ART005

Why Is Congress Agnostic About Natural Gas?

Wisdom vs.: You are referring to step changes in demand that won't occur vs. supply curve and price stability. Your insults really don't apply. Energy sources that are under utilized based on price and availability vs. their value to use that become a bigger part of the energy supply pie help reduce pressure on the rest of the pie. While supply to the pie gets more manageable, time allows new solutions to the supply pie while time also works on the demand pie. Technology and conservation help reduce pressure on the demand curve, global increasing standards of living add pressure back to the demand curve. Arbitrarily undermining supply pie components due to some personal agenda of a long off utopia destroys the time value benefit of those components which undermines the likely success of getting to the utopia.

The path to the energy Utopia the Greens dream of requires time and less green sources of energy to maintain productivity so the accomplishments leading to the utopia can be realized.

Why Is Congress Agnostic About Natural Gas?

mpherson: my comment got chopped off. I also mentioned that you're right about the lack of gasoline taxes being a big one but the gov could go after that via much higher registration fees for CNG vehicles. I suspect lack of gasoline taxes was part of the EPA putting the squash on aftermarket CNG conversions.

Why Is Congress Agnostic About Natural Gas?

mpherson: It's much simpler than you think. The at home Phil station comes in different models that operate at different speeds. I have the pleasure of living in communities where neighbors would be willing to share a Phil amoung 1 or 2 households and simply pay the operator as needed, the machine and vehicle have meters on them. Multi car families know which vehicle range accomodates which travel patterns. The EPA has just about wiped out conversions in the U.S. so the Italian experience will not be common.

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Elliot, you are completely missing the point. The Volt can be rated at 2,300 mpg (no typo) and gasoline free for the lifetime of the car and it has the performance of a 25 mpg car at best. It is virtually useless. It's technically useless compared to vehicles having an on board generator and compared to other E.V. without on board generators it horribly underperforms. It is the worst of both worlds, hybrid and E.V.

You are repeating the baseless headlines. The Volt is only 230 mpg if you assume infinite life of the battery and all other costs of the car similar to conventional cars. In the real world the Volt will struggle to achieve over 25 mpg equivalent. You and the headlines assume the battery is a magic free box in which you charge electrons and when you need energy you just discharge what you need. Then you can say use of the charged electrons in the E.V. is more efficient than use of the fuel to charge those electrons if you use the fuel directly in a vehicle as thermal energy to drive a non E.V. Halleluiah, the world will be saved by EV, NOT!!

Every energy aspect of the battery has to be accounted for when evaluating the efficiency of the Volt. It's energy to manufacture, it's lifecycle, it's cost. The yachting industry is very intense in it's true evaluation of deep cell batteries whether they are charged by wind turbine, water turbine, solar PV, shore (grid) or diesel generator. The yachting industry currently factors about $1/kWhr battery cost not including the cost to generate the power going into the battery. Compare that to the real cost to use grid power ~$0.11/kWhr. The battery increases the cost of electricity around 10X. You and the headlines (230 mpg) can ignore it until you buy a Volt and then you'll have to pay for it!! Look at the Volt and CNG Camary discussion above. Counting added engine life, a CNG vehicle is about 90 mpg equivalent, the Volt is under 25 mpg equivalent.

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Elliot, you are not taking into account the cost of the battery for a full service elec. car with on board generator. You are refering to a misleading definition of efficiency based only on electrons. If you include storage efficiency costs the picture changes dramatically!! See the Camry analyses above (was that your negative vote?)

Elec. vehicles are great for specific dedicated use where an on board generator is not necessary and overall weight of the vehicle can be very small compared to the load. Such as elec. scooters, fork trucks and such. These type of vehicles can easily be charged during their down time and make it through their daily use cycle without having to be recharged during use. Battery powered 4 passenger vehicles with 75+ mph, 300+ mile range are a poor application of E.V. The best answer today for that vehicle is CNG and for city drivers add the Hybrid technology. Actually 300 mile range is a stretch for CNG but quick fill options address most of the shortcoming.

