Mideast Turmoil and the Push For Clean Energy

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Adam Werbach writes that in July 2008 oil prices reached $147 a barrel and suddenly energy prices and alternative energy was on everyone's agenda but soon oil prices fell as the economy faltered and people moved on to the more immediate concerns of keeping their jobs and businesses alive. Now with the possibility looming of $200 a barrel oil, the US has a robust field of clean energy technologies that are slowly coming online, from thinfilm solar to fuel cells to cellulosic ethanol — unlike 2008, when it seemed like we were starting our innovation engine from a cold start. 'In the last three years, as oil prices have softened, we've seen stumbles as companies like Applied Materials pulled back from the clean energy space because of operational and market conditions,' writes Werbach. '2012 will be a rich year for equity capitalizations, giving energy entrepreneurs the capital they need to build infrastructure. Even with the draconian austerity measures that are coming into effect across the country, this is a second opportunity for energy innovation.'"

Comments

Nothing new here

[quarkie68]

In our world there are innovators and there are also people that will vow to re-use existing suboptimal solutions with all their pros and cons until it is absolutely necessary to adopt something else. Unfortunately, the second type is the majority, even if it is completely obvious that the dependency of the West on the Middle East is one of its largest weaknesses. I wonder how many slaps does it take for some people to wake up from their deep oily sleep.

Re:Nothing new here

[quarkie68]

I would agree with you but... I don't. The oil monopoly is supported by some large car driving populations. For most of this folk, it is really a big thing to get on the bike and/or use fuel efficient cars or rationalize the use of the car. This is why the US started considering fuel efficient cars only recently. If you compare the average GM/Ford/whatever gas guzzler they used to chunk out of their production lines (which was cheap for the average Joe to buy) to the average European car there was no comparison. Extrapolate this behavior to the growing middle class of India and China and you get the idea. Power is given to monopolies by people, it does not come by itself. In the absence of realizing the consequences, the majority of the people will use the more readily available and cheapest solution. And that I am afraid is petrol :-( . Not necessarily because they do not have the extra money to pay for an alternative. But because they are sold to the idea of horse power, acceleration, when the most they do on their motorway is 30-40 miles an hour just before the rush hour! :-)

Re:Nothing new here

[khallow]

Sorry, I really messed up my last reply with a single typo. Let's try this again.

In our world there are innovators and there are also people that will vow to re-use existing suboptimal solutions with all their pros and cons until it is absolutely necessary to adopt something else. Unfortunately, the second type is the majority, even if it is completely obvious that the dependency of the West on the Middle East is one of its largest weaknesses. I wonder how many slaps does it take for some people to wake up from their deep oily sleep.

So what's the problem? You just spelled out the optimal solution. It doesn't take six billion people to innovate a replacement for petroleum-based transportation so there's proper division of labor. And society isn't going to do better than to stick with what works, until something comes along that works better (which incidentally hasn't happened yet with transportation).

Finally, what's wrong with giving good business to the Middle East? It helps everyone.

It just seems to me that you haven't really compared the status quo to the alternatives. It's the traditional conceit to assume that because the present scheme has flaws, then some alternative is better. My view is that the flaws and benefits of the alternatives to our fossil fuel burning haven't been seriously evaluated.

Re:Nothing new here

[SuricouRaven]

Nor the price. The electric engine is cheap, but the batteries can cost more than the rest of the car put together. A lot more.

Re:Nothing new here

[iserlohn]

Finally, what's wrong with giving good business to the Middle East? It helps everyone.

That is a very naive view of trade. Take for example the plight of the citizens of Nauru. Although different in scale, it parallels the situation we have in the Middle East.

The Republic of Nauru is a small island nation in the Pacific which had an economy that was based almost solely on phosphate mining which was plentiful once, but not any more. In the beginning, most of the money generate from this industry went to the Australian interests who were exploiting the mines, then gradually the islanders wised up and negotiated a better deal. This money was saved up in a trust fund, but ultimately corruption set in and the trust fund lost most of its value. At the same time, mining had stopped on the island as the phosphate ran out. Now the unemployment rate is near 90% the government failed in implementing reforms to encourage a diverse economy and the establishment of alternative industries.

Trade is not always good, and in some case (such as what's happening in the middle east), it is very exploitive to the people of the lands on which we are sucking the resources from. Many times, it only benefits a few at the top and the money never trickles down to the working population. That frequently causes political instability as the leaders has the resources from the mineral or oil wealth to establish an authoritarian regime. It often causes over-dependency on the export of the natural resources within the state. Once the resources are depleted, what results is a failed state.

Re:Nothing new here

[iserlohn]

The oil markets are global. A demand and supply of oil in any one country will affect the spot price of oil around the world.

Re:Nothing new here

[quarkie68]

There is nothing wrong with doing business in the middle east. What is wrong is to rely so much on the Middle East. This creates contention and undesirable situations, especially for Middle East folk. The very fact that most of them export their resources to oil feed the rest of the world, when very little money returns to them is indicative of most of the geopolitical problems that rose, are rising and will rise in the area.

