Category Archives: Environment

Corn Should Not Be Used To Make Automobile Fuel

Posted on July 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

US farms that grow corn are mainly located in the Midwest.  The Midwest is experiencing a drought that the head agriculture meteorologist with MDA EarthSat say is the worst since 1988.  The MDA EarthSat group is estimating a corn yield of about 118 bushels per acre this year.  In a good year, the corn yield is about 150 to 160 bushels per acre which suggests that this year’s yield will be about 75% of normal.  Shortages always have a way of driving the price of a commodity upward.  However making the likelihood of even higher prices for corn is the fact that the ethanol mixed with gasoline is essentially produced from corn.

It is estimated that about 40% of the corn produced last year was used to make ethanol fuel.  The refiners are required to use ethanol and most filling stations have a 10%ethanol/90% gasoline blend.  Last year 14.2 billion gallons of ethanol were blended with gasoline.   By law, in 2012,  15.2 billion gallons of ethanol must be used.  Of that total, 13.2 must be from corn ethanol.  The remainder must be not corn based.  In order to get a better understanding of what is going on, a brief review of the Renewable Fuel Standard will probably be helpful.

In 2005, Congress enacted the Energy Policy Act of 2005.  It mandated minimum ethanol use.  However, two years later the Energy Independence and Security Act superseded and expanded the Energy Policy Act of 05 and set new, larger use requirements as well as added requirements for cellulosic based ethanol. Cellulosic means from corncobs, wood chips, straw, grass, etc.—by and large almost anything but from the corn kernel (corn starch).  These two acts combined are often referred to as Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2).  Further RFS2 set a maximum use level for cornstarch-based ethanol at 15.0 billion gallons.  The Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) is responsible for establishing and implementing regulations to ensure that the nation’s transportation fuel supply contains the mandated biofuels volumes.

RENEWABLE FUEL STANDARD 2—BILLIONS OF GALLONS

YEAR TOTAL RENEWABLESFUELS CORN ETHANOL CELLULOSIC ETHANOL BIO AND OTHER FUELS
2011 13.95 12.6 0.0066 1.1
2012 15.20 13.2 0.0085 1.5
2015 20.50 15.0 3.00 TBD
2020 30.00 15.0 10.5 TBD
2022 36.00 15.0

16.00

 TBD

If you are wondering if the EPA will enforce the law designating mandated minimum use, the following story will be instructive:  The 2011 requirement for minimum usage of cellulosic ethanol is 6.6 million gallons.—(See chart above and note 0.0066.)  No one is making cellulosic ethanol so there is none available for use.   None-the-less, the companies that supply motor fuels are being fined $6 million because they failed to mix cellulosic ethanol into their motor fuels.   Go figure.

Corn is a major source of food for humans and it is also it is a major source of animal feed.  The price of beef, pork and chicken for example are directly affected by the increase in livestock feed prices. Much has been written about the negative impact of soaring corn prices on the well being of people all over the world.

As noted earlier, ethanol is mandated to be used in gasoline. It is said that the some of the corn used for making ethanol is somewhat different from the corn that normally goes into the food chain.  But that corn will also suffer a loss due to the drought making it necessary for the ethanol manufacturers to buy more food corn to supply ethanol to the gasoline suppliers. Thus the fuel chain will be bidding against the food chain for the limited supply of corn.

The commodities markets are showing this now.  According to reliable sources, corn that was going for $2.00 a bushel in 2005 when this legislation was enacted now sells for over $8 per bushel.  Because ethanol is mandated, the cost of ethanol for blending has little meaning to a gasoline producer as all gasoline producers must use it regardless of cost.  The cost of the ethanol will be passed on to the motorists.

Actually, ethanol is not viable economically but only used because of the mandate.  It will never be in sufficient supply to be a replacement for gasoline.  According to a study reported by Wikipedia, if you are concerned about greenhouse gases, ethanol’s use is a negative:  “A team led by Searchinger from Princeton University concluded that once direct and indirect effect of land use changes are considered, both corn and cellulosic ethanol increased carbon emissions as compared to gasoline by 93 and 50 percent respectively.”

The driving force for the use of corn to make ethanol is the votes that politicians get from their farming constituents. The other reasons weigh against using an important food source to make an automobile fuel.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, crop yields, Domestic Energy, Environment, EPA, Government Regulations, Personal Automobiles

June Global Temperature Update

Posted on July 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

The UAH satellite global temperature for June 2012 departure from average is +0.37C.   The upward trend from last month continues.