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Another natural gas vehicle fact not getting much press is how much longer the engine is likely to last burning CNG rather than gasoline. I think the CNG engine lasts twice as long as gasoline engine. Say 400,000 miles vs. 200,000 miles. If a 30 mpg Camry costs $20,000 and uses 6,700 gallons of gasoline (200,000 miles at 30 mpg) @ $2.50/gal = $17,00 lifetime fuel or about the same cost as the car. So if the CNG Camry engine lasts twice as long, that savings discountes the $$/gal(equiv.) another 25%.

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Good job Fitzman! From the department of the media using headlines to distract population with worthless reporting:

Yesterday Chevy announced 230 mpg Volt with no specifics except $40,000 car available late 2010, the battery should last 10 years, they are making 10 per month or week or something like that....

I would love to get help confirming this but I think the replacement Volt battery costs $15,000. 10 years at 15,000 miles/yr = $0.10/mile battery costs. AT $2.50/gal gasoline the volt is a 25 mpg(equivalent) vehilce if all of its future fuel (gasoline + elec.) were free!! Yeah Chevy technology, the world is saved, NOT, morons!!!

I'm just here to help with the reporting.......

The 'Peak Oil' Myth: New Oil Is Plentiful

Anaconda,
It seems that a critical issue is determining an estimate of the rate of production of Abiotic Oil. Possibly some function of the size of the reaction zone, the kinetics of the materials finding each other, the velocity of products to within reach of the surface, etc.

That would establish an ongoing expectation of new oil supply (with additional drilling as necessary.) If it's lower than forecasted demand that would explain oil fields being depleted (the peak oil crowd.) The amount that it is lower becomes the basis for the future energy build out program for the world. There would be a target for timing of various amounts of additional energy supply going forward. Based on confidence of technology, economics and lead time you can choose from: Nuclear, Coal, Wind, and others.

Astrology types make predictions about when a star is going to burn out. Seems like a similar system to model. The reaction has already been demonstrated in the lab. Do you know if the Abiotic Oil crowd is working on that estimate?

The 'Peak Oil' Myth: New Oil Is Plentiful

I don't understand the strength of arguing that things that take time are not worth doing because there's no immediate value. Availability of natural resources is like a revolving door. When the size and rpm of the door matches the taffic everyone is happy. Then when it can't keep up there is unrest while an additional or faster door is installed. It'd be nice if new door capacity was always in the pipeline but often deliberate barriers prevent it. Heck I would say there are people that make a career of preventing new capacity.

All of the informed comments add up to saying future oil is available. Supply/demand imbalances suggest difficult times in the future. While it's uncertain that oil will always be able to serve world expansion of its current energy market sectors. Moving forward, alternatives will replace some of oil's energy sectors. Every year allows more opportunities to evolve to help recover the balance. Consumption will be pressured by supply imbalances which will help recover the balance. The next 5 years could be difficult but doing nothing is probably a death sentance.

Demand for gas and such is dropping faster and further than ever before. Time will tell where it goes. Look at the options already available at local level:

* $3K to $5K solar water heater saving about $200 to $400 per year. China is using thousands of them.
* 40 to 50 mpg cars compared to typical 25 mpg cars. Making the switch brings the effective price of gas down from $4 to $2.5.

And known but a little further down the road:
* Suppliers of big industrial wind turbines are sold out with 4 year lead times. A weak estimate of new annual capacity is the equivalent of 2400 bbl/day/year of oil. I would love to hear of an accurate estimate if someone can provide. Maybe in 5 years they can get to 25,000 bbl/day/year.
* Nuclear and coal to electric have lots of additional capacity potential to service evolving electric transportation and geothermal heat pumps displacing those energy demands from the gas/oil side.
* Coal to gas.

And still out of sight but maybe someday:
PhotoVoltaic and who knows what else.

I think the presented static review of the oil numbers is less than half the picture. Improvements in oil with whatever lead time will simply be part of the basket of solutions. But I agree the future looks to have some difficult times to compensate for the complacency of the past.