As many as 115,000 people die in India each year from coal-fired power plant pollution, costing the country about $4.6 billion, according to a groundbreaking new study released.
http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/197641/coal-s-true-cost-1000
Showing posts with label Energy Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Energy Policy. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Obama: Winning the Future with Clean Energy
President Obama travels to Penn State University and speaks about encouraging and investing in innovation and clean energy technologies to create new jobs, grow the economy, and win the future. February 3, 2011.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
RFK, Jr.: Oil Industry Trying to Silence "Gasland" Director
A few years ago it seemed the U.S. was past its peak of natural gas production. Until the fossil fuel industry developed what they're calling "Hydraulic Fracturing" or Frakking. Which just gets us Battlestar Galactica fans giggling. But let's not go there and stay focused on the story. A recent movie, Gasland, has come out really slamming the "Hydraulic Fracturing" process, showing the poisoning of the environment, showing people who can set their tap water on fire, etc. Yup, able to set their tap water on fire. What's in that water for it to be flammable, and how can the tap water possibly be safe? Why wouldn't the EPA be leaning on the municipal water systems in question?
In any case an interview by RFK Jr of Gasland's director, Josh Fox, is claiming that the fossil fuel industry is working the system to keep his movie from being aired, and in every way keeping it out of the public eye. The implication is the fossil fuel industry wants to keep us as sheep, thinking that natural gas is cleaner, that every thing is fine, nothing to worry about, and they don't want this movie disturbing the serenity of current state of affairs.
As an incumbent industry the fossil fuel providers have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure they are free to sell their product to the population. There's laws saying that business leaders are responsible to share-holders to maintain the health of the business, keep it growing, keep the share price in upward motion, and so on. That may well mean that the fossil fuel industry is using their money to create clout to preserve the status quo where we continue using their product. Even though that product is demonstrably poisonous in all ways.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Why scream about destruction of Appalachia ("mountain top removal") and not destruction of the Alberta tar sands region
Last week a hue and cry was raised over mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia. This is such an egregiously bad mining practice that a panel of scientists called for its immediate halt. I mean, what part of "mountain top removal" does not scream in huge bloody letters "DESTRUCTION"??? The goal is to "remove" mountains to get at the coal underneath. Anybody with a half an ounce of awareness would see this.
In Alberta there is a huge deposit of "tar sands" which are being mined and processed to produce liquid oil. The mining process involves destroying whole forests, scraping up the ground, pouring the sands into machines, extracting the oil, and dumping the remaining stuff somewhere.
"Tar sands look like dirt and smell like diesel fuel." This makes them attractive to the oil industry. As I noted in "TechnoSanity #32: Fudged numbers in the IEA's World Energy Outlook, 2009??" it is well understood that oil supplies are running low, and that the world is looking to Canada to fill in the coming gap in production. The 2009 World Energy Outlook made it clear that oil supplies will not keep up with demand, if (when) the economy recovers to produce increased demand, and that the IAEA projects are that to keep up with oil demand in the future will require oil production from places like the Alberta tar sands.
A paper has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the egregiously bad mining practices in the Alberta tar sands region. The report covers the high concentrations of various toxic chemical compounds found in the Athabasca River in Alberta as a result of enormous tar sands mining operations.
The question is why in the one case (Appalachia) it warrants calls for immediate cessation and in the other case (Alberta) it doesn't.Currently, the majority of bitumen is recovered by surface-mining practices that require the clearing of large areas of land, resulting in loss of habitat, including migration corridors and breeding grounds for terrestrial and aquatic species. Methods for mitigating and remediating these effects are under development, but even when remediated the habitat will be considerably different from its previous state. These externalities are costs that should be considered when developing this resource....
Global demand for oil and the resulting economic potential mean that development of oil sands will continue. This development has the potential to impact society and the environment significantly. It is essential that any detrimental effects be mitigated as much as possible and that development proceed in a manner that minimizes effects on the health and welfare of the environment, wildlife, and humans like.
The key is "global demand .. will continue" meaning that "development of oil sands will continue". Canada could turn around and say it's not worth the horrid environmental harm to mine these tar sands, and refuse to allow it to happen. But they aren't doing so. The people of the world could realize that use of oil is a very bad thing, and that we should all stop the practice of using machines which require oil. Doing so would halt the demand for oil. But we aren't doing so in any significant numbers.
Dave Levitan writing on the ecopolitology goes a bit further. He took a look at the authors and found that some of them work for the Alberta Water Research Institute. This institute does research activities into, um, water. "But their Management Advisory Board is peppered with a few people who work for giant oil companies like Statoil Hydro and EPCOR. Like pretty much every large oil company in the world, those two have oil sands projects in Alberta."
Um, this is starting to stink of oil companies influencing researchers ... The line of connection is a bit weak. Just because oil companies are funding the institute employing the researchers doesn't mean oil companies are influencing the researchers. Does it?
Whatever the influence on these researchers one thing is clear from what they wrote in their paper. They are allowing the corporate activity of selling oil to meet the continued demand for oil to stop them from calling for a halt to tar sands oil mining. Even if the oil companies didn't influence them to say this, their actions are benefiting the oil companies and thereby allowing the oil companies to continue destroying and polluting the planet.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Department of Energy - DOE Launches New Website to Bring Energy Technology Information to the Public
WASHINGTON, DC – Secretary Chu announced today that the Department of Energy is launching Open Energy Information (www.openEI.org) - a new open-source web platform that will make DOE resources and open energy data widely available to the public. The data and tools housed on the free, editable and evolving wiki-platform will be used by government officials, the private sector, project developers, the international community, and others to help deploy clean energy technologies across the country and around the world. The website was launched as part of a broader effort at DOE, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and across the Obama Administration to promote the openness, transparency, and accessibility of the federal government.
