Signs of Peakiness, oil companies are running out of cash

Posted on August 29, 2014 by

Andrew Nikiforuk, August 29, 2014. A big summer story you missed: Soaring oil debt. The Tyee. 

KeystoneNebraska_600px.jpg

Over 100 of the world’s largest energy companies are running out of cash. Photo of Keystone pipeline in Nebraska by Shannon Ramos. Creative Commons licensed.

Some of the summer’s biggest news stories took place in the bombed schools of Gaza, the abandoned hospitals of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the wheat fields of eastern Ukraine and the bloody mountains of northern Iraq.

But one of the most important made virtually no headlines at all, and seemed to only appear on the website of the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Last July the government agency, which has collected mundane statistics on energy matters for decades, quietly revealed that 127 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies are running out of cash.

They are now spending more than they are earning. Profits have lagged as expenditures have risen. Overburdened by debt, these firms are selling assets.

The math is simple. The 127 firms generated $568 billion in cash from their operations during 2013-2014 while their expenses totalled $677 billion. To cover the difference of $110 billion, the energy giants increased their debt load or sold off assets.

Given that the gap between earned cash and spending stood at a modest $10 billion in 2010, that’s a significant change for the industry as well as the global economy it fuels.

Mining messy bitumen

The Energy Information Administration doesn’t explain why the world’s major hydrocarbon producers are now spending more and making less. But an August report by Carbon Tracker, a non-profit financial think-tank, provides some possible answers.

Most companies are now investing in high-cost and high-risk projects to mine difficult hydrocarbons such as bitumen or shale oil, according to Carbon Tracker. Hydraulic fracturing, the land equivalent of ocean bottom trawling, adds to the cost of oil, too.

It’s not only the firms deploing fracking that are racking up high debt loads. Chinese state-owned corporations, for example, plopped down $30 billion to develop junk crude in the oilsands over the last decade.

But with a few exceptions, none of the investments are making a good dollar return due to the difficult and costly nature of mining messy bitumen as well as problematic quality of the reserves, combined with huge cost overruns.

By Carbon Tracker’s calculation, bitumen remains the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. The extraction of this fuel signals that business as usual is over, and mining of extreme hydrocarbons comes with extreme financial and political risks.

Cheap and easy days are over

The Chinese aren’t the only ones facing diminishing returns from high-cost projects in the oilsands.

Most of the world’s oil and gas firms are now pursuing extreme hydrocarbons because the cheap and easy stuff is gone. The high-carbon remainders include shale oil, oilsands, ultra deepwater oil and Arctic petroleum. (Industry now wants to frack the Northwest Territories, too.)

But given that oil demand in places like Europe, the United States and Japan is flattening or declining, many analysts don’t think that high-carbon, high-risk projects (which all need a $75 to $95 market price for oil to break even) make much economic sense in a carbon-constrained world.

“Our analysis demonstrates that a blind pursuit of reserve replacement at all costs or a focus on high expenditure regardless of returns could go against improving shareholder returns,” recently warned Carbon Tracker.

The capital costs for liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals supplied by heavily fracked coal or shale fields is also rising. Highly complex LNG projects in Norway, Australia and Papua New Guinea have all experienced major cost overruns.

Goldman Sachs now reckons more than half of the oil companies listed on the stock market — are spending five times more than what they did in 2000 chasing extreme hydrocarbons. As a consequence they need an oil price of $120 a barrel to remain cash neutral in the future.

Spending more cash to get less energy has major implications for the global economy, a creature of oil. Whenever nations spend lots on oil, they record crazy exponential growth, like China. And whenever nations spend less on petroleum, like Europe and the U.S., there is stagnation.

Oil’s slavish hold

To explain oil’s slavish hold on the global economy, the Russian physicists Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia M. Makarieva employ a useful metaphor.

Imagine a town of 100 people. Ten own the air, the oil of the modern economy, and they force everyone else to pay to breathe. The other 90 work hard and give the air owners about 10 per cent of their production.

Whenever the price of air goes up quickly (and the cost of extracting oil has increased substantially in the last decade — about 12 per cent a year), then economic growth slows to a crawl. The air owners have killed the growth potential of the workers.

Sooner or later the owners of the air realize they have to lower the price. “As the air price goes down, the workers feel better…. This, in short, is the scenario of the global economic crisis, how it starts and how it develops,” explains Gorshkov and Makarieva. “Curiously, none of the economic analysts relate the world crisis to the abnormally high oil prices that preceded it.”

But diminished returns from extreme hydrocarbons will do more than slow down productivity and increase price volatility. They will impose lasting and material adjustments on all of us.

In addition to seeing fewer vehicles on the road (a startling U.S. reality already), we shall also see lower wages (except in the hydrocarbon industry), rising food prices, rising personal debt loads, increased demands on governments increasingly short of revenue, explosive inequalities in wealth and rising political conflict.

Our new narrative

We shall also see more of what the U.S. Energy Information Administration dutifully recorded: soaring debt loads to support massive energy sprawl. That means industry will spend more good money chasing poor quality resources. They will inefficiently mine and frack ever larger land bases at higher environmental costs for lower energy returns.

Combined with its twin brother, climate change, this is the great energy narrative that will shape our destiny in the years to come.

Marion King Hubbert, a Shell geologist, predicted this development decades ago and presented the cultural conundrum clearly: “During the last two centuries we have known nothing but an exponential growth culture, a culture so dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth.”

But why would such a radical development be news in the dog days of summer?

Posted in Debt, Energy Markets, Peak Oil | 1 Comment

Navy claims that fuel can be made from seawater

Posted on August 27, 2014 by

It must take more energy to break the bonds of water, extract CO2, and recombine into usable fuel than you will ever get out of fuel so produced.  We’ve known for a long time how to split hydrogen from water. But we don’t do that because it takes so much energy to do it that it’s not worth it, which is why 96% of hydrogen comes from natural gas, so this must be a very energy intensive process.

Nor has the Navy hasn’t overturned the laws of physics. Defense One writes that it takes twice as much electricity to convert the water into fuel components as the process yields in terms of power.  The potential energy in the synthetic fuel is much lower than the energy inputs needed to make it.

The EROI of the process is certainly negative – more energy will be used to create the synfuel than what it contains.  Even if the plan is to use nuclear power, then the energy to mine, process, and deliver new nuclear fuel to keep this process going must be subtracted from the overall EROI, not the mention the ship itself, the metal that made the ship and nuclear reactor, and so on.

And is building a bunch of ships with nuclear reactors on board really a good idea? These would be sitting duck floating bombs, tempting terrorist or war targets.

Overly excited non-science writers have made it sound like this will solve Peak oil, but as Mark Draughn at windypundit writes in “Not Quite the End of Big Oil”, that is not the case:

The Navy $3 to $6 per gallon price is the expected price once the process is industrialized. We’re not there yet.

This won’t lead to energy independence for the United States because this is not a new energy source. It’s a process for extracting hydrogen and carbon dioxide from the ocean and “un-burning” them to create a hydrocarbon fuel. However, the principle of conservation of energy tells us that if a fuel produces energy when burned, then the process of creating the fuel must consume energy. Ultimately you can’t get any more energy out of a fuel than you put into creating it, and in practice you’ll get somewhat less, due to inefficiencies in the process.

This will not overthrow big oil because if you have to put energy in to get energy out, then what you’re describing is really an energy storage system, not an energy source. The energy that you put into the storage system still has to come from somewhere else. We could use electrical power to synthesize fuel, but that electrical power still has to be generated, and here in the U.S., over 80% of our energy comes from fossil fuels, and almost half of that is from oil.

Switching our transportation system to use electrical energy would be difficult, because the elements of our transportation system — cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships — all have to carry their energy sources around with them, which means they need an energy source that is portable. More to the point, most modes of transportation require an energy source that is lightweight, which means they must use a storage medium that has a high energy density — that stores a lot of energy per pound of added weight.

Willmott, D. Dec 16, 2014.  Fuel from Seawater? What’s the Catch? Smithsonian.

Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have demonstrated the ability to recover carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater and turn it into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel—the kind of stuff that can power a jet engine.

Using a proprietary electrochemical device, researchers were able to pull carbon dioxide from the water, get hydrogen as a byproduct, and then bounce the two gases off each other to manufacture the liquid fuel. The scientists say they can pull about 97 percent of the dissolved carbon dioxide from the water and convert about 60 percent of the extracted gases into hydrocarbons that can be made into fuel

So what’s the catch? Well, there are many.

First, carbon dioxide concentration in seawater is about 100 milligrams per liter. That’s 140 times greater than that of air, but still not very much in real terms. One report calculates that you’d have to process close to nine million cubic meters of water to make 100,000 gallons of fuel, and that’s assuming 100 percent efficiency. Assume far less efficiency, and you have to assume much more water. And the more water you process, the more plankton and other little critters you remove from the food chain—with potentially catastrophic results for marine life.

