19 12.05

Bon Voyage – Air Travel is the party over?

I am now in India . I flew here, and the question that I keep asking myself is ‘How can someone who understands the devastating effects of global warming and ‘peak oil', still go on foreign holidays by airplane?' This is not a rhetorical question, and I don't even think that I shouldn't. I am following a desire that is contradicted by my understanding. What is crucial to this contradiction is that it happens all the time.

The reason I am examining this important dilemma is because:

•  Our society is built around unsustainable practices and policies.

•  Individually we have some choice. We can live more or less sustainably, or completely disregard sustainability and live how we please.

•  How can we live sustainably, and go on doing things which we like to do, given many of these things are unsustainable?

•  Do we even make efforts to be more sustainable in our daily lives, given that the scale of our energy use is so enormous, one individual can make very little difference.

•  In other words do we just carry on partying, until the party is over?

If the only thing we can do is to party until the party is over then this is a real tragedy. We want without limit, but we live in a finite world. Maybe there is nothing we can do about that, and there are many who think we can't. And now we are starting to reach the final limits, at least along the paths we are treading. Unless of course you believe in growth with out limits; which I regard as a form of insanity. (It's a very prevalent form of insanity however. We seem to assume we are going to live in a ‘Star Wars' future, colonising distant planets, although we continue to make a mess of this one. Try finding a film of an ecological future society, you can't it doesn't exist.)

Of course it makes economic sense now to be making your life more sustainable, and there is beginning to be a clear message- renewable energy, low energy lifestyles pays off. But unsustainable pursuits are also possible, like flying.

Is responsible consumption a possibility? I bought carbon offsets from Climate Care , to cover the one ton of carbon that my share of the flight would produce. Climate Care pays for either creating carbon sinks or renewable energy projects in third world countries that will mean one ton less of carbon is produced (for more detail see 1 below). This again gets back to the problem of scale, for individual action it works, or at least helps, but globally, we cannot build or make the offsetting on a large enough scale to go on burning more carbon at greater and greater rates.

It's been an issue ever since Nikhila and I expressed a desire to go to India this winter and sit at the foot of enlightened masters, and soak up the atmosphere in the Osho Ashram in Pune . All well and good, except for the damaging effect of air travel. No matter how much good this holiday/exploration will do me, and no matter how much I rationalise the purpose of my journey, air travel, at least at the rate we are flying, is unsustainable. The lure of air travel seems irresistible. It's so irresistible that I am joined by 200 million UK air travellers this year alone.

Those of us studying ‘Peak oil' conclude that the airline business, as it is dependent on cheap oil will be the ‘canary in the coal mine' as peak oil sends energy prices soaring. Cheap air travel will become a thing of the past in a few years. In any event it will become more expensive assuming climate change and other environmental impacts are included in the cost.

The UK has a policy of making air travel pay for its environmental impacts. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions' (DETR) document, 'Air Traffic Forecasts for the United Kingdom 2000' 'states, “ As the Government has a policy commitment for aviation to pay for its environmental impacts, modelling takes account of the effects of an economic instrument, such as a permit trading scheme, on future demand.”

The only trouble is, no UK (or any other) government has had the political will to slap an environmental tax on air travel. Cheap air travel is now seen as a right, one of our entitlements, and any attempt to tax it will be fought tooth and nail by the airline industry, (especially the low cost airlines, who have already fired several shots across the bows), and severely punished by the electorate. It is a ‘trickle down' benefit courtesy of our cheap oil bonanza, a bonanza that is on the verge of ending, with or without the above mentioned limits due to climate chaos.

From the point of view of climate chaos, there is also no way we can continue flying like we do. If airline travel continues to grow at the current rate, air travel will create as much carbon dioxide as the rest of the UK 's economy put together by 2030. How can we possibly make the radical decreases in carbon emissions necessary while still continuing to fly on airplanes? It's simply not possible.

So for now my advice is: fly responsibly, buy carbon offsets, but don't count on travelling like we do now in 3 or 4 years time. If you are thinking of buying a holiday house in another part of the world, I would think again. If you are hoping to set up a tourism business that depends on foreign tourists that have to travel large distances I would also have second thoughts. When the first large sailing vessel making regular voyages across the Atlantic will commence, I can't say. But it's being thought about. New opportunities for doing what we do differently and sustainably will open up faster than you think, because it's more joyful and interesting to be working with the earth than against it. Bon Voyage!

 

Naresh

1 This is the basis of a carbon trading scheme that was begun in 2002 in the UK , and a formal arrangent commenced 1st January 2005, to allocate carbon credits to major polluting industries, in order for each country to achieve their emission targets under the Kyoto protocol. This is the first international treaty to recognise the ‘Global Commons', and acknowledge the need for a right to pollute. Or in ecological terms, the right to use an eco-sphere service, thereby implicitly accepting a planetary ‘limit to growth', as set out in the eponymous book originally published in 1972, and republished as a 30 year update. It is only a start, but an important one. (it's easy to lose sight of this. The Kyoto protocols many detractors are quick to criticise it, but not so quick to propose better solutions. ) However Kyoto makes nowhere near the dramatic cuts in carbon emissions necessary. The only protocol that I have yet seen that makes sense is contraction and convergence put forward by the Global Commons Institute, called contraction and convergence.

 

21.11.05

International Energy Forum- The Dog That Isn't Barking.

From Bloomberg.com

http://tinyurl.com/a878o

"Oil prices are moderating as we wanted,'' Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters in Riyadh, where ministers and oil executives are gathering to open the headquarters of the International Energy Forum (IEF).

Oil and finance ministers from more than a dozen energy producing and consuming nations, including the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, are in Riyadh for the inauguration ceremony. The presidents of Total SA, Royal Dutch Shell Group and ConocoPhillips are also attending, according to Saudi Arabia 's Ministry of Petroleum.

