Peak Oil and Climate Change

[b_lumenkraft]

FlyingLotus, in your opinion, how does the fact that renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuel fit into your calculation?

[FlyingLotus]

FlyingLotus, in your opinion, how does the fact that renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuel fit into your calculation?

Wind/solar electricity is cheaper than natural gas or coal generated electricity in many, if not most, circumstances now but wind/solar couldn't singlehandedly power a city unaided by some baseline source of electricity so natural gas plants will continue to be build, especially as nuclear power plants are mothballed.  The only optimistic news on the climate front stems from this above fact: we might be on the steep upward sloping part of the S Curve for adoption of wind/solar. Sadly, Jevon's Paradox probably applies - if solar/wind become cheaper but there is still a substantial need for natural gas, a lot of the anticipated emissions reductions could be attenuated by increased electricity use as prices drop. 

This trend, of course, is of limited relevance to the transportation sector, which is the sector most relevant to petroleum products - electric vehicles remain expensive, though their price is falling fast, and adoption rates by consumers, while impressive compared to rates even five years ago, aren't sufficient to make rapid progress. Again, there's a kind of Jevon's Paradox at play here - insofar as oil demand is curtailed by improved fuel efficiency and increased adoption of EVs, oil prices are held down and that shifts incentives for other uses of oil or for increased car usage among those who do not have EVs. I certainly wonder if Amazon's growth would have been held back in oil was at 150 dollars a barrel! 

Without aggressive carbon taxation that ratchets up every year, we'll find that markets aren't very useful mechanisms at limiting climate change.

Stated different, the CO2 intensity of economic growth is plummeting due to these advances, a wonderful trend, but this is not sufficient. For every dollar of US GDP, 0.32 kg of CO2 is emitted. In 1950, for every dollar of US GDP, 1 kg of CO2 was emitted. However, due to the growth of the US economy, for emissions to drop to 1950 levels, we'd need 0.14 kg of CO2 to be emitted per dollar of US GDP (and this required intensity rate falls every year) - it took 35 years for carbon intensity to be cut in half between 1979 and 2014. We'd need this to happem again and then some to limit emissions to 1950 levels - this is a very difficult task and the US cannot be assisted by offshoring dirty industries this time...

[Tor Bejnar]

After we meet the challenge to get CO2 emissions back to 1950 levels, then we must get them back to 1850 levels.  Will 'we' do this with civilization or without it?  It is our choice!

[b_lumenkraft]

but wind/solar couldn't singlehandedly power a city unaided by some baseline source

This is really odd! Funny you would say that. It strikes me new people coming here recently pushing this agenda deliberately.

This myth is debunked by experts all over the place and everyone can look this up themselves. But for some reason, nobody seems to do that. Not even you, who, given what you write otherwise, seems to be an informed person.

So here is my blunt question to you: Are you interested in sea ice or are you here because your employer told you so?

[FlyingLotus]

but wind/solar couldn't singlehandedly power a city unaided by some baseline source

This is really odd! Funny you would say that. It strikes me new people coming here recently pushing this agenda deliberately.

This myth is debunked by experts all over the place and everyone can look this up themselves. But for some reason, nobody seems to do that. Not even you, who, given what you write otherwise, seems to be an informed person.

So here is my blunt question to you: Are you interested in sea ice or are you here because your employer told you so?

I believe that fact is supported by all of the available evidence. Energy generated via solar/wind fluctuates in substantial ways that does not vary with fluctuation in electricity use patterns, right? You could somehow align the way people live with solar/wind, of course, that's not impossible but is it plausible in democratic societies where people have come to expect comforts without sacrifice? We need to be on war-time footing now and the public is delusional about this.

I am interested in sea ice and I am not sure why this is a niche interest given how critical sea ice is to our broader climate system! If I wanted to spread disinformation for an oil company or whatever, my message would downplay climate change.

Edit: appears that Skeptical Science makes the argument that solar/wind can provide baseload power but they say this might require some natural gas plants that are switched on at times, which seems right to me. Intermitancy of renewables is a big challenge that can be surmounted but it'll require big changes!

