Slashdot Mirror
Shell Ditches Wind, Solar, and Hydro
thefickler writes "Shell has decided to end its investment in wind, solar and hydro projects because the company does not believe they are financially sound investments. Instead Shell is going to focus on carbon sequestration technologies and biofuels. Not surprisingly, and perhaps unfairly, bloggers have been quick to savage the company: 'Between Shell's decisions to stop its clean energy investments and to increase its debt load to pay for dividends, the company is solidifying an image of corporate greed over corporate responsibility.' Is Shell short sighted, or is it just a company trying to make its way in an uncertain world?"
quick to savage the company logo is more like it.
As a company, if they can make more money on oil than on wind, then clearly the shareholders will demand oil. Oil is there bread and butter. I wouldn't expect them to innovate on something that is outside of their corporate culture. Like with the movie and music and software industries; you get innovation and creativity from smaller independent entities, and conservativism from the established entities.
1. They shreaded Lord Oxburgh's employment record.
2. They are maintaining their position that they can't keep building renewable infrastructure forever. They, along with many other multi-nationals have asked for and do need certainty about what constitutes a ton of GHG, how many tons are available, and how they can go about buying and selling it.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I mean when you really think about it, getting unlimited energy from basically nowhere for next to free over the long run is awfully risky. I mean where's the profit model there? I just can't see it. And how can they calculate a profit margin when the energy is free? Their calculators just keep saying error when they try and divide it out. I can see why they gave up.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
i think it would be bad anyway if the companies whose primary business is selling fossil fuel also controlled a large chunk of the renewable energy market.
I mean can you say 'conflict of interests'?
Leave it to the little guys that are better (specialized/core business) at it anyway.
And at least now we truly know where they stand.
Controlled fusion is the next step for our species. We won't know how hard it is except for retrospectively, but we haven't got much time left.
Nobody wants to save energy. There are billions of people on this planet that would like to use half as much energy as an average American, and no amount of wind or solar is going to deliver that.
FTA: Since biofuels frequently lead to greater emissions than either diesel or gas,
That's not really true... Using Biodiesel can result in 75% less CO2 emissions, at the exhaust pipe.
Some Biodiesels, eg, based on Coconut oil, are incredibly low on emissions.
People who claim biodiesel releases more CO2 are making an argument industry wide, including the converting of existing land not used for agriculture to produce biofuels.
Which is a little dishonest, because there are other technologies being developed that make use of badly salt-affected land to produce Biofuel. (Algae based production)
These technologies actually improve the situation and make use of land that otherwise cannot be used at all.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Just because they're being shellfish doesn't mean you have to be crabby. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Let's strap all oil company executives to bicycles instead, it would be a good learning experience for somebody that's never done any real work before~
While it is unpleasant that they are cutting back on other options, putting money into carbon sequestration actually makes a lot of sense for an oil company. Apparently something similar has been done for at least a couple of decades to use injected gas to extract extra oil from wells.
Compared to anything mentioned, the cleanest form of energy is nuclear power, all factors considered. It's the only thing we should be looking at in the long run as a primary source of power for the grid. Wind and solar are great for local uses but not on a large scale. They are incredibly land intensive for a very small output. A nuclear power plant's physical footprint for the power it generates is practically nil.
People just have to stop equating nuclear power with nuclear weapons, and realizing that modern reactors are far, far safer than reactors from half a century ago. Unfortunately, the United States has lost 30 or 40 years of reactor development time compared to other countries.
As usual, radical environmentalists are their own worst enemy. They advocate alternative energy, and then jump up and down when a new solar installation is built on a fictionally endangered habitat or a wind farm causes migratory bird strikes. You can't have it all ways.
You must find a viable replacement for fossil fuels before eliminating them or taxing them to death. Solar and wind alone are not a viable replacement at that scale.
GP says fuck the hippies and gets and Insightful. Parent says fuck the executives and gets a Troll.
Now, I'm down with the hippie hate, but I guess moderators really do like sucking corporate cock.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The problem is there's a conflict of interest; if they invest in solar/wind and managed to improve efficiency enough to reduce demand for oil then they lose money. They will promote whichever energy source gives them the largest profits, and don't have an incentive to invest in new energy sources when there are hugely profitable oil fields to look for.
Don't get me wrong I'm not a crackpot who thinks you can power the world with solar/wind, but I do think oil companies need a bit of government coercion to invest in research.
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The post header is a flamebait - and the mods have really screwed up for not having caught it. If you read the TFA (yes yes, I know this is /.), the article headline says "Shell dumps wind, solar and hydro power in favour of biofuels"
They are saying that compared to investing in wind, solar and hydro, they want to invest in biofuel reseach, since they think it will be profitable (duh! they are a company - they exist to make a reasonable profit).
The impression I got from reading the slashdot post header was that shell has decided to go completely out of alternative energy (/non fossil fuels) entirely.
Posting sensationalist headlines is o.k. for mags - why do that here on /.?
"Laziness is an optimisation protocol"
Stupidest idea ever. Funny. But not insightful.
Why do you think this? Large companies are conservative and short-sighted. Even "long term" planning is at most 10-15 years. The markets are even more short-sighted and especially stupid. "Shareholders" comprise two groups: long-term investors (e.g., 401k's) that want slow, consistent growth. And then there are the short-term traders. They are either idiots or the scum of the earth. Nobody here is willing to take on a good risk on the 20-30 year horizon.
You shouldn't have such blind faith in the free market. It is darn good at solving short-term problems. But, boom-bust cycles are a counterexample to long-term efficacy of "market value."
if they invest in solar/wind and managed to improve efficiency enough to reduce demand for oil then they lose money
Before someone comments that they'd be selling panels/turbines instead of oil; remember oil is a commodity, panels/turbines are a technology. They would much rather deal with selling energy rather than selling energy generators.
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the land that "otherwise can't be used at all" is the naturally brackish wetlands that protect the oceans from our retarded corporate farming policies. "Biofuels" require the raping of nature. Nuclear is, unfortunately, the only plausible short term solution; solar and wind are nice eye candy but have failed miserably to scale or become financially viable. Long term, fusion is the only one that looks good now, but crystal balls are notoriously bad. The brutal reality is that any alternative energy must be cost effective to work. That's just all there is to it.
With shells like these who needs anemones?...
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Personally, I am happy that they are doing this. First, Solar PV IS CURRENTLY THE MOST EXPENSIVE generator going. Solar THERMAL is a different thing. It is cheaper than coal is currently, if you do not include salt storage. They are looking at co2 sequestering. Ok. My guess is that shortly, somebody else will create a plant that uses Solar thermal for daytimes and then switches to Natural gas for cloudy/night. Mostly clean, EXCEPT for CO2. Sequester it, and things are good. The nice thing about such an approach is that it WILL lead to more AE.
Likewise, there are MANY other companies doing hydro and wind. Their pulling out will do nothing to harm them. IOW, they will continue.
That brings up the issue of bio-fuels. Far too many of you are thinking in terms of ethanol via corn, sugar cane, etc. That is a red herring (just like hydrogen production is). Skip that garbage and instead focus on converting crap (literally) to gas; ALGAE. There are several companies that are scaling up right now; Solix and Sapphire. Sapphire is doing gas production directly and they currently have it at less than 100/bl oil equivelence. BOTH of these companies need the price of oil to go up to around 80-85/bl and we are approaching that. These companies will likely get money from US and scale quickly. US MAY be a gas exporter within 4 years because of bio-fuels, combined with American cars moving towards electrical powering.
Even now, I look at the dependency that EU has on Russia for Natural Gas, and how Russia has used it. Shell can help break that. Ppl just need to think big and long term.
With that said, I am amazed that Shell, is walking away from things like hydro, and even wind. Foolish on their part. BUT, it still works out.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If those alternative energy sources were even remotely feasible you can be sure they would be all over them.
Why? Because they are in a rush to make their existing oil lines, distribution networks, and stations obsolete, and want to shake up the system that is making them money? Not to say they have no interest, but they'd be all over them ONLY if they thought they could make even more money doing so, which they might not.
If those alternative energy sources were even remotely feasible you can be sure they would be all over them.
"Alternative" energy sources are feasible, but they just don't make as much money as oil. In the long run "alternative" energy sources (like wind for example) are much more economically feasible (to ordinary citizens at least) because they don't cause global warming, smog, lung cancer, asthma, etc.
Lets strap all of the environmental whack jobs to bicycles and have them the pedal generators to a cleaner tomorrow.
Generally people use ad hominems when they don't have a valid argument. Emotional appeals and rants often do satisfy the lowest common denominator in society however. It's one of the reasons why people like you often get Moderated Insightful.
Corporate Social Responsibility is another one of those dishonest and fraudulent business fads, flaunting secondary goal that often contradict with the primary goal of making money. When push comes to shove, guess which one would prevail. Shell is an oil company, set up to make money in oil business. Criticizing it for not being "socially responsible" (however you define it) is like berating a snake for not acting like a cow.
You want renewable energy, set up monetary incentive for it, and be prepared to pay for it.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
If they hadn't gotten into renewable energy, sure there would have been some good PR lost, but take a look at the backlash they're going to get now pulling out of it. The mistake was to get in if they had no staying power.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Put all objectivists into prisons and lock them into gigantic hamster wheels while collecting the hot air they generate while screaming about purestrain gold. This plan is guaranteed to generate enough power to launch five space shuttles per day for ten years, plus we would be removing all objectivists from society. There is no downside to this plan, if you disagree, you are wrong.
In fact, it's logical for the oil companies to be behind any future fuels. They already have much of the infrastructure required for it, there is no way any start up can build up to that level in a reasonable amount of time.
