Comments for Clean Energy Wonk

Comment on The Cost of Transmission by Storage: The Best Renewable Energy Integration Strategy?

Storage: The Best Renewable Energy Integration Strategy? — Mon, 07 May 2012 03:23:28 +0000

[...] UPDATE 12/29/09- I came across better numbers for the cost of transmission, and updated the graphs here. [...]

Comment on Pink Slime is Green by Dan Gordon

Dan Gordon — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:13:27 +0000

I agree that there is a sort of immediate ‘knee jerk reaction’ to this pink slime controversy. I feel that whenever there is a big controversy like this in the food industry it is automatically magnified. It is interesting how you compare this to foraging through trash. Great article though. thanks

Comment on Fossil Debt by Nimigje

Nimigje — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:40:01 +0000

Wind energy harvesting in the world started hundreds of years, before peoples learned to produce, distillate or refining the oil and use the product as fuels to energize different motors with combustion, or produce other energies, steam, electricity or other uses on the chemical industry or fertilizers, plastic etc. etc. Today we see that this product, has a vital place on economic development, but the reserves are depleting every day.
Peoples know not about the wind energy, or sun energy, and they learned to harvest different energies, waive energy, hydro energy, thermo energy, atomic energy, bibful energy, etc. etc. You as a reader can ad hydrogen energy, biochemical energy, human energy, animal’s energy, fusion or fission, algae energy, traditional dirty coal energy or clean coal energy, natural gas energy, wood energy, dung energy, geo-thermal energy, or others that I may not know, or I have forget to mention.
On this competitive environment, oil has a key place because, oil can be used to fuel the transportation, the airplanes, ships and other automobile that is designed and cannot be move anymore if the oil will be missing tomorrow.
The simple fact is that all the energies recognized by mankind until now, have not competed with the oil, and we now understand that one day, the oil production will decline, and all our investments based on oil will be idle and worthless, starting from my car and other cars, or airplanes will be idle, or even the tractors to dig the earth and produce food.
The other energies cannot move the world, and during the development on the past, has not been invented something better to use the clean and renewable energies.
One think I will say am sure, the development will continue, the competition will continue, and better discoveries will be done on the future.
I personally will agree that a finite world with unlimited growth of population needs unlimited sources of energies, and these energies must be renewable, clean and usable everywhere the mankind needs to keep the continuous development. But this is simple, it is theory, it can be written from me, from you or from everybody.
The real problem of energy is on practice, on the everyday practice. We need energy today, to keep the life normal on the developed world, and to increase the standard of life on the developing world, to disappear the poverty on millions and millions of peoples. We need energy today to continue and produce all the other ores, produce steel, produce plastics and polymers, produce wind mills, dig to produce coal or drill for other oil and gas, we need energy to transport all the goods on the final place. We need energies to produce all agriculture products and transport these products.
Unfortunately, we today use about 32 % energy from oil, about 24% energy from gas, and around 30% energy from coal. Talking on percentage, we see that the numbers looks normal, talking for the potential of the renewable clean energies, we again find possibilities, but we cannot replace everything overnight, we have to invent first, and after do our job, work and work and work, until the job will be done.
I believe, that oil, together with coal and the gas have done and still are contributing on the overall progress that we have today. I believe that all this knowledge will be base of new discoveries and future development.
