This is a first for me. I found this cool house done by Georgia State University’s Physics Department. I do not know if the Interactive part of it will hold because my HTML skills are nonexistent, but if not please go to the site below and play with it.
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http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/houseenergy.html
Household Energy Use
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More tomorrow.
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I was going to go on a residential energy tear, but then I saw this by another of the Frontmen for everything carbon. I always suggest they suck up on the tailpipe of a car for a couple of minutes to get their priorities straight. Our planet is drowning and they want to lalalalalala all around as the water splish splashes around their feet. AND it is about the housing market…so what the heck.
While it slashes budgets, shuts itself off from advice and prioritises economic returns, the supposedly “greenest government ever” is clinging to one of its headline promises: the soon-to-be-unveiled Green Deal. This seemingly simple policy, announced by the Labour government and continued by the coalition, promises to lend the money for an “energy efficiency makeover” to millions of homes in the next decade, to save money on their gas and electric bills and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The energy secretary, Chris Huhne, this month announced the plan would create 100,000 jobs.
Less pollution, lower bills, more jobs: who could argue with that? Except that bills probably won’t be lower. And when customers realise that, will they want to pay for the work that would lower pollution and create the jobs? Perhaps even more damaging, then, is the risk of a public backlash when energy users realise they are paying hundreds of pounds each for a plethora of “government” initiatives to improve energy security and cut global warming emissions.
The problem with the economics of the Green Deal is two-fold. In advance of a government bill before Christmas, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) will only confirm that up to 14m homes could be treated by 2020, and customers will have 20-25 years to repay the costs, though it is hoped many will do so much sooner. It is also expected that spending per household will be capped at about £6,500, and energy and retail companies asked to deliver the programme are said to be modelling interest rates of 6-8% to cover their borrowing of the capital plus the risk of non-payment.
Meanwhile, a recently published Decc leaflet suggests what different measures will cost and save. According to this, customers with cavity walls (usually in homes built from 1930) could spend just £500 getting their walls and loft insulated, and expect to save £160 a year – recouping what the work cost in less than four years, or a little longer accounting for the loan interest.
However, a mid-range quote for insulating solid walls (internally) and the loft would be £6,250, and the predicted saving £425 a year. Taking a middling interest rate (see above) of 7%, a customer borrowing £6,250 would pay back approximately £875 a year over 10 years, or £530 over 25 years.
What immediately stands out in this example is that the repayments are higher than the government’s estimated saving – implying those customers’ bills would not fall. Decc also assumes a relatively low 15% “rebound effect” – when customers chose to use some of the saved money for extra heating, cooling or more appliances – despite acknowledging by email that it is in reality 15-40%, and a separate estimate by the EU environment directorate of 20-80%.
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See they don’t talk about how much coal costs really. I mean if you factor in the costs of the damage done to all of us, and the subsidies all energy companies get…coal is very expensive. More tomorrow. More turkey that is.
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You won’t believe this, what with Google’s image as Mr. Clean and Green. BUT when you type in the simple phrase “household energy usage” into their search engine, the first hit you get is Energy Citizen. This is the astroturf nonprofit front group sponsored by the Koch Brothers, Don Blankenship and Peabody Coal that wants the Federal Government out of the mining business. They want safety laws repealed and they detest global warming and Cap and Trade policies. Massey Energy is up for sale by the way so Blankenship may not be able to play with the big boys much longer…Ahhh poor baby.
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Not only that but they land you write on the “To Join” page without even a chance to be repelled. How repelling is that?
Businesses can thrive and create new jobs when energy is affordable and available. But when lawmakers hinder energy development, we all lose.
We need YOU to help Washington hear our message: American families and communities need sensible energy policies that power our economy and create jobs. Become part of our movement today — join Energy Citizens and let Congress hear your concerns about American energy and American jobs.
We need solutions that increase access to all reliable domestic energy: wind, solar, nuclear, and — yes — oil and natural gas. Our nation has ample energy reserves that can contribute to our economy for decades to come.
The tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the risks involved in energy development — and the need for improved safety. But this tragedy should not make us forget that our economy and way of life depend on affordable energy. We must not allow opponents to use the tragedy to stop domestic oil and natural gas development. Even with increased conservation, our nation’s energy needs are growing.
You can make a difference by joining our citizens’ movement for sensible energy policies. Help us win a national energy plan that creates jobs, promotes economic growth, and increases our security. Please join us TODAY — and tell Congress where you stand
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Instead of here, where at least you can reject the party line if you want to.
http://energycitizens.org/ec/advocacy/default.aspx
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Google should be ashamed of themselves. More tomorrow.
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It doesn’t matter what country you are in.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
The great energy rip-off continues. The wholesale price of gas has risen in recent months so the large household energy suppliers are raising their consumer prices.
British Gas has become the latest to do so, announcing a 7 per cent increase yesterday. This comes after a similar price hike by Scottish & Southern Energy last month. And the rest of the “big six” UK energy suppliers are expected to follow soon.
The problem is that the energy sector is only selectively responsive to fluctuations in market prices. Wholesale energy prices are 50 per cent below their peak in 2008, yet consumer bills have fallen by just 10 per cent in that time. It is a familiar story: consumer prices are sticky on the way down, but well lubricated on the way up.
But the fact that we are used to these gouging tactics by energy firms does not make them any more acceptable. This represents a market failure. Competition should hold down consumer prices. But the number of household power suppliers has fallen from 20 to six since privatisation in the 1990s. A competent regulator would not have allowed this situation to develop. But Ofgem, which supposedly oversees the industry, has repeatedly shown itself to be unwilling to bring the energy giants into line. The result is an energy sector that is uncomfortably similar to a cartel.
And the Coalition has, so far, been no more willing than the previous administration to address this problem. The Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, has warned firms to give customers ample warning of price rises. But he has not indicated a desire to force structural reform. And the Coalition’s decision to abolish the Consumer Focus watchdog, transferring its function to the Citizens Advice Bureau, will only make it more difficult for consumers to resist the excesses of the energy giants.
The suspicion is that ministers are treading softly around these firms because they are relying on them to invest some £200bn in low-carbon energy infrastructure over the next decade. Yet a failure to tackle the vested interests of the energy sector would represent a strategic mistake by the Government. Consumer energy prices will inevitably need to rise over the medium term as firms make investments, under Government pressure, to decarbonise our energy supplies. Massive investment in wind, wave and nuclear power is necessary if Britain is to meet its target of generating 20 per cent of our energy from renewable by 2020.
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More tomorrow.
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First up the Christian Science Monitor.
New energy: climate change and sustainability will shape a new era in which renewable sources such as solar power will ultimately replace oil. A solarplant near Seville, Spain uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays onto towers where they produce steam to drive a turbine, producing electricity.
Marcelo del Poso/Reuters
“Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you,” a somber President Jimmy Carter said gravely into a television camera on an April night in 1977.
This article is part of the cover story project on the future of energy in the Nov. 8 issue of The Christian Science Monitor weekly magazine. Subscribe here: http://tiny.cc/4zeuu
Gareth Fuller/AP
A series of oil embargoes and OPEC price hikes had hit the nation hard. Gasoline prices had tripled. Auto-dependent Americans had sometimes waited hours in line to buy the gasoline needed to get to work. The president, in an iconic fireside chat – in a beige cardigan – two months earlier had congenially urged Americans to turn thermostats down to 65 degrees F. by day, 55 by night.
But on this night, he ratcheted up his tone: Warning of an imminent “national catastrophe” and scolding Americans for selfish wastefulness, the president declared it time for Americans to curb consumption of oil, which he said had doubled in the 1950s and again in the ’60s – time to end their dependence on imports.
“This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war,” he said.