This isn't BIG OIL(ever notice how you can put "big" in front of any industry to make them sound evil?) killing renewable fuels, it's a business accepting that these technologies are unfeasible for them. Wind and solar are dicey at best as energy sources. Hydro is made impossible by the very same environmentalists trashing shell.
The issues with biofuel come about from the realities of BIG AGRICULTURE. In the US for example, corn is a staple crop. Why? Because of massive government subsidies, ethanol being one of them. Corn is a terrible way to produce it, but it's kept alive to keep money going to farms.
Biofuel is the here and now, it could be implemented on wide scales quickly and at reasonable cost. But to do so requires farmers to grow something more efficient than corn, and for oil companies to buy into it. BIG OIL isn't retarded, they know they're going to run out of oil and are poised to jump on whatever is next.
Of course, this is all moot because biofuel and solar/hydro solve two different problems. The problem of generating electricity is very different from that of powering cars. The main issue at hand is finding a way to store energy in a sufficiently dense, low cost package to power a car. Today's batteries are awful at this. All the clean power in the world doesn't mean dick if you can't store and harness it.
Bah, humbug.
Does this mean we can PLEASE break up/ditch/ignore the Corn Cartel... sorry, lobbying group... which is probably the single biggest reason that biofuel is expensive and inefficient and such a bad idea?
Although I'm unhappy to see Shells move, I can't blame them... they aren't really a R&D outfit, and other startups are taking over the role of expanding wind/hydro/solar and making it profitable. Now, if they would just dump all that money into deciding that algae (or, gasp, hemp!) is a much more efficient biofuel, and help get rid of Big Corn, then everyone could win...
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
"[New energy source] or bust" is a very irresponsible thing to say; we need to learn to compromise. But I'll just focus on your particular suggestion of fusion:
Fusion is very promising, if only because it has no proliferation worries, but other than that all of the advantages that count are already available in fission reactors.
Think solar is renewable? Not as renewable as nuclear.
All we need is for the public to get their heads out of their asses and learn to accept compromise.
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Please learn the correct usage of ad hominem before you ever type it again on the internet. Here's one form of ad hominem to get you started.
Oil companies can't be trusted when they say that some alternative energy sources are financially sound investments, because they're just propping up their multi billion dollar fossil fuel industry
Capitalism is the enshrinement of the profit motive. Not only do you worship it, but you're using unfair trade rules, corporate strongarming and even military action to "liberate" the rest of the world from all other methods of social organization.
When you stop thinking that you have the best country in the world, then you can start whining about things like this. Until then, however, bend over and take it like good little consumers.
That means 'they are NOT financially sound investments'... :)
I cannot fathom the kind of person who would actually spend the time to write that. Truly, I'm astonished.
I hate printers.
With BP, Arco and other companies at least acknowledging in TV ads that the current 100% reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable and other solutions, along with simply using less, are a must. Shell is an awfully wealthy company and investing 1% of the money they spend on locating new oil sources would finance an awful lot of school/university projects to come up with financially viable forms of alternative energy. This investment would have more than paid for itself just on PR value.
I have never been particularly loyal to any brand of gas, but I think I will start using the BP station 3 blocks down the road that I drive to get home anyway rather than Shell which is just at the highway exit.
People like to vilify Shell because they are total assholes. Do some research on what they did to the women of a Nigerian village who objected to having oil tar poured on their fields. Shell is one of the most evil companies on the planet bar none. You can be an oil company without having people murdered.
No, the executive-hating parent made no point and clearly has no understanding of the oil industry, if they sincerely believe that oil executives do no work. Nor have they seen people cycling to work at the Shell Centre on the south bank.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
"end its investment in wind, solar and hydro projects":
twas just a PR stunt so they, as oil company, could
make TV adds for themselves that for once didn't
involve a car.
*VVRRRRROOOOoomm*
-
side note: whats more free then water dropping from
the sky, light shinning from the sun and wind?
not a sound investment? lol
Theoretically, television may be feasible, but I consider it an impossibility--a development which we should waste little time dreaming about.
- Lee de Forest, 1926, inventor of the cathode ray tube
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
- Thomas J. Watson, 1943, Chairman of the Board of IBM
It doesn't matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.
- Albert Einstein's teacher to his father, 1895
It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister.
- Margaret Thatcher, 1974
This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
- Western Union internal memo, 1876
We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Bill Gates, 1981
Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.
- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
We don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.
- Hewlett-Packard's rejection of Steve Jobs, who went on to found Apple Computers
King George II said in 1773 that the American colonies had little stomach for revolution.
An official of the White Star Line, speaking of the firm's newly built flagship, the Titanic, launched in 1912, declared that the ship was unsinkable.
In 1939 The New York Times said the problem of TV was that people had to glue their eyes to a screen, and that the average American wouldn't have time for it.
An English astronomy professor said in the early 19th century that air travel at high speed would be impossible because passengers would suffocate.
Airplanes are interesting toys, but they have no military value.
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch in 1911
With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.
- Business Week, 1958
Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.
- Frank Knox, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, on December 4, 1941
Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, October 16, 1929.
"Alternative" energy sources are feasible, but they just don't make as much money as oil. In the long run "alternative" energy sources (like wind for example) are much more economically feasible (to ordinary citizens at least) because they don't cause global warming, smog, lung cancer, asthma, etc.
So you need to get your government to legislate for these externalities, because at the moment these have no effects on the economics at all. Shell is inherently a long-run enterprise, you can't just pull a chemical plant out of your backside and start making money. Shell are looking at the long-run and saying that governments will not have the courage to make difficult decisions and so they will scramble towards biofuels as an eco-sop and a way of subsidising farmers.
See here, these have been published for some time, and give insight to what Shell are doing today.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Sure, if Shell were the only company in the world, they wouldn't have any incentive to invest in alternative energy. But if they don't, someone else will. So while a solar panel sold may be a lost oil sale, Shell would sure as hell rather be the ones profiting on the solar panel.
The problem here is that there is no profit in the alternative energy business, at least not on the scale Shell operates on. One day that will change, but there is still too much oil in the world for that to happen yet.
Another issue at play is the tragedy of the commons. The free market model relies on every transaction reflecting the true value of the good changing hands. Thats the idea behind a subsidy; one party is selling a good or service to another party, but the public as a whole also benefits from the service, so the public helps pay for it.
Thats also the idea behind the failed-as-implemented idea of carbon credits. When I buy a gallon of gasoline and burn it, I just paid a company to pump the oil out of the ground, refine it, ship it to me, etc. I even paid taxes for the roads I drive on. But I went and blew all those toxic fumes into the atmosphere, a public resource, without paying for that resource.
The only viable solution to this is to impose a tax on every gallon of gasoline equivalent to the cost of removing a gasoline-gallon's worth of exhaust from the atmosphere. By forcing consumers to pay the true cost of gasoline we will allow the free market system to eventually correct the situation and make renewable energy a viable business model that much sooner. Of course some subsidies won't hurt either, but you can't just subsidize "good" without penalizing "bad".
Yes, there is a lot of silicon. There is a lot of oxygen. But the silicon is combined with oxygen in sand. The problem is separating the silicon from the oxygen.
Oh yeah and another thing. Oil companies are not 'energy companies' they are 'resource extraction companies' there's a difference.
This relates to an argument about making furnaces better. The furnace company has very little incentive to make a more efficient furnace because they do not have to pay for the consumables and they make a profit off of parts and service. One idea to make HVAC more efficient is to make vertical monopolies within the industry that provide the server of heating or cooling. If the manufacturer has to pay capital costs and variable reoccurring costs then they will make a machine that lasts forever and uses as little resources per unit of heating or cooling as possible. This is why GM killed the EV because they want you to consume parts and service for the (short) life of the car. If GM gave you the service of having a car and had to pay for gas, parts and service you would have 100mpg cars in 10 years that would last a million miles without service. Don't think a million mile per engine car is possible? Look at the Volvo PS-1800, 2 million miles on single engine made in the 1960s.
Oil companies have generated more super wealthy people on this planet than any other human activity; don't underestimate people's ability to do evil when it comes to trillions of dollars.
We don't have enough arable land on planet earth to fully convert from oil to biofuel.
Furthermore, it's a physical fuel that must be grown (on land, using fertilizers, pesticides and farm machinery), processed (expending energy) and then transported (expending energy).
Biofuel is only cheap because of gullible (or corrupt) politicians.
Stop the brainwash
Wind and solar are a load of shit. They require huge upfront costs, have low reliability, and are hard to transport. Bio fuels, esp. cellulose, TDP, and algaculture are efficient, require low or lower upfront cost and can use existing infrastructure owned by the company.
PGE, Marlborough New Zeland, and some companies in Texas are working with algae. What is algae but the product of billions of years of technical development to be the most efficient solar power device on the planet. It is self replicating and can turn our shit into oil. It can also be used for carbon sequestration (if you burn the oil on site you can vent the exhust through the growing algea to speed up production and capture CO2.) Algae in a best case scenario can create 20,000 gallons of bio fuel per acre of land vs. 18 gallon per acre by corn. It doesn't use up the soil resources, it doesn't need chemical fertilizers created with fossil fuels, and it can per pumped around in pipelines that we already own. When combined with TDP you don't even need to worry about having the most efficient producer of oil or getting contaminated with other strains or bacteria. You can just run the system on whatever green goo grows and then render it down into shorter carbon chains. If another better strain that is more efficient comes along later just inoculate with that one. Don't fucking wait for perfection, just get going.
Thinking you can produce a cost efficient solar system that completes with a primary biological producer shows a painful level of hubris. Want nano-tech power? Wow mother nature already does that.
The biofuel tech I see with the most promise is Celloluse biofuel plants.
Several are being built now in varying sizes, and they can use nearly any type of plant refuse to produce fuel.