Secondly, you’d have to pump all that water into the conversion machine using some form of energy, and if the ship uses fuel to make the electricity to do the conversion job, then the whole process would be pointless. So the conversion would need to take place on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

Then, if 60 percent of the gas is converted, what happens to the other 40 percent, including the 25 percent that becomes environmentally unfriendly methane?

And doesn’t flying jets simply put the carbon back into the atmosphere?

Posted in Far Out, Nuclear Power Energy | Tagged , | Comments Off on Navy claims that fuel can be made from seawater

Revolutionary understanding of phsics needed to improve batteries – don’t hold your breath

Posted on August 19, 2014 by

What this Department of Energy document shows is that we can’t make the necessary REVOLUTIONARY breakthroughs to electrify cars until we understand the physics of batteries, and points out that “battery technology has not changed substantially in nearly 200 years.” page 3.

It’s how scientists like to say “don’t hold your breath” in as understated a way as possible.  Laws of physics?  That should have exclamation points.  And it sounds very expensive…

These are just a few of the challenges batteries and other kinds of electrical energy storage (EES) face.  I ran out of steam extracting them by page 35.

“Basic Research Needs for Electrical Energy Storage”. Report of the Basic Energy Sciences Workshop on Electrical Energy Storage April 2-4, 2007. Office of Science, U.S. Department Of Energy. http://www.sc.doe.gov/BES/reports/files/EES_rpt.pdf

What Is a Battery?

A battery contains one or more electrochemical cells; these may be connected in series or parallel to provide the desired voltage and power. The anode is the electro-positive electrode from which electrons are generated to do external work. In a lithium cell, the anode contains lithium, commonly held within graphite in the well-known lithium-ion batteries. The cathode is the electronegative electrode to which positive ions migrate inside the cell and electrons migrate through the external electrical circuit. The electrolyte allows the flow of positive ions, for example lithium ions, from one electrode to another. It allows the flow only of ions and not of electrons. The electrolyte is commonly a liquid solution containing a salt dissolved in a solvent. The electrolyte must be stable in the presence of both electrodes. The current collectors allow the transport of electrons to and from the electrodes. They are typically metals and must not react with the electrode materials. Typically, copper is used for the anode and aluminum for the cathode (the lighterweight aluminum reacts with lithium and therefore cannot be used for lithium-based anodes). The cell voltage is determined by the energy of the chemical reaction occurring in the cell. The anode and cathode are, in practice, complex composites. They contain, besides the active material, polymeric binders to hold the powder structure together and conductive diluents such as carbon black to give the whole structure electronic conductivity so that electrons can be transported to the active material. In addition these components are combined so as to leave sufficient porosity to allow the liquid electrolyte to penetrate the powder structure and the ions to reach the reacting sites.

Fundamental Challenges

Batteries are inherently complex and virtually living systems—their electrochemistry, phase transformations, and transport processes vary not only during cycling but often also throughout their lifetime. Although they are often viewed as simple for consumers to use, their successful operation relies on a series of complex, interrelated mechanisms involving thermodynamic instability in many parts of the charge-discharge cycle and the formation of metastable phases. The requirements for long-term stability are extremely stringent and necessitate control of the chemical and physical processes over a wide variety of temporal and structural length scales.

A battery system involves interactions among various states of matter—crystalline and amorphous solids, polymers, and organic liquids, among others (see sidebar “What Is a Battery?”). Some components, such as the electrodes and electrolytes, are considered electrochemically active; others, such as the conductive additives, binders, current collectors and separators, are used mainly to maintain the electrode’s electronic and mechanical integrity. Yet all of these components contribute to battery function and interact with one another, contributing to a convoluted system of interrelated reactions and physico-chemical processes that can manifest themselves indirectly via a large variety of symptoms and phenomena.

To provide the major breakthroughs needed to address future technology requirements, a fundamental understanding of the chemical and physical processes that occur in these complex systems must be obtained. New analytical and computational methods and experimental strategies are required to study the properties of the individual components and their interfaces. An interdisciplinary effort is required that brings together chemists, materials scientists, and physicists. This is particularly important for a fundamental understanding of processes at the electrode-electrolyte interface.

The largest and most critical knowledge gaps exist in the basic understanding of the mechanisms and kinetics of the elementary steps that occur during battery operation. These processes—which include charge transfer phenomena, charge carrier and mass transport in the bulk of the materials and across interfaces, and structural changes and phase transitions— determine the main parameters of the entire EES system: energy density, charge-discharge rate, lifetime, and safety. For example, understanding structure and reactivity at hidden or buried interfaces is particularly important for understanding battery performance and failure modes. These interfaces may include a reaction front moving through a particle in a twophase reaction; an interface between the conducting matrix (e.g., carbon), the binder, or the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) (see PRD “Rational Design of Interfaces and Interphases”) and the electrode material; or a dislocation originally present in the material or caused by electrochemical cycling (Figure 2). New analytical tools are needed to allow monitoring of a reaction front moving through a particle in a two-phase reaction (Figure 1, ii) in real time, and to image concentration gradients and heterogeneity in these complex systems. A detailed, molecular-level understanding is needed of the mechanism by which an ion intercalates or reacts at the liquid-solid interface or at the gas-solid interface, depending on the type of battery being studied.

Further, an understanding is needed of how these mechanisms vary with surface and bulk structure, particle morphology, and electronic properties of the solid for both intercalation and conversion reactions. Also important is the ability to correlate the structure of the interface with its reactivity, to bridge the gap between localized ultrafast phenomena that occur at the Å–micron length scale and the macroscopic long-term behavior of the battery system. Gaining insight into the nature of these processes is key to designing novel materials and chemistries for the next generation of chemical EES devices. Recent advances in nanoscience, analytical techniques, and computational modeling present unprecedented opportunities to solve technical bottlenecks. New synthetic approaches can allow the design of materials with exquisite control of chemical and physical processes at the atomic and molecular levels. Development of in situ methods and even multi-technique probes that push the limits of both spatial and temporal resolution can provide detailed insight into these processes and relate them to electrode structure. New computational tools, which can be employed to model complex battery systems and can couple with experimental techniques both to feed data into modeling and to use modeling/theory to help interpret experimental data, are critically important.

The Potential of nano-science

The lack of a fundamental understanding of how thermodynamic properties, such as phase co-existence, change at the nanoscale is in stark contrast to the wealth of information available on the novel electronic, optical, and magnetic properties of nanomaterials. While the latter properties typically arise from the interaction of the electronic structure with the boundary conditions (e.g., electron confinement and/or localization), purely energetic properties and thermodynamic behavior change in a less transparent way at the nanoscale.

Many fundamental questions remain to be answered. For example, are the differences in the electrochemical properties of bulk and nanosize electrode materials simply due to the higher concentrations of different surfaces available for intercalation, or are the electronic properties of the nanomaterials significantly different? Are surface structures at the nanoscale significantly different from those in the bulk or are the improved properties simply a transport effect? At the nanoscale, can we conceptually separate pseudocapacitive from storage reactions? Can we develop general rules and, if so, how widely do we expect them to apply? How are ionic and electronic transport processes coupled in complex heterogeneous nanostructured materials? The ability to modify the properties of materials by treating size and shape as new variables presents great opportunities for designing new classes of materials for EES.

It is imperative to explore how the different properties of nanoparticles and their composites can be used to increase the power and energy efficiency of battery systems. A tremendous opportunity exists to exploit nanoscale phenomena to design new chemistries and even whole new electrode and electrolyte architectures—from nanoporous mesoscopic structures to three-dimensional electrodes with active and passive multifunctional components interconnected within architectures that offer superior energy storage capacity, fast kinetics and enhanced mass transport, and mechanical integrity. To do so, we need to be able to control chemistries and assembly processes. Furthermore, low-cost, high-volume synthesis and fabrication techniques and nanocomposites with improved safety characteristics must be designed, to satisfy requirements for large-scale manufacturing of nanostructure materials and for their use in practical battery systems.

New Capabilities in Computation and Analysis

Although clever engineering can address some inherent problems with a particular battery chemistry, dramatic improvements in performance will ultimately come from the development of different electrode and electrolyte materials. New computational and analysis tools are needed to realize significant breakthroughs in these areas. For example, new analytical tools will provide an understanding of how the phase behavior and electrochemical properties of materials are modified at the atomic level. With this information, computational tools will expedite the design of materials with structures and architectures tailored for specific performance characteristics. It is now possible to predict many properties of materials before attempting to synthesize and test them (see Appendix B, “Probing Electrical Energy Storage Chemistry And Physics Over Broad Time And Length Scales,” for further details), and expanded computational capabilities specific to chemical energy storage are a critical need. New capabilities in modeling and simulation could help unravel the complex processes involved in charge transport across the electrode-electrolyte interface and identify underlying reactions that cause capacity degradation.