[FlyingLotus]

After we meet the challenge to get CO2 emissions back to 1950 levels, then we must get them back to 1850 levels.  Will 'we' do this with civilization or without it?  It is our choice!

That's the basic challenge. Pulling this off would require an epochal transformation of civilization that we haven't seen in the developed world since WW2 - it would reorder our lives and require a great deal of sacrifice. We can choose to do this or keep putting it off but, no matter what we do, humanity will be forced to change its behavior in radical ways over the next century.

People are incapable of saving for retirement so it makes sense that we'd keep ignoring this existential threat...

[etienne]

Well, as engineer, I know that for each technical problem, thete is a technical solution, but I also know that all technical solutions are not affordable. ERoEI is a very important concept, and it is the one to be used when thinking more than 3 months in the future, because you can't have a good ROI with a bad ERoEI. Maybe renewables are now getting better faster than we think because their ERoEI goes up and the one of fossil fuels goes down.
Fossil fuels have 2 main advantages : they are easy to store (have already been for many years) and they don't take much space (kWh per square meter is extremely high for storing and for extracting), but even with these advantages, if kWh per kWh is too low, it doesn't make sense anymore.

[sidd]

Re: basepower

Jacobson and others have pointed out that to rely solely on wind/solar, you need to overbuild by a factor of three. Which wipes out the cost advantage of wind/solar ...

Of course, costs of storage are plummeting, so the numbers are getting better.

sidd

[etienne]

I wonder how many times the not renewable infrastructure is overbuilt. Failure are most of the time related to network problems. Furthermore, right now the aim is not a full renewable world, but a reduction of the use of fossil fuels. I don't believe in a fully renewable world because the last % are almost impossible to achieve, at least not in a greenBAU context,, but a 50% coverage on the bad days would be a great achievement.

[b_lumenkraft]

Sidd, do you have a link for me about that 3 times overbuild number?

[etienne]

If you need a 3 times overbuild for a full coverage, 1,5 overbuild for a 50% coverage on the bad days. Once we have that, load balancing and storage could make miracles.

[b_lumenkraft]

With interconnected grids overbuilding is not needed. It's not expensive to connect countries and continents. It's just cables. Interconnecting grids is throwing a cable over the border.

[etienne]

With interconnected grids overbuilding is not needed. It's not expensive to connect countries and continents. It's just cables. Interconnecting grids is throwing a cable over the border.

Well, it's not that the border changes weather.

[sidd]

I think the 3x number (no storage, with lotsa new interconnects covering lower 48 USA) is in one of the Jacobson papers, but i shall have to check. Unfortunately, i am stressed for time right now.

sidd

[b_lumenkraft]

Ho hurry Sidd.

[interstitial]

Similar to previous post but not identical

My point is overcapacity is already required now. Most utilities seem to be targeting 25% even though only 15% required. Without hard numbers increasing it a bit more for renewables seems very reasonable because they are cheaper to begin with.
Storage can be very profitible as well a 50 million dollar battery plant in australia earned 810,000 dollars in the first few weeks of operation. Buy low sell high like any other market. https://greenerideal.com/news/australia-tesla-solar-battery-turns-a-profit/
FERC targets a 15% (varies a bit per region) peak use overcapacity to provide reliable electric distribution now. Most seem to maintain 25% overcapacity.

[sidd]

As I suspected, I have posted the references before here and elsewhere. I recollected incorrectly, what i was thinking of is the Budischak paper given in the comment below, not Jacobson.

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,256.msg110079.html#msg110079

From the Budischak abstract:

"We find that the least cost solutions yield seemingly-excessive generation capacitydat
times, almost three times the electricity needed to meet electrical load." 

and the discussion following. A realclimate comment is also referenced, might be useful.

Apparently my memory is quite faulty, Budischak does include storage ...but refuses to include pumped storage because " Hydropower makes the problem of high penetration renewables too easily solved,"

The MacDonald paper is quite good too.