Think about the acres of land in highway strips and airports sitting unused but required to be mowed? What if all our lawn clippings
turned into Ethanol? Sure, the fuel/acre is nothing compared to corn, but the organic material is already being created and wasted!
To me, that is as close to 'free energy' as solar and wind (yep, still costs $$$ to build the plants, maintain them, run them, and distribute the product, just like solar/wind)
Shell didn't say they'd "never" invest in solar/wind. As oil prices rise, their interest in solar/wind/etc will rise as well, because the delta profit will be more in it's favor. The only way that's going to happen real soon is if governments make oil power so expensive (taxes or greenhouse regulations) that they change the profit curve. And the hit to the economy isn't something any country seems willing to go through right now.
See, troll. Ad hominem and emotive attacks with little or no factual content.
If the evil oil companies are the ones raping the American people, I'm sure glad no American ever bought any oil related products, or voted for some kind of anti-environment President, otherwise they might be considered partly responsible themselves...oh, wait.
The chemical/energy industries are full of scientists, chemists and engineers. There is more of a green attitude in Shell than there is in Parliament/Congress/any government I can think of.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Scrubbing a few percent of sulfur or nitrogen oxides from flue gas is one thing but let's suppose they develop technology to scrub all the carbon dioxide -that is, the vast bulk of waste gas from combustion -aside from the (presumably) environmentally benign water. Just how much of the stuff are they going to have to deal with? Stoichiometry and Periodic Table data help here. Ideally, one tonne of carbon (Atomic Weight 12) will generate 3.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide (Molecular Weight 44). So, roughly speaking, every semi-trailer (or train) full of the back dirty stuff brought into the power plant will require four trucks or trains to carry the waste away! Probably more due to the difficulties of bulk-handling compressed gases. Since we need to store the stuff safely for geological time-spans we also need to consider the volume of the waste collected. One cubic metre of coal will generate perhaps 5000 cubic metres of carbon dioxide at room temperature and pressure. (There's some uncertainty about just how much coal is in a cubic metre. It's not likely to be a solid lump but if it was, there would be 3.6 tonnes. Powdered coal would be somewhat less dense but you get the idea.) That's a lot of champagne bubbles! Obviously the waste gas, once collected, is going to need to be compressed and refrigerated to make the handling challenge more manageable but more energy will be needed for that. The Lake Nyos burp disaster killed 1700 Cameroonians in 1986, so large depositories of carbon dioxide are not to be trifled with. Carbon sequestration is just camouflage for corporate dinosaurs.
The USA currently subsidizes the oil trade directly, and indirectly through foreign policies centered around oil. This includes military spending, a lot of it. If the free market were sane, and the costs were built in to the products that incur them, what do you suppose would happen? What if all spending for military intervention in the Middle East had to be paid for through gas taxes? The effects would be seismic.
We in the US only just now got $80 billion in subsidies for alternative energies in the last stimulus bill from Obama. That's a good start, but had we spent all the money we've spent on the bloody misadventure in Iraq on putting up solar panels, solar chimneys, and wind turbines or more innovative forms of wind power, the world would be a different place, and Shell would be singing a different tune.
Corporations go after the easiest money, quite reflexively. They have no other ethic. They're just not built for it. If you want a world where companies do what's right, change the rules, whether from the capitol or the grassroots.
According to TFA, Shell have been investing in production facilities (wind farms), in that case they'd be selling energy, not technology.
I seem to remember they used to be one of the biggest investors in PV plants, for which your comment would be true.
Clean energy is just PR bullbyproduct for oil companies. As long as going clean isn't enforced, they are willing to spend a tiny % of their budget to look nicer to the public. But the USA will change their attitude towards the Kyoto protocol, this is going to cost money, so the PR party is over.
Be more specific please, is it bash? Korn? ash? zsh? Jebus!
I'm not defending that philosophy at all. I don't know where you got that from.
You're defending the head-in-the-sand philosophy, where people blame 'big oil' because it's easier than taking personal responsibility for the impact one's actions have on the environment.
Oil companies don't destroy the environment and pump oil for shits and giggles, they do it because people are paying them hand-over-fist to do it. People are also willing to forgo legislation to protect the environment to save themselves a few bucks, and then bitch about how the environment is being wrecked.
Yeah, it sucks that Big Oil is ruining the planet man, I wish I could do something about it. What car? This car? No, I need that to drive to my air-conditioned gym.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
There is more free, clean energy in hot rocks 3-5km below the surface than all coal, oil and nuclear fuel combined. It cost nothing to extract other than the initial capital investment, and produces no harmful by-products other than the electricity that you an I take for granted in this modern age.
A bit more research money toward the economic construction of geothermal plants would see us free of fossil and nuclear fuel for the foreseeable future, and that is many, many generations of our species.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
The other consideration here is that it's not the oil executives job to weigh energy cost and the damage to the environment; that's a moral choice that has to be made by society as a whole, via government. Do you really want oil companies to start taking moral stands? What if an oil company executive decides that homosexuality is a sin, and stops selling petrol to gays? Is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
That's a bit like saying bottled drinking-water companies would be all-over home water delivery and filtration, if it were remotely feasible...
Even if there are signs that the oil industry is slowly dying, an entrenched field, where you've got no competition is MUCH more profitable than jumping into new markets which ANYONE can compete in on an equal footing.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Not feasable... then you have to feed the "whack jobs" more energy than you get out. Even the lowly, inefficient photovoltaic cells are many times more efficient than that scheme...
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
You said:
If they really are thinking in the long term perhaps they should get started on a corporate army while they are at it. I wonder what they will base the bonuses on in that department? Body counts?
And then there is reality:
What is a human life worth to a foreign oil company in Nigeria? Apparently just $143.00, the amount Agip originally offered each of the families of the murdered men to compensate for their loss.
- Ref: a href ="http://acas.prairienet.org/alerts/nigeria/blood&oil.htm">http://acas.prairienet.org/alerts/nigeria/blood&oil.htm
Nor have they seen people cycling to work at the Shell Centre on the south bank.
What? You think 2% of Shell employees cycling to work balances out the fact that shell is one of the most polluting companies in the world?
My pics.
I believe Jonathan Swift, if he lived in this era and understood Slashdot moderation, would just as soon moderate that Troll as anybody else. Swift's satire was coherent and relevant, which this is not.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I don't see how carbon sequestering can be more economically viable than wind or solar, unless there are laws passed or subsidies levied that make it economically viable. That's a technology that doesn't actually produce anything. It's more of a garbage collection service than an energy technology.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I cannot fathom the kind of person who would actually spend the time to read that. Truly, I'm astonished.
:o)
Fixed
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Today, oil companies dominate.... oil. (Look how people scream about it!)
Do you really want them to dominate sun, wind, and water technologies instead?
They would get all of the same grief they get now, and more.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Why not when siberia is going to explode with 50gt of methane soon anyway.
As someone who has previously had to choose between a 60% efficient natural gas furnace, and a 95% efficient gas furnace, I call bullshit on at least one of your claims. The 95% model was priced cheaply enough to place it firmly into no-brainer territory. Meanwhile, reaping the remaining 5% of waste energy out of the system is deep into the realm of diminishing returns.
Furthermore, parts and service profits don't have any direct correlation to efficiency gains: As an HVAC manufacturer, would you rather service a 60% efficient unit, or a 95% efficient unit? I'd wager it really doesn't matter...
Kid-proof tablet..
People who suggest cycling as a commute should just bite themselves. Typical car commute in the metro areas is 30 min without traffic slowdowns.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Why ask large corporates to be responsible? I say take personal responsibility and don't buy their products. Ride a bike!
I wouldn't be suprised if Shell (or other oil companies) would opt to do this. They gather the money now so they can buy those renewable-energy start-up companies AFTER they've proven SUCCESSFUL (i.e. let the weaklings die, then invite the survival-tried to join the gang).
My sig is better than your sig.
Well. Two.
NIMBY
BANANA
And the fact that if you say "nuclear" to some people, they do a GREAT imitation of a cat, arching their spines, hissing and spitting.
Whoops! Sorry! That was three wasn't it?
They'll KEEP pointing to archaic monstrosities like TMI and Chernobyl and go "BUT WHAT IF IT HAPPENS AGAIN!" until the end of time.
Yeah, and what if it started suddenly raining knives from the sky! Think of the children!
You simply CANNOT convince these people that it's safe and you cannot decouple "nuclear" from "weapon of destruction".
And while I'm disappointed in Shell for taking this step backwards, a part of me would MUCH rather a new, vigorous economic juggernaut create itself than having to deal with the back-monkey of a previous, someday-obsoleted industry.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
1: CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas produced. Notice how they don't mention any of the other things.
2: There's an environmental impact in GENERATING the biofuel as well.
3: Fuel consumption vs emissions. Sure, you produce 75% less of a single greenhouse gas. But if you're spending (and burning) 50% more in fuel because you're getting lower MPG, it tends to balance out.
Oh wait. Inconvenient little factoids?
OH NOEZ!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You forget. Such people would have the majority of us (as long as it didn't include THEM) die off "for the greater good", and have the remainder living in caves, starving to death because anything you do has an environmental impact.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Actually, most salt-affected land is inland and it's completely dead... No plant life exists there at all...
Salinity kills the plants... All of them... It's all just salt-encrusted mud with dead tree branches sticking out of it...
And they already use dead salt-lakes to produce algae-based biodiesel for about half of the current price of diesel.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
We NEED to build the latest designs of reactors out of Europe and Asia and not the 1950s style Pressurized Water Reactors.
We NEED to get past the fear of nuclear proliferation and allow spent nuclear fuel to be reprocessed
If both of these things are done, it solves a lot of the current problems with nuclear power.
Newer reactor designs (pebble bed etc) are a lot safer.