Tremendous opportunities exist to develop and apply novel experimental methodologies with increased spatial, energy, and temporal resolution. These could answer a wide range of fundamental questions in chemical electrical storage, identifying and providing ways to overcome some of the barriers in this field. In particular, techniques that combine higher resolution imaging, fast spectroscopic tools, and improved electrochemical probes will enable researchers to unravel the complex processes that occur at electrodes, electrolytes, and interfaces.

CAPACITIVE ENERGY STORAGE

Abstract

To realize the full potential of electrochemical capacitors (ECs) as electrical energy storage (EES) devices, new materials and chemical processes are needed to improve their charge storage capabilities by increasing both their energy and their power densities. Incremental changes in existing technologies will not produce the breakthroughs needed to realize these improvements. Rather, a fundamental understanding of the physical and chemical processes that take place in the EC—including the electrodes, the electrolytes, and especially their interfaces—is needed to design revolutionary concepts. For example, new strategies in which EC materials simultaneously exploit multiple charge storage mechanisms need to be identified. Charge storage mechanisms need to be understood to enable the design of new materials for pseudocapacitors and hybrid devices. There is a need for new electrolytes that have high ionic conductivity in combination with wide electrochemical, chemical, and thermal stability; are non-toxic, biodegradable, and/or renewable; can be immobilized; and can be produced from sustainable sources. New continuum, atomistic, and quantum mechanical models are needed to understand solvents and ions in pores, predict new material chemistries and architectures, and discover new physical phenomena at the electrochemical interfaces. From fundamental science, novel energy storage mechanisms can be designed into new materials. With these breakthroughs, ECs have the potential to emerge as an important energy storage technology in the future.

FUNDAMENTAL CHALLENGES

Little is known about the physico-chemical consequences of nanoscale dimensions (see sidebar “Correlation Between Pore Size, Ion Size, and Specific Capacitance”). Further, it is necessary to understand how various factors—such as pore size, surface area, and surface chemistry— affect the performance of ECs. This knowledge can be used to design nanostructured materials with optimized architectures that could yield dramatic improvements in current capabilities in energy and power. Novel electrolyte systems that operate at higher voltages and have higher room-temperature conductivity are critically needed for the next generation of ECs. Fundamentals of solvation dynamics, molecular interactions at interfaces, and ion transport must be better understood to tailor electrolytes for optimal performance. Exciting opportunities exist for creating multifunctional electrolytes that scavenge impurities and exhibit self-healing. A potential bridge between ECs and batteries is combining a batterytype electrode with a capacitor-type electrode in so-called hybrid or asymmetric ECs.6 This approach needs to be better understood at the fundamental level so that it enables the tailoring of energy density without compromising power density. In situ characterization of the electrolyte/electrode interface during charging/discharging at molecular and atomic levels is critical to understanding the fundamental processes in capacitive energy storage. This will require the development of new experimental techniques that combine measurement and imaging, including so-called chemical imaging, where chemical information can be obtained at high spatial resolution. In addition, new computational capabilities can allow modeling of active materials, electrolytes, and electrochemical processes at the nanoscale and across broad length and time scales. These models will assist in the discovery of new materials and the performance evaluation of new system designs.

Background and Motivation
A chemical energy storage system (battery) is inherently complex, consisting of a cathode, an
electrolyte, and an anode (see sidebar “What is a Battery?” on page 11). Any future system
must be designed to include a number of essential characteristics, including
• high energy density;
• sufficient power achieved through holistic design of the storage materials, supporting
components, and device construction;
• electrochemical and materials stability to ensure long lifetimes;
• practical materials synthesis and device fabrication approaches;
• reasonable cost; and
• optimized safe operation and manageable toxicity and environmental effects.
Future chemical energy storage applications, ranging from portable consumer products to
hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles to electrical distribution load-leveling, require years to
decades of deep discharge with subsequent recharging (charge-discharge cycles). This level
of use must occur with minimal loss of performance so that the same capacity is available on
every discharge (i.e., with minimal capacity fade). The necessity of ensuring stable cycle-life
response has restricted the number of electrons that can be transferred in any given discharge
or charge reaction, thereby limiting the utilization of the electrodes and the amount of energy
that could be available from the batteries.
This restriction in battery operation is driven by the fact that deep, but thermodynamically
allowable, discharge reactions usually drive the electrodes toward physical and chemical
conditions that cannot be fully reversed upon charging. The extent to which the physical and
chemical properties of electrode materials change during electrochemical cycling is
dependent on the battery’s chemistry. For example, during charge-discharge, the electrode
materials can undergo damaging structural changes. They can fracture, resulting in the loss of
electronic contact, and they can dissolve in the electrolyte, thereby lowering the cycling
efficiency and delivered energy of the batteries.

I’m amazed you got this far.  This is just page 35 of 186 pages, go read the rest online if your eyes haven’t glazed over yet!

Posted in Batteries | Comments Off on Revolutionary understanding of phsics needed to improve batteries – don’t hold your breath

United States Energy: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Posted on August 16, 2014 by

United States Energy Information Administration FAQ

Coal

Conversion & Equivalents

Crude Oil

Diesel

Electricity

Environment

Gasoline

General Energy

Natural Gas

Nuclear

Prices

Renewables

Posted in An Overview | Comments Off on United States Energy: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Electricity Energy Information Administration (EIA) Frequently Asked Questions

Posted on August 16, 2014 by

Energy Information Administration (EIA) Frequently Asked Questions about Electricity

n 2013, the United States generated about 4,058 billion kilowatthours of electricity.  About 67% of the electricity generated was from fossil fuel (coal, natural gas, and petroleum), with 39% attributed from coal.

In 2013, energy sources and percent share of total electricity generation were

  • Coal 39%
  • Natural Gas 27%
  • Nuclear 19%
  • Hydropower 7%
  • Other Renewable 6%
    • Biomass 1.48%
    • Geothermal 0.41%
    • Solar 0.23%
    • Wind 4.13%
  • Petroleum 1%
  • Other Gases < 1%

Does EIA have data on each power plant in the United States?

Other FAQs about Electricity

Data on existing individual electric generators at U.S. power plants, including the operational status, generating capacity, primary fuel/energy sources used, type of prime mover, location, the month and year of initial operation, and other information are collected with the EIA-860 survey.   Summary data on all generators are available in worksheets by the primary fuel/energy source used by the generators. Monthly and total annual fuel consumption, power generation, and various environmental data for power plants are collected with the EIA-923 survey.

 

 

EIA has an interactive map that includes the location of power plants and major electric power transmission lines in the United States.  To learn more about this map, play a short instructional video on how to use the EIA State Energy Portal tool. EIA currently does not  publish any other information on the location of power lines. The address of power plants with 1 MW or greater in generation capacity are in the “PlantYyy” file of the EIA-860 database

 

 

EIA estimates that the U.S. residential sector consumed about 1,375 billion kilowatthours of electricity in 2012. Estimated U.S. Residential Electricity Consumption by End Use, 2012

End Use Quadrillion
Btu		 Billion
kilowatthours		 Share of
total
Space cooling 0.85 250 18%
Lighting 0.64 186 14%
Water heating 0.45 130 9%
Refrigeration 0.38 111 8%
Televisions and related equipment 1 0.33 98 7%
Space heating 0.29 84 6%
Clothes dryers 0.20 59 4%
Computers and related equipment2 0.12 37 3%
Cooking 0.11 31 2%
Dishwashers3 0.10 29 2%
Furnace fans and boiler circulation pumps 0.09 28 2%
Freezers 0.08 24 2%
Clothes washers3 0.03 9 1%
Other uses4 1.02 299 22%
Total consumption 4.69 1,375  

1 Includes televisions, set-top boxes, home theater systems, DVD players, and video game consoles. 2 Includes desktop and laptop computers, monitors, and networking equipment. 3 Does not include water heating portion of load. 4 Includes small electric devices, heating elements, and motors not listed above. Electric vehicles are included in the transportation sector.

There are about 19,023 individual generators at about 6,997 operational power plants in the United States with a nameplate generation capacity of at least one megawatt. A power plant can have one or more generators, and some generators may use more than one type of fuel. Learn more: Electric Power Annual 2012, Table 4.1: Count of Electric Power Industry Power Plants, by Sector, by Predominant Energy Sources within Plant (some plants are double-counted by fuel type in Table 4.1), and Table 4.3: Existing Capacity by Energy Source. Downloadable databases with detailed data on individual generators and power plants.

