Tag Archives: energy

BP Statistical Review of World Energy

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BP has put out its Statistical Review of World Energy 2020. I’m a little short on time so I’m going to quote CNN’s coverage of it. (At least I think this is the report CNN is referring to. I have noticed a trend recently where journalists talk about a “recent report” without naming it or linking to it.) At least, I’m going to try to quote it. WordPress’s block editor is getting harder and harder to use.

In a “business-as-usual” scenario, in which government policies and social preferences evolve in the same way as in the recent past, oil demand picks up slightly following the coronavirus hit, but then plateaus around 2025 and starts to decline after 2030.

In two other scenarios, in which governments take more aggressive steps to curb carbon emissions and there are significant shifts in societal behavior, demand for oil never fully recovers from the decline caused by the pandemic. That would mean that oil demand peaked in 2019…

”As difficult steps go, BP’s pirouette from traditional oil company to green energy giant ranks among the more challenging,” Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said in a note to clients.

CNN

What exactly is a “green energy giant”? Carbon capture might be a thing, eventually, but that seems like a risky bet as the only business strategy. If most things are going to electrify, it seems like the green energy giant will be the regulated electric utility business, at least in the United States, and it seems unlikely BP is trying to go there. They can try to supply that industry with things to burn, I suppose, like natural gas and liquid natural gas (coal and oil seem to be on their way out), but I am not sure that is a growth industry. Aviation might move toward hydrogen fuel cells eventually. There must be some tiny demand for rocket fuel. Chemicals, drugs, and plastics will continue to exist, of course, but I am not sure that would be a huge source of annual revenue growth for decades. They can manufacture solar panels, windmills, efficient transportation and electrical equipment of various sorts, get into the smart grid, smart buildings and materials, batteries, etc. But doing all sorts of little bits and pieces like this would seem to get them into industrial conglomerate territory, and there are plenty of companies already there. Maybe that is where they are headed – just make forays into lots of different markets and see if anything sticks.

November 2019 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • The Darling, a major river system in Australia, has essentially dried up.
Most hopeful story: Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

the latest on fusion power

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According to the Washington Post, there are looming breakthroughs in fusion.

But the technical challenges of essentially creating an artificial mini-star have been daunting. Scientists have made fusion happen with various approaches, but more energy was expended in those experiments than was released. The turning point will come when more energy is produced than goes in.

The roadblocks have started to fall away in recent years, thanks to the use of supercomputers to model and optimize the design of fusion systems, and to a new generation of superconductors that increase the magnetic fields that contain the artificial star, thereby dramatically decreasing the required size of fusion devices. Advanced manufacturing techniques for specialized fusion materials have also been developed.

Washington Post

The title of the article is “The fusion energy dream is inching toward planet-saving reality”. Would this “save the planet”. Well, if it were clean, cheap, and safe, it could move us closer to that world of abundance some envision. The problem with fission has been that the infrastructure required to make it safe has been so big, complicated, and costly, that by the time it can be put into place it is already obsolete by a decade or more. And then there is the weaponization problem which has prevented widespread use in poor countries.

Let’s assume it will be clean, cheap, and safe. It could solve our carbon emission problems, air pollution problems, and generally free up a lot of resources for other things, making us quite a bit richer. Whole industries would be created and destroyed, which we could expect to cause some political and financial turmoil. It wouldn’t solve our land use, biodiversity, or water pollution problems.

August 2019 in Review

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My work-life balance situation continues to not favor a lot of blog posts. Or is it work-life-family balance? Or is family part of life? Yes, I guess so. Anyway, what there is not a lot of time for is personal leisure activities like reading, writing, and thinking. Not that I don’t enjoy reading Green Eggs and Ham for the 50th time. I do. Anyway, here are a few highlights of the slim pickings that constituted this blog in August 2019. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Drought is a significant factor causing migration from Central America to the United States. Drought in the Mekong basin may put the food supply for a billion people in tropical Asia at risk. One thing that can cause drought is deliberately lying to the public for 50 years while materially changing the atmosphere in a way that enriches a wealthy few at everyone else’s expense. Burning what is left of the Amazon can’t help. 
Most hopeful story:
  • I explored an idea for automatic fiscal stabilizers as part of a bold infrastructure investment plan. I’m not all that hopeful but a person can dream.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

hydrogen as a jet fuel

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I was curious if aircraft could be fueled feasibly by hydrogen in the future. Okay, I know this has been tried in the past – “Oh, the humanity!” – but, there must be advances in technology since then. 10 minutes of research reveals that battery-powered aircraft are now a going concern, although they tend to be unmanned or at least small. Current fuel cell technology sounds like it has pretty similar limits to batteries. On a larger scale, there is serious research on the potential of liquid hydrogen as a commercial aviation fuel. It sounds feasible but would require major changes in long-lived infrastructure systems around the world. But let’s say you happened to have lots of electricity and water in abundance. Maybe you are in a coastal location and have invested in nuclear power, or you just happen to have lots of geothermal, hydroelectric, or whatever kind of power. You have also invested in desalination and you have created a major transportation hub. You might then be in a position to create liquid hydrogen and/or fuel cells at a cost-effective price. This could be climate friendly as burning hydrogen, in theory at least, creates only water vapor as a product, and fusing hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen creates the same – liquid water or water vapor. Hydrogen is dangerous, but so is jet fuel and so are the materials in modern batteries, so hopefully technology will eventually come to our aid and get the risk and environmental impact down to a similar or lower level than these other options.

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

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Kurzgesast – In a Nutshell is a site with short videos on all sorts of futuristic topics. Here is one on the Dyson Sphere. It talks about a seemingly-plausible approach to a Dyson swarm where small, cheap solar satellites are used to beam solar energy to factories on Mercury, which is used along with materials on Mercury itself to make more satellites and more factories to make satellites in an exponential manner. Sounds good except for the possibility of a runaway exponential system redirecting increasing amounts of solar generation in new directions, and the ethics of possibly disassembling an entire planet into construction materials.

generating hydrogen from solar panels

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It makes sense that you could use electricity from solar panels to split water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen, but why do that instead of just using the electricity? I guess if storing and using the hydrogen gas is more cost-efficient or reliable than charging a battery. Still, it seems like the days of storing and burning dangerous gases and liquids rather than electrifying might be numbered.

fracking with explosives in China

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China has a plan to pump shale gas using explosives. The headline grabs attention by suggesting they might be nuclear weapons, but in reality they are using the tape of explosion that sets off a nuclear weapon, which is a conventional charge directed in a very precise direction.

The problem is that 80 per cent of its deposits are located more than 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) below sea level, which is far beyond the range of hydraulic fracturing, the standard method for extraction.

But all that could be about to change, after a team of nuclear weapons scientists led by Professor Zhang Yongming from the State Key Laboratory of Controlled Shock Waves at Xian Jiaotong University in Shaanxi province, released details of a new “energy rod” that has the power to plumb depths never before thought possible.

January 2019 in Review

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After blogging pretty consistently daily for years, I’ve finally slowed this blog down to every other day due to the realities of work and family. Maybe I’ll get back to daily in a couple years. In the meantime, I’m going to pare my “month in review” posts to highlight three items, because it wouldn’t really make sense to do a Top 9 out of 15.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • Writing in 1984, Isaac Asimov thought we would be approaching world peace, living lives of leisure, children would love school, and we would be mining the moon and manufacturing things in orbital factories by now.

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Some in the U.S. Senate and military take UFOs seriously.