Breeder Reactors and Reprocessing help solve the nuclear waste problem by taking all the waste currently sitting in cooling ponds and storage sites around the US and extract more energy from it. The result after waste has been reprocessed and run again and again and there is no more reprocessing that can be done to it is (IIRC) easier to store and takes less time to become totally inert than the current waste comming from existing reactors.
New reactor designs and other modern technology can use nuclear fuel (not just Uranium) that PWRs cannot.
if they are dead?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Its simple: eco-friendly is the new god to many. They see it as heresy to even suggest 'green' fuels aren't green, or aren't a better-than-break-even venture. Like most religious zealots, facts or reality mean nothing if those facts interfere with their faith or first beliefs. Simply put, logic be damned. (This is why we've got 'green terrorists' burning down SUV dealerships.)
Oh, also, it's plainly obvious why Shell is doing what they're doing. Large companies are not well suited for persuing emerging trends, or for that matter, quick-and-dirty R&D. This is particularly true during a recession/depression, when they've got to be careful to not be capsized utterly. On the flip side of things, this is why small R&D, and 'start ups' in general, tend to flourish during hard economic times (as Apple, MS, etc. did during the late-70s/early-80s): the big dogs are slow to maneuver due to a tightening belt, and are more risk/challenge averse.
If history can be any indication, some small start-ups will invent/discover the "next big thing" in terms of 'renewable' energy.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Non OPEC production has certainly peaked, the only question really is Saudi and it looks like their production peaked in 2005 as well. So oil is going to keep running up against demand, hitting 150 dollars plus per barrel. Producing bio-oil is likely to be very profitable in the short to medium term.
Of course businesses can't really function at 150 per barrel so you get this massive demand destruction and a following recession. Think of it like a hammer knocking oil dependent economies back down just as soon as it gets going.
Deleted
What would Ken Saro-Wiwa do?
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Do some research on what they did to the women of a Nigerian village who objected to having oil tar poured on their fields.
Every time I try to Google it, it keeps coming back to your posting. Put me out of my misery - what DID they do (With citation, please) ?
Squirrel!
http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Swiss_Geothermal_Drilling_Upsets_Neighbours_999.html
FTA:
Geothermal is nice and easy when you have geysers or volcanoes that pump that power to the surface for you (like in Iceland) - almost all you need to do to harvest it is lay down the pipes.
But when you try to "dig it up" yourself... that is a whole new ballgame.
As the example above shows - pumping cold water three miles into earth beneath your feet MAY not be such a smart idea.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Seriously, they are an oil company in the business of producing and refining crude oil, for a profit. That's what their entire infrastructure is built around. Thousands of miles of pipe, thousands of service stations, thousands of by-products and oil-derivatives, sea and land tanker fleets, claims to reserves, geological surveys, exploration, oil derricks, off-shore platforms, thousands of scientists, geeks, tradesmen, and explorers, and so on. None of which correlate well to Wind, Solar, or Hydro. Yes, you can use oil products to generate electricity, but Shell wants to deliver the fuel, not run the power plant.
Now that the price of crude oil has settled back to where the market dictates, instead of speculators, Shell is making far less money (along with every company/country in that sector). This isn't much more than a belt tightening and cutting projects that are not contributing to the core business.
Again, they're an oil company trying to profit. The world doesn't run on good intentions, well wishes, and fairy dust. It does run on money and oil though.
I think the other technologies show lots of promise, especially solar, but let someone who specializes in it do it. I am a realist and understand that its going to take a combination of everything to get us to whatever is next.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Do you really want them to dominate sun, wind, and water technologies instead?
...you mean that they would do that by building a Dyson sphere around the Sun and painting a huge Shell logo on it?
That would be AWESOME!
Hell... even a Dyson ring would be like "Check it out Milky Way! Type II CIV in the making here! YOU are next baby, you ARE next! We're coming for ya!".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Folks, we're *in an economic depression* and don't know when we're going to get out - and neither does Shell. It is not surprising that Shell (and other companies) are re-trenching and focusing on "profitable RIGHT NOW" business segments as they bunker down to weather the economic storm. Right now, Wind/Solar are at best marginal investments dependent more on customers need to "feel good" than on any net benefit. The average joe is hunkering down (as is Shell) and more interested in a $500 cast iron wood stove that lets him heat his house with darned near anything flammable than in a 30k investment in solar panels with a minimum 5 years to break-even. Catch a clue. The moment the economy went into the deep end, most anything speculative (so-called renewable energy certainly qualifies) went into the tank right alongside for the duration...
"It is morally wrong to initiate the aggressive use of force.." Of course, defensive force is fair game...
...Producing bio-oil is likely to be very profitable in the short to medium term.
Yeah, that's the problem. Not only is it shortsighted and greedy, but bio-oil is still oil. Dressing on a pig.
Of course businesses can't really function at 150 per barrel so you get this massive demand destruction and a following recession. Think of it like a hammer knocking oil dependent economies back down just as soon as it gets going.
I saw nothing but innovation take off like a rocket with people coming up with all sorts of alternatives to get from point A to point B when oil was well over $100/barrel. In fact, it's likely the reason that oil is well below the $150 line right now because Big Oil actually saw it as a risk. A sedated price makes a compliant (and lazy) customer.
"no amount of... solar is going to deliver that." Why work on fusion here on earth? The Sun already does that... FOR FREE. Harnessing solar, harnessing the power of our star, seems the way to go. Expensive only for the moment. Hell, catching solar power is like standing with a bucket in a downpour... just SHOW UP. Course, we are talking about a really, really fancy bucket... with gold trim and extra bling on the handle...
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI
Oil was 100:1
As the quality of the oil declines (e.g. to tar sands), so does the energy return (e.g. 5:1 or 3:1) and we have to spend more of our time simply trying to generate energy.
And if 30% of our time and energy are going into producing more energy... There isn't much time and energy available to do other things, like run a civilization.
Wind seems to average approximately 20:1 over the lifetime of a turbine.
What is interesting is that in the short term because of our sunk investment in oil, it is more profitable for companies to produce bio-oil at 8:1 EROEI than it is to produce wind turbines or solar panels.
Deleted
...and to increase its debt load to pay for dividends...
That sounds fiscally irresponsible
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
"They're responsible. To their investors...People like to vilify oil companies as monsters, but...in fact", the investors are the monsters.
The "environmental whack jobs" of today are the "I told you so"s of tomorrow.
The only thing that concerns me is if they will use patents collected through their body of research into solar, wind and hydro to block technology developments and deployments creating the same sort of patent mess that is interfering with innovation in the information technology industry.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"Is Shell short sighted...?"
Say that five times fast.
A typical 1000 Megawatt coal powerplant such as the behemoth ERGs boondoggle just being completed in SE Wisconsin requires 1215 train carloads of Coal (Carbon) every day. Once burned, each carbon molocule (Atomic Weight 12) will have two Oxygen Molecules (Atomic Weight 16) attached to it and this 'refuse' to be sequestured will weigh 3.67 times as much. All else being equal, this means you would need 4459 boxcars full of carbon junk leaving the power plant. But CO2 can't easily be compressed into boxcars so it is likely the carbon will be sequestered with calcium or silicon (in rock), and weigh much more. And Shell thinks this is cheaper than solar, wind and hydropower? Have I missed April fools day or is someone playing a shell game?
HVAC *already* has this: most oil and gas companies have installation and service techs that can sell you a heating/cooling system, maintain it, and sell you the fuel. Sure, it's not a fixed rate. But it is nearly a fully vertical business model, they just don't build the stuff they sell you.
Thing is, they have no incentive whatsoever to save you fuel. Knowing how much fuel you *should* be using is way beyond most people and fuzzy at best even to professionals without serious monitoring equipment. So who would know? And they sell fuel. If you tried to flip this so they just promised you X dollars a year for heating/cooling, then you're in a whole new game: they have to guess, and guess high in case you like to leave your bedroom windows open while you sleep. So everyone would have to pay more and no one would actually be penalized for consumption: exactly the opposite of what we really want to see happen.
The furnace company has lots of incentive to make more efficient units when energy is expensive, because that is what the homeowners demand. We've seen the rise of modulating/condensing equipment in the last ten years at a meteoric rate for gas users; conventional gas equipment is dying. However, the installing company has no reason to make sure that such equipment is installed well to actually perform as rated... and never would in a vertically integrated environment, unless it becomes much easier for people to determine what they *should* be using for fuel. That means realistic energy modelling (not title 24) for homes, or home inspection with specialized equipment/energy audits... and that's more expense and complexity in building (though one as a heating professional I would say is a good thing!).
This country is chock-full of furnaces and boilers running south of 50% efficiency, regardless of the rating on the energy star tag, assuming of course the boiler/furnace is new enough to have one. No one knows what they should be using, so they have no way of knowing how bad their current usage is.
Between Shell's decisions to stop its clean energy investments and to increase its debt load to pay for dividends, the company is solidifying an image of corporate greed over corporate responsibility."
Now, some companies are run by people with a streak of "corporate responsibility". Sometimes, the staff want some "corporate responsibility". But mostly "corporate responsibility" is about profit. It's about looking nice to your more naive customers. In the end, companies will work this stuff out as a trade-off. Amount of income lost to treehuggers who boycott you vs amount of income lost on green projects.
If green projects > treehugger income, you'll get rid of the projects.
I worked for BP's orphan photo-voltaics lab in Toano, Virginia long enough for us to be featured in their big "Beyond Petroleum" advertising blitz...and then poof! they pulled the plug. Although we were doing first-rate science and pilot production of amorphous silicon PV cells, we were left with the impression that we were merely a "green" marketing asset left over from the Amoco merger.
