoverable Resources (UERR): Portion of undiscovered technically recoverable resources recoverable under imposed economic and technical conditions.

Proved Reserves: Refers to oil and natural gas that have already been discovered, typically through actual exploration or drilling, and which can be recovered economically today. (This is the smallest number of the four terms and commonly used by those promoting an energy scarcity story.)_NorthAmericanEnergyInventory (PDF)

h/t MJPerry

and Powerline blog

The Power of Wishful Thinking -- An Untamed Force

Caveat: This is not an endorsement of Foster Gamble's "documentary." Rather it is a glimpse into a mindset which is likely to lead to an enormous waste of resources chasing after the innumerable will of the wisps which the human mind is capable of conjuring from nothing. Optimism is a good thing. But it has to be reined in by rational checks and verification.

More at Pesn

Thrive is directed by Foster Gamble, of the Proctor and Gamble empire, who left that corporate empire to pursue something he felt was more in keeping with his soul. The movie portrays his journey to find truth and meaning. _Pesn

This is the type of thinking that is well suited to modern psychological neotenates and academic lobotomates. The Occupy Wall Street personality would find much to confirm their innate biases, in this full length 2 hour video.

But no matter how much you want something to be true, if there is "no there, there," you can only waste your time, and throw good money after bad.

This kind of popular delusion is likely to grow more common, as the fruits of the "great educational dumbing down" of the last few decades come to ripen across society's breadth.

Rational optimism and innovative thinking are the way out of the deepening problems of energy starvation, political peak oil, carbon hysteria, population phobia, and other man-made problems. Both rationality and optimism are crucial to the future human enterprise.

But because ideologues have taken over western academia, media, and politics, most modern humans are not taught to think from multiple perspectives -- the only path to rationality. Instead, young humans are indoctrinated in a dominant political correctness which forbids all rational doubt or discourse. In such an inbred climate, humans cannot learn to think clearly. The end result is what you see on the news every evening.

The human mind does need to be unleashed. But it first must be trained to seek out and develop fertile fields of thought. The mind must be given the skills and competencies to recognise productive pathways and to distinguish dead ends early enough to avoid an excessive waste of time and resources.

More: The video below takes a quick look at the politically correct religion of carbon hysteria. The fact that the world is teetering on the brink of a $15 trillion to $30 trillion massive redistribution scam -- which would put the finishing touches to the demolition of the world's advanced economies -- tells you how easily human societies and governments can be led down the primrose path. Nobel prizewinner Daniel Kahneman helps us understand this human tendency toward self-delusion.

A Peak Oil Infographic

Source: Green Building Elements

This graphic presents a conventional viewpoint of peak oil, but without most of the doomerism. If one looks over the numbers presented here with the knowledge that CO2 hysteria is scientifically unfounded, and that most of the problems listed are already on the way to being circumvented, the overall picture looks quite good -- for the near to intermediate term.

We should always remember that our long term goal is to replace combustion technologies with more advanced technologies which are sustainable on the time scale of millions of years at least. At this point, of all the large scale power technologies, only advanced nuclear technologies qualify as sustainable on those scales.

That is not to say that better solar and geothermal technologies will not be developed. No one can make such predictions with certainty. But the universe itself is powered largely by nuclear reactions -- and other more esoteric forces and energies yet to be discovered. That is the direction we need to be looking.

In the meantime, the available fossil fuel resources, bioenergy resources, and nuclear fission resources available, should see us through.

EIA Projects 53% Growth Global Energy Consumption 2008-2035

All Images via USEIAThe USEIA projects a significant growth in world energy consumption between the year 2008 and the year 2035 (via GCC). The growth will come from a wide range of sources -- particularly coal, unconventional gas, and bitumens. The chart above reveals the expected growth in natural gas production in China, Canada, and the US, over the projected time period.

The chart above compares the expected energy consumption by fuel. All forms of fuel consumption are expected to rise.

