Perpetual Innovation

Category: fossil fuel

  • GenAI on Earth Day 2024: Part 2

    Earth Day, April 22.  See the OVERVIEW. This is Part 2 of 2 of the discussions with GenAI ChatBots.

    GenAI on Earth Day 2024: Part 2


    Q:  What is the consensus on how
    soon we have to phase off of fossil fuels and move to carbon neutrality?

    Q: What are the key factors that agreements like the Paris agreement
    promote in order for the world to become carbon neutral? 

    #EarthDay #Sustainability #RE100 #ReduceReuseRecycle 

    #RegenerativeDynamicArticle #RefractiveThinker #SustainZine
    #ScenarioPlans.com #DelphiPlan.com

    YOU: What is the consensus on how soon
    we have to phase off of fossil fuels and move to carbon neutrality?

    Gemini (2024, April 22)

    There’s no single answer on the exact timeline for phasing out fossil
    fuels, but there’s a strong consensus on the urgency. Here’s a breakdown of the
    key points:

    • Paris Agreement
      Goals:       The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to well below
      2°C (3.6°F) compared to pre-industrial levels. To achieve this,
      substantial reductions are needed this decade.
    • Net Zero by
      2050:       The UN and many countries target net-zero emissions by 2050.
      This means balancing any remaining emissions with carbon capture
      technologies or natural processes.
    • Technical
      Feasibility for Faster Transition:       Experts believe a much
      faster transition than 2050 might be possible, with complete replacement
      of fossil fuels for energy by 2035 being a theoretical possibility.

    There are challenges to a rapid transition, including:

    • Political Will: Aligning
      international efforts and overcoming resistance from vested interests are
      crucial.
    • Infrastructure
      Upgrade:       Replacing existing infrastructure with renewable energy
      sources requires significant investment.
    • Economic and
      Social Impact:       A just transition that minimizes job losses and ensures
      affordability for developing countries is essential.

    Overall, achieving carbon neutrality requires significant and rapid
    action. While the exact timeline is debated, experts agree we need a dramatic
    reduction in fossil fuel use within this decade.

     

    You: What is the consensus on how soon we have to phase off
    of fossil fuels and move to carbon neutrality?

    Copilot (2024, April 22)

    The United Nations Climate
    Change Conference (COP28)    , which concluded recently, has marked
    a significant milestone in the global effort to combat climate change. Here are
    the key takeaways:

    1.     
    Beginning of the End for Fossil Fuels:

    2.     
    Global Stocktake:

    3.     
    GenAI and Climate Action:

    4.     
    Immediate Actions:

    In
    summary, while the fossil fuel era isn’t over yet, COP28’s outcomes signal a
    determined shift toward carbon neutrality. The urgency is clear, and all
    governments and businesses must turn their pledges into real-world outcomes
    without delay. Let’s choose the planet over fossil fuels and work together for
    a sustainable future! 🌎🌿🔥

    References:

    1. COP28 Agreement
      Signals “Beginning of the End” of the Fossil Fuel Era      1
    Learn more

    1

    unfccc.int2phys.org3theconversation.com4weforum.org

     Q: What are the key factors that
    agreements like the Paris agreement promote in order for the world to become
    carbon neutral?

    Gemini (2024, April 22)

    Agreements like the Paris
    Agreement promote several key factors to achieve carbon neutrality:

    • Ambitious
      Emissions Reduction:
      • The
        agreement sets a long-term goal of limiting global warming to well below
        2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, ideally aiming for 1.5°C. This
        necessitates significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,
        particularly from fossil fuels.
    • Nationally
      Determined Contributions (NDCs):
      • The
        agreement relies on individual countries setting and periodically
        strengthening their NDCs, which are national plans outlining their
        emission reduction targets and strategies. This fosters a global effort
        with national ownership.
    • Transparency
      and Accountability:
      • Countries
        are required to regularly report their progress towards achieving NDCs.
        This transparency allows for monitoring and encourages collective action
        if targets are not being met.
    • International
      Cooperation:
      • The
        agreement promotes collaboration between developed and developing
        countries. Developed nations are encouraged to provide financial and
        technological support to developing countries to facilitate their
        transition to clean energy sources.
    • Innovation
      and Technology Development:
      • The
        agreement recognizes the need for technological advancements in clean
        energy, carbon capture, and energy efficiency. It encourages research and
        development to accelerate the availability and affordability of these
        solutions.
    • Adaptation
      and Resilience:
      • While
        achieving carbon neutrality is crucial, some degree of climate change is
        already unavoidable. The agreement emphasizes the importance of helping
        countries adapt to the impacts of climate change and build resilience to
        future threats.

    By promoting these factors, the Paris Agreement aims to create a framework for a
    global transition towards a low-carbon future. It’s important to note that
    achieving carbon neutrality requires not only national efforts but also strong
    international cooperation, innovation, and adaptation strategies.