The Forum, which has met nine times since its creation in 1991, brings together more than 60 oil producing and consuming nations at the ministerial level to discuss energy issues."

I would love to be a fly on the wall for this little get together. I assume that they all know what's really happening, so no need for consuming nations to 'talk tuff' with OPEC or any of that sort of thing , so why are they getting together? To practice their lines for their biggest problem- how to sell all of us the simultaneous lines of "its all just fine", and " Houston - we have problem", (ie create confusion) but to avoid panic and, god forbid, the truth ever leaking out. And , and -the most important bit of all -still maintain control?

Anyone have any alternative theories?

I have now had time to do some searches on the International Energy Forum. The results are not very interesting. The papers were nothing I haven't heard before, and the structure of the organisation is well un-interesting. So this still leaves the question of why has this organisation been formed and what are its real aims?

The stated aims from its web site- are to improve the dialog between oil and gas producers and consumers. All very boring. Do they really get together every two years or so a bore each other into submission? Maybe I have read one conspiracy theory too many, but I find it hard to believe that the sole purpose of the IEF is to improve dialog.

Of course the fact the there is a perceived need for such a dialog is actually a stunning admission. It's a bit like Chevron Texaco's web site ‘Will you join us?'. It's a defacto recognition that the market for oil and gas is broken and is beyond repair.

The international energy forum has existed for some hundred years or so and it's called the free market. The daily trade in oil and gas on NYMEX http://www.nymex.com and the International Petroleum Exchange www.theipe.com is all the information we have ever needed on oil and gas supply. It's where the real world ‘dialogue' between supply (and suppliers) and demand (and consumers) has taken places and the answer is there in plain sight for all to see, and is expressed in dollars and cents.

A new ‘forum' is the same as saying that this recognised and transparent and apparently useful tool for determining how and where our energy supplies are coming from is no longer enough. But the question keeps coming up for me, what can the IEF possibly achieve? More supply? Less demand? Public relations exercises; to talk up or talk down prices, supplies, concerns?

As far as I can see there's no real reason to discuss anything. There are thousands, if not millions of people monitoring every twist and turn of all aspects of the energy market at second of every working day. All everyone has to do is the suppliers keep supplying and the consumers keep consuming. The $17 trillion in investment that the International Energy Agency says we will need between now and 2030 to keep the oil flowing will either come or it won't. If the market is working its working, if not then why not? What is causing the market to become no longer all the information we need about oil and gas supply? Well, let's look at both sides of the equation – supply and demand.

Demand appears robust, especially since the emergence of China and India a few years ago as rapidly industrialising nations with vast populations. The OECD countries have also maintained steady growth in energy needs, while steadily becoming more energy efficient. But crucially the trend is still upwards. The only fly in the ointment as far as the hydrocarbon producers are concerned is global warming – or as a coalition of 18 groups in the UK recently named it climate chaos. . But I would assume that OPEC has all the clout it needs in the OECD nations' political processes, and useful allies in the large oil companies, to prevent anything drastic happening- such as a new treaty agreeing rapid reductions in CO2 emissions. In fact the opposite is happening, the follow on from Kyoto is might well be voluntary.

In other words toilet paper.

Supply , that's more problematic. The big question is oil production peaking? Are OPEC honest about their reserves? Is there as much oil to be found as the US Geological Service seems to indicate? Can new technology improve the recovery of present reserves? These questions remain unanswered. In other words, is there going to be a dislocation in supply that the market will be unable to handle? The widely reported Hirsh report for the CIA certainly implies that by the time markets are signalling it will be too late to avoid sever disruption to economies. To you and me that means at best a severe recession, and at worst a widening of the current resource wars, nations disintegrating (Zimbabwe), continued loss of political rights (patriot act, France's state of emergency, and UK's identity cards), famine (Sudan), and governments unable to cope (Katrina). In short its happening already.

What this new agency can do about the obvious supply problems, I don't know, and can find no one who has any answer to that question. Both OPEC and the IEA regularly comment on oil supply and demand, as does the US government's Energy Information Agency. What a new body can possibly do is unanswered. I am still left with the impression that ‘information management', or spin is the only product of this forum, at best. At worst a cabal to mislead and obscure for ordinary people what must become crystal clear- the new paradigm that is emerging of expensive energy and all that this means. Like Sherlock Holmes, I am more interested in the dog that isn't barking. This dog is not barking!

21.11.05

An interesting development following on from the last article:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1881698,00.html

Tony Blair has apparently made up his mind on building more nuclear power stations, and even the cabinet environmental spokesperson, Margaret Bechett, is giving the plan a warm reception. I hate to say i told you so.......

 

26.10.05

Nuclear Alien 2

Just like its namesake, Alien , we have a sequel to the original, after only five days!

I would like to have credited my article of 21.10.05 to have stirred up so much interest in this subject that it suddenly became of much wider interest than that a few greenies and peak oil nuts. However the head of the Confederation of British Industry, Sir Digby Jones, falls into neither of those categories, and I doubt he reads my blog.

Larry Elliot in The Guardian of Monday 24 th October, makes it very clear in his article entitled, ‘The Answer is not Blowing in the Wind', that we face a reality check. He writes, “There are no soft options. After the last three-day week (In 1974 when British Industry was forced to work a three day week due to lack of energy as a result of the miners strike) we took the bounty from the North Sea and blew it. After three fat decades, a reality check looms.”

He further argues that we have three options for our electricity generation. The first is a reliance on wind and gas. The second is nuclear power, and the third is reaching a contraction and convergence protocol for energy use.