According to EIA projections, growth in biofuel production is expected to keep pace with growth in oil sands production.

Unconventionals slowly make up a larger proportion of total fuels production, according to the EIA.

Nuclear energy is expected to recover from the current attitude of anti-nuclear green hysteria.

Summary of EIA report from Green Car Congress:

China and India lead the growth in world demand for energy in the future. The economies of China and India were among those least affected by the worldwide recession. They continue to lead world economic growth and energy demand growth in the Reference case. In 2008, China and India combined accounted for 21% of total world energy consumption. With strong economic growth in both countries over the projection period, their combined energy use more than doubles by 2035, when they account for 31% of world energy use in the IEO2011 Reference case. In 2035, China’s energy demand is 68% higher than US energy demand.

Renewable energy is projected to be the fastest growing source of primary energy over the next 25 years, but fossil fuels remain the dominant source of energy. Renewable energy consumption increases by 2.8% per year and the renewable share of total energy use increases from 10% in 2008 to 15% in 2035 in the Reference case. Fossil fuels, however, continue to supply much of the energy used worldwide throughout the projection, and still account for 78% of world energy use in 2035.

While the Reference case projections reflect current laws and policies as of the start of 2011, past experience suggests that renewable energy deployment is often significantly affected by policy changes.


Natural gas has the fastest growth rate among the fossil fuels over the 2008 to 2035 projection period. World natural gas consumption increases 1.6% per year, from 111 trillion cubic feet in 2008 to 169 trillion cubic feet in 2035. Unconventional natural gas (tight gas, shale gas, and coalbed methane) supplies increase substantially in the IEO2011 Reference case—especially from the United States, but also from Canada and China.

Other report highlights include:

From 2008 to 2035, total world energy consumption rises by an average annual 1.6% in the IEO2011 Reference case. Strong economic growth among the non-OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations drives the increase. Non-OECD energy use increases by 2.3 percent per year; in the OECD countries energy use grows by only 0.6 percent per year.

Petroleum and other liquid fuels remain the largest energy source worldwide through 2035, though projected higher oil prices erode their share of total energy use from 34 percent in 2008 to 29 percent in 2035.

Projected petroleum consumption and prices are very sensitive to both supply and demand conditions. Higher economic growth in developing countries coupled with reduced supply from key exporting countries result in a High Oil Price case in which real oil prices exceed $169 per barrel by 2020 and approach $200 per barrel by 2035.

Conversely, lower economic growth in developing countries coupled with increased supplies from key exporting countries result in a Low Oil Price case in which real oil prices fall to about $55 per barrel in 2015 and then gradually decline to $50 per barrel after 2030 where they remain through 2035.

World coal consumption increases from 139 quadrillion Btu in 2008 to 209 quadrillion Btu in 2035, at an average annual rate of 1.5% in the IEO2011 Reference case. In the absence of policies or legislation that would limit the growth of coal use, China and, to a lesser extent, India and the other nations of non-OECD Asia consume coal in place of more expensive fuels. China alone accounts for 76% of the projected net increase in world coal use, and India and the rest of non-OECD Asia account for another 19% of the increase.

Electricity is the world’s fastest-growing form of end-use energy consumption in the Reference case, as it has been for the past several decades. Net electricity generation worldwide rises by 2.3% per year on average from 2008 to 2035. Renewables are the fastest growing source of new electricity generation, increasing by 3.0% and outpacing the average annual increases for natural gas (2.6%), nuclear power (2.4%), and coal (1.9%). _GCC

Al Fin energy analysts suggest that the EIA is significantly understating the impact of global political instability on energy production. It is also unlikely that the dominant energy starvation agendas of the governments of the US, Japan, and much of Europe will dissipate quickly enough to allow a rapid rebound in nuclear reactor construction.

The toxic impact of the dieoff global green movement on the human future is very strong and persistent. It will be difficult for more rational humans to shake off the suffocating effects of irrational and hysterical greens -- and their proxies inside governments.