  • Oil & Gas Spills in North America Since 2010

    Oil & Gas Spills in North America Since 2010

    A
    question I sometimes ask of people who think that fossil fuels are here
    forever more and that electrification of everything will never
    happen… 

    Has there ever been an oil spill in Yellowstone National Park? If so, how many?

    The answer I get surprisingly often is “none”. It is, after all, a National Park, right? 

    ArcGIS
    does a map overlay with the data of your choice. In this case the data
    is documented oil and gas spills since 2010, by type of spill and the
    SIZE of spill. Map for North America here.
    The size of the circle indicates the size of the spill. Note the big
    circles; size of the circle indicates the size of the spill. Blue is
    refined oil (gasoline, diesel, etc.). Red is NatGas. Since NatGas just
    vents into the atmosphere (unless it catches fire or is flared), it’s a
    “clean” spill. Kinda. Natural Gas is a wicked greenhouse gas, with a
    warming factor of 80x more than carbon dioxide. 

    The next chart just shows oil & gasoline spills. Crude oil in green (ironically), refined petroleum in blue. Zoom in and select a circle to find out more about the spill (year and amount).

    Yellowstone is in the northeast corner of Wyoming. Yellowstone has had two notable oil spills
    since 2010: an oil spill on the Exxon-Mobil pipeline in 2011, and
    another spill in 2015 from the pipeline owned by the True Companies.
    Those spills seem tiny compared to the thousands of spills throughout
    North America. No info from Canada though. There have been many oil
    spills in the Alaska pipelines that run all the way through Canada to
    the US.

    Note that there are tens of thousands of old wells that
    have been abandoned; many have never been capped or have been poorly
    capped. Old wells are leaking massive amounts of oil and natgas. The big
    oil companies sell off the depleted wells to small companies. Those
    companies milk the well for a while and then go out of business. 

    “According to the Government Accountability Office, the 2.1 million unplugged abandoned wells in the United States could cost as much as $300 billion.[2]” from this Wikipedia article on Abandoned Wells in the United States.
    There are abandoned oil wells everywhere: in the gulf, in Pennsylvania,
    in Texas, in California.  And that is in the USA where there are better
    regulations than most countries. Read about the Biden effort to go out
    and cap them at the NRDC. There are lots of other sources, but you get the idea.

    When
    you think of the costs to the environment, the costs to clean up, and
    the costs to not cleanup, the costs are massively greater than what you
    pay at the gas meter or at the pump. And yet the world’s governments
    still subsidize fossil fuels at the rate of $1T per year. According to the IMF, explicit fossil fuel subsidies are about 1% of GDP, but implicit is 6% to 7% of GDP (about $6T USD).

  • The EV Hurricane Disaster: a 1-sided scenario, part 2

    Read  The
    EV Hurricane Disaster: a 1-sided scenario     on our sister blog
    ScenarioPlans.com (also DelphiPlan.com). The EV disaster article analyzes a viral email
    that talks about how horrible it will be when a hurricane is storming into a
    population center and the electric vehicles are all stuck on the road with no
    possibility for charging.

    The unauthored and undated email makes the implied conclusion
    that we shouldn’t go to EVs because they could be problematic in a disaster, stuck in a mass exodus from a hurricane with dying batteries and no place to charge.

    There are at least three scenarios for analysis in that
    ScenarioPlans article (part 1). One is related to disaster planning related to
    EVs. Two is related to insisting on comparisons with “business as usual”
    comparisons so the non-sustainable and broken business models do not somehow
    become the gold standard. Three is combating bias and taking away the power
    from misinformation.

    It would be interesting to work through the scenario of a
    future with mostly EVs. That may be at best 30 years from now because of the
    time to turn over the existing internal combustion (ICE) fleet of vehicles. The
    average age of cars on road is currently 11 years.  In 2022 there will probably be only 5% new electric.
    It will take decades, under any EV adoption rate for EVs to overtake ICE
    machines.

    You first have to envision what the infrastructure will be
    in the future. (This, as we currently are building lots of large gas stations
    for gas and diesel, phasing out the small gas stations.) It would be reasonable
    to assume that all gas stations would start to add in charging stations in a few
    years.

    But with millions of people and businesses having charging stations,
    there should be no reason that those charging locations could not be
    incorporated to the charging grid options.  If the businesses and homes had solar (and
    battery backup) the resilience could be impressive. With solar and wind, many
    areas could have plenty of electricity for personal and commercial EV use
    indefinitely. No oil tankers needed.

    I’m thinking of kind of an Air B&B for charging, maybe
    and Air Charge & Go (Air C&G). Any superstore or parking lot with
    charging stations could offer to charge (pun intended) the mass exodus of EVs.

    Of course, we might be trying to find a solution to a
    problem that does not exist. In 30 years, the batteries and the charging
    technology will be much better. So, it may only take 5 to 10 minutes to charge
    (say 70%), not that much longer than it takes a car to get gas. And
    transporting gas around during disasters has its own set of problems.