Relying on wind and gas will mean we are reliant on the fast depleting remains of our North Sea bounty, and then gas from Norway , and then when that runs out, Siberia . Add to this peak oil, and natural gas depletion and we are on a very slippery slope, and face at best energy security issues, and at worst a failure of our economic model. This, however, assumes the ‘business as usual' approach with large scale industrial solutions, ie large wind farms, both on and off shore. Although I think some large scale inputs will be currently required, due to our profligate use of energy, small scale localised generation schemes using a variety of renewables would be the long term answer. We are hooked on industrial solutions. Renewable energy doesn't lend itself to this sort of use. By nature it's more diffuse, and locally available in many forms in most places. We don't yet know how best to marry renewable energy to our high energy culture. In my opinion something has to change. Small scale local generation schemes from a wide variety of sources will enable a rapid deployment, rapid innovation, and individual and community based responsibility for their energy. We are an ingenious species, and regulatory and business climate friendly to this sort of approach would harness far more ingenuity per pound spent than large schemes which by their nature are capital intensive, and slowly evolving.

The reliance on local energy generation is untried and untested, we would be moving into the unknown. However the alternative, nuclear power is very much a known and dangerous route to take. It would make us no more secure. We would be relying on mining our uranium from abroad and the problems of waste and decommissioning, are gone into in Nuclear Alien below.

I am not sure that a renewable energy option would require contraction and convergence. I think it is necessary from a climate change point of view, but from an energy point of view I am so sure. Any country that undertook to rely on renewable energy would fairly quickly create a competitive advantage that would make them more competitive, and hence other economies would have to follow suit to compete. Just straight forward good old economics would do the trick. However I know of no research into this proposition, although a few of us are starting a Totnes Economic Re-localisation scheme that will begin to test this hypothesis.

An interesting view from a Swiss MP, arrived this morning in reply to Larry Elliot's article, which proposes European wide wind generation schemes as a way forward.  

" Dear Mister Elliot   I read your comments on Energy with respects.   I am a Swiss MP (in Parliament since 1995), working in the energy comitee since.   I think that Blair is doing a very poor job with wind power and renewables.

The ROC system does not bring the financial background for offshore nor onshore producers; some producers get overpaid, but too many projects get not realized for a too high risk. The contribution of wind energy in UK is minimal, compared to nations like Spain , Germany , Denmark or Portugal . I have the impression that in the UK there is an hidden agenda between the head of government and the nuclear lobby to do all to prevent a fair competition in energy markets or a change toward clean energy like wind. This is especially remarkable because the UK has the best wind resource in Europe, so much more better than Germany or Austria , where many more turbines are built even now than in the UK .  

The problems of intermittency of wind power are easily solvable. A small number of hydro pump storage (overall efficiency 80%) like in Switzerland could bring a cushion of extra wind power for a couple of weeks with low wind; additionally you need some HVDC lines to Norway to use the hydro storage there. These system modification prevent you from a fall back on fossil fuels for most cases with low wind.   Then the UK should introduce the far cheaper price-guarantee-system that is in force in Germany and 16 other European nations. This system creates customized benefits for any energy technologies - wind, geothermal, photovoltaics or biomass generation as well. The ROC-system, thought to be cheap, turns out to be the most expensive and non-innovative system in renewable energy, due to high risk premiums of investors due to uncertainty of long term price levels.

It would be time now to consider better ways for renewables, and to strengthen the grid. All these measures are much less expensive and more energy-secure than new nuclear power. And the UK could export offshore wind power to the European mainland soon. A strong population, willing to buy cheap and clean energy like formerly the North Sea oil, is waiting for green British wind energy exports. And in Switzerland some big electricity companies would know how to store this power in hydro gadgets and would like to enter trade with you."  

Dr. Rudolf Rechsteiner, Guardian reader in Basel Switzerland

We stand at a cross road, and every delay to the introduction of sustainable policies at all levels, (and we are facing the most urgent decisions on energy right now), will make it harder for us to adopt reliable solutions and safe energy options further down the line. A nuclear drag anchor would be sorry legacy to pass onto future generations. However, it is difficult to see the political will to adopt the only feasible solution; Co2 reduction and what ever combination of local and trans-national renewable energy solutions becomes most workable.

Forget about saving the earth, Gaia has a long life ahead of her- and behind her. Whatever combination of pollution and toxic waste we create will be completely irrelevant in 30 million years time- a mere day in Gaia's lifespan. It's us human beings that we are actually concerned with, and more specifically our current way of life. Whether our political, economic, and social systems will evolve fast enough to enable a transition to a sustainable way of life is the unanswered question. Or will an unwillingness to change, political stalemates, and financially powerful vested interests delay action until disaster strikes? At what point will the emerging collision course with earth limits become undeniable? Don't bet on it taking nearly as long as you might think.

Naresh

Nuclear Alien.

21.10.05

Nuclear power is like The Alien in the eponymous film, just when you think it's dead and buried, it comes back in a newer and ever more viscous form. The hopes of the UK nuclear industry drowned on April 2005 in the basement of the Thorpe Nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, under 18,000 litres of nitric acid containing 20 tons of uranium and 160kgs of plutonium, that had leaked, and lay unnoticed for up to 9 months - or so I thought.

British Nuclear Fuels was forced to shut the Thorpe plant, for an unspecified time, and most feel it will probably be forever, until they work out what to do with this spill of radioactive material so lethal, no human being could possibly go near it. My attempts at discovering what Sellafiield or British Nuclear Fuels currently have to say about it lead to nil, zip, a search on all their sites: http://www.british-energy.com , http://www.sellafield.com , http://www.bnfl.com for the Thorpe plant yielded nothing! Like the Alien, the Thorpe plant has gone to ground for the moment, waiting for a chance to resurrect itself, with some form of public subsidy, tax write off, or insurance liability guarantees.