I am adding in its entirety, a discussion regarding satellite temperatures by Dr. Spencer.

Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures

Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The signals that these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies are directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere. Every month, John Christy and I update global temperature datasets (see here and here)that represent the piecing together of the temperature data from a total of eleven instruments flying on eleven different satellites over the years. As of early 2012, our most stable instrument for this monitoring is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite and providing data since late 2002.

The graph above represents the latest update; updates are usually made within the first week of every month. Contrary to some reports, the satellite measurements are not calibrated in any way with the global surface-based thermometer records of temperature. They instead use their own on-board precision redundant platinum resistance thermometers calibrated to a laboratory reference standard before launch.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC

Russia’s Oil Potential In Siberia

Posted on July 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

You may not have known this but Russia vies with Saudi Arabia for the title of biggest crude oil producer.  According to a June Bloomberg posting, oil and gas provided half of Russia’s income in 2011.  So Putin is pushing for more oil discoveries to keep his government afloat. Exxon has been invited to help drill oil fields in Siberia.  These Siberian oil fields are estimated to hold something like half the proven reserves of the US.  Exxon will joint venture with the Russian government run oil company, OAO Rosneft.  Exxon’s fracking technology is to be used on the Bazhenov shale formation in west Siberia.  Rosneft said these deposits might hold 13.2 billion barrels of oil. As part of the alliance with Exxon, Moscow-based Rosneft in April said it acquired a 30 percent stake in a Texas tight oil¹  project to gain experience with the technology. Exxon will be able to book reserves in a mature oil province without taking on the exploration or environment risk it faces in its offshore projects with Rosneft, which will require an initial $3.2 billion investment to explore in the Arctic Kara Sea and the Black Sea. Exxon is also working with Romania’s Petrom in the Black Sea where they have discovered a major gas find.

But Exxon is not the only player.  According to Bloomberg:

“Non-state Russian oil companies, including its second-largest producer OAO Lukoil and fourth-biggest OAO Surgutneftegas, also have resources in the billions of barrels in the Bazhenov formation.”

Ronald Paul Smith a Moscow-based oil and gas analyst at Citigroup Inc said: “Lukoil is already using horizontal wells and multistage fracking to support its West Siberian production, and therefore may be the earliest, clearest beneficiary” of the tax breaks.  Lukoil subsidiary Ritek produces about 2,000 barrels a day from the Bazhenov formation……”

“Another competitor, Gazprom Neft, together with Royal Dutch Shell Plc plan to drill an extended reach horizontal well with multistage hydrofractures next year to tap tight oil at their Siberian Salym Petroleum Development venture, Gazprom Neft Deputy Chief Executive Vadim Yakovlev told journalists at June 8 press conference.”

As noted in earlier postings, Exxon has other  fracking joint ventures besides these in Russia and Romania.  They are active in China and have projects in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta formation.  It is my understanding that they have backed out of ventures in Poland saying that there are too many governmental hurdles.

To read more click here,

¹ I am seeing the words “tight oil” being used frequently.  Here is a definition of those words. Tight oil is a play that consists of light crude oil contained in petroleum bearing formations of relatively low porosity and permeability (shales).  It uses the same horizontal well and hydraulic fracturing technology used in recent boom in production of shale gas.  The North Dakota’s Bakken field is a tight oil play.

cbdakota

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Alternative Energy, Domestic Energy, Energy Development, Environment, fossil fuels, Oil and Gas Exploration, Peak Oil, US Manufacturing Companies

Another Solar Energy Company To File For Bankruptcy

Posted on June 30, 2012 | 1 comment

Abound Solar, one of four solar energy companies provided loans by the Department of Energy is expected to file for bankruptcy protection the first week in July.  The company received $70 million in federal loans.  The company employs 125.  Solyndra was one of the four receiving loans, and as you probably know, it has gone bankrupt, too.

Slate.com posts “Why No One Should Be Surprised That Another Obama-Backed Solar Startup Is Going Bust.”  The tone of their posting is that Conservatives will be gleeful about this company going bust.  Conservatives do not get off on failures of companies and lost jobs.  In fact the people planning on causing people to loose jobs are those in the current administration doing their best to put all the people employed in the coal industry out of jobs.  If that objective is realized, as directed by President Obama,  it will make 125 jobs lost look insignificant.