    About 8% to 10% of the world’s economy is embedded directly
    and indirectly in energy, most of which is fossil fuels. All this money funds
    countries that are ruthless and unfriendly to us, as well as companies that
    have generally demonstrated a disregard for people, society, and the
    environment. Plus, fossil fuels are unsustainable. Period. Somehow, we have
    come to think of the broken business model of fossil fuels as “normal”. If it
    is not sustainable, then “business as usual” is not a viable option; yet in
    scenario planning, you should probably consider fossil fuels the “base case”.
    Shell has been a leader in scenario planning, including the energy future
    (check out Scenarios
    and The Energy Future from Shell    ).

    Recession has winners and losers, destructive innovation.
    An energy revolution will have winners and losers. There will be lots and
    lots of good paying jobs (in hydro, wind and solar). But there will be ongoing
    pain to the fossil fuel economy. Workers in mines and on rigs will have to
    transition. Investors will lose money as oil companies go out of business.
    Governments will have to pick up the expenses of hundreds of years of mines,
    pipes, refineries, and tanks. Orphaned wells are already a huge problem; many,  if not most, are leaking or will leak in the
    future.

    Of course, fear and uncertainty is actually the point of
    many of the misinformation initiatives. Imagine what happens to Russia, Saudi
    Arabia and oil companies when (not if) we get off of our addition to oil. Russia
    could no longer do as much mischief around the world when the major source of
    government funding (oil exports) dries up. Iran’s funding for nuclear weapons
    and terrorism would dry up… etc…

    So, when a one-sided meme or email comes flittering across
    your screen that trashes a renewable, ask them where is the other half of the
    discussion. No one would send out only one side of a discussion or a one-sided
    debate. And certainly no one would want to perpetuate one-sided propaganda? Right?
    !:-)

    #ScenarioPlans #BrokenBaseCase #Sustainability #EVs #100RE

  • Solar and wind just passed another big turning point, Cheaper n Better

    Solar and wind just passed another big turning point:

    So solar and wind power generation is reaching a threshold where renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuel-based power in Germany and UK. That is before counting the subsidies for renewables, and ignoring the massive externality costs of our historically favorite dirty black fuel.

    Note the discussion of the virtuous cycle of renewable fuels. As base load power moves up from 5% renewables the costs of traditional power plants becomes more expensive, essentially they become more peak-power generators and less base-load power.

    Solar has the added advantage of offing more distributed power generation, usually at the point of use. So solar starts to really cut down on the massive loss of power over distribution channels.

    In the US, really cheap NatGas is a no-brainer decision for converting coal plants. It is so much cleaner in all respects. But new fossil fuel power plants will be harder and harder to justify to shareholders and to the PSC.

    In the meanwhile, nuclear sits on the sidelines, leaving fission and fusion as a non option in the foreseeable future.

    If momentum builds for homeowners and businesses to move to at-source power generation (say Solar City), the building momentum could be a real game-changer.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Energy Efficiency & Renewables… Good signs for both.

    In one recent edition of the New York Times, there were two very positive articles on energy efficiency and improving the cost/kwh of renewables.  The Monday, November 24, 2014, issue featured “Good News on Energy,” by Ralph Cavanagh of theNatural Resources Defense Fund, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/opinion/good-news-on-energy.html? and “Solar and Wind energy Start to Win on Price vs. Conventional Fuels,” by Diane Cardwell, http://nyti.ms/1yJq2r0.

    From Cavanagh, peaked energy use occurred in the US in 2007 and has trended downward since with a small increase in 2013.  And, economic growth is increasing more rapidly than the growth in energy usage because technology is making energy sources more efficient.  The LED light bulb is a good example.  Improvements over the last 40 years have done more to meet US energy needs than the combined contributions of oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power.

    Electricity consumption has decreased since 2000 despite the introduction of new consumer electronics.  Moreover, oil consumption by homes, businesses and vehicles is down 12% since the peak in 2005.  June, 2013, began a 12-month period in which the combined usage of renewables exceeded hydroelectric power.  More than 12% of our energy supplied comes from renewables and that category is growing faster than the others.

    In her article, Cardwell confirms that the cost of providing electricity from wind and solar has dropped significantly in the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas.  Several utility companies in the Great Plains and Southwest where wind and sunlight are abundant have signed power purchase contracts, known as “power purchase agreements,” for solar and wind at prices below that of natural gas.

    According to Lazard, an investment banking firm, the cost of utility-scale solar energy is 5.6 cents/kwh with wind as low as 1.4 cents/kwh.  Without federal subsidies that are up for renewal by Congress in 2016, solar costs are about 7.2 cents/kwh and wind would be 3.7 cents/kwh.  Natural gas is at 6.1 cents/kwh on the low end and coal is at 6.6 cents.

    Both renewables and fossils have limitations.  For renewables, the wind has to blow and the sun has to shine as electrical storage technology needs a break through.  For the fossils, there are regulations and costs due to carbon emissions pollution.  One can expect this hybridization of fossils and renewables to continue for a considerable period of time.
    Minor edits: 12/17/2014.