Mr. Carter created the Department of Energy. He called for energy conservation and increased production of coal and solar power. He installed solar panels on the White House.
But his vision – to push America and the world into a new energy era as significant as the shift from wood to coal that fueled the Industrial Revolution – never materialized.
Gasoline prices plummeted in the 1980s, removing the incentive to end oil imports. Driving returned to precrisis levels. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, withdrew funding for renewable energies. And the White House solar panels were torn down.
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More tomorrow.
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Oil People are nothing but proven liars. There is always “oil down there” they tell investors. But only 10 or 20 of the holes they drill actually produce any oil, so is it any wonder that they are unprepared when they come in? Especially in the case of the Gulf Spew if they come in violently.
http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7696-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-leading-edge.html
| The Peak Oil Crisis: The Leading Edge |
| By Tom Whipple |
| Wednesday, November 03 2010 01:01:22 PM |
Do you remember the furor over drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge a few years back? The whole country was up in arms. At various times some 50 to 60 percent of Americans favored drilling in the area as they were told this would result in lower gas prices.
Last week the USGS lowered its estimate of the amount of oil that could be extracted from the region all the way from 10 billion barrels down to less than one billion, making drilling in the area uneconomical. By the way, the amount of crude being pumped down the Alaskan pipeline now has fallen from 2 million barrels a day (b/d) when the pipeline first opened back in the 1970’s to about 600,000 b/d in recent weeks. The trouble is that when the flow of oil falls below a quantity estimated to be 200-300,000 b/d (some say 500,000) the line will have to be closed as there will simply not be enough hot oil being sent down the pipeline to keep it from freezing in winter.
Last week an organization in California, The Post Carbon Institute, released a new book, “The Post Carbon Reader,” which draws a much broader picture of the serious issues facing mankind. With 30 authors, each specializing in some aspect of the multiple troubles we face, the scope of the book touches on nearly every aspect of our civilization that is out of balance, unsustainable, and headed for a fall. The basic proposition of the book is that the world has reached the limits of growth in terms of its population, economic activity, and the ability of the atmosphere to absorb more carbon emissions. Either the world’s peoples must transform themselves into a sustainable number living in a sustainable manner or there will be many dire consequences right up to the possibility that the human race itself could become extinct. Clearly, this is serious stuff.
As long as a problem is perceived as being decades, or even a few years away, it is not a concern.
Some hold that our sustainability problem started when we first started planting crops and domesticating animals 10,000 years ago. This thesis says if we had stuck with hunting and gathering as a race we would have been able to sustain our act indefinitely, but then we would never have had enough surplus energy to learn reading & writing, and to build cities, the Internet and space ships. Our immediate problem, however, started in earnest with the industrial revolution about 200 years ago when we first started digging up prodigious quantities of coal and feeding it into steam engines. It wasn’t long before we struck oil and the rest is history. The world’s population went from an estimated 5 or 10 million when we first started farming, to a billion when we started serious coal digging, to about 7 billion today. We also got incredibly richer in terms of material goods and could sure get around much faster.
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More tomorrow.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101101/sc_afp/indiaenergyoilpolitics
NEW DELHI (AFP) – Premier Manmohan Singh told India’s energy firms on Monday to scour the globe for fuel supplies as he warned the country’s demand for fossil fuels is set to soar 40 percent over the next decade.
The country of more than 1.1 billion people already imports nearly 80 percent of its crude oil to fuel an economy that is expected to grow 8.5 percent this year and at least nine percent next year.
Demand for hydrocarbons — petroleum, coal, natural gas — “over the next 10 years will increase by over 40 percent,” Singh told an energy conference in New Delhi.
“India needs adequate supplies of energy at affordable prices to meet the demand of its rapidly growing economy,” he said, as rising Indian incomes spur industrial demand and more people buy energy-guzzling cars and appliances.
Singh’s call comes as India is locked in a race with emerging market rival China for fuel supplies to feed their booming economies in which analysts say Beijing has taken a strong lead.