The amount of fuel used to generate electricity depends on the efficiency or heat rate of the generator (or power plant) and the heat content of the fuel. Power plant efficiencies (heat rates) vary by types of generators, power plant emission controls, and other factors. Fuel heat contents also vary.

Two formulas for calculating the amount of fuel used to generate a kilowatthour (kWh) of electricity:

  • Amount of fuel used per kWh = Heat rate (in Btu per kWh) / Fuel heat content (in Btu per physical unit)
  • Kilowatthour generated per unit of fuel used = Fuel heat content (in Btu per physical unit) / Heat rate (in Btu per kWh)

Calculation examples using these two formulas and the assumptions below:

  • Amount of fuel used to generate one kilowatthour (kWh):
    • Coal = 0.00054 short tons or 1.09 pounds
    • Natural gas = 0.00786 Mcf (1,000 cubic feet)
    • Petroleum = 0.00188 barrels (or 0.08 gallons)
  • Kilowatthour generated per unit of fuel used:
    • 1,842 kWh per ton of Coal or 0.9 kWh per pound of Coal
    • 127 kWh per Mcf (1,000 cubic feet) of Natural gas
    • 533 kWh per barrel of Petroleum, or 12.7 kWh per gallon

Assumptions: Power plant heat rate

  • Coal = 10,498 Btu/kWh
  • Natural gas = 8,039 Btu/kWh
  • Petroleum = 10,991 Btu/kWh

Fuel heat contents

  • Coal = 19,336,000 Btu per short ton (2,000 lbs) Note: heat contents of coal vary widely by types of coal.
  • Natural gas  = 1,023,000 Btu per 1,000 Cubic Feet (Mcf)
  • Petroleum = 5,861,814 Btu per Barrel (42 gallons) Note: Heat contents vary by type of petroleum product.

EIA publishes estimates for the capital costs for different types of electricity generators in the Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Electricity Generation Plants report.

EIA estimates that national electricity transmission and distribution losses average about 6% of the electricity that is transmitted and distributed in the United States each year

Capacity factor is a measure of how often an electric generator runs for a specific period of time. It indicates how much electricity a generator actually produces relative to the maximum it could produce at continuous full power operation during the same period.

Over the past 6 years, the average capacity factors were: Coal 64%, Natural Gas combined cycle 44%, Nuclear 90%, Hydropower 40%, Wind 31%, Solar PV 20%, Solar Thermal 22%, Geothermal 71%

Capacity is the maximum electric output a generator can produce under specific conditions. Nameplate capacity is determined by the generator’s manufacturer and indicates the maximum output a generator can produce without exceeding design thermal limits.

Net summer capacity and net winter capacity are typically determined by a performance test and indicate the maximum load a generator can support at the point of interconnection during the respective season. The primary factors that affect or determine the difference in capacity between summer and winter months are:

  • the temperature of cooling water for thermal power plants or of the ambient air for combustion turbines
  • the water flow and reservoir storage characteristics for hydropower plants

Generation is the amount of electricity a generator produces over a specific period of time. For example, a generator with 1 megawatt (mW) capacity that operates at that capacity consistently for one hour will produce 1 megawatthour (mWh) of electricity. If it operates at only half that capacity for one hour, it will produce 0.5 mWh of electricity. Many generators do not operate at their full capacity all the time; they may vary their output according to conditions at the power plant, fuel costs, and/or as instructed from the electric power grid operator.

Net generation is the amount of gross generation a generator produces less the electricity used to operate the power plant.  These uses include fuel handling, feedwater pumps, combustion air fans, cooling water pumps, pollution control equipment, and other electricity needs.

One measure of the efficiency of a power plant that converts a fuel into heat and into electricity is the heat rate. The heat rate is the amount of energy used by an electrical generator or power plant to generate one kilowatthour (kWh) of electricity. EIA expresses heat rates in British thermal units (Btu) per net kWh generated. Net generation is the amount of electricity a power plant (or generator) supplies to the power transmission line connected to the power plant. It accounts for all the electricity that the plant itself consumes to operate the generator(s) and other equipment, such as fuel feeding systems, boiler water pumps, cooling equipment, and pollution control devices.

To express the efficiency of a generator or power plant as a percentage, divide the equivalent Btu content of a kWh of electricity (which is 3,412 Btu) by the heat rate. For example, if the heat rate is 10,140 Btu, the efficiency is 34%. If the heat rate is 7,500 Btu, the efficiency is 45%.

EIA only publishes heat rates for fossil fuel-fired generators and nuclear power plants. EIA does not publish estimates for the efficiency of generators using biomass, geothermal, hydro, solar, and wind energy.

Learn more:

Historical average annual heat rates for fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.

Average annual heat rates for specific types of fossil-fuel generators and nuclear power plants for most recent year available.

EIA has data on the types and amounts of energy produced in each state:

EIA also has  the location of coal mines, electric power plants, and oil and natural gas fields in our interactive map. A short instructional video is available to learn how to use this tool.

Posted in Electric Grid | Comments Off on Electricity Energy Information Administration (EIA) Frequently Asked Questions

Patzek: CTL coal-to-liquids from FT Synthesis is NOT likely to happen

Posted on July 21, 2014 by

CTL Mordor

This is a liquid fuel crisis – diesel to be exact – to keep tractors, trucks, trains, and ships moving. There’s not enough coal or water to make even a small percent of the FT-CTL diesel fuel we need from coal in Montana or Wyoming, and would turn these beautiful states into Mordor as depicted in Tolkien’s trilogy “Lord of the Rings”).   Alice Friedemann at energyskeptic.com

Patzek, T. W. et al. Sep 2009. Potential for Coal-to-Liquids Conversion in the United States—Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis. Natural Resources Research, Vol. 18, No. 3

America has the world’s largest coal reserves, and the best spot to locate a coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant would be in Montana near one of the largest coal deposits. CTL is seen as a way to replace depleting petroleum reserves, but there are several major drawbacks:

  1. The Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process is only half as efficient as refining crude oil
  2. The resulting CO2 emissions are 20 times (2000%) higher
  3. An enormous amount of water is needed: 1000 kg of coal needs 1000 kg of water
  4. You’d need to use over 40% of the FT fuel energy to sequester the CO2
  5. CTL is a poor use for coal as long as natural gas is cheaper for generating electricity
  6. FT plants and the surrounding mine are very expensive to build
  7. converting petroleum to diesel fuel is 88% energy-efficient, but less than 50% efficient in the FT process (which produces a high-wax crude oil, not diesel fuel)

Only South Africa uses the FT process to make diesel and gasoline from 45 million tons of coal every year. This led to serious environmental problems:

  1. Enormous amounts of land are strip mined and covered with up to 50 million tons of mining waste per year, waste that’s high in sulfur (1-7.8%) and ash (24-63%).
  2. When the waste is burned, the Eastern Transvaal Highveld is doused in acid rain
  3. These plants need 5 barrels of water per barrel of FT oil produced

A small plant making 22,000 BPD of FT fuel would use 20% of the current coal production in Montana. A 300,000 plant large enough to supply the military would need twice as much Montana coal as is being mined now, three times as much Montana water as mines are now using,

The three larger plant designs extend into the realm of surrealism. For example, the 300,000 BPD plant, sufficient to supply most of the U.S. military needs, would consume twice the current coal production in Montana, thrice the current water use by Montana mines, and each year would produce 11 million toxic tons of ash with arsenic, mercury, sulfur, uranium thorium, among other things. Or as Tad Patzek puts it “If Montanans wish to destroy their beautiful state, then large FT plants offer an almost certain fulfilment of this wish….Stored coal ash slurries eventually threaten water supplies, human health, and local ecosystems.”

Electric power generation is the dominant use of coal in the United States, accounting for 92.3% of U.S. coal usage in 2006. Other industrial use accounted for 5.3% and coke accounted for only 2.1% of U.S. coal consumption in 2006.

It’s not clear that we can find enough coal for both CTL and coal generated electricity. Although natural gas plants have been increasing in number because of the temporary fracking boom, and the need to balance the wind load of intermittent power to keep the grid stable, there’s not enough natural gas to replace all coal plants.  Other load-balancing energy resources can’t step in for coal electric generation to free it up for CTL either: most geothermal is in non-coal-burning states with a max of 9,000 MW from known resources and perhaps another 33,000 MW left to be founde.  Nuclear power isn’t going to ramp up quickly for many reasons.

CONCLUSIONS

1. The large volumes of coal required for CTL suggest that the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana is likely to be the coal source.

2. Although U.S. coal reserves are large, recent coal price increases suggest that there is no global coal surplus in the short term.