Oil is not the only example. Manufacturing and outsourcing is another. If only 20% of the Asian manufacturers of integrated circuit/assembly lines decided to close tomorrow for whatever reason, the implications for the US and the rest of the electronic consumer's world would be at least worrying and at most catastrophic for the market.

I believe this is a general trend of globalization, which is mainly driven by us, because we want the cheapest and then someone has to produce that cheapest product by pushing outsourcing to the point where we rely on few places. Personally, if I knew that a product is REALLY only made in the US/UK/Europe etc, I would buy it, even if it was more expensive. Not because I dislike Asia or whatever distant part of the world, but because I want with my behavior to enforce resilience, the very opposite of absolute reliance.
Do you really think that the world has resilience today in terms of energy?

Re:Nothing new here

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Exactly : currently moving away from oil is prevented, not by of evil corporations conspiring against meddling kids, not (much) by middle eastern theocratic lunatic dictators, not even by the American version of same.

It's prevented by actual, honest-to-God, technical issues.

One thing you never hear greens suggest is ... fixing the problems. It's just so much easier to declare a problem solved and accuse everyone of conspiracies. To depict yourself the victim of whatever is the unpopular enemy "du jour" (is it still BP these days ?). As to whether it gets anyone anywhere ... But where's the fun for "green" parties saying the obvious : we're waiting for decent (= cheap + efficient) energy storage technology. Let's please not waste money or resources on actually becoming green until we ... know HOW. No, not even on co2 reduction (because we won't get it down until we have an actual alternative. Moving co2 production to china does exactly zilch for the environment, except paying for Al Gore's army of cronies and fleet of 30 gallons-a-mile cars)

But wasting taxpayer's money on fool's errands, which then proceed to fail, and then blame the, oh, local bank that demands it's dividends. Or a president. Or congress. Or an oil company that fucked up an installation. Or ... that's like fighting the man, man ! That's so cool.

Re:Nothing new here

[tomhath]

In our world there are innovators and there are also people that will vow to re-use existing suboptimal solutions with all their pros and cons until it is absolutely necessary to adopt something else.

The headline of this story illustrates your point perfectly. High oil prices should push us to seek other, less expensive sources of energy. But the current administration is fixated on solar and wind. They can't see past those suboptimal "clean" sources to the other alternatives available to us (*cough* nuclear *cough*).

.

Re:Nothing new here

[khallow]

That is a very naive view of trade. Take for example the plight of the citizens of Nauru. Although different in scale, it parallels the situation we have in the Middle East.

That changed in the 70s. The Middle East has taken charge of its resources and its destiny. I won't take the blame for any resulting failed states. My view is that the revolutions of 2010-2011 will mark a historical turning point for the Middle East. Oil revenue will have contributed indirectly to this state of affairs.

Re:Nothing new here

[houstonbofh]

Do you really think that the world has resilience today in terms of energy?

Yes. There are lots of sources for chemical energy that we do not use because of cost. That is being fixed... Painfully. Also, there are many sources of oil not being used because of cost and political will. As the cost goes up, that political will has to change. And this is just chemical energy, which is still the best source for transportation. Electrical energy is really only held back by political will. There are safe, low polluting reactors now, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor#Future_and_developing_technologies but the public is afraid of Chernobyl... But as costs go up, that too will change.

Re:Nothing new here

[petermgreen]

the electric engine is superior the the ICE in every way.

The engine itself may be but the complete power system including the energy store isn't. With an ICE a cheap and lightweight fuel tank can take you you hundreds of miles. With an electric the batteries are expensive, bulky, heavy and still give a far worse range then a conventional fuel tank.

For example lets compare the lotus elise and the tesla roadster (I think this is a reasonable comparison as the roadster is basically an electric elise).

pros of the roadster:
a bit faster in the straight (according to top gear, if you have better sources that contradict this please post them)
cheaper to run

pros of the elise:
corners a bit better (according to top gear, if you have better sources that contradict this please post them)
longer range
far lower pricetag (according to wikipedia an elise is arround £30K while a roadster is arround £90K).

There are other cheaper electric cars but I dunno which non-electrics they are most comparable to so it's difficult to see how much more expensive they are. I'm sure I also heared somewhere that they were being sold at a loss to help the manufacturers gain experiance with electric technology for when it does become affordable.

Thorium Reactors

[NFN_NLN]

Why is the west still concentrating on solar and wind power while the Chinese are already into Thorium reactors?

The US oil companies can stall all they want while they squeeze as much profit as they can out of fossil fuels.. but the Chinese aren't going to wait around.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[NFN_NLN]

Sorry, forgot to include this:

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, of the British Telegraph daily, suggests that "Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium," and could put "an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years."[14]

The Thorium Energy Alliance (TEA), an educational advocacy organization, emphasizes that "there is enough thorium in the United States alone to power the country at its current energy level for over 1,000 years."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Thorium_as_a_nuclear_fuel

Re:Thorium Reactors

[IHateEverybody]

A lot of it is due to residual fear of any kind of nuclear energy and chronic NIMBYism. Everybody wants cheap energy but no one wants a power plant anywhere near their home. Most people have no idea when thorium is or of its benefits over traditional nuclear energy. This runs into a basic human fear of change. Oil has worked for America for a hundred years and Americans have grown emotionally attached to their gas guzzlers and have rewarded oil companies with the kind of wealth and political influence that make them a force in Washington.

