ART005

And You Think Today's Gas Prices Are High?

Mickel98, nice post and so much shorter than mine.

This link goes to a long paper with lots of quantitative info about the size of the energy supply challenge going forward. My summary of it would be nuclear and advances in coal are the only real hope and even that doesn't address the liquid fuel necessities though more electric travel when possible is helpful towards that. And the time frame for those is worrisome.

www.peakoilassociates....

It respects contributions from wind, solar heat and other alternatives but it draws attention to their limit in density and possible rate of build out.

And You Think Today's Gas Prices Are High?

First line of my post should have said "trauma today...... come WITH relatively low..." not "come FROM.... "

Ooops, I don't do well typing in these little boxes, SEEKING ALPHA: How about a Preview Page prior to posting?

And You Think Today's Gas Prices Are High?

I think Dr. Perry's point is that the difficulty and trauma of the food/energy costs today come from relatively low costs compared to our history. And that the basis of the difficulty is the growth of the extent of the dependence we've developed. So then while we have the ability to slowly increase our (world) energy options, our faster growing demand and dependence creates the crisis. Going much far backwards in living standards isn't a viable option but awareness of personal contributions to conservation/local generation can be a growing part of the solution. High on the suggested list: solar water heaters, electric transportation, and with some lag time less urban sprawl.

I wish there was more complete description of solar PV productivity being distributed. At this point, counting all manufacturing costs it is about twice as expensive as base line options. The Left/Green crowd talks like it is a conspiracy that solar PV is not being used more. I have solar water heat, experimental wind turbine, passive solar home, drive less than 8,000 miles per year and don't have solar PV because because I know better. I'm afraid that capital being spent building out solar PV is going to restrict equitable options in the future (though I totally support subsidized RESEARCH towards ~$1/watt!)

An example connecting comments from CLH and #51292 would be if a $billion tractor increased farm yields 25% and on paper solved the world's food supply, it wouldn't necessarily solve the world's food problem. The problem would be transferred from food to national debt. Oil is cheap compared to most alternatives, alternatives that cost significantly more than oil aren't part of the immediate solution.

Consider that the average 16 year old can purchase 1 gallon of gas for $4 and then safely move 3000 pounds 25 or more miles down the road in less than 30 minutes. For that cost, in that amount of time, I don't think the 16 year old could possibly find another way to accomplish that much work. Finding ways to make that work more productive becomes important as costs go up.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

Humblemaster,
Nice post. I was at a multiday biodiesel seminar in March. The presenters commented on Algae. They said there was a problem getting the oil isolated for the esterification process. Do you know what the status of that is? I didn't realize different algaes were being cultured specific to the target fuel: diesel, jet fuel and such.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

nakedjaybird,
I appreciate your enthusiam but you are just brushing past the PV capital cost issue. I took some time to check my work and dig a little deeper. I would sure like to see different energy sector experts comment on the numbers. I'll try to be more concise:

Construction and delivered energy costs of some energy methods:
PV: $7/W but 35% sunlight = $21/W, $??/kw*hr
Nuclear: $5.5/W, $0.06/kw*hr
Wind: $2/W but 35% wind = $6/W, $0.10/kw*hr
Coal: $4/W, $0.06/kw*hr
Nat. Gas: $4/W, $0.05/kw*hr

I wouldn't read precise accuracy into the numbers colleced but they came from pretty comparable sources. And it seems odd to me wind is at $0.1/kw*hr with similar $6/kw to coal and gas and no input costs but that's what I found.

The point is that unfortunately PV is off the chart to the high side and I couldn't find an estimate of PV $??/kw*hr.

Wind status:
Current U.S. (from pie chart): equiv. of 170K bbl/day, increasing annually at 42K bbl/day/yr.
Current World: equiv. 463K bbl/day increasing at 115K bbl/day/yr.
I think the wind numbers are on the cusp of being significant in terms of bbl/day oil equivalents for world energy balance.

I think your theme is right but the focus on PV is too early and I wouldn't be surprised if PV is always just beyond economic reach (it would be good to hear from transistor chip people.) Wind and conservation (includes conversion to more efficient utilization, i.e. electric transportation and things like ground source heat pumps) will answer your vision with the gaps provided by more dense energy supplies. I think nuclear needs to be high on the high density list because of how it will ease demand of other stressed inputs (oil/gas.) without the emissions of coal. Also nuclear has the lowest percent of input cost/delivered cost so going forware for 10s of years Nuclear is the least susceptible to rising fuel costs plus it has the least competing competition for its fuel supply.

Solar can still play an important part via direct heat of homes and water. Ever improving solar concentrators are helping bring costs down. Solar water heaters are already cost effective at around $0.25 - $0.5/watt and then accounting for 35% sunlight = $1.1/watt. That tops the list and addresses the distribution losses you've mentioned.

As an example my solar water heater is 70% efficient and costs about 50% as much per sq. foot as a PV panel that is typically 15% efficient. So total improved efficiency is 9 times more efficient/$ than PV! Every place you see a PV, there is 900% more justification to install direct heat panel up to the usuable amount of heat.

Regarding my earlier nuclear fuel cost estimate. I tried to be careful keeping a constant basis of unenriched uranium. That's the level I'm most familiar with. Enriched uranium has about 10 times the energy and 4 times the cost, hence the motivation for enrichment. The $/person/yr energy cost is kind of meaningless since fuel is around 10% the cost of delivered nuclear energy. But the mass/person/yr might help some people visualize the waste issue. Coal, natural gas emmissions are 1000s of times more.