Now i really gotta run.

sidd

[b_lumenkraft]

Thanks, Sidd.

From that paper:

We model many combinations of renewable electricity sources (inland wind, offshore wind, and photovoltaics) with electrochemical storage (batteries and fuel cells)...

Meaning, they assume there wasn't any existing storage infrastructure already. I don't know the motives for this but it's not a realistic scenario.

So yeah, in this unrealistic scenario you would need overbuilding. In the real world though, this is just not applicable.

[sidd]

Allrite, I got a break waiting to unload and i see that Jacobson(2011) has an overbuild of about 4 (40 TW for 11 TW consumption) in his controversial 2011 papers doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.11.040 and doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.11.045

I still think Budischak is roughly right as I stated in my realclimate post and here, but of course, storage cost is plummeting, so LCOE will be lower. And as he admits, he doesn't even consider hydro, because it makes the problem too easy.

The reason i think overbuild (in nameplate capacity, watts rather than joules of course; recall that all these papers are talking about satisfying instantaneous demand in watts but looking at LCOE in joules) will be necessary is simply that capacity factor of wind and solar is substantially lower than 1. Overbuild  might not be as high as 3, but not much lower.

As for overbuild in actual energy generation (joules instead of watts), that entirely depends on how much storage you put in the equations. And how much demand response (another battery if you like) you can muster.

This discussion should really go back to the renewable energy threads at least as far Budischak and MacDonald
papers are concerned. Jacobson does talk about transport, heat and such, the the other are all talking about electric.

sidd

[etienne]

When we talk of overbuilding of non renewable generation capacity, Belgium has 7 nuclear reactors, but last November (2018), only one was running, and there was no shortage.
Overbuild is needed just to be able to manage unexpected technical problems. Belgium didn't plan to have only one reactor available.

[kassy]

I hope they are planning on taking at least some of them off line since they are old crap.

When driving from the Netherlands into Belgium at night the first thing you would notice was a crap ton of lights. Much more then we had and basically much more then needed.

Years later i read an article that explained why. Local politicians are also in some local energy council which decides on energy uses and that pays well so they squander their tax payers money on these useless lights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/world/europe/belgium-electricity.html 

From 2017 so they can probably still gain a lot with just efficiency.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Shale oil Ponzi scheme about to end:
https://srsroccoreport.com/global-economy-propped-up-by-u-s-shale-oil-ponzi-scheme/

[b_lumenkraft]

From Toms link:

"...of the total global oil production increase in 2018 over 2017, the United States accounted for a stunning 84% of that growth. ..."

Wow! Thanks, Obama i guess?

[FlyingLotus]

Yes, one of Obama's grand compromises with the GOP was opening up foreign markets for US oil. This has been extremely influential. He deserves no credit for being a "Green" President - his approach failed. America is now more like Saudi Arabia or Russia than ever before - as our economy becomes more driven by oil, it'll become more difficult to turn the tide as more people will have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

[b_lumenkraft]

America took the wrong turn when they never followed through Nixons Project Independence.

Project Independence was an initiative announced by U.S. President Richard Nixon on November 7, 1973, in reaction to the OAPEC oil embargo and the resulting 1973 oil crisis. Recalling the Manhattan Project, he stated that the goal of Project Independence was to achieve energy self-sufficiency for the United States by 1980, through a national commitment to energy conservation and development of alternative sources of energy.

Link >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Independence

This would be a very different world now. The US would be CO2 free by now, perhaps even have a very big renewables sector. Many wars with millions of deaths would have never happened. And, of course, a lot of money could have been saved.

[Sebastian Jones]

Tom's linked article is accurate as far as it goes, but it did not explore what drives the N. American shale ponzi scheme.
The shale industry as a whole has lost an amazing amount of money- which is why it is called a pozi scheme; only the firs players are making any money.
The question then becomes- how come? Why would a money losing enterprise persist?
The short answer is that money became super cheap in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The longer answer is that central bankers and their ilk realized that the global economy would collapse if oil production peaked, and decided that a decade or two of artificially stimulated production might buy enough time to find another solution.
I've not heard that a solution has been found yet, but if one is found, it may well be even more destructive than fracking.