3. The Powder River coal, cheapest in the United States, would inevitably double or triple in price if there were a high-throughput railroad connection to the Pacific or Atlantic coast.

4. The energy efficiency of an optimal coal-based FT process that produces liquid fuels is 41%. This means that for every 1 unit of fuel energy out, one needs to put 2.4 units of coal energy in.

5. Because of the different energy contents of subbituminous coal and FT fuel, and a low energy efficiency of CTL conversion, roughly 800 kg of the average Powder River Basin coal will be needed to produce 1 barrel of the FT fuel.

6. Per unit energy in a liquid transportation fuel, carbon dioxide emissions from a CT plant are about 20 times higher than those from a petroleum refinery.

7. Subsurface disposal of carbon dioxide produced by the FT plants costs at least 40% of the thermal energy in FT fuel. If this disposal were deeper than assumed here, the current estimate might increase by a factor of up to 4.

8. Montana does not have the approximately 800 kg of clean water necessary to produce each barrel of FT fuel.

9. Natural gas can be compressed and used for transportation fuel with an efficiency of 98%. Therefore, the FT transportation fuel from coal is always uneconomic as long as natural gas competes with coal for power generation. This is true even if the gas-fired plants are more efficient combined cycle designs and the coal plants are conventional.

10. Judging by the recent financing of corn ethanol refineries, the astronomical construction costs of coal-based FT plants might be borne by the U. S. taxpayers through a new subsidy program.

11. The massive societal costs of the subsidies required to render CTL ‘‘economical,’’ and the environmental costs of fuel production would be borne by all Americans and the planet at large, but especially by the people of Montana and the surrounding states, including Canada

 

Posted in Coal to Liquids (CTL), Tad Patzek | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

What we knew about the energy crisis back in 1977

Posted on July 20, 2014 by

A friend of mine found this yesterday in one of her folders from college.  If seems like even more Americans are ignorant and blindly techno-optimist today than they were 40 years ago.  The last item of how we might proceed offers 4 suggestions, and we appear to have chosen the most repugnant: “Hang the environmentalists and plunder the environment”.  Lamar certainly was prescient…

The energy crisis: Some human considerations. Fall 1977.
From an outline prepared by William Fred Lamar, Jr., for a talk before a National Conference of Rural Electric Cooperative Directors

I. The Energy Crisis is Real

A. There are no easily available sources of fossil energy to supply our expanding needs.

  1. We are rapidly running out of oil and natural gas.
  2. While we have a 200 year supply of coal, there are pollution and other environmental (greenhouse) problems we have not solved.
  3. We have not come up with satisfactory and safe means for using nuclear reactors on a large scale.
  4. Our resources of geothermal, wind, and tidal energy either are limited or have limited applicability.
  5. Solar power is probably a generation away from application to our current needs.

B. According to a recent Gallup poll 50% of all Americans do not believe we have an energy problem, and/or believe that we have the technology available to meet our present and future energy needs.

II. A Description of the Problem

A. We are in danger of exhausting our economically recoverable oil resources

B. We are currently using non-renewable resources for the wrong ends.

  1. Most of our oil and natural gas is used for transportation and low temperature space heating, where other sources of energy would suffice
  2. At this time there is no substitute for the petrochemically related hydro-carbon molecule in: a. the production of agricultural fertilizers and chemicals, b. the production of drugs, c. the production of plastics, wash and wear fabrics, paint polymers,

III. Suffering caused by the Energy Crunch

A. On an international scale, the suffering will not be equitable

1. The major powers will probably be able to survive much as they are, but with some inconvenience

2. The economies of western Europe and Japan may be destroyed by the $30/bbl of oil predicted by the end of the 1980’s

3. Such an increase in oil price will mean total disaster for the developing nations who are:

a. dependent on petrochemically produced fertilizers to maintain the green revolution
b. petroleum products to begin the production of energy for industrial production and transportation

B. The suffering will not be equitably distributed within the United States

1. the rich will get by
2. The middle class will lose its long vacations, second cars, and possibly its free-standing homes
3. The poor and those on fixed incomes will face a bleak future as transportation and fuel costs increase fourfold, and as food costs double

IV. Some Issues that the American People will have to face in working through the Energy Crisis

A. Credibility

1. Currently 50% of the population and many of our leaders still believe that there is no crisis, or that the crisis is a manipulative activity of the energy producers

2. Some crazy things will happen to rate structures

a. artificially priced commodities (oil and natural gas) will either soar in price, be drastically rationed, or be rapidly depleted
b. A radical increase in price will suddenly make some petroleum reserves available (economically feasible to exploit), e.g. shale oil, tertiary pumping of abandoned wells, oil from coal, oil from “deep sea” wells
c. people may be asked to pay more if they conserve energy than if they waste it, e.g. experience of Union Electric Co of St. Louis in 1973
d. The use of solar assisted heating systems (installed at great expense of $6-10,000 may not result in a lowering of the consumer’s electric bill, e.g. University of North Dakota engineering survey of solar assisted electric heating costs

B. Equity

1. Energy allocation

a. in the event of energy rationing, how shall the rationing be accomplished?

1. Shall all be asked to take a uniform cut?
2. Shall certain groups be exempted from rationing?
3. Shall rationing be accomplished by an “economic model” (let people use what they can pay for)?

2. Expense of Energy

a. as energy costs rise, shall we
1. deny energy to the poor
2. guarantee lifeline rates
3. provide energy stamps backed by a regressive income tax
4. require all persons to live in apartments or condominiums which use 1/3 heat of freestanding home
5. place a severe tax on homes with unused space (rooms above the minimum of 2 per family member), and a prohibitory tax on second homes

b. Basic question—is a minimal entitlement to energy an “inalienable right”? What is minimal?

C. Social Dislocation in a time of crisis

1. Since the close of World War II the American people have created a world of unbelievable luxury and ease based upon the false belief in an unending supply of cheap petro-energy

2. How shall we face the possible dislocation caused by:
a. A move away from the automobile economy which employs 16% of all Americans
b. the inability of our economy to support the energy consumption (for space heating) of freestanding homes, and the energy consumption (for transportation) of the commuters who live in these homes
c. currently our entire economy is based upon an assumption of transience:
1. gasoline powered mobility for people
2. throw-away or convenience items for all
3. with planned obsolescence, rather than quality as the goal of production
d. A radical move toward stewardship of our resources, toward quality craftsmanship, and toward foot-powered mobility could make 1933 look like a very good year

D. Energy Production

1. As the gap between our energy needs (desires) and the available level of energy production that is not hazardous to the environment becomes more acute, shall we:

a. practice radical conservation—at the possible cost of a world depression
b. mount a research program equal to that of the Moon landing or the Manhattan project—at the cost of decreasing other governmental problems
c. follow Edward Teller’s recommendation and move instantly to the mass production of thorium fission reactors so that oil and natural gas may be saved to provide precious fertilizer for the third world
d. hang the environmentalists and plunder the environment

 

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American Physical Society: has the Battery Bubble Burst?

Posted on July 15, 2014 by

Aug/Sep 2012. Has the Battery Bubble Burst?

Fred Schlachter. American Physical Society. APS News Vol 21, number 8. Phys.org

Three years ago at a symposium on lithium-air batteries at IBM Almaden there was great optimism. The symposium “Scalable Energy Storage: Beyond Lithium Ion” had as a working message: “There are no fundamental scientific obstacles to creating batteries with ten times the energy content–for a given weight–of the best current batteries.”

Optimism had all but vanished this year at the fifth conference in the scalable-energy-storage series in Berkeley, California.

“Although new electric vehicles with advanced lithium ion batteries are being introduced, further breakthroughs in scalable energy storage, beyond current state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries, are necessary before the full benefits of vehicle electrification can be realized.”

The mood was cautious, as it is clear that lithium-ion batteries are maturing slowly, and that their limited energy density and high cost will preclude producing all-electric cars to replace the primary American family car in the foreseeable future.

“The future is cloudy” is how Venkat Srinivasan, who heads the battery research program at Berkeley Lab, summarized the conference.

Electric cars have a long history. They were popular at the dawn of the automobile age, with 28% of the automobiles produced in the United States in 1900 powered by electricity. The early popularity of electric cars faded, however, as Henry Ford introduced mass-produced cars powered with internal-combustion engines in 1908.

Gasoline was quickly recognized as nature’s ideal fuel for cars: it has a very high energy density by both weight and volume–around 500 times that of a lead-acid battery–and it was plentiful, inexpensive, and seemingly unlimited in supply. By the 1920s electric cars were no longer commercially viable and disappeared from the scene. They did not reappear until late in the 20th century as gasoline became expensive, supplies no longer seemed unlimited, and concerns over the possible effect of combustion of fossil fuels on global climate reached public awareness.