Assuming Thorpe has to close indefinitely, the UK governments' hopes that the Thorpe plant's profits, from reprocessing nuclear waste from around the world, will also go. They were to help offset the enormous costs to the UK taxpayers of making safe the UK's nuclear wastes; costs that have risen to £60 billion and at least one estimate I heard was probably closer to £90 billion.

Nuclear power generation would probably never have been attempted had it not been for the most appalling Weapon of Mass Destruction the world has ever seen – the atomic bomb. For the two go hand in had, a marriage of convenience which has underpinned the adoption of nuclear electricity generating capacity in countries where there have also been nuclear bomb making. Check it out, not one nuclear power has failed to develop a robust civilian nuclear generating capacity.

This is in stark contradiction to President Eisenhower's stated aims outlined in his famous ‘Atoms for Peace' speech to the United Nations on 8 December 1953, in which he said, “ The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes. It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.”

However prior to the afore mentioned ‘coup de grace' to the most potentially dangerous industry ever invented, other moves have been afoot. Tony Blair appeared to distance himself from the flawed Kyoto protocol when he stated  "The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem.” he said.   "Some people have signed Kyoto , some people haven't signed Kyoto , right? That is a disagreement. It's there. It's not going to be resolved." Mt Blair continued. For this brutal honesty he was of course roundly condemned by the green camp. However, the UK remains, at least for now, committed to the Kyoto Protocol, which requires substantial reductions in green house gases. As the UK currently generates roughly 20% of its electricity from its 12 aging nuclear power plants, it would come as a particularly painful blow, to lose both this considerable contribution to its power supplies and the beneficial effects on its Kyoto obligations. For this is what is on the cards.

The UK 's nuclear plants are aging. Designed for a specific lifetime, the 12 nuclear power stations currently in operation are scheduled to close as each reaches the end of its life until the last station closes in 2035. Licences can be extended and the lifetimes of the existing station prolonged, for a short period of time, maybe 5 -10 years, giving enough time for future developments to be planned.

I predicted in my press releases prior to this years UK general election that the issue of renewing our nuclear power station would be a decision that would have to be made in the lifetime of this next parliament. That has now proved to be true. Once the green light is given, it will take 15 years to get one nuclear power station on line. That was the time scale it took for the last nuclear power station, Sizewell B, to be built. This issue received no debate and no air time in this year's UK general election. One of the most important decisions facing the UK is where or from what mix of options will the energy to maintain our present way of life come from.

While it is great to have been proved right, I take that as cold comfort that I live in a country with a dysfunctional political system. What's the point of having elections, if there is no real debate? There was no debate because there was no choice. No other major party (aside from the green party, who are not sadly a serious option) would have a different solution from Labour. None of the main political parties offered a choice, but is true that there is really no choice? I would like to examine our options as I see it.

By doing nothing, particularly in relation to getting serious about renewable energy, we now probably have less choice in this matter. Money and political lobbyists will decide from what source and how we are to maintain our power generation capacity.

Climate change combined with ‘peak oil' has made nuclear almost unassailable as long as you are working on the business as usual scenario. I believer our assumption of ‘business as usual' needs to be questioned. This is the stark reality facing us in the UK , and probably most other OEDC countries. There are careless and insidious assumptions that need unpacking if we are to find our way though the problems facing us and our culture. The first assumption is ‘Must we continue growth?' The second; Does increased economic growth (a positive GDP) correlate to a positive growth rate in energy required and consumed? And ‘Can an OECD rely on renewable energy for its power or is the energy too expensive or diffuse to power a modern economy?' Are there limits to our eventual growth as a race, or will we grow forever in some shape or form? And lastly will we continue with an industrial culture involving large scale solution by large companies with large scale investments, or decentralise and go for small is beautiful type solution? I will take them one by one.

 

Can an OECD rely on renewable energy for its power or is the energy too expensive or diffuse to power a modern economy?

The short answer is that no one has yet done it, although the Cuban example is indicative of what can be done. But they are not an advanced industrial country. Denmark for instance has achieved 20% energy through renewables, mostly wind, perhaps the most promising of large scale renewable electricity generation. . The three arguments against wind is the intermittent nature of wind makes it unreliable, and secondly it too expensive, thirdly we lack an infinite capacity for expansion, there are only so many sites suitable for wind generation. Dr David Toke of Birmingham University has looked at the relative costs of nuclear and wind. His conclusions are that to build enough generation capacity to meet 20% of UK energy requirements wind and nuclear are virtually the same. This calculation takes into account the relative load capacities of each (ie windmills only generate power 30% of the time). This does not account the costs of nuclear waste and decommissioning the power stations. Nor does it account for insurance liabilities (nuclear installations are un-insurable) or the cost of fuel. Once you build the wind farm the cost of its power source is nil. So by any concievable costing assumption wind is by far the cheaper, and less dangerous. (a)

The only other arguments for nuclear power are:

1) That by shutting the door you will be closing a possible energy source. This is a suspect argument. George Monbiot in 25th October issues of The Guardian quotes Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute andSir David King the UK's Chief Scientist, " It's certainly a good idea, as people like King recommend, to have a "diversified energy portfolio". But, as Lovins points out, "this does not mean ... that every option merits a place in the portfolio purely for the sake of diversity, any more than a financial portfolio should include bad investments just because they're on the market"

2 When fossil fuels are in long term decline then we will need all the energy we can possibly get. A mix of alternatives of which nuclear will be one of them will be necessary.

3) There is also the less convincing argument that there could be a technical breakthrough that will magically solve the waste and decommissioning problems and make nuclear attractive again. I regard this as wishful thinking, and you could equally apply it to a more promising and less dangerous technology.

