As I´ve written before, it´s important to know more than about renewable energies and eco tech but to understand as much as possible about fossil fuels. Here´s an interesting oil quiz, written by The Oil Drum. Highly educational.
Archive for Oil-Gas-Coal
Coal mining – deeper digging (05.06.2007)
I know, this is a blog about the “Cleantech revolution” that I am fully supporting. At the same time I think it´s important to also report about developments in the oil, gas and coal area. The reason: You need to be informed about both sides clean and rather dirty and you need to understand “the other side”. Many blogs are just too one sided, it´s important to give a full pöicture. As a journalist I am trained to offermore than one angle of a story.
In reality clean alternatives will replace the “dirty” energies — eventually, it will take time. Oil will be increasingly expensive to get, Uranium resources will last maybe another 50 years, only coal resources will be there the next 250 years or so. So it´s important to follow developments over there. That´s the reason I am blogging also about “clean coal” developments. For starters, have a look at this note in the oil drum about the coal mining industry.
The Oil Drum: Coal seams can be mined as deep as 4,500 ft, but the methane and other problems (including keeping the roof from falling in) have made these difficult conditions to work in, so that while there is still coal in the ground, it is becoming increasingly uneconomic, under present conditions, to extract it.
So one of the first problems that the mining engineer has in determining whether to count coal as a reserve is whether or not it is either practical or economic to mine it. This means that, in general, it must be machine mineable, since the productivity of a human miner is no longer sufficient, in many countries, to cover the costs of labor and support.
The second problem is to ensure that there is enough of it. And so before deciding to mine the company will drill cores down to the coal seam over the planned area that will be mined. These don’t, at first sight, need to be that close, since the initial intent is just to see what is there and that it goes out far enough to make it worth while to sink the mining shaft (which costs several million dollars).
Africa´s Oil Dreams (02.06.2007)
It´s a no brainer: Just follow the news about civil wars in Congo, Nigeria and other countries in Africa. Interestingly enough, these countries are (potential) oil producing countries and that´s the reason they are in the news all the time. If Northern Korea had oil patches, nobody would let them build their nuclear bomb, that´s for sure. There is an eye opening article in TIME about Africa´s oily dreams; quite a long article but insightful. And then: Always follow The Economist´s Africa section to get more local information on what´s going on there. West Africa: More wars, more oil.
TIME: Indeed, says Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, West Africa is “only going to get hotter. It has the location and the resources; the technology is now there to develop them; and companies from all over the world want to be in on the action.” Rising demand from India and China and worries over instability in the Middle East have fueled higher oil prices, and those in turn have precipitated a new scramble for energy — oil rigs worldwide now have to be rented a year in advance. There are several reasons why the Gulf of Guinea is a key focus of this rush. African oil is high quality, with a low sulfur content that requires little refining to get it to the pump.
Using Hydrothermal Carbonization to Clean Emissions (29.05.2007)
Maybe there is a better solution for “clean coal”. And look, charcoal may be the next “green coal” solution – not for barbequing but for sequestration.
Treehugger: Good news for people who like “clean coal”: a team of scientists from the Department of Colloid Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces has discovered a novel “low-tech” way of using biomass to clean up carbon dioxide emissions.They suggest using a cost-efficient process known as hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) to turn fast-growing energy crops into a form of “bio-coal” that would be stored into “carbon landfills” that could act as effective carbon sinks.
Study: Implications of “peak oil” for atmospheric CO2 and climate (29.05.2007)
There is an interesting paper available for download from P.A. Kharecha and J.E. Hansen of NASA GISS and Columbia Univ. Earth Institute on the effects of the “peak oil” on the atmospheric CO2 and climate. A good summary of the paper with many charts and scenarios can bei found in The Oil Drum.
P.A. Kharecha / J.E. Hansen: We suggest that, if estimates of oil and gas reserves by the Energy Information Administration are realistic, it is feasible to keep atmospheric CO2 from exceeding approximately 450 ppm, provided that future exploitation of the huge reservoirs of coal and unconventional fossil fuels incorporates carbon capture and sequestration.
Existing coal-fired power plants, without sequestration, must be phased out before mid-century to achieve this limit on atmospheric CO2. We also suggest that it is important to “stretch” oil reserves via energy efficiency, thus avoiding the need to extract liquid fuels from coal or unconventional fossil fuels. We argue that a rising price on carbon emissions is probably needed to keep CO2 beneath the 450 ppm ceiling.
>> Implications of “peak oil” for atmospheric CO2 and climate (PDF)
Peak oil – peaking or what? (25.05.2007)
There are many discussions about the peak oil point. But one thing is going to happen: We´re running out of oil, eventually — and it´s going to be more expensive to get oil from the ground. The Valuesystem blog shows some interesting updated graphs and, of course, speculations.
US EIA: World Energy Use to Grow 57% till 2030; CO2 Emissions Up 59% (24.05.2007)
The Energy Information Adminsitration (EIA) has published a new “Energy Outlook 2007“. There are several reference cases which do not include any specific policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions. However, this paper is an interesting read, especially the facts and estimates on the energy sector and the different fossil fuels.
Green Car Congress:In the IEO2007 reference case, which does not include specific policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise from 26.9 billion metric tons in 2004 to 33.9 billion metric tons in 2015 and 42.9 billion metric tons in 2030. From 2003 to 2004, carbon dioxide emissions from the non-OECD countries grew by almost 10%, while emissions in the OECD countries grew by less than 2%.
The result of the large increase in non-OECD emissions was that 2004 marked the first time that emissions from the non-OECD exceeded those from the OECD countries. Further, because of the expectation that non-OECD countries will rely on fossil fuels to supply much of their future energy demand growth, carbon dioxide emissions from the non-OECD countries in 2030 are projected to exceed those from the OECD by 57%.
Global energy demand grows despite the relatively high world oil and natural gas prices in the reference case. However, rising oil prices dampen growth in demand for petroleum and other liquids fuels after 2015 and, as a result, reducing their share of overall energy use from 38% in 2004 to a projected 34% in 2030.