[Tor Bejnar]

Some people think (fear) that oil sands are the next 'best' thing.

[Bob Wallace]

Overbuild  might not be as high as 3, but not much lower.

My modeling for CAISO found that to be about the case.  But that's for fixed demand.  Convert ground transportation to battery power, charge with the 'overbuild' and the actually curtailed falls much lower.  As we find more "opportunistic loads" we'll have market for the overbuilt which will lower the cost of electricity back closer to the cost of generation.

An example:  Rock crushing plants.  My experience is that the local plants that sell gravel, sand, and concrete do large runs of a given size gravel.  They'll mill a large 'hill' of material and they work that down over time.  The hill could be built any time of the day or night and could probably skip weeks at a time when fixed demand was the highest.

Desal plants might make a good dispatchable load if the infrastructure is inexpensive enough.

[b_lumenkraft]

Right Bob! We could be also way more intelligent when it comes to locations of high energy consuming industries.

How is it that not all aluminium plants are in Iceland? Here you have 100% renewables 100% of the time. There is enough geothermal energy. If all aluminium was made there, we would, by default, lower our CO2 footprint.

The list of ways to make energy usage more efficient is endless. The best energy is the one you don't produce.

[Tom_Mazanec]

I thought oil sands were already a “thing” (at least in Canada).

[Tor Bejnar]

Tom,
Oil sands are being mined, for sure , but some think oil sands will be the major source of hydrocarbons for industry in the future. 

Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers

Canada has the third-largest oil reserves in the world. Of the 170 billion barrels of Canadian oil that can be recovered economically with today's technology, 164 billion barrels are located in the oil sands. The IEA says Canada is expected to be third in oil production growth over the forecast period, after Brazil and Iraq.

With consumption rising worldwide and conventional oil supplies declining, the need for a secure supply of oil from unconventional resources like Canada’s oil sands will continue to increase. With the majority of reserves located in the oil sands, the resource has potential to become a key global supplier. As the IEA reports, Canada has the energy the world needs – our challenge is to move it to new customers in new markets in the years ahead.

[Where's the "I'm sick" icon?]

[SteveMDFP]

The question then becomes- how come? Why would a money losing enterprise persist?
The short answer is that money became super cheap in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The longer answer is that central bankers and their ilk realized that the global economy would collapse if oil production peaked, and decided that a decade or two of artificially stimulated production might buy enough time to find another solution.
I've not heard that a solution has been found yet, but if one is found, it may well be even more destructive than fracking.

Somewhat tangentially, I don't think it's at all true that the Federal Reserve is artificially keeping interest rates low.  It may well be propping up interest rates.  Interest rates have dropped because of a vast surplus of investable funds--a direct effect of widening wealth inequality across the globe.  See:

Federal Reserve Actually Propping Up Interest Rates. . .
https://seekingalpha.com/article/1514632-federal-reserve-actually-propping-up-interest-rates-what-this-means-for-mreits
"Paying interest on reserves combined with the subsidy to the banks of providing free unlimited deposit insurance on non-interest bearing demand deposits is keeping t-bill rates positive. Absent those policies the rate on t-bills would be actually negative."

Regardless, it's true that low interest rates have permitted the frackers to continue business, despite very high debt.  But bankruptcies won't end the fracking--the assets will be purchased, and the debt and stock will be erased.  Exxon and Chevron will likely purchase the assets.  The status quo of fracking will likely not end soon.  Unfortunately for the planet.

[Tom_Mazanec]

This guy still thinks PO will be what kills us:

[Tom_Mazanec]

Is this Peak Oil approaching?
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4276550-u-s-shale-peak-oil-finally-arrives?fbclid=IwAR1Y3eNLbJUe_Q5J62P3N8dRevtgxy51bA3EXuI_7mhNOCLctCJnt9KapUA

[Tom_Mazanec]

Peak Oil - Future Oil Production for Various Countries + World Total
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xirVusIFXA0&feature=youtu.be
World peak oil production graphs + those of US, Russia, Canada, Iraq, Brazil, Guyana & Kazakhstan. Also projections for Gold & Silver productions as well.