The other, less talked about but implicit in the pro nuclear camp, arguments for nuclear energy are political and social. This is that we are taking costs out of the current column and moving them into the far distant future column. In other words we are stealing from our children, grand children, and generations into the distant (1000 years+) future. It's a politician's dream come true. Get the benefits now but pay for it when those who have had the benefits are dead and hurried. Please note that we have lots of industries like that. Lest you accuse me of unfair attacks on the Nuclear Industry, I am not singling out the nuclear industry alone.

The question then becomes can we do it all with renewable energy – solar, wind, biomass, bio-fuels, hydro-electric, and wave power- and of course conservation and improvements in efficient use of resources? I think the answer to that question will be what kind of society are you trying to power? What are the priorities? And don't forget no one has ever tried to run modern armed forces on renewable energy. Solar powered fighter jets? I don't think so.

I think the problem with crying uncle and dropping nuclear technology is that as a scientist that would be the most likely place t look for large amounts of energy, and the next step in an energy progression. Let me explain. When we burn something, wood, oil, or coal, anything, we release the energy as a result of a chemical reaction, a reaction between electrons, we are accessing the sub atomic electromagnetic force. A far more potent source of energy is found in the nucleus of an atom, which is what we tap with nuclear reactions, both fission and fusion. Theoretically that's where then next great energy source would be from, it makes sense. It's damned inconvenient that the practical problems with nuclear fission and fusion are, so far at least, insurmountable.

We have always progressed from less dense, less convenient forms of energy to more. It is hard to believe that a technologically advanced society like ours cannot find the next step in the progression. Nuclear fusion is the Holy Grail of energy research. This is where most of the energy in the universe is to be harvested, at least the energy that we know of. If we are to create a ‘Star Wars' inter galactic empire harnessing fusion and then some other as yet unknown high tech energy source would be a necessity.

I have not included fossil fuels in this accounting, as we are fast approaching the peak in oil and gas, and an increasing amount of our power will have to come from something other than fossil fuels. Add in climate change and the case for moving away from hydrocarbons is even more compelling. There is some argument for clean coal technology with carbon sequestration, however I see this as ‘blue sky' thinking at the moment as it is not tried and tested. I have also not included zero point energy devices, cold fusion, or di-lithium crystals.

 

Does increased economic growth (a positive GDP) correlate to a positive growth rate in energy required and consumed?

The UK , and every other OECD country, has decreased their consumption of energy per unit of GDP. However, total energy use has risen steadily, even though energy intensive heavy industries have been exported to third world countries.

Jevon's paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox indicates that more efficient use of a resource increases the amount of that resource that you will use, as it will become relatively less expensive.

No one has yet been able to achieve this goal, which is necessary if a society is to become sustainable. Economic welfare goes up and resource use, including energy, decreases. One of the main conclusions of “Limits to Growth, the 30 year Update” is, “Given enough time, we believe humanity possesses nearly limitless problem solving capabilities. Growth, and especially exponential growth, is so insidious because it shortens the time for effective action. It loads stress on a system faster and faster, until coping mechanisms that have been adequate with slower rates of change finally begin to fail.” Pg223.

 

Must we have growth?

We have an economic system that demands growth. Debt based money, requires more and more money each year to pay for the interest earned from preceding years money supply. See Douthwaite for a specific discussion on money and its relation to economic growth, andFeasta.org for other research into alternative monetary systems. We are currently locked into a system that demands continual industrial growth. Unless we uncouple ourselves from this system, the answer to the question is yes.

Are there limits to our eventual growth as a race, or will we grow forever in some shape or form?

We can grow only if we either expand beyond planet earth, or we dematerialise our economy and create a non polluting industrial system, or spend significantly on pollution abatement technologies. This is essentially the limits to growth question. Assuming we remain earthbound, then one answer to this long and difficult question can be found in the “Limits to Growth, the 30 year update”. Meadows, Meadows, and Randers approach is comprehensive and explores and the avenues where this may be possible. The short answer is we can and probably will continue to grow, but some ways are more sustainable than others, and eventually all non sustainable growth will have to come to an end. Also pertaining to this question, the sooner we adopt sustainable growth the more chance of a soft landing.

 

Will we continue with an industrial culture involving large scale solution by large companies with large scale investments, or decentralise and go for small is beautiful type solution?

For me this is the real crunch question about energy supply. Will we seek to decentralise and enjoy the immediate benefits of a decentralised energy supply, or continue to try to find large scale industrial capital intensive solutions? Probably the answer is a bit of both. It may well be beneficial to have a distribution grid to balance wind generation across the country, but to generate as much as closely to where it is used as possible. I cannot see how we can get much beyond the 20% target of renewable electricity generation proposed by 2020, or indeed 10% by 2010, without adopting another model- small scale, local, and empowering individuals. We would certainly have to retain the present nuclear power stations for as long as possible to enable the transition. Small scale micro generation, solar water heating, pv electricity as well a significant steps toward energy efficiency and conservation would be required.

We face hard choices and I believe are at a cross roads in our culture. As soon as you let go of having to maintain a high energy, centralised industrial culture then different options become available. We would continue our economic development, but in some new shape or form. The old model is a relic of the high input fossil fuel age, which is obsolete. The choice at the moment is between nuclear or a raft of renewable energy solutions. Will we opt for the inevitable adoption of renewable energy or will we yet again plumb for the unsustainable nuclear options?

(a) Nuclear has never proved its financial viability. British Energy sold roughly £1.2 billion worth of electricity in 2004/05. It made a net operating loss. Add to that some proportion of the costs of decommissioning say if a plant has an operating life of 40 years, even the conservative figure of £60 to decommission would leave an additional 1.5 billion to be added each and every year plus the cost of making safe and storing the waste. This cost is, as yet, un-quantifiable as no one knows the eventual cost of storing the waste. This rough estimate, with no allowance for financing, would indicate that proposed indications of nuclear's cost per kwr would have to triple to take into account the above mentioned costs. Any combination of renewables is a far better deal and a lot less risky.