We supplied the green paint, then they threw away the brush. So goes the oil business.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Yeah, that's it. We MADE China manufacture all that stuff to sell to the U.S. And before that, we absolutely threatened Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines into producing all the stuff the U.S. no longer could produce cheaply enough. Come to think of it, we threatened to invade India if they didn't help the U.S. offshore those American jobs.
And look what the U.S. did for Kuwait, the U.S. invaded the damn country just so it could give it back to the Kuwaitis; maybe the Kuwaitis were threatening to go into textiles instead of pumping oil, it being such a lucrative market.
And what's with the Free Trade Act, imagine opening up American markets just so those evil, money grubbing S. and L. American countries could sell their stuff here. Why, even Mexico is threatening tariffs if the U.S. Congress doesn't take back the restriction they recently put on Mexican trucks. I'll be the U.S. threatened Mexico to threaten the U.S. with tariffs just to keep trade free and open.
Those naughty Americans, the nerve of such people thinking other people in the world might want a better standard of living. Maybe socialism would work, its been so successful in the past.
Gerry
Oil IS running out. Without investment in renewables, what is the future of their business? Nuclear? They are an oil company, they have no way to enter that market. They may as well be starting from scratch.
If they think they can be a multinational corporation making biofuels they are deluded. Its curious to watch such a large company willingly fall on its sword like this.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Shell's "investment" in non-oil energy sources seems to have been miniscule anyway; this is merely bringing marketing in line with reality.
Does this no.make business sense? If they operate with a view on quarterly or annual stock performance, probably yes. Long term? Probably not.
That real convenient. They've been sucking up all the government research funds for renewable energy research and now that the gov has not more money for them they are all done with it.
The problem with the Oil companies is they constitute a cartel. They control Energy. There is no free market here and the plan to keep it that way.
:T:R:A:N:S:
I would say that 70,000 homes is pretty large scale, and the energy is completely free.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/25/world%E2%80%99s-largest-solar-power-plant-coming-to-arizona-in-2011/
The entire midwest is ideal for Solar. Death Valley? Thousands of acres sitting empty. Who'd want to live there? Solar...
Just because something hasn't been done doesn't mean that it can't be or shouldn't be.
wind and solar energy unprofitable. unprofitable as in WHAT ? the maintenance of wind farms are pathetically low compared to any other energy forms as far as i know. solar energy will go as far as the sun continues to exist.
wind energy is readily sufficiently efficient, without humongous investment on any companys' part. solar energy WILL become efficient soon, since the methods to capture sunlight is rapidly developing, since there is some investment flowing in recently.
so, how's that ?
cant spare a little investment for developing better solar energy ? despite it would be a pathetic sum compared to what you invested in oil extraction and distribution ?
i dont get when did the 'investment' part of capitalist system go to trash. today companies want to profit without investing anything.
i want to let you know i will evade anything with 'shell' logo or subsidiary logos on it from now on. and i will urge my close circle to do the same. enjoy your new public image.
Read radical news here
...I see no reason to make Shell out as the enemy here simply because they want to concentrate solely on two areas of environmental technology.
What they are doing is helping. So why all the hate from all the posters?
Ah, the question is not whether they are helping or not, but who they are helping more. The problem the very millisecond a company goes public is the almighty dollar becomes the number 1 priority. So, that being said, what exactly is doing "what they know best"? Long-term Innovation, or short-term profit-building?
I'm sure AIG thought they were helping each and every one of those young kids find a way to "afford" their $400K dream home at the whopping age of 22 as well. I'm sorry if the actions of other public companies has soured the general public and made us all skeptics.
Corporations are not required by law to be responsible. They are required by law to be greedy.
It is the Law that corporate officers must act to maximize shareholder value, not to gallivant around the world pouring investor dollars into impractical investments that cannot hope to ever pay a return.
I don't care. As long as the TV commercials keep showing chimneys with colorful flowers coming out and lovely bunnies next to it and all to keep my conscious from nagging me.
This relates to an argument about making furnaces better. The furnace company has very little incentive to make a more efficient furnace because they do not have to pay for the consumables [...]
They can tell their customers "our furnaces are more efficient and will help you save money (and help the environment too)".
I want cheap rather than expensive (all else equal). I'm going to be profitable to them rather than their competitors.
Saving the customer money makes you more competitive, even if the money saved isn't the money that you would have gotten. See also "Total Cost of Ownership".
What made those quotes interesting was a lack of vision. The scientist saying that passengers would suffocate hadn't considered that there would be a way to pressuring a tube for people to sit in. Foch maybe hadn't thought about the speed of development of planes. Thatcher hadn't thought about the personality of Sir Keith Joseph.
So, here's my challenge to you: explain a vision of how solar or wind makes sense to Shell beyond what their people have thought. Explain how it's a good bet for them over the next, say, 20 years, despite the fact that the efficiency is, right now, way off the cost of oil.
Now, at some point, the cost of solar/wind is going to meet the cost of oil, I have no doubt. Maybe that will be in 20 years, I don't know. As you seem to think Shell have got it wrong, perhaps you can produce some figures to back up your assertion.
idiots.
idiots.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
" This is why GM killed the EV because they want you to consume parts and service for the (short) life of the car."
OK. So, why doesn't one of the other car makers make an electric car? There's dozens of them out there. Presumably they would clean up, selling to people. Or why don't a bunch of non-car guys like Apple, Google or Microsoft do it? Or you?
An electric vehicle that can seat 1 adult, 2 children and some shopping would absolutely clean up in the 2nd car market in Europe. So, if people can make a profit from it, and are capable of doing it, why aren't they?
TECHNOLOGY IS NOT ENERGY.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Whether Shell is being prudent and going in the safest economic way they can or whether they are fiends, oozing greed is meaningless. Their ideas are killing us all and the reasons behind those ideas enable this oil horror story to continue.
The old calculator joke
I think it was 142 arabs and 154 israelis fighting over 69 barrels of oil for 5 years - who wins
(14215469 x 5 )
They did say we are taking our money and placing it elsewhere, and they did place it in another type of energy research, but not the ones you and I would profit from in the end...more for the industrial sector. I say, that's ok, we could use a few different sources of funding for ALL technologies. Technology is like many parallel lines, as soon as one strays too far behind, we get jammed waiting for it to catch up.
If they do research in how to clean up nuclear waste (as Madonna is doing of all people, and of all the research you could invest in...!?!) we could have more nuclear power plants going up.
If we had a few BIG companies investing in separate quarters of research...we could gain leap and bounds instead of baby steps.....my 2 cents.
I'm not saying they're cheap, but when Shell asked me out for dinner, they wanted to go dutch.
It may be a mistake to lump the entire oil industry together, but let's look at the big picture. Putting on a green face is a PR benefit. Actually hastening the obsolescence of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars of infrastructure (tankers, offshore platforms, refineries, pipelines, etc., etc.) is simply stupid from a business perspective. They never cared about being green. They cared about appearing green. In these trying economic times they are cutting back where they can. Lose the apperances? OK. Don't lose the core. The people running these companies are doing what they are legally required to do - maximize profit for the shareholders. Actually going green is a threat to profits. Won't happen.
I really really want to believe in Carbon Sequestration, but it just screams bullshit to me. Can anyone point me to analyses of it? Maybe even one or two where it's not bullshit?
Ouch, that Irving Fisher quip at the end probably pissed the Friedman fanbois. ;-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
In soviet Russia . . . oh.
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
That still would emit too much CO2. Unless you could get them to do it without breathing... hmmm.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
And here's why:
Say you use energy source like oil. The reason why you do it is because you are spending energy faster than what Sun (i.e. renewable resources - biomass, wind, solar) can currently provide.
How do you get energy for carbon sequestration then? If you get it from oil, you will need more energy to put carbon in the ground than you got from in the first place. If you get it from renewable resources, then you don't have enough energy to recover all the CO2 back, because if you had, you could just skip the oil entirely and use renewable resources directly.
Carbon sequestration is a fantasy. It fails the law of conservation of energy. Think about it.
640K ought to be enough for anybody. - Bill Gates, 1981
As much as I would just LOVE to defend ole Bill, no one can prove that he actually said this at any one point in time. Is just a nerd urban legend. Unless someone has proof?
Check out the 'misattributed' section for him here:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
*sigh* Something tells me I'm gonna be modded to hell.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Actually, it all makes sense when you look at what companies like Shell depend upon:
1) Oil. Contrary to what many people think, it will never run out. At least not in our lifetime. We may run out of 'easily accessible' oil but as technology progresses, we will be able to extract more at difficult places.
2) Refining: Refineries are large and expensive apparatuses. Shell has invested heavily in them. It has the knowledge, the sites, the infrastructure. It would be very convenient for Shell if alternative energy sources would need big refinery-like installations since they are already good at that. It would give them a huge advantage.
3) Distribution: Shell is owner of a large distribution network, as do other oil producing companies. It is this distribution network that allows them to ultimately dictate the consumer price.
So, what happens when you take 1) away from them. Say everyone "wants" alternative energy although there is still oil aplenty? The current craziness around the carbondioxide-hoax may actually initiate this, at least for some time to come.
With biofuels they get to keep 2) and 3). And this is what it is all about; Shell probably realizes by now that most other alternative energy sources are quite viable without a distribution network or large centralized refinement. People will just generate the energy in the same place where they need it. Solar panels on the roof would give you free energy and a battery or hydrogen powered car could be fueled on your front lawn, with your self-generated electricity or hydrogen.
So by pushing the bio-fuel option they keep themselves in business. And any smart company does just that of course ;-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hold up, sometimes the 401(k)s have to rebalance and when they do, I'll bet they're pretty darn happy that all those traders make the cost exceedingly low. Without traders you'd be near permanantly stuck with your investments once you purchased them, if they were available at all (go try to invest in just Geico sometime).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Shell is a business - the management has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to manage their investments carefully. The price of oil dropped from $140 / barrel to around $40. This represents a large drop in the value of Shell assets. Demand for petroleum is way down due to the global recession. Cutting back on marginal projects with little prospect of short to medium term profit is the right move in this economic environment.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I'm down with the hippie hate
Stop hating on the hippies, they make good brownies :)
You can't take the sky from me...