Add a fundamental lack of will and rampant political cowardice and you have a formula for Chinese domination of the "green" industries of the future.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[khallow]

1. The solution isn't more energy usage. The solution is less energy usage, period.

Energy is cheap and there really isn't that much to be gained from energy conservation. Else we would be doing it already.

2. This is because USA still stupidly has an unregulated economy that does whatever it wants.

There are two obvious errors. First, the US economy is far from unregulated. Second, what is left that needs to be regulated? Virtually everything that people claim needs to be regulated is already regulated.

Sane countries, like China, let The Smart People plan their economic growth in accordance with scientific principles.

Do you know what the purpose of a "five year plan" is? Emergency toilet paper. The people implementing the plan don't have a clue. They can't make serious decisions. Second, do you know what's far better than "scientific principles" for running an economy? Markets.

Third, "scientific principles" are a case of the "appeal to authority" fallacy. Please recall that macroeconomics is unusually resistant to scientific principles precisely because of the remarkable difficulty of falsifying any hypotheses about it.

Just imagine if USA had similar policies, and could actually implement them. Ownership of General Motors to advance state economic policies was a good start, but needs to expand to more sectors of the US economy. Letting the market decide is, frankly, irresponsible and a proven recipe for disaster, time and time again. Just look at history.

The US merely had to let GM go through bankruptcy court. No action required. The Obama administration screwed that up by rescuing it at the expense of everyone but the unions, and mocking the laws of the land.

It'll be a long time before I buy another GM or Chrysler (or for that matter any banking product from one of the "too big to fail" banks) product and I know that's going to be the case for a lot of other people too. We don't like thieves.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[SuricouRaven]

You're both wrong. The free market works quite well, most of the time - but it is by no means infallible. We worked that out over here in Europe, but you in the US are afraid to regulate anything for fear of somehow turning into communists.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Zoxed]

> Everybody wants cheap energy
Wrong: people want, for example, warm houses. Whether that comes from pumping energy in, or insulating it to prevent energy leaving it is irrelevance. You can invest in energy saving, and not need cheap energy.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[TheRaven64]

Yes you can. You can crack long chain polymers into shorter ones, and you can polymerise simple hydrocarbons to produce shorter ones. Crude oil just happens to have a fairly convenient mixture, allowing you to use relatively low energy reactions to produce lots of chemicals that we want. You can produce the same chemicals from any hydrocarbon source - such as plant oil - but you need more energy, making it not cost effective to do. If you have cheap and abundant energy, then these economies change.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[KonoWatakushi]

Actually, Thorium was the natural choice for nuclear energy; Uranium was chosen instead so that we could build bombs.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[phoenix321]

Saving energy is only going to delay the problem and won't help much in addressing the root of it. Unless energy saving can reduce expenditure to zero or close to it - and it can't - we still need to find a long-term solution when (not if) oil runs out.

Don't get me wrong, energy saving is a good thing and should always be considered if economical or practical. But while the other half of energy research should be directed at new (shale gas), renewable (sun, wind, water, biomass) or long-term (nuclear) primary energy sources. We invariably need both, but primary energy gain quite a bit more than secondary gains through efficiency.

Hypothetical case:

Assume that this year, cold fusion is reaching industry-scale profitability, for money and energy output. Assume production is so cheap (one plant = 300 GW or more) and its resources so abundant that the price of electrical energy drops to 0,01USD/kWh. Renewable energy (0,10USD/kWh)is and house insulation (1,00USD per kWh/y saved, insulation lifetime is max. 50y) will then be absolutely moot.

One stroke of genius in cold or hot fusion - or any other large-scale energy production - can reduce everything we as a society invested in renewables and efficiency to a foolish and expensive waste of resources, overnight. We'd still need superconductors and high capacity batteries, though.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the west still concentrating on solar and wind power while the Chinese are already into Thorium reactors?>

Eh?! China is concentrating on biofuel, solar and, especially, wind power(*), just like the West. It also research molten salt reactors (aka thorium reactors), just like many countries in the West. In the West, a lot of countries spend a lot of government money on research and experiments with different kinds of power sources, including better ways to utilise nuclear power. Heck! I live in Sweden where we are, since 1983, slowly replacing all nuclear power with other sources of energy, and even inside Sweden there are efforts to develop new, waste free and more efficient, kinds of nuclear power, those researchers get more than a billion dollars a year from the Swedish government and EU. It is pocket money, but nothing say more money would lead to better research. Meanwhile Sweden is concentrating on developing and refining energy sources that already work or show actual promise. Nuclear power has been a very expensive, inefficient and polluting (mostly on the mining side, and some hundreds years in the future when the capsules with our nuclear waste start to leak) dream, for more then 60 years There is no indications that the world will ever see clean and profitable (without government subventions) nuclear power, even if we would spend a lot of money and resources trying to develop such nuclear power.

And as always, it is more efficient to save energy then to find new sources of energy. Sweden could save the energy production of two nuclear reactors, just by applying knowledge and technology that already exist, without any loss in living standard (Swedish living standard is much higher then that in English speaking countries, it is high even compared to New Zealand and Canada). The gain of using energy saving technology and changing energy wasting habits would be even greater in extremely wasteful and inefficient countries like USA(**). In such an underdeveloped country, modernising the industry, infrastructure and consumer products offered, could really improve the life's of the citizens.