 

http://www.world-nuclear.org

To reconcile global human need and environmental preservation, our world needs nuclear power.
“There is no sensible alternative to nuclear power if we are to sustain civilization.”
- James Lovelock, preeminent world leader in the development of environmental consciousness

 

 

Prospects for nuclear power have improved in recent years, with higher capacity utilization rates reported for many existing nuclear facilities and the expectation that most existing plants in the mature market and transitional economy nations will be granted extensions to their operating lives. Further, higher fossil fuel prices and the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol are expected to improve prospects for new nuclear power capacity over the forecast period. Nevertheless, nuclear power trends can be difficult to anticipate for a variety of political and social reasons, and considerable uncertainty is associated with nuclear power forecasts (see discussion on "How Nuclear Power Could Shape World Electricity Markets: Two Nuclear Power Development Scenarios") . http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/electricity.html

 

www.greenparty.org.uk/files/reports/2003/aer_2003.pdf

report looking at costs of nuclear, Dr D Toke .

 

The CBI was concerned that the French and the Germans were flouting EU regulations by subsidising their firms, and was also becoming increasingly anxious that the government should respond to the looming obsolesence of UK power stations by opening a debate on future energy supply.

Larry Elliot The Guardian 20.10.05

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1596040,00.html

 

David King, the UK 's chief scientist recently(21.10.05) came out in favour of nuclear power.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1597142,00.html

 

What do Hurricanes, free markets, and refining capacity have in common?

Answer: Peak Oil

21.9.05

Energy consultancy PFC Energy said in a note that the OPEC offer of spare production capacity is a "de facto suspension of quotas," and would send a stronger political message than raising output quotas by 500,000 b/d.

www.rigzone.com

 

“The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will supply all the oil it can, effectively suspending its quota system for the first time since the 1990 Gulf War after prices surged because of damage from Hurricane Katrina.

OPEC estimates its members can pump another 2 million barrels a day, enough to supply the U.K. , Europe 's second-largest economy. The offer of additional barrels starts Oct. 1 and lasts three months, OPEC President Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah said in Vienna .”

http://tinyurl.com/ap7vd

 

In a study released today, Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist and Chief Strategist at CIBC World Markets, said we are likely to see US$100 per barrel oil sooner than later. The CIBC World Markets study predicts that oil prices will average US$93 per barrel in 2007 with prices expected to reach or exceed US$100 per barrel by the fourth quarter of that year. The September Monthly Indicators report notes that both supply and demand factors are pushing oil prices higher. The devastation to both oilfields and oil industry infrastructure from Hurricane Katrina will not only impact current oil production but future production as well. The study expects that planned expansion of production in the Gulf of Mexico over the next two years is likely to be halved; cutting off nearly 300,000 barrels per day of potential future supply. The setbacks to planned expansion of Gulf of Mexico capacity comes on the heels of stagnant production in Russia and tapped out capacity in OPEC.

http://tinyurl.com/bbcrp

 

When a cartel loses its ability to increase or decrease supply is ceases to be a cartel. It no longer has control over supply and hence prices. That has now happened at least for the next 3 months. From now there is no one in control of the most important commodity we have, and no one really knows where this leaves us. It appears that we are in for a period of price and supply instability, with possible swings, upwards and downwards, all of which make for a very uncertain future for oil producers and for us consumers. For without price stability, oil producers including OPEC, will be wary of investing in future production.

 

This wariness seems to have already restricted refining capacity, as no one seems to want to build new refineries, which have a payback period of 20-25 years. If a refinery you build now were to be idle in 5-10 years time because there wasn't the oil to supply you wouldn't get the return on capital employed to build the plant. There would be no point in building it. The refining capacity we have is also set up to process the wrong sort of crude, light, sweet, and not the heavier crude oil that Saudi Arabia apparently has spare capacity in. There has even been calls by several governments to build refineries, apparently because the excessively profitable oil companies seem unwilling to do so. Even Richard Branson has flown a proposal to build a refinery to supply his beleaguered Virgin airline's fuel.

 

It is also clear from the above report from CIBC World Markets that oil producers are having second thoughts about the Gulf of Mexico, the only region in the USA that has seen significant growth in oil and natural gas production. The results of hurricane Katrina, and previously Ivan last year, and now possibly Rita, is either you build oil platforms and infrastructure to withstand more violent storms, or you abandon oil production in this region, or you stagger along and accept that from time to time various parts of the region will be off line, and or damaged beyond repair. Any way you look at it some part of future potential production will have to be forgone because of higher costs, which at some point will outweigh the benefits of that portion of production.

 

It is interesting to note that this cost, more severe weather due to climate change, is most likely the direct result of burning fossil fuels creating elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere. This is an unforeseen twist to the peak oil story, direct negative feedback due to climate change, making oil production too expensive and pushing the EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) envelope from positive to negative.

 

This comes on top of the apparent peak in light sweet crude oil production, as reported by OPEC http://tinyurl.com/7wvtj . As light sweet crude is the most sought after crude oil, requiring the least refining, and producing more of the most profitable products like petrol (gas), it would make sense that it would be the first product to peak, obviously oil companies search for and produce the most profitable oil first, and save the less desirable product for later. This is another indicator signal of an immanent peak in world oil production.

 

Today's developments add several other layers of complexity to the problem we are facing, namely energy security, and with it the future of our industrial civilisation. The so called Hubbert's peak in world oil production has always been seen as a geological constraint. In theory it is but in practice it appears as the peak of world oil production nears, several other factors, economic, political, and the negative climate changing effects of burning fossil fuels will conspire to create effective peak production sometime prior to the physical Hubbert's peak. What this all means is that previous estimates of Hubbert's peak will have been optimistic, as they are based more less solely on geology, while it has become apparent in a complex and chaotic world that there are other factors that have become just as important.