India faces “immense competition from China which has been far quicker to react when an asset becomes available,” Kalpana Jain, senior director of global consultancy Deloitte, told AFP.
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More tomorrow
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I said all along that the idea that there were huge new oil fields in Alaska was both dangerous and wrong. Dangerous, because if there was oil there, drilling could destroy the ecosphere. Wrong, because like the North Sea, the oil companies always claim there is “oil next door” and then drill dry holes. I have often thought they use this technique to drain capital from smaller investors.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/27/alaska.oil.reserves/index.html
(CNN) — The U.S. Geological Survey says a revised estimate for the amount of conventional, undiscovered oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a fraction of a previous estimate.
The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.
The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the area, the geological survey said.
“These new findings underscore the challenge of predicting whether oil or gas will be found in frontier areas,” USGS Director Dr. Marcia McNutt said in a statement. “It is important to re-evaluate the petroleum potential of an area as new data becomes available.”
The organization also estimates 8 trillion cubic feet less gas than a 2002 estimate of 61 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, conventional, non-associated gas — meaning gas found in discrete accumulations with little to no crude oil in the reservoir.
“Recent activity in the NPRA, including 3-D seismic surveys, federal lease sales administered by the Bureau of Land Management and drilling of more than 30 exploration wells in the area provides geological information that is more indicative of gas than oil,” the geological survey said.
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Of course the nutcases still believe this and will until their dieing days.
http://www.pushhamburger.com/hidden.htm
Huge Alaska Oil Reserves Go Unused
After 30 years, an insider finally acknowledges the United States
has all the oil and gas it needs.
By Marie Gunther
The United States has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia but this happy though shocking information has been covered up for years.
The wells have been drilled, it’s merely a matter of turning on the faucets to supply America’s needs for 200 years.
These astounding revelations have been confirmed by a 30-year veteran oil exe cutive with leukemia who has decided to speak out.
In 1980, Lindsey Williams wrote a book, The Energy Non-Crisis, based upon his eye witness accounts during the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. As a chaplain assigned to executive status and the advisory board of Atlantic Richfield & Co. (ARCO), he was privy to detailed information.
“All of our energy problems could have been solved in the ’70s with the huge discovery of oil under Gull Island, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska,” Williams said. “There is more pure grade oil there than in all of Sau di Arabia. Gull Island contains as much oil and natural gas as Americans could use in 200 years.”
Oddly though, immediately after this massive discovery, the federal government ordered the rigs to be capped and oil production shut down.
Developing Alaskan oil would make the United States completely independent of oil imports, Williams said in his book.
Why is the government covering up such good news? Why does it want to be dependent on imported oil? Do international financiers who are heavily invested in the oil industry want to keep the supply limited and prices up?
Will the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), investigate what could be a criminal cover-up? Will the appropriate House committees in quire? Or the Justice Department? Since the cover-up has extended through four presidential administrations, only public outrage can force action.
“Everything you hear on the evening news and out of Washington is garbage,” said Jim Lawler, an oil production manager with ARCO. “Eight wells have already been drilled in the areas environmentalists are claiming we must not go in. We have already been in and out. There was no damage done. All we need to do is start production.”
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More tomorrow
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Why in the world would you want to fuel up a 40 year old reactor. Because it is a religious dictatorship and the ayatollahs can order it to be done. It is Allah’s will. Allah definitely has a sense of humor.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-nuclear-20101027,0,1194581.storyIran begins fueling nuclear reactor
 Iran’s controversial nuclear plant near the southern Iranian city of Bushehr. The country has begun a weeks-long process to fuel its reactor. (Majid Asgaripour / AFP Getty Images) |
Iran began loading nuclear fuel rods into the core of its first nuclear power plant Tuesday, bringing the facility a step closer to producing electricity, Iranian state television reported.