How dare a company actually attempt to be profitable. Don't they know you make bad decisions for years they get billions from the taxpayer ????
What if Shell had a breakthrough tomorrow that allowed them to create only new green energy production facilities? Sure, they'd hire thousands of new employees for their new green growth areas, but would people still applaud them when they lay off all of their oil production, refinery, and distribution employees that are no longer needed? They might offer to retrain some, but job cuts would be unavoidable.
Corporations exist to conduct business for the benefit of the shareholders. Therefore, Shell makes business decisions based on what they believe should be best for the company's health and the shareholder profits. If you want Shell to change, your best bet would be to get together with your friends and start buying Shell stock. Until you have a major block of shareholders who share your vision for a greener Shell, don't expect the giant to change course.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Best comment ever.
Good for Shell! They made a BUSINESS decision! It is NOT GOOD BUSINESS practice to "invest" in something that DOES NOT WORK. Wind & solar are (at this time) cost prohibitive! If/when the day comes where it is more efficient to produce wind/solar power, you will see the energy companies jump on it. Same thing with these stupid "hybrid" cars. They are more expensive, use "more energy" to produce than a regular car.
That's a pretty interesting link. Thanks for sharing :) Wish I had some mod points to throw at you.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I don't see the AC's plea to boycott shell as Flamebait. I think he's correct. A number of other posters have written that "shell is a corporation, so it only responds to profit points" then FINE: manipulate the corporation where it pays attention: at its bottom line. Therefore, boycotting shell is a perfectly logical and REASONABLE response to Shell's profoundly stupid move.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
She sells C shells from the C source.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Stop hating on the hippies
To be clear, I'm not hating hippies, especially as I consider myself one. However, I do understand the current narrative, and that's fine by me. Somebody's got to be the bogeyman, especially so if they don't actually have any power.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
"... its growing the high purity [silicon] crystal that's expensive and very slow."
It's expensive partly because it takes lots of energy to keep the crystal hot for long periods.
The shortage of silicon crystal, if there is a shortage, is due to there not being enough producers and large enough producers. Previously silicon was used for semiconductors, which require far less silicon than large areas of photocells.
Bloggers are talking trash about Shell because that's popular to do among eco-bloggers. It's popular and gets more blogroll visits and page views when they talk down about the big evil anti-environment, big evil oil corporations.
Pharmaceutical companies are also up on the 'easy target' list. So is Apple. Look how much crap Greenpeace gives Apple, and they're almost always way off base. It's because Apple is an easy target.
I do agree with the other posts - wind & solar doesn't generate enough electricity. Listen to Dr Bill Wattenburg from KGO - he discusses this at length, and has said the same things for many many years. It just doesn't scale. Nuclear power combined with per-home solar panels and wind turbines would help out significantly, IMO.
IsShellsho
Waitwaitwait, this isn't a trick is it, like that bloody mary thing is it? Trying to make me repeat the name of some unspeakable horror a couple times and summon misfortune upon myself?
Like those guys who want me to say Hastur Hastur Hastur keep attemp&^557647%$uy... NO CARRIER
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Quit complaining about Shell and don't invest with them. Invest in alternative energy yourself. You have the power.
Industrial Solar Thermal.
Yes, it takes room, but we have a lot of empty space. It's 24 / 7 , easy to maintain relative to other electricity productions.
This is proven technology.
Shell, and others, are really missing the boat here.
Sadly, when people here the word 'solar' they think panels, and day time use only. Frankly, I don't see panels being a viable alternative for a while. They need a bigger breakthrough.
Ironically, even if Solar thermal was day time only (which it isn't) it would still be worth while because it would cut are petroleum usage in half.
Also, IFRs would be a good alternative while we transform the electrical system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
RDS is a $multibillion a quarter in earnings company. In the end, if they decide to gear towards a new product they need to be able to actually produce results.
Right now alt energy is an intriguing possibility that is largely dependent on public opinion and legislative action to make it financially viable. I.E. if the government does not attempt to quantify the externalities associated with brown power (pollution) and either tax the cost of the power to reflect the social cost of the pollution, or subsidize the creation of non-polluting generating resources, well then the economics aren't there. Should people in the future decide that they are, for instance, in a depression and paying 30% to 50% more for electricity than they "used to" before the pollution cost was realized, well maybe they wont care about global warming as much as they care about the "tax"... BOOM goes the renewable space.
So what is a huge company going to do? Spend their scarce resources to make it happen, or focus on the core, and things that will actually generate revenue that shows up in the annual report. The critic sites that they are pulling out of a 1000MW wind farm? Who cares? That may be the largest wind farm on the planet, but it is a tiny tiny project for a multination corporation. China alone brings on line a coal generating facility that produces more power than that every week. For the last two years.
This play is about scale, and cost effective carbon sequestration 1)is potentially has more environmental impact than all the wind and solar farms in the world put together, and 2) Is a huge potential market.
There is no simple solution to the complicated problem of global warming.
Wind is VERY viable and growing. Shells exit will have no impact. Solar PV IS expensive and really is not viable at this time. BUT Solar Thermal is actually cheaper than Coal. Sadly, far too many idiots push the PV side because it is unobtrusive and ppl have delusions of being unhooked from the big bad electric company. Until storage is cheap, it will not happen. If shell and other companies are smart, they would push into geo-thermal as well as solar thermal. In Solar Thermal, back up the operation with natural gas. In this fashion, it allows for converting to AE at a very low costs (less capital), while helping to buffer against price increases. Once the price of Natural gas goes up, then start adding thermal storage to these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
LONG before we hit that, we will have switched our economy to using oil from algae. After all, what is oil? Simply the membranes from algae, plants, and animals from eons passed. We will shortly grow most of that cheaper than it takes to recover it (sapphire energy, solix to name but two).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Many comments here miss the point. Energy systems besides oil are now actually in the discussion of the mainstream. If nothing else the slimy derivative traders did society a favor in jacking up the price of oil beyond what supply and demand dictated.
They forced a, mostly, lazy world to take a hard look at our current and future energy systems. Moved a lot of things that had been only very obscure topics of regular discussion to things that those 'normal' people talked about.
Of course now that the bubble burst most people are not having those discussions anymore. But they do remember them. They, for the most part I hope, understand that something(tm) needs to happen.
For some that something should happen now/have already happened/can't happen soon enough...whatever. I'm personally resigned to the idea that it could very well take a long time to sort it all out. But I know that now when I bring up a discussion about energy with 'normal' people they actually can have it rather than getting that deer in the headlights look.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
bio-fuel taking up space is only true if you consider plants (basically a 2d process). OTH, if you move to algae, a simple organism that grows 3D in water, it takes no resources from food, and can actually help the environment. For example one study showed that algae grown in Salton sea would provide ALL OF THE US POWER AND allow for exports. How to feed it? From LAs waste. It loves the crap.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
how is that a whoops.. it's accurate information. A nuclear moderator's job is the absorb neutrons - that is how it controls the rate of the reaction. The more neutrons absorbed the less new atoms get split by neutron impacts, and the slower the reactor "burns" fuel. So by the nuclear moderator becoming more efficient at capturing neutrons at higher temperatures means that higher temperatures force the reactor to slow down burning, thereby brining the reaction temperature back down.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
The commercials bragging about their alternative energy projects were too expensive, so they had to cancel the alternative energy projects .....
"Will you join US?" (No, not Chevron, but USSSSSS...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
believe whatever you want, but in my gut i know that this is more than just tragedy of the commons.
oil companies, cigarette companies, drug cartels, corrupt governments. most threads here talk about business decisions, and this may be the most profitable one for shell. more like rape vs a long term relationship. everyday people are getting it from every angle. only future generations will feel the pain more than us.
Electric power in the US is perhaps a year or two from being rationed.
When was the last time a large-scale generating plant was constructed? Oh, maybe 1978. I don't believe there has been anything other than small "peaker plants" built. Why? Becuase of the environmental regulations.
Unfortunately, the US has not gosten the message that electric power growth must stop. So we are now on the edge of running out of capacity. In a year or two you can expect to see major changes in electrical power pricing, distribution and controls. And probably some new laws. Things like it being illegal to use a home air conditioner outside of specific hours.
If we started today to build a nuclear power plant it would take 10 years to bring on line. If we started today to build a coal fired power plant it would take five years. In five years the cities will likely be dark at night and most people on the East Coast will have manditory shut-offs so California can turn on air conditioners in the evening hours.
Then why is Shell spening large piles of cash on oil shale projects in the US? Oil shale is not economically viable right now.
Shell is the dumbest of the big oil companies. And as such, it will be the next one to disappear.
What proof is there that the men were murdered and not legitimately killed in self defense? The article doesn't go into that at all so it's rather suspicious.
The communities that are protesting don't want "substantive dialogue with the oil producing communities" (from the article), they just want a big cut of the oil money. They're pissed that their own government (which makes big bucks off royalties) doesn't take care of them, but the soft target is the oil company itself so they attack that rather than work for true change.
"If we had functioning markets that took all costs into account and didn't allow externalization, we'd never have developed a petroleum based economy."
Please. You make it sound like the first guy to develop an gasoline-powered automobile back in the turn of the 19th century actually knew all of those costs and externalizations and their cumulative effects. He didn't. He just wanted to get from point A to point B without stepping in horse manure.
They made their decisions based on the knowledge and technology and resources available to them at the time. We, on the other hand, have more knowledge and technology and resources available to us than they did.
As such, we can now do better.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
hey.. have your driven by your local shell station?
