The Bullroarer - Monday 30th June 2008

Remember when the business pages of mainstream newspapers didn't carry multi-page stories about Peak Oil? I think this pretty much demonstrates that those days are gone:
The Age - The energy crisis needs a clear head

The interaction of global warming and peak oil is the reason why construction of tollways/freeways should be stopped now. Funds for transport infrastructure should be switched to rail and electrification.

National Business Review (NZ) - PM wants oil blockade of Zimbabwe

Prime Minister Helen Clark says the best course of action against Zimbabwe's rogue regime would be to stop oil exports into the country.

SMH - Savings for public transport users

THE State Government is prepared to offer big discounts to users of public transport, along the lines of those flagged by Queensland for users of its newintegrated ticketing system.

Queensland plans to give commuters discounts of up to 67.5 per cent on some trips if they use its integrated ticketing Go Card. Every trip using the card will carry an automatic 20 per cent discount, rising to 35 per cent for longer trips. "As public transport usage continues to grow we will continue to look at other options to make it even easier for passengers to leave their car at home," a spokesman for the Transport Minister, John Watkins, said.

NZ Herald - Brian Rudman: Time to back up opposition with assurances and ideas

With the polls suggesting the National Party is sleep-walking its way into power, is it too much to ask the Government-in-waiting to come clean on how it plans to fund the electrification of Auckland rail?

Perth Now - Premier Alan Carpenter uses gas crisis to rally troops

PREMIER Alan Carpenter used WA's continuing gas shortages as a rallying call for delegates at the Labor Party conference.

Upgrading the crisis from the biggest challenge faced by the Labor Government in the past eight years to the biggest ordeal confronting the state in decades, Mr Carpenter put energy security at the top of the ALP's priorities heading into the coming election.

"The Varanus Island explosion and the loss of gas supplies brings into sharp focus the issue of security and sustainability," he said of the June 3 explosion at Apache Energy's Varanus Island gas production plant.

A lighter look, providing some useful definitions:
The Age - Why crude oil is an ungrateful commodity

Oil.
An extraordinarily ungrateful commodity - one of the worst. Didn't we invade Iraq on oil's behalf? And how did it repay us? By putting its price up, that's how. Sometimes having all the best weaponry just doesn't seem worth the bother.

Scoop.co.nz - Fonterra hits 15 per cent energy reduction target

Fonterra hits 15 per cent energy reduction target

Fonterra has achieved its second major energy efficiency milestone in five years, cutting the amount of energy used to manufacture its products by 15 percent since the 2002/03 season.

The reduction - which is equivalent to the total annual electricity use of around 100,000 households and will cut carbon emissions by about 230,000 tonnes per annum - comes just two years after the Company announced a 10 per cent reduction in its energy consumption per unit of output. The latest savings represent an additional 5 per cent.

And in our "Don't believe everything you hear on the radio" section:
Radio NZ - Prius found to use more fuel than SUV

The hybrid Toyota Prius car has been exposed as being less economical than a diesel SUV.

The Prius has been compared by a British motoring website with a Jeep Patriot and found to use half a litre more fuel per 100 kilometres than the SUV.

The reality can be found here. The article certainly argues that hybrids are hyped, and a good, economically-optimised diesel engine can put in a comparable performance. This was proved in the tests, which were very close, but the reality was that the Prius just snuck in ahead of the Patriot's engine, by 0.2 liters per 100 k. The Honda and Lexus hybrids did not do so well in their comparisons, so perhaps Radio NZ was thinking about one of these other hybrids.

Stuff.co.nz - Market warming to cheaper solar panels

THIS COUNTRY'S renewable energy sector could be approaching a tipping point as solar panels become affordable for homes and offices.

The involvement of large power companies is shaking up the sector and bringing down prices.

This week Elemental Energy, half- owned by giant power company Meridian Energy, will start leasing solar panels and micro wind turbines to its customers, allowing businesses to treat the cost as a tax deductible expense and considerably improving the technology's economic viability.