The twin problems of debt and demographic decline will likewise throw a retarding effect on efforts to keep up with projected demand.

Peak manpower in the energy industry will be another obstacle to be confronted in the near future. This problem is being driven by both a widespread demographic decline and a societal decay resulting in a dumbing down of cultures and populations. It will be a difficult problem to overcome, and may only be solved with the development of advanced machine cognition and robotics.

Needless to say, energy starvationists such as Obama and their coteries will have to be ejected soon, if these projections are likely to have much credibility.

US Has Massive Energy Resources: #1 In the World

EnergyTribune
A new report from the Congressional Research Service points out that in terms of total hydrocarbon resource, the US possesses the largest inventory of any nation on Earth. But under the Obama regime, an unstated but unrelenting program of "energy starvation" is being carried out -- from the DOE to the Department of Interior to the EPA, even including the NRC. It is one thing to be energy-poor because you lack the resources. It is quite another to intentionally cripple your own economy using half-baked policies of carbon hysteria, nuclear fear, and faux environmental crisis fabrication.

America’s combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined – and that’s without including America’s shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.

...if the White House is in any way serious about impacting the economic Black Hole that is the burgeoning national debt, reinvigorating business big-time, creating real jobs and restoring ebbing national wealth, the best shot by a distance if you’re American ... well, you’re standing on it, or rather above it.

...While the US is often depicted as having only a tiny minority of the world’s oil reserves at around 28 billion barrels (based on the somewhat misleading figure of ‘proven reserves’) according to the CRS in reality it has around 163 billion barrels. As Inhofe’s EPW press release comments, “That’s enough oil to maintain America’s current rates of production and replace imports from the Persian Gulf for more than 50 years”. Next up, there’s coal. The CRS report reveals America’s reserves of coal are unsurpassed, accounting for over 28 percent of the world’s coal. Much of it is high quality too. The CRS estimates US recoverable coal reserves at around 262 billion tons (not including further massive, difficult to access, Alaskan reserves). Given the US consumes around 1.2 billion tons a year, that’s a couple of centuries of coal use, at least.

...In 2009 the CRS upped its 2006 estimate of America’s enormous natural gas deposits by 25 percent to around 2,047 trillion cubic feet, a conservative figure given the expanding shale gas revolution. At current rates of use that’s enough for around 100 years. Then there is still the, as yet largely publicly untold, story of methane hydrates to consider, a resource which the CRS reports alludes to as “immense...possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels.” According to the Inhofe’s EPW, “For perspective, if just 3 percent of this resource can be commercialized ... at current rates of consumption, that level of supply would be enough to provide America’s natural gas for more than 400 years.”

...With 85 percent of global energy set to come from fossil fuels till at least 2035 no matter what wishful thinkers may prefer, current US energy policy – much like European – is pure political pantomime. _EnergyTribune

Looking for Clean, Abundant Energy

Greentechmedia

GreentechmediaGovernments of the western world appear more focused upon shutting down fossil fuels -- out of carbon hysteria -- than in providing their economies and industries with abundant and clean energy supplies. You might think that shale gas is an exception, given the graphics above, but shale gas was a natural evolutionary development of the petroleum industry.

As far as official bureaucracies are concerned, shale gas fell into the laps of the North American energy markets almost like manna from the sky. Governments cannot claim credit for it, nor can any particular research agency, university, or corporate lab. Neither official policy nor planning had anything to do with it. But governments are busily at work attempting to shut shale gas down -- particularly Obama's EPA -- out of vastly inflated faux environmental concerns. Not the attitude of a government that cares about the energy supply of its people and its industries, eh?

NewEnergyandFuel
Brian Westenhaus points to two important viewpoints on energy here and here. The graph from the first source above, demonstrates current dysfunctional energy policies on the left, contrasted with more intelligent policies which might be instituted on the right.