Electric cars are returning with the advent of battery chemistries that are more efficient than the lead-acid batteries of old. A new generation of electric cars has come in the form of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), and fully electric or battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Most of the latest generation of electric vehicles are powered by lithium-ion batteries, using technology pioneered for laptop computers and mobile phones.

Powering cars with electricity rather than with gasoline offers the dual advantages of eventually eliminating our dependence on imported fossil fuels and operating cars with renewable energy resources. Eliminating dependence on petroleum imported from often-unfriendly countries will greatly improve our energy security, while powering cars from a green grid with solar and wind resources will significantly reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

The major barrier to replacing the primary American family car with electric vehicles is battery performance. The most significant issue is energy storage density by both weight and volume. Present technology requires an electric car to have a large and heavy battery, while providing less range than a car powered by gasoline.

Batteries are expensive, resulting in electric cars typically being much more expensive than similar-sized cars powered by gasoline. There is a sensible cost limit when the cost of an electric car and electricity consumed over the life of the car considerably exceeds the cost of a car with an internal combustion engine including gasoline over the life of the car.

Safety is an issue much discussed in the press. Although there are more than 200,000 fires per year in gasoline-fueled cars in America, there is widespread fear of electricity. Batteries in cars powered by electricity will surely burn in some accident scenarios; the fire risk will probably be similar to gasoline-powered cars.

Stored energy in fuel is considerable: gasoline is the champion at 47.5 MJ/kg and 34.6 MJ/liter; the gasoline in a fully fueled car has the same energy content as a thousand sticks of dynamite. A lithium-ion battery pack has about 0.3 MJ/kg and about 0.4 MJ/liter (Chevy VOLT).

Gasoline thus has about 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery.

This difference in energy density is partially mitigated by the very high efficiency of an electric motor in converting energy stored in the battery to making the car move: it is typically 60-80% efficient. The efficiency of an internal combustion engine in converting the energy stored in gasoline to making the car move is typically 15% (EPA 2012). With the ratio about 5, a battery with an energy storage density 1/5 of that of gasoline would have the same range as a gasoline-powered car. We are not even close to this at present.

Powering a car with electricity is considerably more efficient than powering a car with gasoline in terms of primary-energy consumption. While the efficiency of energy use of an electric car is very high, most power plants producing electricity are only about 30% efficient in converting primary energy to electricity delivered to the user. Conversion of petroleum to gasoline is highly efficient. This results in electricity having a factor of 1.6 improvement in use of primary energy relative to gasoline, and is an important point in its favor.

A 2008 APS report on energy efficiency examined statistics on how many miles Americans drive per day. The conclusion of that study was that a full fleet of PHEVs with a 40-mile electric range could reduce gasoline consumption by more than 60%. Thus America may not need a full fleet of BEVs to achieve a very considerable reduction in gasoline use.

The compelling question is whether electric cars can provide the convenience, cost, and range necessary to replace their gasoline-powered counterparts as the primary standard American family car. And this hinges almost entirely on the state of battery development, coupled with issues of making the grid green and providing widespread infrastructure for recharging electric vehicles.

The answer today is mixed:

  • HEVs are already popular, even though they represent only a small fraction of cars on the road today. The present generation of batteries is adequate for HEVs, and range is not an issue, as 100 percent of the energy to power the car comes from gasoline. Purchase cost is higher than for a conventional car; the advantage is a 40 percent or more improvement in fuel economy (EPA 2012).
  • PHEVs are now coming onto the market (Fig. 1). Electric range is limited, and batteries presently available are only marginally adequate. Total range is not an issue as gasoline is stored onboard as a “range extender.”
  • BEVs coming onto the market are expensive and the range is too small for many American drivers, at least as the primary family vehicle. Batteries with a much higher energy storage density and a lower cost are needed for BEVs to become popular outside a limited market of upscale urban dwellers as a second car to be used for local transportation, where home recharging is feasible, and where charging time is not an issue.

Battery requirements are different for HEVs, PHEVs, and BEVs. A battery for an HEV does not need to store much energy, but needs to be able to store energy quickly from regenerative braking. Because it operates over a limited charge/discharge range, its lifetime can be very long. A PHEV battery must have much greater energy-storage capacity to achieve a reasonable electric range and will operate with a considerably greater charge/discharge range, which limits the cycle life of the battery. The battery for a BEV must supply all the energy to power the car over its full range–say 150-300 km–and must use most of its charge/discharge range. These requirements mean the battery for a BEV will be large, heavy, expensive, and have a limited cycle life. Replacing a battery for a BEV could entail a cost exceeding ten thousand dollars, which, divided by miles driven, will likely exceed by a large amount the cost of electricity to power the car.

The Berkeley 2012 symposium focused on 2 alternative chemistries:  lithium/oxygen (lithium/air) and lithium/sulfur. Both theoretically offer much higher energy density than is possible even at the theoretical limit of lithium-ion-battery development. However, the technical difficulties in making a practical battery with good recharging capability using either of these chemistries are considerable.

There are major research issues concerning all aspects of a battery: the cathode, the anode, and the electrolyte, as well as materials interfaces and potential manufacturing issues. A Li/air (Li/O2) battery requires cooled compressed air without water vapor or CO2, which would greatly complicate a Li/air battery system. A Li/air battery would be both larger and heavier than a Li-ion battery, making prospects for automobile use unlikely in the near term. However, a leading battery-development group at IBM wrote in a 2010 article on lithium-air batteries; “Automotive propulsion batteries are just beginning the transition from nickel metal hydride to Li-ion batteries, after nearly 35 years of research and development on the latter. The transition to Li-air batteries (if successful) should be viewed in terms of a similar development cycle.” Perhaps we need to be patient.

Many approaches are being followed to develop and improve battery performance, including studies using nanotubes, nanowires, nanospheres, and other nanomaterials. However, none of the researchers reported progress to the point where a practical battery using Li/air or Li/S could be envisioned.

Thomas Greszler, manager of the cell design group at General Motors Electrochemical Energy Research Lab, was pessimistic about the prospects for new battery chemistries: “We are not investing in lithium-air and lithium-sulfur battery technology because we do not think from an automotive standpoint that it provides a substantial benefit for the foreseeable future.”

A significant infrastructure challenge is the network that will need to be constructed for recharging the battery of a BEV. There are more than 120,000 gasoline filling stations in the United States. With the range of a present-day BEV being less than a third of that of a gasoline-powered car, a very large number of recharging stations will be required, in addition to home charging, which may be feasible only for those who live in private homes or apartment buildings with dedicated parking.

Charging an electric car takes hours, and even a fast charge will take longer than most people will be willing to wait. And charging should be done at night, when electricity generation and grid capacity are most available.

Battery research is being funded at a modest level, as there is a false perception among the public and policymakers that present battery performance is adequate for widespread acceptance of battery-electric vehicles. The national focus has been on renewable sources of energy. The United States will not become independent of foreign oil and combustion of fossil fuels until new battery technologies are developed. This will require a concerted national effort in science and technology at a considerable cost.

Fred Schlachter recently retired as a physicist at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is co-author of the 2008 APS report Energy Future: Think Efficiency, for which he wrote the chapter on transportation.

“Moore’s Law” for Batteries?

Isn’t there some kind of “Moore’s Law” for batteries? Why is progress on improving battery capacity so slow compared to increases in computer-processing capacity? The essential answer is that electrons do not take up space in a processor, so their size does not limit processing capacity; limits are given by lithographic constraints. Ions in a battery, however, do take up space, and potentials are dictated by the thermodynamics of the relevant chemical reactions, so there only can be significant improvements in battery capacity by changing to a different chemistry.

Posted in Batteries, Transportation Infrastructure | Comments Off on American Physical Society: has the Battery Bubble Burst?

Charles Hugh Smith: How To Find Shelter From The Coming Storms?

Posted on July 11, 2014 by

How To Find Shelter From The Coming Storms?

by Charles Hugh Smith

Some basic suggestions for those who are seeking shelter from the coming storms of global financial crisis and recession.

Reader Andy recently wrote: “I look forward to your blog each day but am still waiting for your ideas for surviving the coming crisis.” Andy reports that he and his wife have small government and private pensions, are debt-free and have simplified their lifestyle to survive the eventual depreciation of their pensions. They currently split their time between a low-cost site in North America and Mexico. They are considering moving with the goal of establishing roots in a small community of life-minded people.

Though I have covered my own ideas in detail in my various books (Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation, An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times, Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It and Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, I am happy to toss a few basic strategies into the ring for your consideration.

Let’s start by applauding Andy for getting so much right.

