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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?"
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.
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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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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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.
Exactly. Consider their Energy Scenarios study. Essentially, after this study, they asked governments to take the necessary decisions. If you look at what they're doing, they clearly believe that 'scramble' is the scenario we face, and are preparing the company for it.
Shell are a far-sighted company. As with all chemical engineering companies, they need to plan now to build in 5 years, and their plants need to operate at a profit for 20-odd years. The point I'm making is that over time they've become very good at predicting the future.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
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.
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".
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
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic#Energy_payback_time_and_energy_returned_on_energy_invested
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/wind_turbine_lca.php
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
While I agree that subsidies are bad, I don't understand how you then proceed to say that the 80 billion subsidies for alternative energies are 'good'.
How can stealing MORE resources from the US economy be better than simply ending all subsidies to whatever technology, ceasing government intervention in the energy market, actually using property rights laws to allow for the pollution externals to be correctly priced and internalized, and let the market, i.e. we the people, sort out which work better.
I sincerely don't think that trying to 'over-subsidize' Green energy over Oil is a sensible solution.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
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!!!
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!!!
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.
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.
I'm always surprised to see comments like this...
You've clearly never used Biodiesel in your life and have no idea what you're talking about.
1. ALL Biodiesel I've heard of has significantly lower emissions and also less harmful emissions that diesel. It doesn't take much of a search to confirm that, so please tell me which biodiesel you think produces more greenhouse gases than regular diesel.
2. There doesn't have to be a negative impact of biodiesel on the environment. In fact, a lot of commercial biodiesel is made from used vegetable oil that's recycled. ... That's actually a useful thing.
If everyone started using it, then you need to make lots which means using some agricultural land to make it... but it's still better than using crude oil to make the stuff.
3. What? What a lot of rubbish. Most biodiesel (commercial) is 98% as much energy as Diesel... I used it for three months and had almost no change of fuel economy.. 27mpg in a 1980's JEEP. That's better than twice the economy you get from a Petrol Jeep.
2% is NOT 50%... I've never heard of Biodiesel being 50% worse... Are you thinking of a petrol substitute? Even Ethanol isn't nearly that bad.
Also, some biodiesel, notably Palm/Coconut based not only has 1/100th the emissions of normal diesel, it also has 20% more energy...
That means for the same tankful, you get 20% more range, 20% more power or 20% more torque...
Do some research before you go talking about facts...
I've used the stuff, bought commercially, in an unmodified Jeep. (Same diesel engine it came out of the US factory with in 1982)... The only drawback is that it's a little harder to start in the cold.
On the positive side, it provided better lubrication and smelt better too.
But I got sligtly improved fuel economy so the stuff I was buying was probably slightly better than normal diesel.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
When you are making the future, it's hard not to predict something that is in you own plans.
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
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.
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
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.
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?
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
Captalism IS Evolution. Some jumps cannot be made. Large jumps have lower probability of success. Species go extinct... deal with it.
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.
Agreed. Sun Micro is a perfect example. IMO, Sun is the best workstation provider in history, a truly outstanding company. It's not Sun's fault that workstations are no longer in demand. Most people say Sun should have had the foresight to switch to a new business. I say bunk. A company that owns the #1 spot in their market should simply fade with it, and let a new generation of companies exploit new markets. As we approach peak oil, Shell, Exxon, and their competitors should continue to compete in oil even as their revenues fade. Making the jump to alternative energies makes little sense for them.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
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.
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
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.
She sells C shells from the C source.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
You're modded as funny, but I'm not sure if that was your intent or not.
Companies evolve and survive. Nokia has been around since the 1800's, long before anyone ever heard of a cell phone.
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.
The better point is *some* companies can evolve and survive, and some can't. The market is the best judge of this, not the government cherry picking who yells the loudest. Time will tell if Shell made the correct decision. Meanwhile their customers are perfectly within their rights to boycott etc.
Their early reception sucked.
I drank what? -- Socrates
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.
"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.
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.