The graphic below from the second source illustrates the connection between a concept called "Energy Intensity Ratio (EIR)" and the state of the economy. When the EIR drops for the dominant energy/fuel sources, economies tend to go into recession. More detail at Brian's blog and at the original source PDF.

NewEnergyandFuel
When energy starvation becomes official government policy, a prolonged recession is virtually certain to come. Investors and venture capitalists will go where energy is not artificially constrained by faulty government policy. Banks and other lendors will be reluctant to lend funds in an environment of anti-energy, anti-market regulations and tax policy.

This is the impasse faced by much of the western world. The shale gas bonanza was totally unplanned by the higher levels of policy and planning. It has come as a disruptive force which threatens an otherwise solidly-constructed plan of energy starvation by the ruling regime. The US Interior Dept and the EPA are united with groups of useful idiots to try to shut down shale gas production -- but government forces must be subtle, and attempt to build a popular movement against shale gas to use as a shield and smokescreen.

Coal supplies are far more vast and easily accessed than popular media and official government sources are willing to admit. And clean coal is a very real possibility, quite within reach. Integrated gasification combined cycle coal plants -- without carbon sequestration -- would place vast resources of coal inside the "clean energy" category.

This makes two abundant sources of potentially clean fossil fuels which will reach at least to the mid 2100s, coal and gas. If you consider advanced fission technologies as implemented in small modular factory-built reactors as a third abundant source of clean energy, the world has three potentially abundant and clean energy sources to see it through the 21st century and beyond.

If you go further and look at microbial energy and fuels, prolific biomass (land and marine) energy and fuels, methane clathrates, enhanced geothermal, orbital solar, and eventually fusion and other advanced approaches from nuclear and particle physics -- and you should be able to see yourself clear to the 26th century at least.

The worst possible thing you could do for the planet is to cut off humanity's ascent to advanced technologies at its current primitive stage. But if current policies of carbon hysteria and energy starvation continue as at present, that is exactly what will happen.

If the faux environmentalists and neo-Luddites have their way, this planet and all of its precious ecosystems will continue to be vulnerable to a massive dieoff event from terrestrial and/or extraterrestrial agencies. Natural climate change -- ice age -- is a far greater threat to species diversity than the minimal climate change due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. An impact by comet or asteroid has the potential to destroy more life in one fell swoop than all of man's impacts put together -- including a massive nuclear war.

There is no perspective nor wisdom within most of the world's governments -- only hunger for power and graft. It is up to any humans capable of awakening, to make up the deficit.

Addendum: Here is a short list of "useful idiots" on the local level of the US Pacific Northwest, who are vocal in opposing a biomass CHP plant in Port Angeles, WA:

Mania and Toby Thayler, attorney for the seven environmental groups filing the appeal, argued that selling the electricity could overtake the primary use of the mill.

"Obviously they listened and carefully considered their decision," Thayler said.

"I think they are wrong, but they listened carefully."

The environmental groups -- Port Townsend AirWatchers, Olympic Forest Coalition, Olympic Environmental Council, No Biomass Burn of Seattle, the Center for Environmental Law and Policy of Spokane, the World Temperate Rainforest Network and the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club -- said the assessment was incomplete. _Source

These easily manipulated but quite vocal fools are willing to oppose whatever they are told to oppose, and loudly. The attorneys among them are sometimes quite well-paid, however. Particularly those in the higher levels of powerful faux environmental - industrial complex political lobbies such as Sierra Club.

Who Needs Rare Earth Magnets? Not NovaTorque

Source
Sunnyvale California's Nova Torque has introduced 3 permanent magnet motors that use magnets costing only 1 / 15th the cost of a neodymium magnet.

So how does NovaTorque do it? Take a look at the photo. The motor (foreground) consists of conical hubs (background) containing magnets separated by a tapered motor shaft (left). The hub is the component that looks like a space capsule and the shaft has the band of copper. The key here is that the interface between the magnetic surface of the hub and the shaft is diagonal, not flat like in most motors. A diagonal interface dramatically increases the surface area between the two, thereby increasing magnetic flux transmission (good) and reducing materials (also good). The magnets are the raised surfaces on the side of the conical hub.