1. Don’t count on pensions maintaining their current purchasing power as the promises issued in previous eras are not sustainable going forward. I’ve addressed the reasons for this ad nauseam, but we can summarize the whole mess in four basic points:

A. Demographics. Two workers cannot support one retiree’s pensions and healthcare costs (skyrocketing everywhere as costly treatments expand along with the cohort of Baby Boomer retirees). The U.S. is already at a ratio of two full-time workers to one retiree, and this is during a “recovery.” the ratio in some European nations is heading toward 1.5-to-1 and the next global financial meltdown hasn’t even begun.

B. The exhaustion of the debt-based consumption model. The only way you can sustain a debt-based model of ever-expanding consumption is to drop interest rates to zero. But alas, lenders go broke at 0%, so either the system implodes as debtors default or lenders go bankrupt. Take your pick, the end-game of financial crisis and collapse is the same in either case.

C. Printing money out of thin air does not increase wealth, it only increases claims on existing wealth. An honest government will eventually default on its unsustainable promises; a dishonest government (the default setting everywhere) will print money to fund the promises until its currency loses purchasing power as a result of either inflation or some other flavor of currency crisis.

In other words, the dishonest government will still issue pension checks for $2,000 a month but a cup of coffee will cost $500–if anyone will take the currency at all.

D. Pensions funds are assuming absurdly unrealistic returns on their investments. Many large public pension plans are assuming long-term yields of 7.5% even as the yield on “safe” government bonds has declined to 3% or 4%. As a result, the pension fund managers have taken on staggering amounts of systemic risk as they reach for higher yields.

When the whole rotten house of cards (shadow banking, subprime everything, etc.) collapses in a stinking heap, the yields will be negative. As John Hussman has noted, asset bubbles simply bring forward all the returns from future years. Once the bubble pops, yields are substandard/negative for years or even decades.

Pension funds that earn negative yields for a few years will soon burn through their remaining capital paying out unrealistic pensions.

2. Lowering the cost of one’s lifestyle. It’s much easier to cut expenses than it is to earn more money or squeeze more yield out of capital.

3. Establishing roots in a community of like-minded people. Though it’s rarely mentioned in a culture obsessed with financial security, day-to-day security is based more on community than on central-state-issued cash–though this is often lost on those who have surrendered all sense of community in their dependency on the state.

The core of community is reciprocity: before you take, you first have to give or share. Free-riders are soon identified and shunned.

My suggestions are derived from this week’s entries on the inevitable popping of credit bubbles, the unenviable role of tax donkeys in funding corrupt state Castes and the Great Game of Elites acquiring essential resources with unlimited credit issued by central banks, leaving the 99% debt-serfs and/or tax donkeys with neither the income nor the credit to compete with Elites for real resources.

4. Lessen your dependence on anything that requires debt and assets bubbles for its survival. Whatever depends on expanding debt and asset bubbles for its survival will go away when credit/asset bubbles pop, which they always do, despite adamant claims that “this time it’s different.” It never is.

5. Control as many real resources as you can. These include water rights, energy-producing or conserving assets (solar arrays, geothermal heating/cooling systems, etc.), farmland, orchards and gardens, rental housing, and tools that you know how to use to make/repair essential assets such as transport, housing, equipment, etc.

6. It’s easier to conserve/not use something than it is to acquire it or pay for it. As resources rise in price, those who consume little will be far less impacted than those whose lifestyles requires massive consumption of gasoline, heating oil, electricity, water, etc. It’s as simple as this: don’t waste food, or anything else.

7. The easiest way to conserve energy and time is to live close to your work and to essential services/transport hubs. Those who reside in liveable city neighborhoods and towns with public transport and multiple modes of transport who can walk/bike to work, farmers markets, cafes, etc. will need far less fossil fuel than those commuting to everything via vehicle.

8. If you can’t find work/establish a livelihood, move to a locale with a better infrastructure of opportunity. I explain this in Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, but John Kenneth Galbraith made much the same point in his 1979 book The Nature of Mass Poverty.

9. If you buy property, do so in a state with Prop 13-type limits on property tax increases. We have no choice about being tax donkeys, but choose a state where income and consumption (i.e. sales tax) are taxed rather than property tax. You can choose to earn less and buy less, but you can’t choose not to pay rising property taxes.

10. Be useful to others. That way, they’ll want you around and will welcome your presence. There are unlimited ways to be helpful/useful.

11. Trust the network, not the state or corporation. Centralized systems such as the government and global corporations are either bankrupt and don’t yet know it or are bankrupt and are well aware of it but loathe to let the rest of the world catch on.

12. Be trustworthy. Don’t be morally corrupt or work for corrupt/self-serving institutions. Many initially idealistic people think they can retain their integrity while working for morally bankrupt, self-serving bureaucracies, agencies and corporations; they are all eventually brought down to the level of the institution.

Lagniappe suggestion: lead by example. “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.” Albert Einstein

Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly14/shelter-storm7-14.html

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David Fleming. 2007. The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy. A Life-Cycle in Trouble

Posted on July 11, 2014 by

This is an easy to read 56-page primer on how nuclear reactors work, how ore is mined, nuclear fuel created, why there’s likely to be a supply crunch, and much more. I’ve extracted a small part of this article  and often rephrased some of it. Fleming doesn’t have many (high-quality) citations, so I’ve left out most of what he wrote since I’m not sure if he’s right about various matters (see the discussion at the end of this 2008 theoilddrum article by Fleming)

David Fleming . 2007. The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy. A Life-Cycle in Trouble. www.theleaneconomyconnection.net  

Nuclear Waste

Nuclear power is a source of high-level waste which has to be sequestered. Every stage in the process produces waste, including the mining and leaching processes, the milling, the enrichment and the decommissioning. It is very expensive.

Deep reductions in travel and transport can be expected to come about rapidly and brutally as the oil market breaks down [from declining oil production, making disposal of the wastes less likely].

Nuclear energy relies on the existence of a fully powered-up grid system into which it can feed its output of electricity – but the grid itself is mainly powered by the electricity from mainly coal and gas-fueled power stations, so if coal or gas supplies were to be interrupted, the grid would (at least partially) close down, along with the nuclear reactors that feed into it;

Nuclear energy inevitably brings a sense of reassurance that, in the end, the technical fix will save us.  Which it can’t [since electricity doesn’t solve the liquid fuels crisis at hand, since mining and long-haul trucks, tractors, harvesters, and billions of other diesel powered equipment can’t be run on fuel cells or batteries].

The nuclear industry should focus on finding solutions to the whole of its waste problem before it becomes too late to do so. And hold it right there, because this is perhaps the moment to think about what “too late” might mean. Despite the emphasis placed on oil depletion in this booklet, it is climate change that may well set the final date for completion of the massive and non-negotiable task of dealing with nuclear waste. Many reactors are in low-lying areas in the path of rising seas; and many of the storage ponds, crowded with high-level waste, are close by. Estimated dates for steep rises in sea levels are constantly being brought forward (as of 2014 the latest projection is 1 meter by 2100 made much worse by storm surges best case, worst case is Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets slip off the land into the ocean).

With an angry climate, and whole populations on the move, it will be hard to find the energy, the funds, the skills and the orderly planning needed for a massive program of waste disposal – or even moving waste out of the way of rising tides. When outages in gas supplies lead to break down in electricity supplies, the electrical-powered cooling systems that cool high-level waste will stop working.

It will also be hard to stop ragged armies, scrambling for somewhere to live, looting spent fuel rods from unguarded dumps, attaching them to conventional explosives, and being prepared to use them. All this will have to be dealt-with, and at speed. There may be no time to wait for reactor cores and high-level wastes to cool down.

The task of making those wastes safe should be an unconditional priority, equal to that of confronting climate change itself. The default-strategy of seeding the world with radioactive time-bombs which will pollute the oceans and detonate at random intervals for thousands of years into the future, whether there are any human beings around to care about it or not, should be recognized as off any scale calibrated in terms other than dementia. Nuclear power is an energy source that causes trouble far beyond the scale of the energy it produces. It is a distraction from the need to face up to the coming energy gap.

How reactors work

Nuclear fission uses Uranium-235, an isotope of uranium that splits in half when struck by a neutron, producing more neutrons resulting in a chain reaction that produces lots of energy. The process is controlled by a moderator consisting of water or graphite, which speeds the reaction up, and by neutron-absorbing boron control rods, which slow it down. Eventually the uranium gets clogged with radioactive impurities such as the barium and krypton from uranium-235 decays, “transuranic” elements such as americium and neptunium, and much of the uranium-235 itself gets used up. It takes a year or two for this to happen, and then the fuel elements have to be removed, and fresh ones inserted. The spent fuel elements are very hot and radioactive (stand nearby for a second and you’re dead). In Europe the spent fuel is sometimes recycled (reprocessed), to extract the remaining uranium and plutonium and use them again, although you don’t get as much fuel back as you started with, the bulk of impurities still has to be disposed of, and other scientists believe this has a negative EROEI. Very few nations have anywhere safe to put it to keep future generations from harming themselves over the next billion years (the half-life of U-238, one of the main items of waste, is about 4.5 billion years).