(*) In just three years, China went from having almost non-existing (village black smiths) production of wind power plants, to being the leading manufacturer in the world (China has twice the production as the previous leader Denmark). Most of those wind power plants are deployed inside China.

(**) Since the fall of the Warsaw pact, Sweden is deploying energy saving and waste reducing technology to countries around the Baltic sea as part of foreign aid. Every "krona" spent in Poland, former East Germany, Russia (never call it "foreign aid" in the face of a Russian), the Baltic states et.c., give hundred times more in return in form of a clean Baltic Sea, then it would if it was spent in Sweden (of course, as part of the same plan for a clean Baltic sea, we also have technology exchange and share research efforts with other countries around the Baltic Sea, like Finland, Germany and Denmark, it has been so successful that today most of the waste in the Baltic sea origin from Britain, there is a current that take some of the waste from the British shores to the Baltic sea, where it accumulates). Even if neither technology nor living standard in those countries are on par with the rich countries around the Baltic Sea, they are approaching fast, with a lot of help from "green" technology. USA have a technological level roughly equal to those countries when they where still part of the Warsaw pact twenty years ago.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[drinkypoo]

Energy is cheap and there really isn't that much to be gained from energy conservation. Else we would be doing it already.

That is a stupid thing to say. There IS a great deal to be gained, but those who stand to gain it are not those who are in power. Also, Energy is most certainly not cheap, but many of the costs can be pushed off onto all the citizens of the planet instead of having to pay them solely by oneself.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[AmiMoJo]

Nuclear produces waste. We don't want proliferation of nuclear material and despite our best efforts like anything will never be 100% safe. Remember we need to produce energy in less stable and well maintained parts of the world, not just Europe and the US.

On the other hand solar thermal energy production (using mirrors to reflect light onto a water tank and then using the steam to drive turbines) produces no waste and you can build a lot of what you need from recycled material too. In the event of an accident there isn't any nasty stuff to leak out and contaminate things. It is cheap, reliable and relatively easy to build and run. It even works after dark as water is a good way to store energy.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Thorium was the natural choice for nuclear energy; Uranium was chosen instead so that we could build bombs.

I keep hearing this bullshit over and over, as if peopel just cut and paste it from some random website.
Thorium is a rubbish choice for several reasons:

Firstly, while it is possible to build a thermal breeder reactor using thorium, you would have to really push the the neutron economy, and thus the doubling time would be very long. As a consequence of the very long doubling time, the initial fissile fuel to breed enough U-233 to make a thorium reactor critical would have to come from reprocessed plutonium, meaning you would have to develop the technology needed for uranium reactors and plutonium extraction anyway.

Now if you want to destroy the minor actinide from your uranium waste you need a fast neutron spectrum. The reason for this is that many of the actinides are not fissile for low energy neutrons. You could build a fast reactor using thorium, but in a fast spectrum Plutonium, not U-233 is teh superior fuel due to a much higher neutron yield. It is only for thermal neutrons that Thorium excels.

It is also more difficult to reprocess throium, there's some intense gamma-emitters formed in a reactor using them, and there's a bunch of other issues.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[tmosley]

Keep up with the technology. Thorium produces short lived (10-15 years) waste that can be stored on site, and, in fact, can and HAS been designed to be 100% safe (pebble bed reactors, anyone?), where they physically CAN'T melt down.

You SAY that solar thermal doesn't produce a lot of waste, but you have clearly never been to a smelting operation, nor have you considered the energy input it takes to produce the hundreds of thousands of miles of tubing and mirrors that would have to be purpose made for such plants, or the environmental effect they would have on the NOT lifeless deserts you people want to destroy with them.

Further, you can't use WATER to store the energy--you can barely store heat in water. How are you planning to heat water to a boil using the energy stored in water? If you want it to produce energy overnight you have to use molten sodium. There's an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. You are talking about distributing little pockets of 10,000 degree heat all around the place, rathe than having a few,centralized, large, easily controlled pockets of 3,000 degree heat that won't melt much more than ice, certainly not steel and concrete.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[tmosley]

Anyone and everyone, once we get rid the literally impossible to overcome regulations that were imposed on new construction in the industry after 3 mile island. Hell, I'd go in with the neighbors to order one of those self-sustaining nuclear reactors from Japan where the only maintenance required is to change out the fuel once every 50 years. The regulations prevent me from hiring these experts who have set up such systems around the world without problem.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[khallow]

There IS a great deal to be gained, but those who stand to gain it are not those who are in power.

How are you forced to use more energy? You can always pay more to live closer and use less energy in your activities.

Also, Energy is most certainly not cheap, but many of the costs can be pushed off onto all the citizens of the planet instead of having to pay them solely by oneself.

In the case of petroleum for transportation, I strongly doubt this is the situation outside of some oil producing countries which heavily subsidize their oil consumption. Most places have consumption taxes which tend to offset or even exceed their subsidies.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[tmosley]

Uhh, having them distributed means they will be smaller. They might as well attack the coal plants we have now.