Think of how baguettes get cut in restaurants: you can put more butter on diagonally cut bread than slices lopped off the top. The expanded surface area permits NovaTorque to switch to ferrite magnets.

NovaTorque also manages to reduce the amount of copper needed for the coils in the motor. Less copper, less cost.

Efficiency in the motor is greater than average due to the fact that the magnetic field is axial, i.e., it runs in an oval around the axle, instead of being radial, i.e., circumnavigating it. One advantage: the axial field means NovaTorque can use gain-oriented transformer-grade sette, which lowers eddy current losses and boosts efficiency. Higher efficiency should also result in fewer breakdowns: a large percentage of mechanical failures can be traced to ambient waste heat generated by motor inefficiencies.

The motor also pairs well with variable drives, and variable speed air conditioners are one of the top priorities in data center retrofits.

The company's Premium Plus+ motors are currently spec'd for refrigerators, HVAC systems, vacuum pumps and industrial equipment. But if the technology scales well to larger motors, other markets could open. _greentechmedia

In other news from GreenTechMedia, Massachusetts company Premium Power is introducing a zinc bromide flow battery system scaled for a large home. It is clear from the comments following the article that most readers have no idea what a flow battery is. Still, the announcement is good news for anyone looking for advances in large scale power backup systems.

Also from GreenTechMedia, an announcement that Sapphire Energy is beginning work on the first of a series of 3 100 acre algae biofuel pilot plants in New Mexico. Ignore the facetious comment left by yours truly after the article. The website will probably alter the article by the time you read it to make the comment seem superfluous, or may delete the comment altogether. Website administrators tend to take themselves and their sites altogether too seriously! ;-)

Brian Wang describes research from Montana State University, which demonstrates that algae are capable of thriving on added HCO3 -- producing significantly more oil as a result of the extra carbon. This is actually good news for those worried about ocean acidification from atmospheric CO2, since most dissolved CO2 turns promptly into HCO3 (over 90% I believe). In other words, sea creatures will take this extra bicarbonate and turn it into more plankton, sponges, coral reefs, and shelled sea creatures.

Robert Rapier describes a visit to a Shell Oil Gas-to-liquids plant in Malaysia. The plant utilises gasification plus F-T synthesis of liquids. Very enlightening, and most optimistic toward the future of GTL.

CTL and BTL are still considerably more expensive, but given time we are likely to see a lot of progress on those fronts as well.

Wind Farms Cannot Produce Electricity On Demand

Short excerpt from Energy Facts Report PDF:

Typical availability [for wind farm power] is 20-40%, compared with 60-80% for coal and over 90% for nuclear. Such unpredictable electricity is hard to sell. In addition, note that each windmill contributes only a tiny amount of electricity to the grid, yet it is a major structure. Windmills kill a significant number of bats and birds, some of which are on the endangered species list. This has created concern, at both the local and the federal level, over potential increase in mosquito-borne diseases caused by bats and birds killed by wind-turbines.6

Since thrown blades can kill people nearly a mile away, and windmills must be spaced so as not to interfere with each other’s wind, they must be surrounded by considerable land area. To generate (at peak power) as much electricity as a single 1000-megawatt nuclear plant, a wind-farm would occupy 200 to 300 square miles. (A nuclear power station might have two or more such plants and occupy only about one square mile.) Each two-megawatt wind-turbine is one-third taller than the Statue of Liberty from the ground to the torch-tip. To make these windmills: “Coal-fired cement plants would be needed to make millions of cubic yards of concrete for the bases. Rocks might have to be blasted away, or trees cut down to make room for the bases, towers, and the wind itself.”7 Per kilowatt-hour generated, wind farms require considerably more steel and concrete than a nuclear plant.8 And this cost can be amortized over only the short—typically 15 years—life of wind-turbines. By comparison, nuclear power plants will run for 60 or more years.

