Energy Reality: The Stock Beats the Flow from the Sun (why technology struggles to save ‘renewables’)
By Roger Donway -- November 7, 2009This article, “Energy to Spare” by David Warren, published in the Ottawa Citizen on November 4, 2009, says much in few words. Energy reality is that the sun’s work over the ages has produced energy sources (oil, gas, and coal) that far exceed the dilute energy from the sun. The stock beats the flow–by a country mile.
This article is reproduced below as a Weekend reading feature:
Will technology solve our energy problems? This seemingly fatuous question is actually stupider than first appears. For we already have the technology to power anything within reason, with minimal if any environmental fallout.
Yet under the inspiration of the Green Zeitgeist, I cannot go into a magazine shop without finding some science-lite cover story on new prospects for harnessing solar, thermal, wind, tidal, or whatever “renewable” forces.…
Continue ReadingThe Bear Growls, The EU Grovels: Adventures in the European Gas Market
By Donald Hertzmark -- November 6, 2009Among those hoping that global warming is real we should now count the EU. As winter approaches there is, quelle surprise, the initial hint of yet another gas supply crisis between Russia, Ukraine and Russia’s EU customers. The problem is that those pesky pipelines have to go through somewhere to reach the market and that somewhere happens to be the Ukraine (unless it’s Poland, more on that later).
Source: US DOE, for better map resolution
All those red lines running Northeast-to-Southwest carry gas from Russia to the EU countries. There is just no getting around the Ukraine for most of the transits; it is big and (if you are Russian) in the wrong place.
Gas: The Great Green Hope for Europe
As noted previously, gas use in Europe is roughly the same as that of the US, a bit over 20 tcf annually. …
Continue ReadingDOE Secretary Chu’s Convoluted Climate Economics
By Marlo Lewis -- November 5, 2009Last week, at the first Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on S. 1733, the Kerry-Boxer “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu explained the economic rationale for adopting a Kyoto-style cap-and-trade program.
His argument, in a nutshell, goes like this:
- Reducing emissions globally will require a massive investment in “clean technologies” — an estimated $2.1 trillion in wind turbines and $1.5 trillion in solar voltaic panels by 2030. These investments will create many green jobs.
- “The only question is — which countries will invent, manufacture, and export these clean technologies and which will become dependent on foreign products.”
- The United States is falling behind. “The world’s largest turbine manufacturing company is headquartered in Denmark. 99 percent of the batteries that power America’s hybrid cars are made in Japan.