Further, no truck bomb is going to be able to breach an underground facility, which is generally what I have seen being called for, especially with the micronuclear reactors designed by Hitachi, which are designed to provide power to 1000 households for 50 years with no maintenance, and are so cheap that you could literally throw them away when you are done (they only cost a few million each, installed, IIRC). And with the intrinsically safe pebble bed reactors, even if the fuel was spilled in the street, you would just need guys in suits to go pick them up with tongs. The pebbles have radiation shielding built in, and physically can't get close enough together to melt down. You would have to remove the shell from each and every one to cause a problem.

Also, I don't know where you seem to get this idea that China is some sort of homogeneous culture. They have more Arabs than we do, many of which are fighting for independence and want an Islamic state.

Basically, your ideas are laughable excuses not to go with nuclear.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[tmosley]

Yes, solar thermal takes about 100X as much material to produce the same amount of energy. The heat stored by water overnight is worthless, because you by definition can only extract useful work by converting liquid water to steam. You can only do that by adding energy. If you want to continue generating energy overnight, you have to use molten sodium.

I don't understand how a person can fail to tell the difference between 10,000 square miles of thermal solar and ten thousand nuclear plants that cover maybe 20 square miles. With so so very many miles of energy production, which must by definition will be in sparsely populated areas, you are going to experience a LOT of fires. But hey, as long as there's no "radioactivity", right? Tell me, when, in the history of the Earth, has there EVER been an accident while delivering fuel to a nuclear facility? I've certainly never heard of one.

Re:Thorium Reactors

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Using a rare isotope of Uranium in a thermal reactor while wasting 99% of the energy, and leaving behind a huge mess was the rubbish choice.

U235 is at 0.7% and you can make natural U critical, it not that rare. Th is *NOT* a fuel, its fertile, you need neutrons to turn Th232 into Pa233 which then turn into U233 which is far *rarer* than U235. Also you can make a bomb from U233, in fact they *did*. Pa233 has a high neutron cross section and if not separated will form Pa234. Pa234 decays into U234 which is a horrible gamma emitter. The waste from *both* cycles is roughly the *same* for all practical planing purposes. Stable fast reactors reactors are "easy" if you go molten salt. You don't need Th to do it. In fact the "advantages are many fold" is often not from choosing Th but from using a molten salt reactor.

As for "wasting 99% of the energy", WTF are you talking about. What you do with the heat afterward has no bearing on the fuel cycle. Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

And it is BS that U was chosen over Th to make bombs. Th was tried once there was enough U around to make the neutrons needed, without U as a neutron source you can't use Th for anything. Its has some problems as a base fuel cycle which is why molten salt is often suggested despite is long development time, it should solve the problems. Th is no silver bullet and does not change the basic issue with nuclear energy.

Domestic oil is an alternative

[Kohath]

The cheapest and most obvious alternative to mideast oil is domestic oil. We have lots of it. It's being produced in North Dakota in increasing quantities. It's available under the Alaskan wasteland. It pollutes the Santa Barbara beaches from natural oil seeps -- pollution that would be prevented by oil drilling. And it's available in vast quantities in the Gulf of Mexico.

And in Canada, the oil from tar sands will be available to use in mass quantities. But environmentalists are trying to prevent the construction of a midwest oil pipeline to bring the oil from the oil fields to the people who would use it.

There are also vast new natural gas reserves available.

If people want to invest in "clean" energy, they're welcome to do that. But "clean" energy shouldn't be the only energy. We need affordable energy to escape the recession.

We need clean energy jobs and also traditional energy jobs. And every other kind of jobs.

Re:Domestic oil is an alternative

[jjohnson]

America has plenty of shale oil, which is more expensive to produce than the oil in the tar sands of Alberta, which is more expensive to produce than the oil in the Middle East. Environmentalism has nothing to do with failure to develop North American oilfields; the cost of a barrel of oil simply isn't high enough to start thoroughly exploiting local deposits.

Oil has to be around $70/barrel for the tar sands to be worthwhile, and no one knows the floor price to make shale oil extraction profitable because that's a field of engineering only now being developed. As for the Gulf of Mexico, the reason BP was drilling 5,000 feet down was because all the shallow fields have been sucked dry.

Re:Domestic oil is an alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's available in vast quantities in the Gulf of Mexico.

No shit, Sherlock.

All you need is a rowboat and a bucket.

Re:Domestic oil is an alternative

[buchner.johannes]

Plenty of oil is the wrong term when you have a limited resource and constant growth of demand.

Watch this video, it's insightful.

Re:What do you mean by 'Clean'

[NFN_NLN]

Most of the 'clean' energy projects are not for replacing oil (as a transport fuel) but are for replacing fossil fuels like coal and natural gas in electricity production.
Until we get a big breakthrough in battery technology we are not going to be able to run our cars on wind and solar power.