If you’d prefer all this be done off-shore, you’ll need monopole towers about nineteen feet in diameter sunk deep into the seabed. Cravens notes that “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is planning to test a monopole installation and has announced that four species of endangered turtles, four species of endangered whales, two species of endangered seabirds, and a threatened beach plant may be affected by such an experiment. Warning lights for aircraft and boats would light up the wind-park at night, and foghorns would bellow as needed. An underwater cable would connect the turbines to the grid.” (Curiously, environmentalists don’t appear to mind that cable—just the one across Long Island Sound.)

The above discussion is just to document the fact that the wind-turbines used in connection with “wind power” plants are not at all like the simple, small windmills commonly seen on farms before the electric power grid made them obsolete.

As the magnitude of the intrusion such wind-turbines would make on any neighborhood became apparent, public opposition of the NIMBY type (Not In My Back Yard), reminiscent of early anti-nuclear rallies have sprung up, and given rise to national and international anti-wind-power organizations.9 The bases for objection were many. The Audubon Society was horrified at the bird- and bat-slaughtering capability of these “avian cuisinarts” (their words). The Industrial Wind Action Group opened one of its newsletters with the words: “Building turbines in some of the best places to harvest wind in Ohio could put millions of birds and bats—some protected by state and federal law—at risk.”

...The important fact about wind-turbines is that electric power output varies as the cube of the wind speed. Thus, when wind speed doubles, the power output from the wind-turbine increases eight-fold. A variation from 10 to 12.6 mph doubles the output. And conversely, dropping from the rated speed by a third (from 31 to 21 mph) decreases the power generation by more than two-thirds. This presents a serious problem for the electric power grid, because there is no place to store any significant amounts of electricity. The National Electrical Reliability Council estimates that for safe grid operation, voltage can vary no more than 5% without potential damage to electrical equipment. Information storage and handling systems are even more vulnerable—blips as brief as a sixtieth a second can be damaging.

So, an electric power grid is a continuous delicate balancing act, having to match up each new demand for more electricity by increasing generation accordingly, and matching each turned-off light switch by correspondingly decreasing output from one of its power stations. The grid accomplishes this balancing by maintaining a good-sized “spinning reserve” of some reliable energy source, such as coal or gas. Of course, this is all done automatically, under the coordinated watchful eye of various human operators. But in that situation, having an energy source, such as a wind-farm, that on its own initiative doubles its output or cuts it in half from time to time, is seen as pure mischief. As evidence of this, note that it usually requires 24 hours or more to restabilize the grid after a blackout. If we had never heard of unpredictable energy sources, and we observed unpredictable surges into and out of the grid, we might reasonably suspect sabotage. It is easier to harm the system by scrambling the demand than by blowing up transmission towers.

Not only is a wind-farm’s output unpredictable, but what pattern there is, is often counter-productive. In much of the U.S., the wind is apt to be higher speed and steadier at night, when the demand is lowest. And the gusts are strongest in the spring and fall, when neither heating nor air-conditioning demand is in full swing. But such conditions are local, and some are favorable.

Europe now has enough wind energy to pose serious grid problems. Utilities would not buy wind-power by choice, so they are required to do so by government mandate. One suggested remedy is to disperse the wind turbines over a wide area, to smooth out some of the wind bursts. But this requires that more of the energy travel over greater distances, and even at 500,000 volts (to minimize losses), a significant part of the energy being transmitted is lost as heat on the way. Even within a few tens of miles, as much as 9% is lost. Getting approval to place high-voltage power lines is even harder than for nuclear power plants. _FactsReportPDF

The full report at the link above documents the significant superiority of nuclear energy over unreliable wind and solar.

Charles Barton offers an excellent argument for the sustainability of nuclear power

Nuclear Fusion is an energy dark horse that promises to overturn the established energy order -- if we can find the right approach.