The Australian - Higher domestic air fuel surcharges

HIGH oil prices are continuing to force local airlines on to the back foot with rural passengers facing new fuel surcharges this week and Tiger Airways almost halving its Melbourne-Darwin services.

The moves are the latest in a series of cutbacks and fare increases to hit Australian travellers as airlines take action to offset the spiralling cost of oil.

They come as Virgin Blue is rumoured to be moving to delay aircraft deliveries as part of its strategy for coping with the oil price rises and softening domestic demand.

ABC - Truckies to stage F3 'go slow'

Hundreds of truck drivers will stage a 'go slow' day tomorrow on the F3, north of Sydney, to protest over wages, working conditions and rising fuel costs.

From 6:30am (AEDT), a convoy of truck drivers will travel at 60 kilometres an hour southbound on the highway from Wyong to Wahroonga.

The NSW Transport Workers Union says freight drivers are being forced into unsafe work practices to keep their businesses afloat.

It says some long-haul drivers are spending around $500 extra on fuel a day.

THe Australian - Climate change agenda heats up for Garnaut

TODAY is the unofficial start of the Government's July festival of climate-change policy. Professor Ross Garnaut opens the show today when he delivers the long-awaited draft report of his climate-change review to be issued publicly at the Canberra Press Club on Friday.

A day earlier, economist and Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin will issue a paper questioning the effectiveness of the Kyoto model of national timetables and targets. McKibbin's model for a hybrid tax and trading scheme was dispatched in a speech given by Garnaut earlier this month, so the timing is curious.

Next week, climate change heads the agenda of the group of eight major economies (G8) meeting in Japan although oil prices may have something to say about that. And then we're back to Canberra for the release of the Government's climate-change green paper, over which Cabinet has been burning the midnight oil in the past few weeks.

News.com.au - Green electricity users face 'double bills'

GREENPOWER users will be double billed if changes to the new greenhouse gas reporting system are not made, says University of Adelaide climate change Professor Barry Brook.

This could cause the GreenPower national accreditation scheme to "implode" when an emissions trading scheme is introduced in 2010.

SMH - Iran threat to close oil strait

BEIRUT: The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards says Iran might shut oil lanes in the Persian Gulf if it were attacked by the United States or Israel.

NZ Herald - Jack Woodward: Fission trip wouldn't suit us

Faced with impending energy shortfalls and the need to reduce carbon emissions, many countries are looking again at the nuclear energy option.

Notwithstanding our plentiful renewable energy resources, some New Zealanders are keen for us to do the same. I believe the key issues of safety, nuclear waste management and nuclear proliferation will effectively rule out the adoption of nuclear energy here.

Yes, energy is going to be the topic of conversation for many years. I posted an item in the ABC's "Have Your Say" bulletin board encouraging them to educate the public. If you agree then register and support it. You can read it here. If that doesn't work go to abc.net.au/tv, click on "Have Your Say" and look for the item "It's the Energy, Stupid", currently on 2nd page.

WA Premier encourages increased coal use
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23941009-2761,00.html

Alan Carpenter
1) gives a 'tick of approval for an expanded coal industry'
2) says there will be 'no nuclear power.....in WA while I am the Premier'
3) by implication endorses carbon credits for oil mallee harvesting.

I think the latter is dodgy. Correction I think it borders on fraud with government complicity. However to prove me wrong I want them to disallow the credit whenever fire, drought or phytopthora reduces the growth of the mallee. Some of us hoped in vain that WA's gas reserves would replace coal.

Natural gas can replace oil as a transport fuel. Burning it for electricity is a crime until we're sure we can get through the peak oil energy crisis without needing that.

I agree that natural gas is too valuable for baseload electrical generation as is done in Perth and Adelaide. However coal only gets half the kwh for the same emissions so we need another form of baseload. Presumably WA will now be in the conga line of groups trying to weaken the ETS.

