Oil's energy contribution has declined by about 12% since 1999. The world's economies have also declined by about 12%. (Using conventional metrics, which are time delayed determinations, this will only be seen in hind sight). The massive destruction of asset values now occurring testifies to it happening.
Peak is well behind us, world economies have peaked and will continue to decline.
Less than 1% of uranium is fissionable. Only uranium-235 is fissionable. We can convert U238 into a fissionable material... plutonium. But the costs associated with this "breeding" solution are prohibitive.
Both France & Japan have experienced difficulty with experimental breeder programs, and these continue to remain offline. It is of note that this is part of the process for building hydrogen bombs. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Aaron, that chart puts us at 79.2% (in 1998) of electricity generated from coal (52.7%), nuclear (18. and Hydro (7.7%).
It also indicates some interesting trends between 1980 and 1998. For the USA, Europe and Japan, oil use for electricity declines sharply. Nuclear increases dramatically.
You are falling into the Matt Savinar trap. You are looking for a perfect silver bullet that provides you EVERYTHING that oil provides.
No, I'm not. I do think that if we did what David Goodstein suggests, and put everything we have into building wind farms and nuclear power plants, we could mitigate the crash. But I don't think we'll do that. Not until it's too late.
And that will still mean the end of life as we know it. That is, the end of industrialism/capitalism. We may not have a dieoff, but we will have a Great Depression that stretches for decades. Each year, a smaller GDP, fewer jobs. Each generation with a lower standard of living than their parents. Until our population drops to a sustainable level.
The mistake you're making is to think that we can just substitute one form of energy for another, in patchwork fashion, and life will go on. It's not going to work that way. It's basic thermodynamics underlying it all. And the thermodynamics say that one way or another, energy's going to be a lot more expensive. That has profound consequences for our society.
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Only 18% of our electricity (USA) is from natural gas.
And supplies are so tight that that's not an insignificant amount. Ironically, they are building hundreds more natural gas fired power plants, to meet the exploding demand. Only no one knows where we're going to get the natural gas for them.
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Nuclear, Coal and Hydro provide about 75% of our electricity. None are in short supply in the next 100 years.
I've no doubt we'll build more nuclear plants as things get tight. I have feeling people's objections to nuclear will fade when the lights go out. Hydro may well be in short supply...because water is. If we didn't run out of oil, we'd run out of water.
Coal is not in short supply now, but if we start using it place of oil or natural gas, it will run out pretty fast. Not to mention how polluting it is.
China has quite a bit of coal. I hate to think what they're going to do with it, once the oil starts running out.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 309 Location: Ontario, Canada
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 8:36 pm Post subject:
At this point, I'm not looking for a cureall solution, I'm looking for the best one we have, to the transportation/vehicle problem. Is this the best available choice? If a politician was to say "ok what should we work towards" is this the best option we have to give them?
If we can't have the average cars going far enough, we have people use telecommunting or electrified mass transit to travel large distances to work, and a plug-in car for day-to-day shopping and chores. And some construction or agriculture vehicles could perhaps be tied into the grid most of the time. You use gasoline/methanol/hydeogen for vehciles that travel too far, work too hard, or don't have an effective "home base" to plug in. At least until we get a better solution for these hold-out problem cases. _________________ "Our forces are now closer to the center of Baghdad than most American commuters are to their downtown office."
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, April 2003
You are falling into the Matt Savinar trap. You are looking for a perfect silver bullet that provides you EVERYTHING that oil provides.
No, I'm not. I do think that if we did what David Goodstein suggests, and put everything we have into building wind farms and nuclear power plants, we could mitigate the crash. But I don't think we'll do that. Not until it's too late.
You might surprised at how quickly Wind farms can be built. The IEA was projecting wind power in 1998. They projected world wind power output estimates through 2020. The world hit the 2020 target in 2004 based mostly on just Denmark and Germany. If there are brownouts in America and natural gas is not available to fill the gap, I can guarantee you that wind farms will become quite common very quickly.