Brian Wang has much more on nuclear fusion

The pursuit of big wind power will guarantee energy obsolescence and starvation for anyone foolish enough to attempt it. Just because the current batch of US politicians advocates for energy starvation is no reason to accept such suicidal policies as appropriate.

Vote them out!

Robert Rapier Stands Up for Bio-Energy

Robert Rapier is an engineer who has often expressed skepticism about various biofuels approaches and particular biofuels companies. But the logic in favour of biomass is very difficult to dispute. I am posting a brief excerpt, but you need to read Robert's entire article to get a feeling for how frustrated Robert is with the biomass-bashers. (almost as frustrated as Al Fin)

...it is true that wood gasification plants can have lots of particulate emissions, that is not an inherent quality. You can put the same pollution controls on them that you can on coal plants. So once again a bad starting assumption leads to a sweeping, but false conclusion.

In summary, this was a very one-sided view that presented the worst extremes as more or less the status quo for biomass utilization. It is true that you can do things a right way or a wrong way. Water is healthy and I need it to live, but if I drink too much it can kill me. Taking a page from this article, I suppose I should avoid water from now on, as it has the potential to kill me.

For those quoted in the article, I hope they don't freeze to death in the dark as the biomass they are so opposed to rots and releases its CO2 anyway. As I tell people sometimes, if you are opposed to everything, then prepare to be happy with the status quo. _RSquared

Rapier is an engineer who is focused on the matter at hand -- hot to make things work efficiently. He is not a generalist and does not have a truly global view, except in the narrow areas that he specialises in. But he is honest in expressing his impressions as he sees them.

Too many intellectuals without technical training (such as the ones that Robert bashes above) have latched onto an initial impression that "biofuels are bad" and have decided that bioenergy cannot help alleviate energy shortages. Time will prove them wrong, but in the meantime, they are slowing down society's abililty to flexibly face energy supply fluctuations.

BlackLight Power Converts Hydrogen to Hydrino?

Darkhorse energy company BlackLight Power utilises a most unconventional mechanism to produce energy from hydrogen.   Brian Westenhaus picked up on a Brian Wang post and pursued the matter further.   Al Fin engineers have been skeptical about this unique approach ever since hearing about it, but Al Fin engineers are the curious, open-minded type.  They are always willing to take a look.

The "new information" about BlackLight comes in the form of a webcast from FBR capital markets.  Brian Westenhaus has more:

...on the fuel front Dr. Mills is offering more insight on the inputs. During the webcast he’s saying in effect that the fuel, or the media more appropriately, is combined with sodium to form sodium hydride (NaH) and other commercially available chemicals to make a solid fuel. When heated to the range of boiling water a catalyst, with the implication that the catalyst makes up part of the solid fuel, reacts forming the hydrino. This is said to release a substantial amount of energy in the form of heat. The heat in its turn then can be used as any other heat source such as making steam, space heating or industrial process use.



The loads are the operational costs that Dr. Mills suggests would be a few percent and the hydrogen formation, another two percent or so. The implication is that some 95% of the reaction’s energy can be put to work. With the base raw material just water, and not a huge amount at that, the costs to generate power are going to be on the very low side. Dr. Mills says that engineering firms are already looking into costs and construction details, and the thinking is that the plant capital costs are going to come in between the price of natural gas fired and coal fired – two of the very lowest capital investment choices utilities can make.


The waste material is hydrinos. Just how much of that humanity chooses to allow into the atmosphere for getting swept off into space is yet to be asked. Dr. Mills offers that hydrinos themselves will have economic use and barely implies that the hydrino state can be reversed. Those two points need considered. The effects of hydrinos in the air are not addressed at all, and the waste stream if problem free and allowed to be an atmospheric effluent would soon be swept away by the solar wind. The process would over a long time “de mass” the planet. It seems a shame to think the free hydrogen that’s being used to become a hydrino has no value. The effluent premise can’t last for long. _NewEnergyandFuel

A fascinating approach, if it works. So far, environmentalists have not taken up the question of hydrino safety. If the EPA considers CO2 to be a toxic pollutant, what do you think it will have to say about hydrinos? Oh, bother!