Big Gav and others claim there are renewable forms of low carbon baseload. However I see no evidence that renewables can provide the continuity of power needed for hospitals and aluminium smelters at moderate cost.

Cheaper than nuclear seems to be the relevant entry point from your point of view and CSP is certainly that, which is why I advocate it.

Its the best option available, and therefore the one that should be implemented.

The latest on nuclear costs vs CSP or wind:

http://www.energycentral.com/centers/energybiz/ebi_detail.cfm?id=525

Nuclear can't compete without massive government intervention and will be dead as a dodo as far as new plant construction goes in 10 years time once everyone realises that nuke plants can only get built with a lot of taxpayer cash subsidising both ends of the plant lifecycle.

Which is why I'll keep warning people not to waste time and money on futile acts of reversalism when they should be planning for the long term...

Interesting how the article concludes that nuclear costs will be several times higher than those currently in France. What the article failed to mention is that CSP is not so cheap if you have to duplicate it at the end of long transmission lines to ensure catching the sun somewhere. Since there will be whole weeks of rain and cloud there will need to be 100% backup capacity with fixed costs even if that backup is idle.

The 'latest' will be when a CSP plant produces enough cheap continuous power so that a large coal plant can be dynamited.

Yeah - I'm sure the Simpson and Mojave deserts get weeks of rain at a time - show me how many times that happened in the last century.

You can complain we need to extend the grid (to reach the deserts) or you can complain about rain (in locations where the grid already reaches). You can't have it both ways.

Of course, you'll struggle to get nuclear power plants built in these wet places at all - because the residents won't want them where they live.

The desert doesn't have this problem.

I know someone who has switched to pro nuclear, which is amazing after past rhetoric. The key thing seems to be the realization that oil is running out and gas and coal will follow. Can we actually imagine a world running on geothermal+solar+wind+bio+?. Is there a document that gives a reasonable description of such a world (complete with numbers, as per withouthotair.com). My guess is that voters will soon be saying "we don't want energy options excluded". So antinuclear arguments will need to be compelling. Saying "we'll be able to build this huge renewable power station in 2 years time after we fix a few bugs" isn't going to cut it.

I dunno about numbers, but the Germans have tried it, and it worked. See for example this youtube vid.

They used solar and wind for generation, and hydro and biogas cogeneration for backup.

If you have an electricity grid across the better part of a continent, it's very unlikely that it'll be overcast and with still air across the whole continent. So really this is just a matter of supply management, the managers of the grid taking supply from one place to meet demand in another. And we already do that across continents. When hydroelectric can't go in Tasmania because of a drought, they get extra coal-fired power from Victoria. When a power line from Victoria to NSW goes down, the Victoria plants pump up their output to compensate. And so on.

So intermittency is already something our engineers deal with on a regular basis. With renewables, it would only differ in nature; instead of planned outages from maintenance and unplanned outages from accidents, you have outages forecast by the weather forecasters; and if enough spare capacity were put in place then it'd be okay. We already put in spare capacity in case of outages.

If you know from weather forecasts that on some days there'll only be half as much sunlight or wind, well then you put in twice as many panels or turbines. It gets expensive, but infrastructure is always expensive, just last year my home state paid $2.5 billion for 45km of road, if we can afford that we can afford doubling up generation capacity for backup.

Anyway, the Germans have tried it in Kassel and it worked. I think that beats a sheet of numbers any day.

Interesting video. It certainly convinced me that it can't be done. I encourage everyone to have a look and see whether they're convinced. My guess is that they couldn't grow as much biogas as they would need for the fill in, and the lakes going up and down to store power would be an environmental disaster. Quite apart from the fact that biofuels are always an environmental disaster: nature needs "waste" bio material to be recycled back into the soil, not burnt. [Also, while it's not too clear, I think it was only a virtual experiment and real life would not be so easy.]