Also encouraging is how close to this path we are on. Right now I was told there is a 4 year lead time for delivery of commercial wind turbines due to sold out capacity. Plug in Hybrids are less than a year away. Electric bikes and scooters are already on the road. Permits for Nuclear plants are in the works. The Uranium mining industry is ramping up as fast as they can.

Improvements needed: Bring wind turbine lead time down to 2 years or what ever sight improvement schedule is. Facilitate faster permitting of Nuclear (probably the biggest issue.) Educate consumers on benefit of solar hot water, geothermal ground source heat pumps, electric transportation including plug in hybrids, and general conservation methods. And through it all I hope PV makes more progress.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

The solar PV analyses forgot to account for ~50% darkness each day so the return is twice as bad.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

nakedjaybird,
The pie chart is probably of energy output not input as you are referring to mentioning efficiency. Burning material to make electricity runs into about 40% efficiency limit due to exit temperatures of combustion products and slippage turning generators among other things. 40% efficiency doesn't imply wasteful, it's a thermodynamic limitation.

Energy efficiency and economic efficiency are not the same. Ultimitely the world runs on economic efficiency. Basically cost of inputs vs. value of outputs. For instance, a geothermal power plant (not geothermal ground source heat pump menitoned above) operates at only 15% efficiency but provides some of the cheapest power the world uses, lucky for Greenland.

PV Solar is not economically efficient. I'm not an electrical engineer or physicist so I can't comment on the likelyhood of overcoming their 15% energy efficiency. If they are at $5/watt right now they need to double energy efficiency and halve manufacturing cost at the same time and even then still above $1/watt.

The energy of the sun is rated at 1kw/m^2 on the earth. The average person would be comfortable with 50 kw*hr/day (Everything personl: HVAC, hot water, elec., daily transportation. Nothing industrial or commercial) so you're right that each person only needs about 500 ft^2 of earth to meet their personal needs at 100% capture efficiency. Remember that PV is only 15% efficient so this project needs 3300 ft^2. My south racing roof is 850 ft^2 so I'm only 1/4 there. That PV installation would cost $250,000. At 6% cost of capital not even accounting for the limited 25 year life (with decaying performance into those years) that is $1250/mo which is more than 6 times the value of the electricity! That is the magic of $1/watt, the break even point for energy generation. Plus I haven't accounted for cloudy days and such.

PV is not just suffering from economy of scale. A huge amount of electricity goes into processing the "sand". If you ever get a chance to tour a PV factory you'll notice the large electric substation right outside the building. So PV manufacturing costs are closely related to energy costs, they go up together.

So watch for $1/watt or lower Alternative Energy options: car pooling, driving 65 mph max, biking, CFL lights, other conservation, electric transportation, solar heat/hotwater, wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps, nuclear, coal, hydroelectric. Probably virgin Biodiesel, deffinitely WVO to Biodiesel, probably not ethanol.

I would like to hear from someone that knows the delivered cost of nuclear power $/watt infastructure cost. My contribution is that at $60/lb for Uranium the equivalent cost of oil is $3300/bbl. My daily usuage study of 50 KW*hr/person/day results in 1.1 lbs/year/person of Uranium!! $66/year fuel costs!! Of course delivered energy costs have to account for the power plant ammoritization and waste storage. Remember Europe is running some 70% nuclear to U.S. 10%, maybe a significant cost disadvantage going forward.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

Thank you for the pie chart. Nice to see all that info in one place.

There seem to be two concepts that overlap and cause a little confusion when it isn't clear which is being addressed. Balancing energy requirements vs. energy investment opportunities.

I'm not convinced solar PV is economical so I don't follow that industry much. When they get to $1/watt then future build out will be productive. I'm afraid at $5/watt the industry is going backwards as far as adding value to the world. I'm all for subsidized research towards $1/watt but subsidized installation at $5/watt doesn't sit well with me.

Solar heat (hot water, home heating) on the other hand is below $1/watt.

Wind is at or below $1/watt. Current world wind energy output is around 32K equivalent Bbl/day. At an impressive 25% annual increase it is adding additional 8K equivalent bbl/day annually to world energy supply. But the world doesn't even respond to Saudi Arabi offering 200K Bbl/day. I think the ongoing world growth rate of just oil demand is on the order of 1 million Bbl/day/year. For total world energy then, using the pie chart, about 2.5 million equivalent Bbl/day/year increase.

My point is that every little productive contribution is important but as the author suggests, the small parts of the pie can not be improved enough to carry the struggling bigger parts (oil) in the short run. Coal and nuclear are big parts that can be ramped up.

Conservation on the order of 10% would be huge, moving some energy requirements from oil to electric (coal, nuclear) via the transportation sector as suggested is another big low hanging fruit opportunity. Geothermal ground source heat pumps are another productive transfer of energy load from gas/oil to electric.

So bigger growth investment opportunities might be in the fashionable alternative energies but the world's energy balance is going to have to come from higher energy density options with large input supplies (coal, nuclear.) Don't forget that oil as a chemical feedstock is very valuable so burning it all up and then converting to alternative energies isn't an option even it was possible.

The excessivley supportive alternative energy camp needs to realize that while improvements in their camp our valuable, proposing no expansion of coal and nuclear is a death sentance!!

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.

Save Money on Gas - Drive More Slowly

whiplasdh1,
There's a very clear chart at the top that shows mpg efficiency at 60 mph equal to 30 mph so 30 mph highways never suggested. In fact some (generally smaller) cars are geared such that 60 mph is more efficient than 55 mph. So up to 65 is very reasonably efficient and as the atricle says by 75 mph there are costs that people might prefer not to pay.