WTF is with the Nitrogen enriched fuel they are selling? Big deal.. they are blowing air bubbles into fuel, this means you are buying less gasoline because the air bubble are taking up some volume.
When I buy gasoline I will but it minus the nitrogen enrichment. I'll let my engine aspirate on it's own. ... if I want more I'll add a cold air induction system.. hmm. that might be a cool summer project :)
It would be interesting to compare the MPG of Shell vs. Mobil
nevermind citgo or gulf.. I get terrible mpg with that.. 26mpg, with Mobil I get 30mpg.
Solar, wind, and geothermal energy cannot supply enough energy for today's huge global society- true enough. However; if we can't learn to get along any better- all we'll have in 10-20 years is small villages so it will do just fine. :)
We are going to see more of this in the next year or two. With money tight, funding for investments that promote good will and mindshare, but don't make money, will be cut or throttled back. Regardless of what we might think of that, it's an inescapable part of staying in business. Good will is important, but it doesn't help if you're bankrupt.
I suspect that the economy tanking is going to be the worst thing that could happen to the green movement. Immediate physiological needs trump self-actualization. It's difficult to be concerned about the weather 50 years from now when you're facing eviction in six months.
This, plus people observing with their own senses the weather getting colder (we've had more snow this year than any year since I moved to the PNW in 1989), global warming is becoming a very hard sell. It's going to be interesting to see how this progresses.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If you take carbon out of the ground and put it into the atmosphere you have problems (increase in atmospheric CO2, global warming, etc.) If you put it back into the ground (sequestration) that is inherently less efficient than a sustainable cycle. One should take the CO2 out of the atmosphere at precisely the same rate as one puts it back. That requires either a growth in ocean plankton (through fertilization of the oceans with iron and/or phosphorus) or land based solar ponds producing biofuels.
You will be unlikely to get a productive answer from a company operating from an "old school" mindset.
The economic efficiency of using wind, solar, geothermal and hydro the main renewable energy sources is not a clear cut issue. It depends highly on your particular situation. With oil prices so cheap they are clearly not as good of an option in terms of price per unit of energy output as they were 6 months ago. However there is a lot to consider here.
Hydro is wonderful it has a large onetime ecosystem rearrangement including displacing people but after this point it provides cheap reliable energy when you need it and a reservoir is essentially one of the best batteries we have today. Unfortunately most of the possible large hydro projects have already been built in developed countries.
Wind power is highly dependent on your location. There are many places where it is already an economically competitive energy source and many were it is not or will never be. It does not produce reliable energy however so it must be paired with some energy storage method or a more reliable source.
There are many types of solar energy technologies but mostly I think we are focused on those aimed at producing electricity. If you took all of the solar energy landing on the united states and converted it to electricity at 100% efficiency there is enough energy to meet the entire energy needs of the US roughly 500 times over. Of course solar photovoltaic panels are not very efficient (10-20% in practical uses) and we want sun for other things like growing plants. People are building some large solar plants in places where land is cheap and more people are putting them on their roofs but it is an unreliable source of energy like wind and my understanding is that its usually not very economically practical yet.
There are not very many places where it makes sense to use geothermal energy to create electrical energy. However it can serve as a great heater and cooler in most places.
One of the biggest factors in what energy source is economically practical is government subsidies. There are many more renewable energy projects happening these days because of large government subsidies. Governments can think in the long run and this makes a lot of sense. But currently the largest subsidies go to nonrenewable fossil fuels. If for example all energies had to pay for their environmental impact (say co2 output) rather than being subsidized by public governments renewable energies would become much more economically practical.
One nonrenewable energy source that is relatively friendly environmentally is nuclear. I see this as one of the few technologies that we can switch too quickly that has the potential to meet our energy needs. It won't last for ever especially if we try to do everything with it but there is also a lot of room for research. If we ever figure out how to gain energy from fission to there is a huge potential for energy there.
Well thats the way I see it at least part of it. It might be in shells short term interest to ditch wind, solar, hydro but they may be limiting their lifespan.
Shell seems to have other problems. I base this on observations of their prices: Always ridiculously higher here in California.
I mean, a full dollar higher in some cases. I've joked with friends that the local Shell stations must be mob fronts, because nobody would actually stop there. Either that, or people at snooty parties pull out their Shell cards as status symbols. Actually, a Shell card might be the answer. Perhaps card holders get a discount off the marked prices. At any rate, It's even more silly to bother with a Shell card to get a discount than it is to bother with grocery cards. When you're competing with stations where anybody can pull up and get a low price... well... That, and their fuel is ethanol blended at our local Shell!
The Chevron station has fair prices, and solar paneles on the roof (to power the station, obviously, not cars; but it's a nice touch). The Arco stations are cheapest if you don't mind the debit card fee or paying cash up front. If I fill up my tank (usually 10 gallons), the debit card fee adds $0.045/gal. Filling up a large SUV would add even less per gallon since they have bigger tanks. The Shell station could easily be charging $0.30-$0.50/gal more!
Shell must be having some kind of distribution problem, or they don't know how to hedge the cost of oil sent to their refineries, or they must have a really inefficient distribution system in California. Honestly, I don't know how they stay in business out here, so it doesn't surprise me they are cutting costs.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm a cynic, and although I'm not a tree-hugger, I much prefer not dumping at where we eat.
But really, wind and solar has scale problems, and highly dependent of the weather for a stable output. Hydro is a bit more stable, but like the first two, they're not immune from politics.
You'd think outdoor enthusiasts like hikers and such would be for renewable energy (and they are), but they won't like it too much if you stick a bunch of windmills at their favourite hiking spots, with good reason. Access roads need to be built, and the natural setting would be devalued because we're trying to be green.
Hydro's even worse in terms of the politics - them hippie tree huggers wants green power without any alteration of the natural environment. All of these renewable energy sources requires some level of it, and for the nuclear plants, no one's a fan of the waste.
Even if Shell isn't an oil company, I can see why someone would want to pull out of the business. There's just way too much crap to put up with even get some kind of consensus out there about what's good for us and good for where we live.
...the high prices may be a form of protest on the part of independant station owners.
In other words, Shell is Walmarting people. Even if the prices come back down, I'm already biased against stopping at Shell when other alternatives are available.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
increase its debt load to pay for dividends
In layman's terms this means Executive Management cannot find/do not have Shell projects that generate profit.
Even simpler, instead of using the money to grow the company, they are giving it all to the shareholders PLUS passing debt through to the shareholders as dividends.
Shell is in the process of being robbed by the Board of Directors and Executive Management. Moreover, the organization is totally ineffectual at the executive level.
Forget the greenwashing. This is theft.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
A typical 1000 Megawatt coal powerplant such as the behemoth ERGs boondoggle just being completed in SE Wisconsin requires 1215 train carloads of Coal (Carbon) every day. Once burned, each carbon molocule (Atomic Weight 12) will have two Oxygen Molecules (Atomic Weight 16) attached to it and this 'refuse' to be sequestured will weigh 3.67 times as much. All else being equal, this means you would need 4459 boxcars full of carbon junk leaving the power plant. But CO2 can't easily be compressed into boxcars so it is likely the carbon will be sequestered with calcium or silicon (in rock), and weigh much more. And Shell thinks this is cheaper than solar, wind and hydropower? Have I missed April fools day or is someone playing a shell game?
All the wind power generation in Germany (the world leader) in 2007 was 38.5 TWH, or an average of 4.4 GWe (of course, it wasn't a continuous 4.4 GWe, but up and down with wind speed). That is 4.4 GWe average on 22.2 GW rated of turbines, or about 20% of installed capacity. There are 19,460 turbines in Germany for their 22 GW rated capacity.
4.4 GWe continuous could come from 3 Gen. III ABWR nuclear reactors. 3 versus 19,460. An ABWR needs to be refueled once every two years, or an average of 76 tons of fuel per year (one train car worth) per reactor.
There's no question that US oil production peaked decades ago, so we're shipping dollars overseas with every gallon we burn. So we either have to trade for something we produce (what do we produce these days?), take on more and more debt--which has worked so far, but that house of cards is coming down--or watch our currency tank, which has already begun. Even if the world supply of oil is fairly stable, we can't afford to keep importing it. Sorry Sarah, Drill Here Drill Now isn't going to get us off foreign oil, even if we somehow managed to double domestic production.
But that's not Shell's problem, and they'll keep buying our politicians to to make sure they don't do anything about it.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
While you do have a point, the oil lobby certainly has a hand in fighting legislation to protect the environment and promote energy efficiency.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Pretty simple. The car guys don't because they would be cannibalizing their own profits. Nobody wants to sell a car that's cheaper and will require fewer replacement parts than the cars they're already selling, and that has a huge investment up front in new technologies. It's a lose-lose proposition.
As for Apple, etc, they're not car companies. The ipod wasn't much of a reach for Apple, they already sold software, hard drives, and processors. It was just a new form factor. Automobiles, on the other hand, are several orders of magnitude removed from their core business.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
It is no secret that the energy companies (owned by approximately 12 families around the world with secret majority proxy stakes) have locked up complete control of all energy on this planet.
They are now going to control our food production.
How are they going to do that?
Not happy to topple whole banking systems on a mere whim, Shell and other puppets of these families now are turning to the worlds food supply to control and eliminate unwanted populations on this planet, control the value of currencies traded in fuel and ultimately control ANYTHING that is plugged into the wall or you put in your mouth.
The first step in this process is to use the enourmous profits from the oil industries to buy out industrialized farming so that more of it can be converted to extremely inefficient methods of producing more energy (such as using corn for methanol etc.).
After they acquire enough industrial companies, they will also acquire THE PATENTS FOR THE SEEDS.
Imagine that?
Not only do you control the food production, it becomes an IP PROBLEM JUST TO PRODUCE FUEL.