 

Without a safe secure energy supply industrial civilisation cannot function. What with having armies in Iraq to guard the supply of oil to the USA , and storms in the Gulf of Mexico , and lack of refining capacity, and now effectively no OPEC we are in uncharted and complex territory. Increasingly oil is proving to be a loadstone to the global economy, a position it always had but because of plentiful supply the importance it held was masked. As we reach the first and perhaps the most important of earth's limits my only prayer is that we see the folly of the road we are now travelling and move at all possible speed towards the only safe and secure energy policy. It is one that has renewable energy and conservation at its centre and fossil fuels, at most, at the periphery.

Tony Blair was right to support President Bush & Invade Iraq

23 August, 2005

Imagine the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, standing up in Parliament in late November 2002 and making the following statement:

“I have decided that the UK will support our allies and friends the USA . In close consultation with President George Bush we have decided that Saddam Hussein must be overthrown, and Iraq occupied by allied troops. Regrettably, this is the best form of action at the moment because Iraq is of such strategic importance to this country and our friends the USA . The oil resources of Iraq and its neighbouring Middle Eastern countries are of vital importance to us. Without Middle Eastern oil we would not be able to maintain our standard of living, and our current way of life would be placed in jeopardy.

We therefore have no choice but to commence military action shortly to secure the ME and its supply of oil.”

Of course such a statement is preposterous; it's completely unbelievable, absurd even.

Neither Tony Blair nor any other politician would ever commit ‘political suicide' by saying what most of us in fact think.

What's interesting in this subterfuge is firstly that although we think it is indeed true that there is a connection between Iraq and the London bombings, we would never expect our political leaders to say so ‘out loud'. Politicians exploit our (mostly unconscious) “power allower”. That's the principle that the more power you have the more whoppers you are allowed to get away with. In fact it's a measure of how much power you have, try it sometime, but be careful! It's probably not a good idea to experiment with your boss. President Bush had a term for this- “political capital'. He said two days after his second election victory that he had earned “political capital, and now I intend to spend it”. In other words, the American people had bought his lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction etc, and had reacted by giving him more power, and with it the power to tell more lies! Neat! (Hmmm I wonder what went wrong? But that's for another piece.)

Is our political process so degraded that we so readily accept our leader's Orwellian contrivances - and make the necessary ‘truth adjustments' in our heads? Will we ever or can we ever expect truth and transparency in our political process?

Secondly, it is remarkable how many of us believe what Tony Blair fervently wishes us to disregard – that securing our oil supplies and the Iraq war (and its unintended but inevitable consequences such as terrorism) are both ‘cooking in the same stew pot'. This open secret has become almost a given and not just in the blogosphere!

Overwhelming UK public opinion believe it, a recent UK poll put the number at 85%, (I take anything over 80% as virtual consensus). This fact is reflected in the unsurprising conclusion by the influential Chatham House think tank that, “ Supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq put the UK more at risk from terrorist attack. ” . In fact the Downing Street mantra – that 9/11 happened before the Iraq invasion, therefore the two have nothing to do with each other - is as feeble a straw man as can possibly be imagined. Does Tony Blair think we could have forgotten about the first Gulf War already? What about the permanent garrison of US troops in Saudi Arabia (and the Muslim Holy Land) that served as Osama bin Laden's original gripe? Or the USA 's backing of corrupt Middle Eastern tyrants - the list goes on and I haven't even mentioned Israel yet.

However, the big question that remains for me is how widely are oil, terrorism, and the Iraq war seen to be one and the same problem? This bothers me most; how much do most people really know? How aware are we of ‘Peak Oil' – and in the not too distant future? Or how much the current oil world market is set to be ‘deformed' in a way that will make ‘The Market' inoperable- and all the consequences of that? There seems to be, in the UK at least, a gut understanding of the oil problem. We know Tony and Co are lying to us when they try to maintain the Iraq war wasn't about oil, and terrorism isn't about the Iraq war.

Of course since I started to write this piece, (it's taken me several weeks I'm afraid to admit) many have let the cat out of the bag. There's Larry Elliot's piece in Thursday, 18 th of August's Guardian, Edwardian Summer. Although he doesn't make the direct connection between this war and oil, he states, “ global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when many experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend. In those circumstances it would be the height of folly to assume that there will be no economic consequences or that there will not be an intense - perhaps even bloody - struggle for the resource that more than any other has shaped the modern world.”

Meanwhile over Stateside, Derrick Z. Jackson's op-ed piece of 17/8/05 in the Boston Globe, ‘Guzzle gas and Pretend' makes the direct connection between America 's gas guzzling habits and having to fight a war to enable that to continue. James Howard Kunstler as always is spot on the money, in his August 15 th piece, he states, “… reminds me of my neighbor here in Saratoga Springs , the lady with the "War Is NOT the Answer" bumper sticker on her Ford Expedition . For people who want to keep on enjoying an easy motoring utopia, war is the answer.”

So we have connected the dots, and the picture comes out, let me see…ugh, “ships company to Captain Tony: we like our lifestyle, it all good, keep the ship on course. We need more energy. Over That means more oil? Over Fine, no problem. Oh and we will probably need some renewable energy sometime, lets get those on board too. Over and out.”

It seems like thinking has gone so far without being able to draw the necessary conclusions. Perhaps following through the consequences of oil depletion is a step too far? This is what my workshop, Living on the Cusp , is about; drawing the necessary conclusions and then acting on them in the necessary time scale.

But maybe the severity of the oil crisis is understood only too well. And maybe the unspoken understanding is that we don't like this war but we will put up with it because we need the oil. Maybe we have consciously or unconsciously connected the dots. Maybe we are all, to some degree, complicit in this subtle self deception, our society wide ‘ Power Allower' .