The oil price increase, gradually or on a sharp shape, has been and is a problem for importing countries, and on the actually times the high prices, have damaged seriously many economies, have increased probably the unemployment, have effected on increasing the prices of every good or services, have closed many companies. Today, oil companies many times are in front of big problem, not because the oil price is low, but even they make a lot of money, billions of dollars, they are investing back the money to discover new reservoirs, and many times they fail, they lose the money, they many time cannot make any more money on the old wells or old reservoirs and they need money and to abandon the old wells and return the area on normal and natural conditions that the environment has been before drilling. This is associated and with other problems, they invest on researches and new discoveries to increase the oil recovery from old reservoirs need big investment, sometimes they need water to produce steam and produce heavy oil or bitumen, they need to capture the gas carbonic produced on different factures and inject deep on old reservoirs, and they need other agents to do the job, but the agents are not cheap and abandonment, sometime they need light oil products but these are not abundant and are not cheap. All these have brought all of us infront of high prices, and these prices will keep drilling on deep seas, in Arctic or other places, where the cost is even higher, the risk of other disasters is immense, and there is the risk for the company to lose the money, because they find no oil.
The high oil price, of course is bad thing, but if the oil will be short and the demand will be higher than the supply, then the only peaceful way is to increase the gasoline and diesel price, and many of us “live” oil where it is, and I mean live it there in gas station, for all of them who can afford it.
My understanding is simple, and as the oil or oil products used as fuel on transportation, measure at around 55% of the oil produced, then at least 30-50% of this amount, can be “saved” to save the mankind from a deeper shortage on the future. Based on the level of oil consumption we have today, around 90 mm bbl per day, the amount that can be “saved” is around 15-25 mm bbl per day. This is a huge amount, but this is a big sacrifice from many peoples who until today are using their cars, and they “voluntarily” will keep away from gasoline or diesel with high price, and use for their transportation the public transportation.
I have put the word saved and the word voluntarily on the QUOTING MARKS, because indeed this will be achieved only by increasing the gasoline and diesel prices, so only peoples that can afford the price will continue to use their cars for some more time, until the new energies will easy and cheap be used again on transportation.
In reality, to give a simple idea for peoples who want it, the world is awash with oil resources, but we cannot produce all the oil that is inside the tiny pores of the rocks, deep on the earth. And based on the advanced technologies we today can produce only around 25-45% of the oil, and only on few cases we can produce more. To give another idea, how hard it is to produce the oil, I will say to everybody to remember the cleaning of any stein of oil, edible oil on the shirt, and we have the shirt on the front of our eyes and it is hard or sometime we cannot clean the shirt and we will throw it. The production of crude oil from the depths of the earth is even harder, than the cleaning of the edible oil on the shirt that I mentioned. All what I say, is not to blame or to justify, but I want peoples to be realistic, and try to detect problem, learn to solve the problems that they detected, and finally apply the knowledge to develop the economy. Simply, detecting the problems, and waiting from the others to solve the problems, does not work, or is with dangerous results at all.
With oil we are on the point that we have detected the problems, and we continue to do researches to replace the oil with clean energies, we continue to invest with the hope to discover new reservoirs and new technologies, but the reality is that we are on delay, we do not have any possible solution to continue the life like before, and to do the business like before.
I am not a person that want to panic the world, the hope is, we see that the effort to decrease the oil consumption, or better to match the oil demand with oil supply, even by increasing the price, looks that is an effort to solve the problem with the present knowledge.
Another hope is to increase the researches, and find ways or technologies to produce oil from the depleted or abandoned reservoirs, the places or reservoirs that we know, and gradually increase even more the researches, discover and develop new renewable clean energies.
For today and for tomorrow, the shortest way to solve the problem of the oil shortage, is increase the production from existing reservoirs, use this old non-renewable energy by using more effective cars, by increasing the recovery factor, by drilling more wells, by stimulating wells to produce more, by using the EOR or IOR technologies, by using horizontal drilling and multifractures, by using SAGD or cyclic steam injection, by increasing the knowledge and discoveries every day.
On long term, the mankind needs to harvest the renewable and cleans and safe energies.