If you think the problem with GAS and OIL is bad, imagine a world with PATENTED FUEL & FOOD PRODUCTION.
What do you think the prices will be like for a simple bowl of corn oil?
This has all been planned for decades now, and it is finally comming to fruition.
Only a few more years to go and countries won't matter because a few people will control all of the currencies on the planet, the food and the energy.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Pretty simple. The car guys don't because they would be cannibalizing their own profits. Nobody wants to sell a car that's cheaper and will require fewer replacement parts than the cars they're already selling, and that has a huge investment up front in new technologies. It's a lose-lose proposition.
But that's precisely what happened when Japanese car makers came on the scene. They had to outclass the US automakers and so made more robust cars with longer life/less spare parts.
There are companies making electric cars right now (the G-Whiz for instance). Why can't they make a larger family model if they can make a tiny model?
That's not the fault of traders! That's the fault of take your pick from:
A) Easy money policy at the fed from a chairman who had too little questioning of his decisions
B) Paying much too high a price when they acquired said assets
C) Not being long term investors except in their own mind
D) Previous bailouts encouraging too much risk taking or too much retention of poor management
E) Too little regulation of businesses being promised a bailout
F) Too much leverage
G) Not paying attention to the above
Take your pick from the list. The traders are the messenger not the makers prices. Most of the changes come from other similar people liquidating and/or changing allocations. Investors seem to want an unregulated free for all in the good times but can't seem to tolerate that that means no one will be standing by to mop up the mess you made on the way back down. You can't have it both ways.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
People who suggest cycling as a commute should just bite themselves. Typical car commute in the metro areas is 30 min without traffic slowdowns.
And with traffic slowdowns, biking is often barely slower and occasionally even faster than driving. While biking isn't a good choice for everyone, there are quite a lot of people who probably should bike to work.
Reminds me of an NPR radio show I listened to a week or so ago.
It was about all the aid that western countries have given to Africa. The basic gist was that the aid has hurt the countries, by not providing incentive to innovate and create infrastructure on their own.....
Apparently there are many/some/vocal (not sure) leaders/writers etc.. that are native Africans, asking for the aid to please stop.
I don't know enough about the history of aid in Africa to comment in detail on it, but I found it an interesting twist: that even our pure food aid is beginning to be viewed as a mistake by some.
At least in the US ... it just takes a decade or so to earn back the necessary investments.
These are not interesting investment for the oil giants, for one thing they want short term profits and for another a swift increase in alternative energy decreases the value of the remaining oil they have the rights to. There is a sweet spot for them to really get behind alternative energy ... that sweet spot hasn't been reached yet. The commercial sweet spot is very unlikely to be the same as the social sweet spot though.
The US is in a very good position Solar wise, it could at present technological levels construct enough solar energy plants at a couple 100 billion to generate it's electricity needs. So basically put the stimulus toward solar power and you have free electricity ...
The bird killing issue stems from one of the early wind farms in California that was installed in a specie's migration path. We learned from that and now that's one of the criteria when evaluating prospective wind farm sites. There is no blanket condemnation of windmills by major environmental groups. We're now learning that windmills may be a hazard to bats. Given the significant role that bats play in controlling insect populations, there is good reason to be concerned and study the matter appropriately.
Most of the opposition to windfarms has been NIMBY's who don't want anything spoiling their pristine views, although they're quick to come up with other excuses, like the bird meme.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Thanks for posting, it's always gratifying to learn that my cynicism is not misplaced.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
...People are also willing to forgo legislation to protect the environment to save themselves a few bucks, and then bitch about how the environment is being wrecked.
I'm afraid I don't agree with this point. People don't have very much control over how their representatives choose to represent them. Certainly not at any fine degree. You choose either Republican, Democrat, or other. It doesn't matter what other is, and often both the Democrat and the Republican candidate have the same stand on a particular issue of interest to a particular voter. Even where they differ, other differences may be controlling. One benefit of the "two party system" is that if a company is big enough, it can buy off BOTH candidates.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
One more for your list...
We no longer have much time left to change.
- Al Gore, 2005
"If GM gave you the service of having a car and had to pay for gas, parts and service you would have 100mpg cars in 10 years that would last a million miles without service."
No. We don't have such a car because we don't have the technology to produce such a car that a large group of people would want or afford. The million mile part is pretty easy (many cars could do it now with enough maintenance and repair).
The 100 mpg part is very hard.
But... they just improved the model. Toyota is a profit machine for a few reasons. They took Deming's statistical process control ideas and were able to get error rates into the parts per billion. Then they took lean manufacturing to eliminate waste and delay in their production. Then they went to target cost accounting where they fixed the price of the cost of the car before production ensuring that failures could not balloon in cost. But they still are following the same basic plan. Sell a car in order to sell financing, service, and parts. GMAC was the only profit center in GM for years. IT was no different than the Xbox sold at a loss to sell games.
No MAJOR CAR MAKER makes an electric car. The hybrid was the height of brilliance by Toyota, an electric car that needs oil changes and all the other maintenance. Toyotas still don't go a MILLION miles on a single engine 250K sure easy with maintenance and you think you're getting a great deal. Toyota could make a car that would never ever die for a tiny fraction more in cost.
I was told a story at one degree of separation (so take as much salt as you would like) about guy who worked for Merrill shoes as intern. He made a pair of shoe that would last twenty years by using different mid-sole and leather combinations. They were all recalled when his boss found out. Why wouldn't they be? People have to make a living.
I am saying drop the bullshit. Just say as a company we want X dollars per year from you and in return you will always have a working car. The market for customization licensing would be the cream on top. GM's skateboard car design was perfect for this. They lease you the drive train and you go to the dealer to get a different body depending on what you want to do.
It's about removing the threat of green energy from possible competitors.
Large companies will fund research for the purpose of patenting every possible, useful implementation of whatever threatens their business model - whether it is alternative energy (oil companies) or VOIP (Verizon). This way, their business model is sound, and competition is eliminated.
In the case of the oil companies, they know that alternative energy sources lack the infrastructure to become established, but that this could/will be overcome by changes in the political winds (no pun intended). As neither party, (or, as I should say, THE PARTY) is not interested in patent reform, patenting alternative energy puts them in the position of being able to profit from green technologies, without actually having to incur the risk of bringing them to market.
You didn't think you could stick it to the man by going green, did you?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
We have a convenient source of fusion already - the sun.
I think molecular manufacturing (nanotech) is going to give us cheap, automated ways to make the materials for a space elevator and dirt-cheap solar cells. Once putting solar power satellites into orbit is cheap, it seems to me that beaming power to earth that would otherwise have dissipated out into the galaxy is the way to go.
And I think this will come long before practical fusion.
If only we had the technology to produce energy with a favorable EROEI. Maybe one day we'll be able to split the atom or something.
You still have to dig the atoms up, separate them from other atoms.
around 10:1 for LWRs (most existing US reactors)
Deleted
Oil companies have no business in that space anyway - so good riddance.
However, Shell have developed a system of extracting high quality oil from shale, concentrated in the Green Hills area of Colorado, using a technique which is very environmentally friendly. That deposit alone contains several billions of barrels of oil, and is economic at $35 a barrel.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4051709,00.html
We won't be running out of oil this century - that's for sure.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
TMI had lots of backup systems to give it a nearly impossible risk of meltdown, otherwise it never would have been brought online.
The PBR designs do seem much safer, as do PWR designs where the reactor is inverted (high heat causes metals with a low melting point drop the fuel rods out). There are some things that are scary about them. What if the heat causes the beads to expand to the point where they can no longer be circulated? What if the graphite catches on fire causing the fissile material to pool together at the bottom and reach critical mass?
Keep in mind that even today after many years of use there are a lot of things we don't understand about pressurized water reactors. We're still discovering new failure modes for critical systems.
As dangerous as nuclear power is though, it's less dangerous to us long term than most current sources, so I think we should go ahead with licensing some PBR designs. Just keep them far away from people for a long time.
Holy fuck! How did you slip that shit in there and get modded insightful? First off the government doesn't not currently do this. However if they ever did it would be the end as we know it to all first world economies. It would literally create famine, war, disease outbreaks, collapse of first world governments, among other undesirable consequences.
No, your idea is WAY the fuck off base. The Solution is not to make Oil more expensive. It is to make it cheaper by harvesting the oil we have RIGHT THE FUCK HERE in the USA! Then the government needs to simulfuckingtaneously (yes it's a word) provide subsidies for development of alternative fuel infrastructure and alternative energy sources. Paris Hilton actually had it right. DO BOTH!
Solution for commute in metro is public transportation, not biking, unless you want to convert US to China.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This is one of the technologies i was referring too. There is quite a lot you can do with a fast neutron spectrum.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
...over the last two decades, Shell merely concluded - correctly - that renewable energy did not offer the ROI that buying an American Presidency does.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
As you all are probably aware, the feds will be investing billions of dollars to upgrade the power grid and push for green technology. If anyone thinks that any of the oil companies are willing to make this level of committment (throw out their "cash cow" (oil) for green tech) they are fooling themselves. My suggestion is for the gov funding to only be directed to companies whose sole purpose (strategic direction) is green technology. At least Shell has been honest to state that they are dropping their committment. I'm concerned that the rest of the "energy companies" (oil companies in sheep's clothing)will vie for this funding for the purpose of stifling the development of the technology for their own "business reasons". (They will be involved only to protect their cash cow: oil) If they really want this technology to take off. Fund the companies who are soley-dedicated to the technology.
Well, for them it makes sense to dump the radically different tech ( regardless of its future ) and stick to things they know. BioFuels are about the same as what they have now, so their engineers are already there, as is the infrastructure for distribution.
Its about spending their R&D dollars efficiently.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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