He predicts world peak mid-Twenties.

[DrTskoul]

World without US and Canada has already peaked....

[Tom_Mazanec]

US because of shale oil and Canada because of oil sands.
Also, the video said Iraq may rise considerably in the future, because of political factors previously holding down production.

[etienne]

I wonder each day how comes prices are so low. We are politically in an unstable situation with somehow overproduction. It doesn't need much for shortages, but it just doesn't happen. Maybe it is the instability that promotes overproduction.

[Tom_Mazanec]

The Real Reason Why US Oil Production Has Peaked
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Real-Reason-Why-US-Oil-Production-Has-Peaked.html

My conclusion is that upstream companies in the U.S. are not completing enough new wells to offset the increasing decline rate. My "guess" is that U.S. oil production peaked sometime in April or May. If this is confirmed by a few more months of actual production data provided by state agencies on a 90-day lag, I think there may be a big “Paradigm Shift” that causes a lot of investors to add more energy to their portfolios.

[etienne]

My conclusion is that upstream companies in the U.S. are not completing enough new wells to offset the increasing decline rate.

The article also says that the reason why this doesn't happen is because prices are too low. I believe that some people will try to keep prices as low until the next US presidential elections. So we have some times to go.  I guess somebody find out that it is not possible to win a war and get the Iranian Petrol before 2020. It's better to keep that oil available and if needed reduce sanctions to keep prices down.
Reduced number of new wells because of low prices also means reduction of sweet spots that can be drilled with low prices. That's one of the aspects of peak oil. Since production takes time to start, this creates price instability, not permanent high prices.

[Tom_Mazanec]

And you get into this situation where a price high enough to frack oil is too high for consumers, and a price consumers can pay is too low to allow frackers to make money, making things even worse.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Global fossil fuel and US gas production and forecasts
http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2019/08/global-fossil-fuel-production-and.html

Global climate change continues to accelerate. The environmental carnage inflicted by the human hordes, 7.7 billion strong, on the planet's major ecosystems is staggering. Very likely, humanity may be beyond the point of no return to biological and financial self-destruction. The ever-cautious scientists, bullied by the influential global fools, have consistently underpredicted the impacts of climate change on the future fate of humanity. (We don't really care about all other species, do we?)

In this series of nine** posts, I have investigated whether humanity will sober up and transit to the less power-intensive lifestyles everywhere. To do so, will require a strong global control of birthrates in India, most of Africa, and many other places. Our survival also depends on depowering the richer countries and a wise transition to renewables everywhere. There is scant evidence that any of these globally-coordinated actions can happen, given the political reality in so many countries. If you still don't understand what I am implying here, let me clarify: Humanity is on a straight short path to committing global suicide by massive social unrest, financial collapse, war and ensuing starvation.

[Tom_Mazanec]

This blogger was one of my favorites back in my Peak Oil days. A look back at peak oil and a look ahead:
https://www.ecosophia.net/waiting-for-the-next-panic/

Does that mean that the long-awaited energy transition will finally happen then, or that the global economy will get around to collapsing at last? No, we’ve been here often enough now that it’s not at all hard to predict what will happen. The price of oil will spike to jawdropping levels, dealing a body blow to the world’s economies; then demand destruction will cut in, and the sky-high oil price will make it economical for some other low-grade, high-cost oil source to be brought online and bring prices back down again. (My guess is that other countries that have substantial shale oil deposits, and sensibly held off on developing them until the US ran through its tight oil reserves, will jump on the fracking bandwagon in turn.)
The price of oil will go down, though never as low as it was before the spike, and yet another round of activists will have to go running after whatever the next fashionable cause du jour happens to be. Meanwhile, without more than a few of us noticing, the industrial world will have taken another step down that prolonged process of decline I’ve named the Long Descent.
In the meantime, while we wait for the next panic to hit, there’s a good deal that can be done, and there’ll be even more to do once the price of oil starts to climb in earnest. Before we can talk about that, though, we need to discuss what’s going on with the global climate…and what’s going to happen when the current fad for climate change activism finishes jumping the shark.