Conservatives want R&D monies to be expended on solar cell research.  Not for the government to be picking and choosing businesses for which their record in one of failure.  The Administrations efforts to strong-arm wind and solar has so far yielded little to be proud of.  These operations are only valuable to their cronies that take little to no risk all at the expense of the taxpayer and specifically the ratepayers that have to absorb the vastly overpriced product .  The Energy Information Agency of the US Department of Energy categorizes wind and solar as Non-Dispatchable Technologies.  That means their delivery is too unreliable for the grids to be useable.   These technologies are not ready for PRIME TIME.   Wind and Solar will remain non-viable until such time that low cost,  large-scale energy storage is developed.

Yes, we know as Slate tells us,  the Chinese have dropped the prices of solar cells to a point where our domestic companies can not compete.  But even the cheaper solar cells don’t make solar farms viable.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Domestic Energy, Energy Development, Environment, fossil fuels, Green Jobs, solar cells, Windpower

Offshore Wind Turbines Concrete Bases Failing

Posted on June 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

An offshore wind farm in the Netherlands was the first to discover that the concrete used to attach the turbines to their steel foundations was eroding.  If unattended the towers could collapse.

 

 

In Britain, the same erosion has been confirmed.  Investigations are underway to determine how extensive the problem is. Britain has some 336 offshore wind turbines and it is estimated that it will require some £50million to fix if all the offshore units are involved. 

Off-shore wind turbines are at a major disadvantage as is, without more new and costly expenses being added.  According to the US  Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) the levelized cost of onshore and offshore wind turbines coming on-line in 2017 are $97/mWh and $331/mWh respectively.  By comparison, the EIA’s levelized cost for a natural gas advanced combined cycle unit coming on-line in 2017 is $66/mWh.  And with the price of natural gas dropping in the US, the natural gas unit will be even more favorable price-wise.

cbdakota

 

 

 

 

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Energy Development, Environment, Windpower

Climate Model Forecasts Proven Wrong

Posted on June 17, 2012 | 4 comments

Where would the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW, aka: man-made global warming) be if it weren’t for the climate models that forecast devastatingly high temperatures, sea level change that will make hundreds of millions of people homeless, mass extinctions of all manner of creatures, etc? What if those forecasts consistently were in error?  You would have to conclude, that the warmers don’t have a viable theory and they would quickly fade away.  Well, the forecasts are consistently in error and warmers still have not faded away.  So what is going on?

Because it is Father’s Day, let’s look at James Hansen’s (father of the current man-made global warming cult) forecast presented to the US Congress in 1988:

Chart from: James Hansen et al. Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model journal of Geophysical Research.

The chart forecasts a global temperature increase that will be caused by different levels of CO2 emissions.  Scenarios “A” (blue) which postulated an increase in CO2 emissions by 1.5% per year
 and “B” (green): constant increase in CO2 emissions after 2000
 and “C” (red): no increase in CO2 emissions after 2000.  The black line is the actual global temperature.

Since 2000, the CO2 emissions have increased about 2.5% per year.  So one would expect the observed temperature to have exceeded the blue line “A”. Yet we see the actual temperature increase matching or perhaps coming in lower than that forecast by the red line “C” that was based upon a forecast of O% per year increase in CO2 after 2000. How many ways can you say FAIL!!!

Hansen’s influential presentation was widely broadcast and had a profound effect on Congress.  If you had been in the Capitol that day, you might have become concerned.   But with time, the Hansen forecast has been demonstrated to be very wrong.   The Chart above came from Wattsupwiththat (WUWT) blog and the comments by readers to the WUWT posting are quite interesting.  The warmers that commented essentially said—well, sure, it was wrong but some things happened; volcanoes, less fluorocarbons in the atmosphere, less methane in the atmosphere and the positive feedback he used is now imagined to be less than it was imagined to be at the time of the Hansen forecast.

Wow, that is a lot of things going wrong considering we are still being told that only CO2 really matters.  Isn’t it amazing that when the forecasts play out for a lot of years (in Hansen’s case, 24 years), only then can you find out if they are really any good.  Forecasting today what the world will look like in 2100 is an interesting exercise but only fools would believe that it was likely to be accurate.