“This information platform will allow people across the globe to benefit from the Department of Energy’s clean energy data and technical resources,” said Secretary Chu. “The true potential of this tool will grow with the public’s participation – as they add new data and share their expertise – to ensure that all communities have access to the information they need to broadly deploy the clean energy resources of the future.”
DOE worked closely with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and other National Laboratories to develop and populate the Open Energy Information Platform. The site currently houses more than 60 clean energy resources and data sets, including maps of worldwide solar and wind potential, information on climate zones, and best practices. OpenEI.org also links to the Virtual Information Bridge to Energy (VIBE), which is designed as a data analysis hub that will provide a dynamic portal for better understanding energy data. NREL will continue to develop, monitor, and maintain both sites.
Members of the American public and the energy community globally will have the opportunity going forward to upload additional data to the site and download the information in easy-to-use formats. OpenEI.org will also play an important role providing technical resources, including U.S. lab tools, which can be used by developing countries as they move toward clean energy deployment. Over time, the plan is to expand this portal to include on-line training and technical expert networks.
As part of the Administration-wide Open Gov Initiative, Secretary Chu also announced today that the DOE is contributing various tools and data sets for the National Assets program being undertaken by a group of six departments and agencies across the federal government. These agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services; the Agricultural Research Service in the Department of Agriculture; the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the Department of Commerce; the Department of Energy; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, are working together to spur innovation by making it easier for high-tech companies to identify collaborative, entrepreneurial opportunities. By making information from multiple agencies available in RSS and XML feeds on Data.gov, the National Assets program will increase access to information on publicly-funded technologies that are available for license, opportunities for federal funding and partnerships, and potential private-sector partners. This information will help innovators find the information they need and receive real-time updates, which can fuel entrepreneurial momentum, create new jobs, and strengthen economic growth.
Media contact(s):
(202) 586-4940
Sunday, November 1, 2009
TechnoSanity #30: Peak Oil and the UKERC Peak Oil report
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In October 2009 the UK Energy Research Centre released an indepth report on Peak Oil. In this episode of the Technosanity Podcast we go over several articles discussing the report.
Articles discussed in the podcast:-
"Global Oil Depletion" a report on Peak Oil by the UK Energy Research Centre is my summary of the report. Of especial interest is the following two charts.
This shows the rate of oil discovery over the years, and shows that the peak of oil discovery occurred in the early 1960's. The lack of discovering oil is not due to a lack of searching, it is due to a lack of finding. The lack of finding new significant oil discoveries implies strongly that the fossil oil resources on this planet have all been tapped out.
The important wedges in this chart are "Crude oil - fields yet to be developed" and "Crude oil - fields yet to be found". Looking at the chart it appears the IEA expects on the order of 40 million barrels/day will come from those two sources. The first, fields yet to be developed, is oil that's known to exist but hasn't had infrastructure installed to extract the oil. The fields yet to be developed require extensive investment to install that infrastructure.
The fields yet to be found simply aren't known yet. Where are they? We don't know. The IEA is putting a lot of credence in the wish or hope or expectation that those fields will be found. Maybe they'll be found, maybe not.
There needs to be a long lead time to install the infrastructure - something like 10 years to build out an oil field full of oil derricks etc.
Peak Oil - It's Still Coming, It May Be Delayed Though, Whither Resilience and Transition? Why ‘Peak Oil’ Has Yet to Outlive its Usefulness, Oil production could peak in 10 years' time, Have We Reached Peak Oil? and A post-oil world gets less sci-fi by the day all go over the same UKERC study.
The UKERC study warns that the world society will have to find 64 million barrels/day in production by 2030 to replace the decrease in production they expect by then. This is shown on the above chart. But it's not clear where that oil will come from.
Canadian tar sands? The Canadians doubt they'll ever get more than 3 million barrels/day in production.
There are four key issues about oil production and which together point to a supply crunch sooner rather than later.
- declining output: That's peak oil, once we're past the global oil peak it means oil production is declining
- declining discoveries: Discoveries have been in a decline since the early 60's, it means discoveries do not match the rate of use, and that we're due to run out no matter what
- increasing demand: Population increases and other factors mean continuing demand increases
- insufficient projects in the pipeline: Without oil infrastructure projects to exploit the known fields, the oil production capacity cannot increase even with fields we know about
Reflections from ASPO: Contradiction, EROI, and Future Energy Supplies is a look back at the recent conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He talks at length about Energy Return on Investment (EROI) in regard to some claims about "Shale Gas" resources. Someone claims there's 200+ years of natural gas available from Shale Gas. However what's missing from that claim is the EROI of extracting that gas, and if it requires a lot of energy to extract natural gas from shale then is it worthwhile to do so?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
ENERGY.EU - Europe's Energy Portal
URL:
Description:
An information portal that appears to be sponsored by the European Union which tracks many aspects of "energy". This includes oil and fuel prices, renewable energy sources, efficiency, recommendations, and more. It looks to be a very comprehensive site.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
On energy, McCain sounds a lot like Cheney
Joe Conason is claiming the proposals floated by John McCain are eerily like the ones pushed by V.P. Dick Cheney. Hmm... McCain is running on claims he bucked the White House on various things, but hey if he's reading from the same playbook as Cheney then is he really the maverick bucking the administration?
McCain is pushing for the folly of increasing offshore oil drilling .. and .. coincidentally so is Cheney.
McCain is pushing for more nuclear energy .. and .. coincidentally so is Cheney.
McCain is pushing for the oxymoron of 'clean coal' .. and .. coincidentally so is Cheney.
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