Leanan wrote:
And that will still mean the end of life as we know it. That is, the end of industrialism/capitalism. We may not have a dieoff, but we will have a Great Depression that stretches for decades.
Decades is too long to even think about projecting into the future. It is far more reasonable to limit such projections to no more than 5 to 10 years. So much can change in that time period that predicting farther than that is pure folly.
Leanan wrote:
Each year, a smaller GDP, fewer jobs. Each generation with a lower standard of living than their parents. Until our population drops to a sustainable level.
People who assume population will fall might be in for a surprise. A farm based society encourages children to work the farm. There might be a population explosion if people are forced to farm for survival. The declines in the number of children per family are based on the lack of an economic incentive to have children. Modern society. If we move backwards, population might explode for more child labor.
Leanan wrote:
The mistake you're making is to think that we can just substitute one form of energy for another, in patchwork fashion, and life will go on.
To some extent, there will be a certain amount of sustitution where substitution for oil is possible. It will be more expensive and some things will no longer be economical (delivery pizza, shipping lobster from Maine by plane to Texas, all of Las Vegas).
There are a lot of industries that will likely go bankrupt because their economics dont work without cheap oil. The airlines are a prime example.
But there are a lot of industries/jobs that will likely rise from the crisis. Solar power installation/home conversion. I am actually thinking of converting my house to solar and work thru the kinks. That could be a very valuable skill worth starting a business around.
Leanan wrote:
It's not going to work that way. It's basic thermodynamics underlying it all. And the thermodynamics say that one way or another, energy's going to be a lot more expensive. That has profound consequences for our society.
That may certainly be true. Society will face huge changes. Energy conservation will likely play a huge role in how we live, move about, produce food, etc.
Leanan wrote:
Quote:
Only 18% of our electricity (USA) is from natural gas.
And supplies are so tight that that's not an insignificant amount. Ironically, they are building hundreds more natural gas fired power plants, to meet the exploding demand. Only no one knows where we're going to get the natural gas for them.
That trend is already coming to a screeching halt. The rise in cost for natural gas by 400% in the past couple of years has made utilities aware of the problems. I have followed a few utilities that sold their natural gas plants as a total loss just to get out from under the burden.
If we can't have the average cars going far enough, we have people use telecommunting
We discussed this at work the other day. My co-workers are not really aware of peak oil and I try not to bring it up directly. But I posed the question. At what price of gasoline would you really seriously push for telecommuting to save the trip to and from work? Most of us said that $4 per gallon would likely be the breaking point where telecommuting would be a serious negotiating issue at annual review time.
Aaron, that chart puts us at 79.2% (in 1998) of electricity generated from coal (52.7%), nuclear (18. and Hydro (7.7%).
Not sure what you mean... I didn't run the percents from the data, but it seemed pretty clear that coal is still king.
But coal does the heavy lifting for electric grid. Nuclear has grown by leaps and bounds as has hydro, but unless we solve the problems with breeding nukes simply can't grow much larger. Hydro is of course restricted by suitable locations.
I was just responding to the 75% of electric coming from N H C. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
But coal does the heavy lifting for electric grid. Nuclear has grown by leaps and bounds as has hydro, but unless we solve the problems with breeding nukes simply can't grow much larger. Hydro is of course restricted by suitable locations.
I was just responding to the 75% of electric coming from N H C.
Which was approximately correct, right?
I am saying that Nuclear is about 20%, Coal is about 50% and Hydro is about 5%. Those are all approx. 1% here or there is irrelevant to the macro issues of this discussion.
And I maintain that the experience of Denmark and Germany indicate that Wind can meet the other 20% to 25%.
Fuel is not really the issue with nuclear. Fuel is a minor cost for the overall production of nuclear energy. The main cost of the facilities, safety precautions, regulations. Instead of building entirely new nuke power plants, I wonder how feasible it is to add additional reactors. Many nuke plants are actually 2 to 4 reactors, each generating 800 MW to 1000 MW. It would likely be far more economical to simply license additional reactors at existing nuke plants. The infrastructure is mostly in place for water, safety, etc. I am sure there would be added expense for expansion, but it is likely much less expensive than a completely new plant. Could nuke power grow from 20% to 30% by this method? Any nuke experts reading?