I'm not convinced it can't be done, because they did it.

I agree that biogas in general as generally currently practiced is not sustainable, I've previously written that biofuels - as generally currently practiced - are bad for climate change. But neither is agriculture and forestry in general sustainable, and yet we do not condemn them as useless on that account, but instead call for changes to sustainability. And in any case some manage it sustainably.

The Finns and Swedes have a few towns with wood-burning stations which generate electricity and hot water pumped around for heating, etc, and they manage to do it sustainably. See for example this discussion of Finland's energy here. Wood provides about a tenth of their electricity consumption, which is about 16-17,000kWh per person annually, if I recall correctly. So something like 1,600kWh per person annually is coming from wood.

Now, a study [Alan D. Pasternak, Global Energy Futures and Human Development: A Framework for Analysis] looked at HDI (human development index - longevity, education and income) vs electricity consumption, and what the guy found was that HDI rises very quickly as you add electricity, reaching 0.8 with 2,000kWh or more total use, and maxing out around 0.9 with 4,000kWh total use; that is, adding more electricity after 4,000kWh doesn't improve people's lives at all in any real way.

So that Finland's sustainable biofuel use for cogeneration gives them 1,600kWh, which is a fair way to assuring an HDI of 0.8 needing 2,000kWh, though only a third of the way to maxing out at 0.9.

Looking at forest area, we see that Finland has 219,350km2 of forest, or with 5 million people, 0.04km2 per capita, and Europe as a whole 10.3 million km2, or with 750 million people some 0.01km2 per capita. Thus Europe as a whole has one-quarter the forest per person Finland does, thus logically could manage sustaible cogeneration from wood of only one-quarter what Finland manages.

So as a back-of-the-envelope sort of figure, we can say that if Finland can manage 1,600kWh per person annually from wood, Europe as a whole must be able to manage 400kWh per person annually.

Against this 400kWh we must set
- 2,000kWh for HDI0.8+,
- 4,000kWh for HDI0.9+,
- 8,000kWh in France or Germany
- 12,000kWh we see consumed in the US or Australia
- 16,000kWh in Finland
- 25,000kWh in Iceland or Sweden

and so we can conclude that at first glance, it seems that sustainable cogeneration can go a long way (10-25%) to supplying the power needs for a decent standard of life, but is hopeless when set against our current high and wasteful consumption.

That is, renewable energy can work well if coupled with a prudent but not spartan level of conservation of energy. Which really is what you hear most renewable energy advocates outside the actual energy companies saying - we need conservation and efficiency, too. Renewable energy can provide us with enough energy for a decent lifestyle, but not enough for us to waste it as we do with fossil fuels.

Renewable energy can provide us with enough energy for a decent lifestyle...

A nice way of saying close to the edge. You take that to the voters and I'll take nuclear. Seriously, things like natural disasters happen where you need a lot of extra energy. Also: nuclear is the energy source that the rest of nature doesn't use. The alternative portrayed involves us gobbling up every last bit of energy we can get from the natural world. Nuclear looks a lot greener to me.

"closer to the edge"? 4,000kWh annually is "close to the edge"? Residential use is generally a third of all use, so that's 1,333kWh for domestic use, 3.7kWh a day each, so for the average Aussie household of 2.6 people that's 9.5kWh daily for the household... this is meant to represent being "on the edge"?

You're reminding me of when Boof tried to tell us that if you took the train instead of flying that was like cladding yourself in "sackcloth and ashes". Oh, the suffering one would have in the dining car of the Ghan!

Please describe a natural disaster any time in human history which was mitigated by having more electricity.

Radioisotopes are part of nature, too, and like fossil fuels, are finite. Of course pro-nuclear people are fond of telling us that they're so large in supply they may as well be infinite. But then, in 1880 Britain thought they had a 2,000 year supply of coal. We may or may not have a limited supply of radioisotopes, but we certainly shall not run into limits of sunshine, wind and wave in any reasonable timeframe. So we can bet on something which may or may not run out, or something which we know definitely won't.