But seriously, if the reaction works efficiently, and if hydrinos could serve an even more important purpose than the original hydrogen, without causing harm, we may see a proliferation of BlackLight Power devices sometime over the next 20 years.

A lot of questions. But if BLP is not the huge scam that most people would assume initially, it may give fusion a long-term run for its money.

Is Energy Suicide Official US Policy Now?

Without energy, an entity will die. This is true for plants, animals -- and for nations.

During the campaign, Obama promised to shut down coal fueled power plants -- and he is doing just that.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being admitted. _R&D

Under the Obama administration, offshore oil, oil shales, nuclear power, and other reliable forms of baseload power are not having much success either. Obama seems to believe that shutting down the US energy supply will make him a better leader, and the US a better country.

The Chinese are a good deal more intelligent, apparently, and understand that a nation's energy supply is the life's blood of its industry. That is why the Chinese are planning a vast new energy future for the 21st century.

Brian Wang has covered China's ambitious nuclear energy plans. China has large contracts with Areva, Mitsubishi, Westinghouse, and other nuclear power contractors, to build a large array of newer generation, safer nuclear power plants.

China is also becoming a leader in the implementation of clean coal gasification power.

Under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Shell and Shenhua, the two parties will explore opportunities to jointly develop more advanced coal gasification technology. In addition, they will discuss the possible application of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. A joint working team will be set up to implement the agreement.

Shenhua has built the world’s first million-tonne level direct coal liquefaction project in China’s Inner Mongolia, equipped with two gasifiers using Shell’s coal gasification technology to produce hydrogen from coal.

The Shell-Shenhua MoU was signed alongside government meetings between China and the Netherlands on sustainable energy cooperation. Officials from the National Energy Administration of China and the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands witnessed the signing, after their meeting concluded with a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the field of energy between the two government departments.

Shenhua Coal to Liquid and Chemical Co. Ltd. is a subsidiary company to Shenhua Group Corporation Limited. Shenhua Group is the world’s largest coal company. It not only builds coal-to-liquid and coal-chemical projects, but also develops CCS, hydrogen power and renewable energy technology.

Shell has been developing and commercializing coal gasification technology since the 1970s with a total of 26 licensing agreements signed worldwide. Shell has signed 19 licensing agreements with different Chinese users. Eleven plants using Shell coal gasification technology, including Shell’s joint venture with Sinopec in Yueyang of Hunan Province, have been started up.

Gasification equipment. The SCGP is a dry-feed, oxygen-blown, entrained flow coal gasification process which has the capability to convert virtually any coal or petroleum coke into a clean medium Btu synthesis gas.

In SCGP, high pressure nitrogen or recycled syngas in used to pneumatically convey dried, pulverized coal to the gasifier. The coal enters the gasifier through diametrically opposed burners where it reacts with oxygen at around 1,600 °C. The gasification temperature is maintained to ensure that the mineral matter in the coal is molten and will flow smoothly down the gasifier wall and out the slag tap. The hot syngas exiting the gasifier is quenched to below the softening point of the slag and then cooled further in the syngas cooler. _GCC

China is the world's larges coal producer, and the US has the largest coal reserves. Australia, Russia, and India also have large coal reserves.

Using gasification, it is possible to turn any type of coal or carbonaceous material, into clean synthesis gas. Syngas can be fired like natural gas, or turned into more complex fuels, chemicals, or polymers.

China's system of government and economy once suffered under tremendous disadvantages with respect to the government and economy of the US. As the government of the US continues to eviscerate the US economy, any advantages the US enjoyed are beginning to slip away.

Even under a global regime of poverty, someone will be on top. At the rate the Obama administration is going, the one on top will be China.

Cross-posted to Al Fin