The steps to get electricity from uranium

1. Mine and mill ore. Although uranium is found all over the world, only a few places have enough concentrated uranium ores (.01-.2%) to mine: Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, Russia, the USA, and Uzbekistan in mines up to 800 feet deep. Mines are injected and drenched in in tons of sulfuric acid, nitric acid, ammonia, and other chemicals and pumped up again after 3-25 years, yielding about a quarter of the uranium from the treated rocks and depositing unknown amounts of radioactive and toxic metals into the local environment. You need to grind up 1,000 tons of .1% ore to get 1 ton of yellow oxide and 999 tons of waste, both of which are radioactive from uranium-238 and 13 decay products. The waste takes up much more space after it has been mined, where wind and water can take radioactive waste far away. Properly cleaning it up would take 4 times the energy to mine the ore, so it seldom happens.

2. Preparing the fuel. The uranium oxide must now be enriched to concentrate U-235 to 3.5%, resulting in even more nasty, toxic, scary waste that isn’t properly disposed of. One of the wastes from this process is plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs.

3. Generation. The fuel can now be used to produce heat to raise the steam to generate electricity. When the fuel rods are spent they must cool off to allow the isotopes to decay from 10 to 100 years before they can be disposed of elsewhere. The ponds need a reliable electricity supply to keep them stirred and topped up with water to stop the radioactive fuel elements drying out and catching fire. Then robots need to pack the wastes into lead, steel, and pure electrolytic copper, and put into giant geological repositories considered to be stable. There will never be an ideal way to store waste which will be radioactive for a thousand centuries or more and, whatever option is chosen, it will require a lot of energy.

Human Error. The consequences of a serious accident would make nuclear power an un-insurable risk. The nuclear industry has good safety systems but is not immune to accidents. The work is routine, requiring workers to cope with long periods of tedium punctuated by the unexpected, along with “normality-creep” as anomalies become familiar. The hazards were noted in the mid-1990s by a senior nuclear engineer working for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: “I believe in nuclear power but after seeing the NRC in action, I’m convinced a serious accident is not just likely, but inevitable… They’re asleep at the wheel.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates the probability of meltdown in the U.S. over 20 years is 15 to 45%. The risk never goes away.

4. Reactors last 30-40 years [but are being renewed for another 20 anyhow] but produce electricity at full power for no more than 24 years. During their lifetimes, reactors have to be maintained and (at least once) thoroughly refurbished; eventually, corrosion and intense radioactivity make them impossible to repair. At that point they must be taken apart and disposed of, resulting in at least a thousand cubic meters of high-level waste. After a cooling-off period which may be as much as 50-100 years, the reactor has to be dismantled and cut into small pieces to be packed in containers for final disposal. The total energy required for decommissioning has been estimated at approximately 50 percent more than the energy used in the original construction.

Greenhouse gases

Every stage in the life-cycle of nuclear fission uses energy, and most of this energy is derived from fossil fuels. Since we’re waiting for high-level waste to cool off before dismantling plants, the emissions look better now than they will in the future. And as ores get less concentrated, the carbon dioxide from mining will consume more fossil fuels and emit even more greenhouse gases.

Nuclear power may have a negative EROEI & Peak Uranium

Deposits are often at great depth, requiring the removal of massive overburden, or the development of very deep underground mines, require more energy to mine the resource than is required by the shallower mines now being exploited.

Water problems can reduce EROEI. You can have too little water (it is needed as part of the process of deriving uranium oxide from the ore) or too much (it can cause flooding). Some of the more promising mines have big water problems.

How much uranium with a positive EROEI is left? The Energy Watch group predicts Peak Uranium between 2020-2035. Michael Dittmar at the Institute of Particle Physics predicts Peak Uranium will happen in 2015. The 2005 OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggested a 70 year supply at the current price.

Every year 65,000 tons of uranium are consumed in reactors worldwide. About 40,000 tons are supplied from uranium mines (which are declining in output), 10,000 tons comes from Russian nuclear weapons (contract for this expires in 2013), and 15,000 tons comes from inventories which won’t last much longer.

So the only hope to keep enough uranium in production for existing reactors is more mining. Several medium-sized producers have maintained or increased output the past few years in Kazakhstan, Namibia, Niger, Russia, America and Canada.

But the biggest hope for more uranium is from the Cigar Lake mine, but after catastrophic flooding in 2006, and again in 2008, it wasn’t until spring of 2014 that the mine finally started processing uranium ore. The other big hope was the Olympic Dam in Australia, which has the largest known single deposit of uranium in the world (but it’s very low-grade, with an average of .03%, and only economic because uranium is a byproduct of gold, silver, and copper mining.

Fleming predicts that before 2019 some nuclear reactors will have to shut down due to a lack of fuel.

Fleming goes to great lengths to explain why nuclear power won’t end up having a positive net energy in the future, mainly due to the tremendous amount of energy that will be needed to safely store the wastes that have been building up since the industry started back in the 1950s. (I believe it is highly unlikely we will ever store any of this waste because as oil declines, which 99% of transportation is fueled by, people will want to use oil to grow and transport food, pump drinking water, treat sewage, and so on — safely storing nuclear waste will be at the bottom of the list. This is an outrageous crime: we will poison millions of generations of our descendants, and add to the growing pile of dangers that might drive us extinct).

Fleming demolishes Lovelocks’ proposal to use nuclear power to get ourselves out of the energy and climate change mess. First he shows why Lovelock’s idea of getting uranium from granite won’t work – it’s such a low concentration (.0004%) and for a 1 GW plant, you’d need 100 million tons of granite ore requiring 650 petajoules to extract, yet the energy delivered from the uranium would only be 26 petajoules. The same negative energy return true of uranium from sea water.

Lovelock also urges that we have a readily-available stock of fuel in the plutonium that has been accumulated from the reactors that are shortly to be decommissioned. But this won’t work for many reasons, including that it’s never been attempted in reactors like those we have now. If Lovelock means for us to use a breeder reactor, that has huge problems as well (including that we don’t know how to do this safely yet). There are 3 fast-breeder reactors in the world: Beloyarsk-3 in Russia, Monju in Japan and Phénix in France; Monju and Phénix have long been out of operation; Beloyarsk is still operating, but it has never bred. Getting the plutonium to breed involves 3 processes that, like breeder reactors, have never been done at a commercial scale. You end up with many nasty radioactive mixtures that clog up and corrode equipment.   Even if you could figure out how to do build breeder reactors in 30 years and built 80 in 2045, it would take another 40 years for each breeder to produce enough plutonium to replace itself and start up another nuclear plant. By 2085 we will be deep into oil depletion, yet only have 160 breeder reactors. And that is all we will have, because the uranium-235 reactors we have now will be out of fuel by then.

It’s impossible to prevent accidents at a breeder reactor

A meltdown is nothing compared to the explosion of a breeder reactor, which is basically a large nuclear bomb in a major accident. If you designed a system that couldn’t fail, it would be so expensive you’d have to build an enormous breeder reactor to justify the cost, but such a large reactor would have such a huge dome that there is no material to give it enough structural strength to survive a major accident. You could try to make the defense system even more complex, but then the defense system would be more problem-prone than the breeder reactor itself. A study for the nuclear industry in Japan concludes: “A successful commercial breeder reactor must have 3 attributes: it must breed, it must be economical, and it must be safe. Although any one or two of these attributes can be achieved in isolation by proper design, the laws of physics apparently make it impossible to achieve all three simultaneously, no matter how clever the design.”

Phosphates

(A truly ridiculous idea — see Peak Phosphorous).  Phosphate reserves are likely to last at most for 70 years and they are essential for growing food. They’re also a poor source because they have very low concentrations of uranium. Extracting uranium is difficult, and results in greenhouse gases — the solvents used include toxic organophosphate compounds that result in organofluorophosphorus and greenhouse gases in the form of fluorohydrocarbons.

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David Fleming has an MA (History) from Oxford, an MBA from Cranfield and an MSc and PhD (Economics) from Birkbeck College, University of London. He has worked in industry, the financial services and environmental consultancy, and is a former Chairman of the Soil Association. He designed the system of Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs), (aka Domestic Tradable Quotas and Personal Carbon Allowances), in 1996, and his booklet about them, Energy and the Common Purpose, now in its third edition in this series, was first published 2005. His Lean Logic: The Book of Environmental Manners is forthcoming.

 

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