Comment on Small is Beautiful by Steve Hayes

Steve Hayes — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:39:11 +0000

Large scale wind is already as cost effective as other commercial electric generation. Sign up, to help promote its development, and at the same time, reduce your own personal carbon footprint.
According to AWEA only 2% of home in the US, are located where site wind is feasible. Nevertheless, everyone should call its electric utility, and ask them if they have a clean electricity option. If they do, sign on. If they do not, then make it clear to them, that you want one.

Comment on Penny stock “tips” by Penny Stock Investing Tips You MUST Know | Best Penny Stocks Review

Penny Stock Investing Tips You MUST Know | Best Penny Stocks Review — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 07:07:15 +0000

[...] Penny stock “tips” [...]

Comment on Predicting the Electric Vehicle Adoption Curve by » Mile-High Mega Kites Could Pull Giant, Floating Power Plants

» Mile-High Mega Kites Could Pull Giant, Floating Power Plants — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:42:58 +0000

[...] Clean Energy Wonk jQuery.ajax({type:"GET",async:false,url:"http://www.InnovationToronto.com/wp-content/plugins/post-views/post-views.php",data:"cache_post_id=4790&cache_view_type=normal&cache_output_type=content",cache:false}); [...]

Comment on The silicon wafer industry by More Pain Ahead for Solar Stocks

More Pain Ahead for Solar Stocks — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:28:51 +0000

[...] one of the very first articles I wrote about investing in clean energy was about the solar silicon industry in July 2006. At the time I wrote, “I expect all polysilicon manufacturers to be very [...]

Comment on The silicon wafer industry by More Pain Ahead for Solar Stocks - Duoplan.net - What are Renewable Energy Sources - Duoplan.net

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:13:41 +0000

Comment on Greenwashing at KB Home by KB Home Issues

KB Home Issues — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:48:23 +0000

KB Home did not insulate our new home’s attic properly to code either. Our attic was supposed to have a minimum of 13″ blown in insulation and it only had about 6-7″ with NO insulation on the other side. This was supposed to be an Energy Star home. KB Home is now going around bragging how green it is when it can’t even insulate an attic properly! You are exactly right, that’s a good way to tell in colder climates how well an attic is insulated by how much heat is escaping which melts snow.

Comment on When it Makes Sense to Worry About Jevons Paradox, and When it Doesn’t by freedom13

freedom13 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:18:35 +0000

You’ve got great insights about Green Enegy Possibilities, keep up the good work!

Comment on Bill Konrad 1930-2011 by Tom

Tom — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:20:15 +0000

Thanks.

Comment on Bill Konrad 1930-2011 by David Lane

David Lane — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:27:35 +0000

Thank you for publishing this. I know that we owe your Dad gratitude for your fine contributions. You certainly have my condolences. What a tremendous loss.

Comment on Visual Comparison of Electricity Generation Technologies by Lea Courtney

Lea Courtney — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:25:00 +0000

“What people want to believe is that so-called “clean” or “renewable” energy is the future. The reality is that although there have been recent advancements in technology on a number of levels; we are still a long way off from efficient vs. cost. Once the government incentives drop off or are reduced we’ll be back to slow motion once again. This is not to mention all the other problems with renewable as we know them today such as irradiance or what happened when there is no wind.”-Indeed true.

Comment on The Cost of Transmission by Tom

Tom — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:08:16 +0000

http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=Content-Type&blobheadervalue1=inline%3B+filename%3D%22REDI+Report+(Full+Version).pdf%22&blobheadervalue2=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1251746588129&ssbinary=true

Comment on The Cost of Transmission by Cedric

Cedric — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:54:27 +0000

Dear Tom,

This is really interesting!

I just finished my PhD on the integration of wind power using demand response. In my further research, I would like to compare demand response opportunities with transmission interconnection and other sources of storage/flexibility. Could I get access to the presentation/publication behind as well as the excel file you refer to (I found a link on the internet, but it does not work)?

Thanks in advance for your reply!

Comment on They do it with Mirrors: Concentrating Solar Power by jack

jack — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:08:46 +0000

Hello , my name is jagjit hans. I would like to enquire about the price of one dish stirling. I am interested in buying one dish and taking it to India to start an buisness.Thank you

Sincerly,
Jagjit Hans
717-395-3956

Comment on Another Cost Comparison For Renewable Electricity by Dr.A.Jagadeesh

Dr.A.Jagadeesh — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 17:05:20 +0000

Solar power generation is expensive far far above Wind power generation in India.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com

Comment on They do it with Mirrors: Concentrating Solar Power by Cheap Photovoltaics Are Eating Solar Thermal’s Lunch - Alternative Renewable Energies

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:47:30 +0000

[...] renewable energy advocates (myself included) have long seen CSP as core to the decarbonization of the electric grid. That’s because CSP [...]

Comment on Small is Beautiful by Tom Konrad

Tom Konrad — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 04:22:10 +0000

No, Marc, Small is not always beautiful when it comes to efficiency, as you point out. The idea I’m trying to put forward here is that even though modular technologies may not be as efficienct or cost effective as industrial technologies, they may end up triumphing anyway because their small scale allows the technology to progress much faster.

Another way to think about it is evolution… small creatuers tend to live and reproduce much faster than large ones, and given more generations, they may be able ot eveolve qucker and be more sucessful as a species than a much more impressive large creature.

In other words, expect surprising progress from modular technologies… they may end up beating large scale technologies, even if the latter look better on paper.

Comment on Small is Beautiful by Marc Gunther

Marc Gunther — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:47:04 +0000

Great post, Tom, thanks, but is small always beautiful? One reason why EVs are more efficient and lower carbon that the internal combustion engine, I’m told, is because even a coal plant wastes less energy than many thousands of automobile engines.