We know that money and control drives the warmers and the politicians to continue this charade.  But the media has bought into this lock, stock and barrel.  What drives them?  I know that bad news (fear of global warming caused catastrophe) sells more papers than good news.  And the falling readership that the mainstream media is experiencing, makes them desperate to continue echoing everything the green alarmists say.  Why are there no latter-day Woodwards and Bernsteins that want to expose the lies after some 20 years of flat global temperatures and failed predictions?   Skeptics are gaining the upper hand with regard to public opinion, but if the media owned up to the facts and began questioning the AGW theory, this round of Lysenkoism could be ended.

cbdakota

  

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, CO2, CO2 positive feedback, Environment, Global Temperatures, Government Regulations, IPCC, Sea Ice

The Ill-informed Bishop And The Wind Turbines

Posted on June 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Environment, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, Government Regulations, Government Revenues, Windpower

IBM’s Lithium-Air Battery Project

Posted on May 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

IBM is working on a lithium-air battery that they believe has enormous potential to slash the weight and cost of battery packs.   In an Aol Energy blog posting, IBM’s Winfried Wilcke says: “Improvements to the chemistry and manufacturing methods of Lithium-ion cells have led to reliable improvements in price and performance by about 6 to 8 percent per year.” But he adds:  “…. the cost to outfit an EV with a battery pack-estimated today to add $10,000 to $15,000 to the price of Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf-will fall by only half by 2020”.   Wilcke feels this is not fast enough to make EVs go mainstream.

Wilcke is the Principle Investigator of the IBM Battery 500 Project.  Scientists theorized that combining lithium with oxygen could create a battery with unprecedented energy storage potential. According to the posting:

A key feature of this approach is that the reaction “breathes” air, taking in oxygen when it discharges and releasing oxygen while recharging. Because the battery “borrows” these molecules from the air, fewer raw materials-and less weight-needs be built into the device. This “Lithium-air” approach shows enormous theoretical potential to slash the weight and cost of battery packs. In 2009, IBM took a very long-term bet to see if it could realize this theoretical promise. The resulting project, dubbed Battery 500, aims to produce batteries able to propel an EV 500 miles on a single charge, roughly matching the range of a tank of gas.

Three years in, the results are tantalizing. Lithium-air shows the potential to store up to ten times the energy per weight of today’s commercial Lithium-ion batteries, opening the door to potentially game-changing applications. For instance, if a current EV can hold 100 miles worth of charge, a bank of Lithium-air cells promise to boost that capacity to 500 miles at similar weight.

To be sure, the scientific challenges facing the project remain daunting. After three years of work, the basic operation of rechargeable Lithium-air chemistry has been exhaustively characterized, showing the way ahead. But before Lithium-air cells can move from the laboratory to the car show room, researchers still must improve the cells’ long-term cyclability, speed-up the time needed to charge and discharge, and further drive down costs.

Still, the researchers have been knocking off these sorts of challenges so steadily that they hope to have a working a large-scale prototype within the next two years. Automotive commercialization would be further out, sometime between 2020 and 2030.

If this battery is what is needed to make the EV go mainstream, the forecast of battery commercialization of somewhere around 2020 and 2030 must be discouraging to the advocates that want to replace fossil fuels.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Batteries, Domestic Energy, Electric Vehicles, Environment, fossil fuels, Green Jobs, Personal Automobiles

California’s Global Warming Solutions Act”—Part 2.

Posted on May 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

The Democratic polling firm of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates at the request of the “Vote Solar Initiative” organization polled some 400 Los Angles residents and found according to an Aol Energy blog posting:

“The vast majority of Los Angeles residents are demanding more renewable energy, especially solar power, according to a new survey. Around 87 percent of voters want solar energy to generate more electricity and 79 percent welcome more wind power. Around three out of four voters (76 percent) say the solar power should be generated from rooftop panels.”

Aside from a pro-solar organization hiring a liberal Democrat polling organization to fashion a poll to get them the answers they wanted, the poll results show how far removed from reality are the LA citizens.  They are clamoring for more government intervention which is what has given California the 3rd highest unemployment rate in the country,  the 9th highest electricity rate and the 3rd highest gasoline cost. It’s the poorer people that are suffering the most.  This will be made even worse as the price of electricity continues its climb as they force in more uneconomical solar based production and drive out much lower cost fossil fuel production. This conclusion is also dawning on the Germans according to the Global Warming Policy Foundation: “The current funding of Germany’s green energy transition is anti-social, according to a new report by the Institute of the German Economy. The economic burden due to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) is up to 10 times higher for low-income households than for high-income households.”