Transportation only accounts for 27% of US energy consumption. You can still make a large impact even if you left cars to run on fossil fuels.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:VQZGOdC8BrMJ:www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/IntInfo/ConsI.pdf+automobiles+percentage+energy&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiuc1DbXndHxR3juwumi8zfv8PraBjI9Q6rRJddCRo2TVVM2d6ar8e-9lofdg138GPS-jCQAA5o0F6wbGk4kC51MYiOK_-rw0y7XWluvhzo-JBVPyZpTJAxeMZYQaAvcMJE3eha&sig=AHIEtbTo2UW2PHXen6_KMZpEnGeuEAj4vQ

Basic economics

[l2718]

As a product becomes more expensive, developing alternative means of production becomes more profitable. For example, extracting oil from the shale in Alberta (Canada) is more expensive than the bare costs of extracting it from wells in the middle east. If political risks make middle-eastern oil more expensive, it will now be profitable to extract oil in Alberta. But oil prices could also come down if the political situation becomes more stable, so it's difficult to tell if the investment in alternatives is worth it. It depends on the ability of the market to deal with the volatility coming from the political instability (if it can, then the fluctuations in prices don't mean much in the long run).

If you view the product more generally (energy) then again more expensive oil would make alternative energy solutions more profitable. For example, shifting from gasoline-powered to electric-powered cars tends to reduce the volatility in the cost of driving the car, since electricity can be produced by many means.

What I don't see is why the so-called "clean" alternatives to oil would be cheaper than the "non-clean" ones. Given the terrible experience with wind power in Spain and Germany, the disaster that corn-based ethanol is in the US etc, it is simply not believable that such technologies would be cheaper than, say, natural gas.

Then there's fusion reactors, a proven clean energy source that seems to always be left out of the discussion. At current oil prices building nuclear reactors should be more profitable, but given the possibility that oil prices will eventually come down, I don't think short-term savings will be enough to counter the public's irrational fears of nuclear reactors.

Re:Basic economics

[Electricity Likes Me]

Corn-based ethanol was an idiotic idea from the start, born only of lobbying by the corn industry so farmers wouldn't have to actually change their crops. Corn is and always has been a terrible source for ethanol. The problem is it is politically impossible in the US to stop subsidizing inefficient farming practices, despite most farms being owned by mega-corps anyway.

I don't know what you're getting about wind power in Spain and Germany though. Their biggest problem is that they can't let it grow to be too large a fraction of the power grid without some type of storage technology, but when the wind blows it works just fine to let them shut down coal generators.

The biggest problem any of these places face is subsidy's to specific technologies. Without a general price on CO2 emissions, most of these technologies end up being a net inefficient way to reduce CO2 emissions, often at the expense of other technologies (like tidal power, nuclear, hydro, geothermal).

The free market works wonderfully when externalities are correctly priced in, but so long as CO2 is not, then direct action plans are much more expensive then a CO2 price (and subsequent cost-of-living increase) subsidies are.

Re:Basic economics

[rrohbeck]

All the economics doesn't change one fact: There will be Peak X for any nonrenewable resource X at some point. The question is not if but when.
Shale oil can keep us going for a decade or two, at high cost, but it's the last chance to get off fossil fuels. By the time shale oil hits its peak, peak coal will also be imminent - in 20 to 30 years. If the economy is still running on fossil fuels by then it will collapse. Even without that worst case scenario we will be hit by crude price peaks repeatedly - probably faster than the economy can adapt so it will have to shrink.

The Kings Fault

[MrQuacker]

When oil got that high, the Saudi King decided that if it got any higher people would really start looking at alternatives. So Saudi Arabia overinflated oil reserve and production estimates, and upped production as high as possible. By flooding the market with more oil they lowered prices a bit. Along with the banks fiasco, oil went "cheap" again.

Now the Saudis production is slowing down the fields are going dry.

Re:The Kings Fault

[rrohbeck]

All OPEC countries inflated their reserves because their market share was allocated proportionally.
In 2008 Saudi Arabia couldn't increase production any more although the price was at a record high and Bush begged them for more.
Right now it looks very questionable if they can really increase their production to pick up Libya's shortfall. Nobody measures how much they export so they can tell us anything. The crude oil price will tell us in the end.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7550

I put on my tin foil hat and robes.

[Palmsie]

If the wave of manufactured democracy has any foundation from the US government, bravo sirs. We have been trying to artificial create democracy in the middle east for quite some time. Right before Obama is beginning the Afghan pull out, democracy not only appears, but thrives. Massive propaganda success? Maybe. Who cares. Mission accomplished. I, for one, hope that the strain on oil continues. I'm in CA atm and we're up to $4.10 for regular but the long term goal is that this forces us to reconsider alternatives: serious alternatives, seriously.

It is only when gas gets so ridiculously high that average citizens actually change their behavior that we as a nation can change. It forces us. And, as previous posters have noted, this will not solve the entire energy problem but it will allow for an ecosystem to grow in society where you can have a broad range of thoughts: robber barons, genuine captains of industry, small fixes, big fixes, fixes for cars, fixes for electricity. It allows for what Don Campbell called an 'experimenting society'. Rather, a society where everyone can (through science) solve the woes of humanity. Building that kind of society is the first step but it isn't the last.

Re:The enemy is still present

[khallow]

will do their best to cut funding for promising projects and make laws to kill the ones that are left over.

If these projects can't stand on their own merits without requiring a ton of public funding, then they aren't "promising".