The start of the weeks-long process lends credence to Iranian claims that a high-profile computer virus attack earlier this year did not significantly postpone the launch of the nuclear plant near the southern Iranian city of Bushehr. After years of delay, the plant, built in part by Russian engineers, is scheduled to produce electricity early next year, after all 163 of its fuel rods are moved into the reactor core and undergo tests.
“We hope that nuclear electricity would enter the national grid within the next three months,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency
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More tomorrow.
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shhh It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hntXAO_Rq7c
OK so which is it, are we running out of stuff or not? Is 6 Billion people too many or not? Have we cut down way too may trees or not? I believe these answers are knowable. Are the Ocean’s fished out or not? Is Global Warming happening? The issue seems to be Price. If Global Warming were happening then carbon would be expensive. But what if price isn’t the issue when capitalists and nations treat resources as if they were “free”.
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http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Whole&qid=3267
Blog item: Recycling? What A Waste.
By Jim Fedako
This fall, school kids across the country will again be taught a chief doctrine in the civic religion: recycle, not only because you fear the police but also because you love the planet. They come home well prepared to be the enforcers of the creed against parents who might inadvertently drop a foil ball into the glass bin or overlook a plastic wrapper in the aluminum bin.
Oh, I used to believe in recycling, and I still believe in the other two R’s: reducing and reusing. However, recycling is a waste of time, money, and ever-scarce resources. What John Tierney wrote in the New York Times nearly 10 years ago is still true: “Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America.”
Reducing and reusing make sense. With no investment in resources, I can place the plastic grocery bag in the bathroom garbage can and save a penny or so for some more-pressing need. Reducing and reusing are free market activities that are profitable investments of time and labor.
Any astute entrepreneur will see the benefit of conserving factors of production. Today, builders construct houses using less wood than similar houses built just 20 years ago. In addition, these houses are built sturdier; for the most part anyway.
The Green’s love for trees did not reduce the amount of wood used in construction; the reduction was simply a reaction to the increasing cost for wood products. Using less wood makes financial sense, and any entrepreneur worth his profit will change his recipe to conserve wood through better design or by substituting less dear materials for wood products.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pojL_35QlSI&feature=related
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http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-10-20/global-resource-depletion
André Diederen’s recent book on resource depletion
I have been thinking, sometimes, that I could reserve a shelf of my library for those books which have that elusive quality that I could call “modern wisdom”. Books that go beyond the buzz of the media news, the shallowness of politicians’ speech, the hyper-specialization of technical texts. That shelf would contain, first of all, “The Limits to Growth” by Meadows and others; then the books by Jared Diamond, James Lovelock, Konrad Lorenz, Richard Dawkins, Peter Ward and several others that have affected the way I see the world.
I think I’ll never set up such a shelf, I have too many books and too few shelves; many are packed full with three rows of books. But, if I ever were to put these books together, I think that the recent book by André Diederen “Global Resource Depletion” would make a nice addition to the lot.
The subject of resource depletion, of course, is well known to readers of “The Oil Drum”. So well known that it is difficult to think of a book that says something new. Diederen, indeed, succeeds in the task not so much in reason of the details on the availability of mineral commodities that he provides, but for the innovative way he describes our relation to the subject. In other words, Diederen’s book is not a boring list of data; it is a lively discussion on how to deal with the implications of these data. It is a book on the future and how we can prepare for it.
To give you some idea of the flavor of the book, just a quote:
(p. 43) “… it isn’t enough to have large absolute quantities (“the Earth’s crust is so big”) and to have all the technology in place. (p. 33) … we have plenty of water in the Mediterranean or Atlantic Ocean and we have ample proven technologies to desalinate and pipe the water to the desert, so, why isn’t the Sahara desert green yet?”
This is, of course, the crucial point of resource depletion: what counts is cost, not amounts (I plan to use this example in my next talk!). Diederen is an unconventional thinker and he goes deeply into matters that, in some circles would be thought to be unspeakable; for instance (p. 41)
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Price? Really. More next week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a9mx1IVZzU&feature=related
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