The preliminary 2012 Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) estimates for levelized costs per kilowatt-hour in 2017 are 15.7 cents for a photovoltaic solar plant and 25.1 cents for a thermal solar plant.  That is far more expensive than the 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for conventional combined cycle natural gas and the 10 cents per kilowatt-hour for conventional coal in those same EIA estimates.  Also,  the EIA inflates the cost of coal by the equivalent of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted to represent the difficulty of obtaining financing for coal plants. Further, it does not appear that the EIA levelized cost for conventional combined cycle natural gas plant is getting credited for the lower price of natural gas resulting from fracking shale.

The survey also said that:

“Most voters believe Los Angeles should create 1,200 megawatts of power from the sun, which is LADWP’s percentage of the state goal of 12,000 megawatts of local clean power by 2020.”  

And they inform us that 1200megawatts is enough to power 260,000 homes.  The calculation for number of homes powered  is suspect as it is varies from solar power promoter to promoter.  Without power storage, some other source of electricity most likely from a fossil fuel powered source is necessary because the lights would go out on these homes at night when the sun is no longer shining.  So much for reducing carbon emissions.  I wonder if California Air Resources Board (CARB) has put that in their solar energy calculations?

More on Solar cell reliability, etc. in my next posting on this topic.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, cap and trade, CO2, Domestic Energy, Environment, EPA, fossil fuels, Government Regulations, solar cells

California Law “Global Warming Solutions Act”—Is It A Black Hole?

Posted on May 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

The California environmentalists got Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislators to pass the “Global Warming Solutions Act” in 2006.   The law called “AB 32” is sweeping in its authority to regulate fossil fuels.  The stated objective of AB 32 is to implement a “transformative” standard that will reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.  In 2013, electric power and major industrial emitters of about 160million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) will be compelled to begin reductions. This will require fuel-switching, new lower-emitting plants and contracting for lower-carbon generated power form out of state. The program is essentially Cap and Trade.  In 2015, transportation, natural gas, smaller emitters, etc accounting for about 230MTCO2e will be required to begin reductions.   How this sector is to accomplish this is not clear and what ever it is, is expected to be expensive.   Off-sets seem to be one way but these are limited and further, no emitter can use more than 8% offsets to comply with the law.

AB32 has not gone unchallenged.  For one challenge, the Renewable Fuel Association (RFA), mainly representing ethanol producers say they will be ruled out of the California market.  The law is based on the study of total emission from “seed to wheel” and California Air Resources Board (CARB) sets a standard that the ethanol producers say makes compliance too expensive.  The RFA  got an injunction to stop implementation saying that the law was  unconstitutional because it violates the commerce clause which was intended to stop states from introducing laws that would discriminate against businesses located in other states.  But the US Court of Appeal (9th District) has now lifted the injunction.  The ruling on AB 32’s constitutionality is expected soon and the lifting of the injunction probably indicates they will say it is constitutional.

AB 32 was the product of Western Climate Initiative (WCI) that was formed in 2007.  The partners in the WCI were California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington and later expanded by the addition of Montana and Utah plus the Canadian Provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec 2008. Each State or Province would not bound by AB32; they would have to pass similar bills in their respective legislative bodies.

All the US states dropped out when AB 32 was passed obviously not on-board with the size and scope of the act and that it was unlikely to get passed in their respective states.  The four Canadian Provinces have remained and have issued AB 32 as guidelines.   It would seem that the tar sands oil in Canada would be negatively affected by these guidelines if they become law in the four Provinces.

The trend for California to get their electrical power from out of state will be affected by this law as well.  CARB wants to limit “leakage” where emissions drop only because the generation source is out of the state.  So any emissions that occur in the process of generating the imported electricity are to be accounted for.

So why the comment about a black hole?  The size of the California market is huge. In the years past,  if California made an environmental change, the nation often followed. The Federal Clean Air Act was pretty much a product of California. Before retirement I pushed a program to amend the Clean Air Act to permit the use of up to 5% methanol mixed with ethanol in gasoline.  It was necessary to work with CARB if you wanted to do business in California. At that time they wanted to use methanol but not as a low level blend but as the primary fuel.  I think CARB and California have become too zealous.  The fact that all the states dropped out of the WCI is pretty telling.   When the price of electricity, gasoline, and other fossil fuel associated products get way out of step with rest of the nation and more industries flee the cost burden to more friendly states, I hope California residents get the message.

Next posting will look at the Californian’s wanting more solar power.  I don’t believe they know how costly this will be.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, cap and trade, CO2, Energy Development, Environment, fossil fuels, Government Regulations, Personal Automobiles