Why any sane rational person would ever vote Republican is beyond me.

Currently, US voters are to a considerable degree worried about the level of spending at the federal and state levels. When Democrats, such as Bill Clinton were serious about cutting spending, they got considerable support. Currently, the only serious impetus to cutting spending is among the Republicans. If that were to change, then the Democrats would get more support.

Oil is too cheap

[Opportunist]

Not too expensive. It's too cheap!

You will not see any investment in alternative energies or more efficient engines as long as it's cheaper to just use more oil. Do you think people would care about getting 10 or 30 miles to the gallon if we still had the gas prices of the 70s? Especially if that 10 mpg car would cost quite a bit more since more R&D is necessary? Efficiency is never free, someone has to come up with a way to save fuel.

And as much as it will hurt, only with higher prices for gas other, more expensive, forms of energy will become popular. Electric and H2 cars will instantly be a hit when gas prices double.

And also, let's not forget that local production becomes quite a bit more interesting if the transport of crap from China gets more expensive...

Re:Oil is too cheap

[rrohbeck]

Price volatility is the problem. Right now the price is high but after the next recession when the price drops again many new projects will be canceled again because they're not profitable. Exactly that happened in 2009.
There needs to be a tax that props up the price to some minimum level.

Re:Oil is too cheap

[Opportunist]

It's hardly a recession that creates cheap oil. If oil is cheap in a recession, it only means that there's enough stockpiled that oil sellers can open the flow when they need money.

Thrives? Where exactly?

[SmallFurryCreature]

The rebellions in the Middle East have shaken things up but no lasting changes have yet been made. Figure heads can easily be replaced by the next dictator.

Things are happening but to say Democracy is thriving... lets wait for the first free and open elections to be held at least eh? Some of us old stick in the muds think that they are a fairly important element of democracy. Silly I know but humor us.

When not only a government has been fairly elected but ALSO one freely elected government has been freely and openly replaced by another fairly elected government can democracy be said to thrive.

Overthowing a dictator is NOT democracy. Forced free elections is not freedom either. A ruling government respecting election results that go against it. THAT is democracy.

Re:Thrives? Where exactly?

[cdrguru]

Might want to see who gets elected as well. A huge problem is that there are very few established poltical organizations in those countries and the ones that do exist we wouldn't really like to see in power.

But whether we like it or not, the established and well known organizations are likely to end up in control. It won't be like Iran but it will almost certainly be like Gaza where Hamas was elected in a supposedly free and fair election.

If people want to vote in a new dictator, who are we to stop them?

Re:The problem is FAR more complex

[Alioth]

Pencils ARE made from biomass, they are made from wood and carbon. Terrible example!

In any case, the amount of oil we use for plastics is dwarfed (probably by orders of magnitude) compared to what we burn. Plastic is also very reusable, unlike fuel that is burned.

In any case, to make plastic, fundamentally you need hydrocarbons. If you have energy you can make hydrocarbons. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are incredibly abundant; have a big enough source of energy and you can make any hydrocarbon you want. It's just it's more convenient and cheaper to get them ready-made from oil.

Overpriced trains are madness

[fantomas]

I know, it's madness. I guess it depends on your model / philosophy of how a country should be run. Current ConDem government seems to follow the Tory line that trains should be run at a profit, they are a business. Compare to many of our European neighbours who see trains as part of the public infrastructure and to be subsidised as such.

Can't pull any figures out the hat but we definitely pay way more than a lot of other European countries for our train services. Myself, I think in the long run you're better investing in infrastructure and I believe you'll indirectly pull in profit in the long run if you have good services. Plus the current govt says we need jobs, well why not employ loads of people in building a 21st century rail infrastructure, that'll stimulate the economy. I live in a railway town and they'd love it if the government announced we need hundreds of new railway carriages built here, need to open up some mothballed steelworks and start turning out new rail lines, get loads of construction workers building improved bridges and tracks etc. People in work = people spending in shops, secondary industries benefit, end result more people working and better infrastructure. Or you could just lay off loads of people and let our trains decay to the point where you're into third world / US public infrastructure and see how that works. (rant over! :-) )

Re:Overpriced trains are madness

[isorox]

I know, it's madness. I guess it depends on your model / philosophy of how a country should be run. Current ConDem government seems to follow the Tory line that trains should be run at a profit, they are a business.

Prices were extreme before the last election. There are massive discounts for season tickets, but these aren't great if you work a mixture of peak and off peak, or only do a few days a week. The current train fare structure encourages 9-5 m-f working.

I live in a railway town and they'd love it if the government announced we need hundreds of new railway carriages built here, need to open up some mothballed steelworks and start turning out new rail lines, get loads of construction workers building improved bridges and tracks etc.

Building infrastructure is a great way out of a recession, as long as you can afford to borrow to build it (the last government screwed that one up by borrowing to pay for non-infrastructural projects when we were in a boom). That infrastructure could be rail, road, power, even new cities.

Re:Overpriced trains are madness

[isorox]

You don't seem to understand that if you don't pay for it yourself, they subsidies will cost you 50% more at least, as you not only have to pay the taxes to run the train, but for the bureaucrats who distribute the subsidy and prevent fraud. Not to mention the fraud itself.