You might surprised at how quickly Wind farms can be built.
That's not the issue. The issue is that wind does not have the EROEI that oil has.
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People who assume population will fall might be in for a surprise. A farm based society encourages children to work the farm. There might be a population explosion if people are forced to farm for survival. The declines in the number of children per family are based on the lack of an economic incentive to have children. Modern society. If we move backwards, population might explode for more child labor.
I agree. Plus, we probably won't have birth control any more. But food will keep the population in check. Without oil, we have about a hundred million people too many.
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To some extent, there will be a certain amount of sustitution where substitution for oil is possible. It will be more expensive and some things will no longer be economical (delivery pizza, shipping lobster from Maine by plane to Texas, all of Las Vegas).
I wonder. Will all that stop, or will it continue for the very wealthy, while the ordinary folk can no longer afford to drive cars?
You might surprised at how quickly Wind farms can be built.
That's not the issue. The issue is that wind does not have the EROEI that oil has.
Yes it is the issue. You said we cannot build Wind farms fast enough. Wind is not a direct replacement for oil so that is not really an issue. I think the issue for Wind power is whether it can replace natural gas as a source for electric power on the grid. If Wind can produce 20% of our grid power, then the answer is yes.
Yes it is the issue. You said we cannot build Wind farms fast enough.
No, I didn't. I said we wouldn't do what Goodstein suggests (build wind, solar, and nuclear) in time. That's a different thing entirely.
It's not necessarily that it takes a long time. It's that by the time we realize we have to do it, it's too late. Aluminum takes a lot of energy to manufacture. In fact, a lot of domestic aluminum plants were driven out of business by the natural gas shortage. No problem; we just import the stuff. But will that be possible, post-peak? If there's little oil for shipping, and everyone's building wind turbines and solar panels, or building up their military, or building ships to transport oil or LNG, there will be shortages of aluminum, copper, steel, and other commodities.
And if there's not enough natural gas for home heating in winter or for making fertilizer to grow food, will people agree that using scarce natural gas to make wind turbines is the best use of our resources, when they won't "pay back" for months or years?
The time to build all the infrastructure we need for the post-peak is now. But we aren't doing it.
You might surprised at how quickly Wind farms can be built.
That's not the issue. The issue is that wind does not have the EROEI that oil has.
Actually, energy payback for wind is on the order of 3-4 months, and if the turbine lasts 10 years (25 years is what they are designed for), we get a EROEI of around 30. What is the EROEI of petroleum again?
Actually, energy payback for wind is on the order of 3-4 months, and if the turbine lasts 10 years (25 years is what they are designed for), we get a EROEI of around 30.
Can you give us a reference for that? Most of the EROEIs I've seen for wind are in the 2-10 range. A recent article in Discover said that wind was "almost" competitive with oil for electricity generation. (But that's a different thing entirely from transportation, what we usually use oil for.)
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What is the EROEI of petroleum again?
It's estimated that it was 200 when we first discovered it. It was 100 in 1950, and has been dropping steadily. Current EROEI depends on where we're getting it from. Middle East oil has an estimated EROEI of 30. But then, these are the same people who estimate wind has an EROEI of 4. If you're right and they're wrong, maybe they're wrong about oil, too.
Actually, energy payback for wind is on the order of 3-4 months, and if the turbine lasts 10 years (25 years is what they are designed for), we get a EROEI of around 30.
Can you give us a reference for that?
Unfortunately, no, but I did see two different studies in that EROEI area a couple months ago, and a GE presentation in which they did an analysis of their own (not that they would be biased- yeah right)
and these also included the energy that would be needed to remove the tower and pad, but I doubt that would be done, likely just repowered.
Leanan wrote:
But that's a different thing entirely from transportation, what we usually use oil for.
Very true, but any net energy is going to be very welcome, maybe electrified trains may be in order.
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and Hydro (7.7%).
