Perpetual Innovation

Category: non-renewable

  • ECO:nomics | The Wall Street Journal

    ECO:nomics | The Wall Street Journal:

    The WSJ’s big forum on ECOnomics seems to have been a great learning and sharing session for divergent ideas on how to blend economic growth/development with environmental needs.

    A special report in the WSJ on Wed, April 13, 2016 offers several takes and interviews covering the spectrum of associated topics.

    A couple base statistics are that coal generated electricity has dropped from half of all US generation to less than 1/3 within about 10 years. The big gain is Nat Gas, but that too is changing. In 2015 solar was the #1 install base with 9.5 gw (37% of new), NatGas 8 gw (31%), wind 6.8 gw (26%). Only 4% new nuclear and fractions of other.

    Related to the switch from coal to NatGas, this is only a stop-gap measure: moving from one really bad non-renewable, coal; to a relatively better non-renewable, NatGas. Michael Brune from the Sierra Club comments on the methane and other issues that brings NatGas closer to parody with coal (really ugly vs. relatively ugly).

    Coal is really taking a hit, as Peabody goes bankrupt this week, bringing down all of the big coal companies. No victory laps here; the pain and suffering in the mining communities is going to be horrendous. (Also, bankruptcy doesn’t mean the mines will all stop, just that the debt associated with the companies will replace the equity positions.)

    Even against crashing oil/coal prices, solar & wind are winning major solid footing. Even with the likelihood of subsidies going away, are now starting to be very price competitive (especially if you consider externality costs). BUT when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine (night) we still need regular power generation. Or battery-type storage.

    You have to marvel at the gain of renewables during the second year of record low fossil fuel costs. That is really, really impressive.

    Check out all the articles on the ECOnomics conference and interviews at the special business & energy section of the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/news/types/journal-reports-energy

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  • Wind And Solar Will Soon Become The ‘Least-Cost Option’ – Yahoo Finance

    Wind And Solar Will Soon Become The ‘Least-Cost Option’ – Yahoo Finance:

    It is interesting how quickly the prices of wind and solar have been dropping and are expected to continue.

    Obviously, these must be only a part of the solution, unless batteries get to be a whole lot better, a whole lot faster. (Maybe?). The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine.

    One savings for solar, is that it doesn’t need to be done remotely. The transport/distribution costs can be much lower. Both sun & wind do not require the massive volumes of water that conventional fossil and nuke need. (Except for the manatees, there is no real reason to heat up rivers and lakes.)

    Those folks in the coal industries, even in China, are soon going to find that they are missing the boat. Coal is not sustainable. Once people start to think harder and longer about the externalities costs of coal, it is going to continue the downward spiral from favor.

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  • 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.

  • Invest Yourself – Roaches, Never Just One

    Free Investment Newsletter | Invest Yourself:

    I really like what they (Robert B. Rinear) say on the currency. That all seems very very
    true.  The currencies in the world are
    all crap. The best may be Japan and they can’t keep the Yen low enough to be a     competitive exporter so it is wreaking havoc on their economy…
    The Yankee Dollar is a piece of crap. But we are less crappy then the
    Yuan or the Euro.  We are the best house
    in a slum-blighted neighborhood. 
    You can only have all the currencies in the world artificially low for
    so long. Especially if all the effects are compounding, year over year. I
    really do think that real assets, like land and gold, will slingshot into the
    stratosphere sometime rather soon, say 1 to 3 years.
    But the same thing that they complain about, the talking heads at CNN,
    they did themselves. Go look at any of the databases, since recorded history,
    on any of the measures you chose, and you will see that the global warming is
    very real, and accelerating. It also     coincides well with populations explosion and industrialization.  And it is a compounding effect. Panicking certainly doesn’t make
    sense, but ignoring facts and data supporting global warming means the “hoax”
    is on you.
    Give a look at: https://www.skepticalscience.com/
    (Real science and no crap, discussing the real facts and actual data about
    Climate Change & Global Warming. It is very real by every measure that is
    measurable.)
    Want to know about Sustainability, look at my book (www.TinyURL.com/SustainYBook/) created
    from live Wikipedia links on Sustainability. The Intro is by Elmer Hall and created the
    dynamic links to carefully selected Wikipedia articles (pages). The pages in
    this book represent the best, most current and most accurate single source of
    information related to sustainability and climate change in the world.

    Sustainability. The world currencies are not!… 
    Ever growing greenhouse gas emissions,  sustainable we are not.

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  • Next generation of biofuels is still years away | Hattiesburg American | hattiesburgamerican.com

    Next generation of biofuels is still years away | Hattiesburg American | hattiesburgamerican.com:

    Biofuel is a byline in the energy mix.

    So biofuel is mandated. And because it is ordered to be true, it must be.

    And because it is ordered to be true, the mandate must meet the expectations.

    Thus is the problem with government subsidies… Burning food for fuel (corn to ethanol) is still a rather dumb idea, even though it is finally getting efficient enough that there is a small net gain gallon-equivalent per gallon of ethanol.

    What would work perfectly well, from an economics point of view, is to raise taxes on non-renewable sources of fuel and energy. A simple carbon tax would do it. It could be progressive over time.

    Then the more accurate costs of non-renewables would allow for the energy economy to shift and make its on path forward. The types of renewable fuel would decide themselves and the government would be out of the picture setting mandates in less-than-smart — some might say foolish — areas.

    Of course the politicians who set the wheels in process for a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade (tax?) will soon find themselves out to pasture shoveling biowaste.

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