[oren]

A. Lots of self-admiration on the blog. Very tiring to read.
B. Taking turns shooting at climate change activism, renewable energy, and nuclear energy, although making sure to acknowledge that AGW is "a real and serious issue". Strongly smelled of disguised denialism.
C. A whole blog post about the catastrophe of Peak Oil yet not a single mention of the remote possibility that electricity could be an alternative to oil, or of the very existence of Battery Electric Vehicles (even managed to take a potshot at Elon Musk without mentioning EVs).
D. Freely mixing energy consumption and oil consumption, with not a single mention of natural gas as a possible alternative to oil for some uses.

I am deeply unimpressed. While the blogger seems to have the economic cycle of oil prices and production analyzed and understood properly, and the finiteness of the planet etc., all the rest is contrived IMHO. Ignoring EVs is such a serious flaw in the analysis of demand destruction that it has to be intentional. And the disguised denial overtones made me sorry I clicked the link.

[etienne]

I wouldn't be so negative about this blogger, but just that I didn't learn anything new. I feel that, I can be wrong, he still believes that peak oil could solve the climate change issue which unfortunately is wrong because there are enough others fossil fuels as alternative, and if needed we have so many forests to produce pellets. Sometimes I feel that we are like caterpilars or slugs on a plant. The ones who produce some of their vegetables know what I mean.

[Tom_Mazanec]

He implied he will soon post on AGW. If so, I will link.

[kassy]

Often when people are passionate about a certain issue it becomes their answer to everything.

Does he ever write about the powergames behind the supply and demand?

[Tom_Mazanec]

He writes about a lot of stuff.
Actually, his obsession is occultism...he is actually an Archdruid in a neoPagan Church. Of course, this does not mean that he is either right or wrong on anything else by itself, any more than my Catholicism means I am right/wrong about astronomy or whatever.
His coverage of PO and AGW is mostly about how the great mass of "Joe Publics" don't change their fundamental beliefs about things, no matter how much evidence they encounter.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Well, I promised to link if he discussed climate change, so...
Heating Up The Political Climate
https://www.ecosophia.net/heating-up-the-political-climate/

So there’s an obvious way for the people who are most concerned about climate change to take drastic action concerning it:  they can change their own lifestyles.  One ingenious blogger has launched a campaign to encourage exactly that under the hashtag #BanPrivateJets.  It’s a great plan and it would do a lot of good; private jets owned by the rich and famous dump millions of pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, and all of that could be done away with easily by banning private jets; what’s more, the people who would be inconvenienced by the ban are the wealthiest among us, and thus have ample resources to adapt.  So can we expect celebrity activists to voluntarily ground their jets anytime soon?  I don’t recommend holding your breath.
Au contraire, the behavior of climate change activists, and of the corporate media and multinational business interests that fund and promote them so lavishly, makes sense only if you assume that they want everyone else to stop using fossil fuels so that they don’t have to. The shrill claims of impending doom, the insistence that we’re in a climate emergency and everyone has to accept drastic restrictions that climate change activists show no trace of willingness to embrace in their own lives, make perfect sense if the game plan is to buffalo most of the people in the world’s industrial countries into accepting a sharply lower standard of living “for the planet,” so that the upper twenty per cent or so can maintain their current lifestyles unchanged.

[oren]

This is a denier stance IMHO, just as I suspected. If "the people most concerned about climate change" would change their own lifestyles, climate change would still happen. It would not be drastic at all. There are not enough such people, and their lifestyle is already less consumerist and wasteful compared to the society around them.
Not that I support private jets, but they should be banned for everybody, not just for bleeding heart environmentalists.
And to focus the whole climate change stance on this, is denial in disguise. Ignoring the message and flinging it at the messenger.