Multiply that times tens of thousands of subsidies, and you wonder why western economies are all floundering?

You do realise the trucking industry in the U.S. is subsidised by a mostly free interstate highway system?

Re:Overpriced trains are madness

[tautog]

You don't seem to understand that if you don't pay for it yourself, they subsidies will cost you 50% more at least, as you not only have to pay the taxes to run the train, but for the bureaucrats who distribute the subsidy and prevent fraud. Not to mention the fraud itself.

Multiply that times tens of thousands of subsidies, and you wonder why western economies are all floundering?

You do realise the trucking industry in the U.S. is subsidised by a mostly free interstate highway system?

Just to keep things in perspective... The transportation industry paid $37.4 billion in federal and state highway-user taxes. Commercial trucks make up 12.5 percent of all registered vehicles, but paid 36.5 percent of total highway-user taxes in 2006.

Source: American Trucking Association

Granted, they travel more miles than private passenger vehicles, but they are also designed to impact the infrastructure less.

Re:Overpriced trains are madness

[sumdumass]

No.. not really.

The trucking system pays a hefty fuel tax for the use of those interstate roads. A single driver truck will average about 3000 miles a week over 50 weeks. That truck will pay close to $14,000 a year in IFTA (fuel taxes). This is not counting registration fees, permits, state surety bonds, or anything else associated with it. When you consider team drivers that will average about 5500-6000 miles per week, that number jumps quite a bit (over 20k).

and yes, I used conservative mileage estimates there. when I drove, I averaged close to 3500 a week for most of the year (winter caused it to go down to 3000).

The trucking industry more then pays for it's use of the roads. The problem is that the money they pay, gets spent elsewhere. This is no different then regular gas taxes either. for instance, a few years ago, The town I live closest to, ended up spending most of the gas tax on a rural bike path that doesn't even come close to any business centers in the town. They then complained they they didn't have enough money to fix the roads. the state, funneled a lot of the road use tax money to other programs too. Even the feds take the money and put it in other areas.

You would be more accurate in saying the government is subsidized by the trucking industry.

Re:Overpriced trains are madness

[HornWumpus]

USA total gas taxes.$66b/year.

Cites

Average gas tax 48.1 cents/gallon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax

Total gas used: 137,916,660,000 gallons/year http://americanfuels.blogspot.com/2010/04/2009-gasoline-consumption.html

Like I said don't let facts bother you.

Re:Overpriced trains are madness

[HereIAmJH]

In addition, trucks cause quicker roadway deterioration.

On the other side of the coin, passenger traffic tends to be clustered on limited routes during short periods of the day. So passenger traffic causes cities to build over capacity to support traffic flow for 4-5 hours of the day. For example, a local loop interstate has 4-6 lanes (each direction) to handle rush hour in the morning and evenings. Even so, it is quite common for a 6 mile stretch to be bumper to bumper for close to 2 hours in the evening. Outside of the morning and evening commutes, 2 lanes in each direction would be sufficient. That carries over to ramps and interchanges as well. Most of the interchanges around town are being rebuilt to increase rush hour capacity, not because of wear.

Re:The enemy is still present

[khallow]

You mean 'if these projects can't compete with all of the direct and indirect subsidy that the oil industry receives'.

IMHO while in absolute size, oil industry probably receives more, as a fraction of revenue, renewables and nuclear get more.

Re:The enemy is still present

[DavidTC]

Currently, US voters are to a considerable degree worried about the level of spending at the federal and state levels.

Currently, Americans are, first and foremost, worried about jobs and the economy. (I don't think 'US voters' differ from that, but haven't seen a poll of just them.)

Then they're worried about spending.

Currently, the only serious impetus to cutting spending is among the Republicans.

Yeah, those serious Republicans, yammering constantly about cutting...social security? Which doesn't have anything to do with spending? Hrm. Anytime anyone mentions social security, which pays its own way, as somehow being related to 'spending', they just obviously dishonest. Same with people who list Medicare.

Both those are trust funds, both those have nothing to do with our budget shortfall because they are spending only the money they've taken in, and both those are the first thing Republicans attack WRT spending. It's inherent dishonestly on the whole issue from starting premises. (Obviously, at some point, both those need fixing, because they either are, or near the point of, spending more than they currently are taking in, and operating off their reserves, and at some point will run out of money, but that's not relevant to the actual budget.)

The actual spending problem is that the Republicans refuse, and have scared the Democrats into being unable to do so (The Democrats are spineless cowards who faint at their own shadow), to cut defense spending, which is the gigantic elephant in the room.

Instead, the Republicans run around trying to cut out microscopic levels of spending, like $27 million to help communities run poison control centers. That's about how much it costs us to operate one nuclear sub for a year. So, keep three million people out of the emergency rooms...or have a nuclear sub to play around with to 'export freedom'...wait, who are we even fighting that we need nuclear subs against?

You can claim the Republicans are 'serious' about spending when they acknowledge that the military is costlier than all other militaries on the planet, combined, and maybe we should do something about that.

In fact, I have seen Republicans point that out...and then get ignored by the rest of their party. Ron Paul is an idiot on many things, but at least he's honest and consistent, and has pointed out our military spending is insane.