Judging by any standard of international law, we have created a situation where our Prime Minister is a war criminal. Tragically we have allowed our government to find itself in this particular corner, and the only sensible course of action was to use our military might, (well, piggy backing onto the US 's military superiority), to protect our way of life. How harsh is that?

Energy is at the bottom of this spectacularly smelly heap. The bald fact is we need and are absolutely dependent on the raw energy oil supplies to run our lifestyles, institutions, food supplies, and very way of life. The tragedy is there is no one to blame. We are all just doing our jobs, living how we have always lived, and gone about our normal lived completely oblivious to this crushing threat to our, now very apparently, unsustainable lives.

We have had plenty or warnings which began with the Club of Rome report in the early 1970's, and now almost daily warnings from climate change scientists. But they get sidelined or ignored by our media. Politicians can conveniently ignore long range unpalatable and unpopular problems. We can simply go on living our lives and worrying about the kid's educations, or where our next holiday will be, or ‘paying the mortgage'. And Tony Blair is only playing his part- and he was, and still is, right. We had no choice but to invade Iraq . If only he could stop talking about “evil ideologies” own up about the weapons of mass destruction fiasco, and give us the real reason, then I for one would be a whole lot happier.

The London Bombings-Why?

12 July 2005

While Tony Blair supports the US 's ‘war on terror', that by their own admission will last indefinitely, innocent people are dying on the streets of London . Why?

We are being told that we are winning the ‘war on terror', but by any yardstick, the opposite is true. Sheldon Rampton, in an excellent piece in Counterpunch, details the abysmal failure of this so called war. From Afghanistan to Iraq , if we really are fighting terrorism, then our political and military leaders are grossly incompetent.

In his feature of 8.7.05, Noam Chomsky says, “If the United States can maintain its control over Iraq, with the world's second largest known oil reserves, and right at the heart of the world's major energy supplies, that will enhance significantly its strategic power and influence over its major rivals in the tripolar world that has been taking shape for the past 30 years: US-dominated North America, Europe, and Northeast Asia, linked to South and Southeast Asia economies.
It is a rational calculation, on the assumption that human survival is not particularly significant in comparison with short-term power and wealth. And that is nothing new. These themes resonate through history. The difference today in this age of nuclear weapons is only that the stakes are enormously higher.”

Previous in the same article, Chomsky states. “the NIC (The US government's Intelligence think tank) warned that " Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalised' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself." The willingness of top planners to risk increase of terrorism does not of course indicate that they welcome such outcomes. Rather, they are simply not a high priority in comparison with other objectives, such as controlling the world's major energy resources.”

As Gary Younge, in this weeks Guardian says, “ Did Downing Street really think it could declare a war on terror and that terror would not fight back? That, in itself, is not a reason to withdraw troops if having them there is the right thing to do. But since it isn't and never was, it provides a compelling reason to change course before more people are killed here or there.”

Does anyone believe for one moment that we are in Iraq for any reason other then the oil? If it is about the oil, and ‘Peak oil' pessimists like myself believe that we are facing a world of dwindling energy (i.e. oil) supplies….soon; then the actions of our political leaders become crystal clear and frightening logical. The implications are also becoming inescapable. Expect more terrorism on our streets, more foreign wars, and accept a constant eroding of our civil liberties in pursuit of the resources necessary to maintain our high energy, high consumption lifestyles.

While to many a complete reassessment of our high consumption lifestyles is impossible, and to some “not negotiable”, to me this represents a complete failure of political leadership and a lack of collective imagination. We have a stark choice, either find other ways of re-creating our lifestyle and all that means, or acquiesce to fighting ever worsening, never ending resource wars, and all that means.

I believe that most of us will ultimately chose to actively engage the emerging shift in redefining our humanity, and reshaping what it means to be human. After all, every indicator of well being (health, mental health, education, job satisfaction, rather than GDP) in modern society is getting worse not better. This shift will involve a wholesale rejection of defining ourselves by what we purchase, re-localisation of home, work, shopping, and recreation, and de-globalisation of manufacturing, food, and energy. In short it is learning to live within the limits of the earth on which we rely for everything; living off the interest in our account rather than spending the capital; harvesting rather than mining, balanced and in harmony with all the rest of life. I also notice that this profound shift would also solve many of the problems that bedevil us- climate change, traffic congestion, wide spread alienation, lack of purpose, obesity, and heart disease to name a few.

This short piece is only a noticing of the cause and effect of our actions. While in no way am I condoning this sickening act of terrorism, I am also not condoning either our callous wars in the Middle East, but rather noticing that the current way is a blind alley, and another more fruitful avenue beckons.

This avenue is a step into the unknown. Perhaps it is farfetched to believe that international cooperation on equable sharing of the remaining resources will replace the ‘default' option of war. Then again maybe it is farfetched to believe in the survival of the human race. But surely a crash program to introduce renewable energy supplies and conservation and low energy solutions is not that difficult to envisage. Even the second biggest oil company in the US , Chevron, is calling for it. Hell it even makes a lot of sense, especially since Britain will shortly become a net importer of oil again, joining the rest of Europe (except Norway ) and the USA . We won't give in to terrorists, but what about common sense? Reducing dependence on foreign oil make such bedrock common sense that I can't even believe it's up for discussion. But it is. Perhaps if enough of us wake up to this fact then maybe our sorry state of a no real choice, bought, sold, and paid for democracy might just make some difference.

Yeah, farfetched all right.

Links to the articles above in case the hyperlinks didn't work due to my somewhat shaky web design skills.

http://www.counterpunch.org/rampton07092005.html

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9387.htm   http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,1525755,00.html