So whether we choose nuclear, wind, hydro, geothermal or whatever, we are going to face at some point resource constraints and have to learn to restrain our appetites to merely fill ourselves to bursting, rather than filling ourselves to vomiting. I believe we can manage this difficult task, as onerous a burden as it may seem to some of us.

I'd be glad to take the offer of renewables and conservation to the polls, especially if we were offering nuclear as the alternative. I know of only a few occasions in history where the public was actually asked if they wanted nuclear power in their country or area. I list only the binding votes, as opposed to local council resolutions as gestures, etc.

- Austria, 1978 - NO
- Sweden, 1980 - NO - only semi-binding in that it required the government to get rid of the plants as soon as possible if it wouldn't cause any problems to anyone
- Italy, 1987 - NO
- Switzerland, 1990 - this was two votes, the first to have nuclear power at all - YES - and the second whether to build any new plants in the next decade - NO
- Japan, Maki, 1996 - NO - this was on having a plant in their area, two other areas whose names I forget had a similar vote the same year and also voted no.

What the referenda results show us is that once people have nuclear, they accept its presence but don't welcome its expansion; but if they don't have nuclear, they don't want to start with it.

Nuclear, then, would be an excellent stick to offer with the renewable and conservation carrot; if we simply offer renewables and conservation, people may reject them in favour of burgers and SUVs. But if it's a choice between renewables with conservation and nuclear, I've no doubt what the majority would choose.

I would, then, be very comfortable in taking to the polls a question something like,

"choose one of the following:- (a) renewables with heavy energy conservation, or (b) nuclear with no energy conservation"

Are we remembering that our post-fossil energy supply has to cover all transport as well? E.g. create hydrogen from water and use hydrogen fuel, or some such. Given high conversion losses this is very significant. And yes: we used a lot of fuel helping people after the tsunami, and in every emergency.

"choose one of the following:- (a) renewables with heavy energy conservation, or (b) nuclear with no energy conservation"

You can have renewables with no energy convservation too, if you so choose.

It will be easier to replace all our energy needs with renewables than it would be to do so with nuclear, that is certain.

You can, but then you need to build heaps more renewables than you would with conservation, which even ignoring the extra money it costs means it takes much longer to get us entirely renewable.

And since most conservation consists simply of getting rid of pointless waste - lit-up offices at night, houses warmed when nobody's in them, SUVs with one person in them idling in traffic, plastic wishbones and the like - I don't think conservation need cause great suffering.

So perhaps we could rephrase it as,

""choose one of the following:-
(a) renewables with heavy energy conservation,
(b) nuclear with no energy conservation,
(c) heaps and heaps of renewables at much great cost than (a) or (b) so you can have the privilege of pointless waste"

When it comes to nuclear I think it fair to present it to a voting public impartially so they can choose; when it comes to waste I see no reason to present things impartially.

My point is that (c) wouldn't cost more than (b).

Solar thermal on a sufficient scale will provide base load.Geothermal with HVDC transmission certainly will.The technology is there already.
Maybe we don't need the sort of high level power users like aluminium smelters.Most of it is for export anyway.This sort of industry is best located in countries with heaps of spare hydro power.

Prime Minister Helen Clark says the best course of action against Zimbabwe's rogue regime would be to stop oil exports into the country.

Wow, I didn't know that NZ supplied oil to Zimbabwe!

;-)

I think that the Prius milage depends hugely on where and how you drive it. I just recently bought one ( not because I really think they're that much better, but someone at work was selling it, and it's a great geek car) which we use mostly for city driving in Brisbane, and it's been averaging 5 litres/100 kms, much better than the 7.2 quoted in the review. It also provides constant feedback of your current fuel consumption, so it becomes a driving challenge to minimise it. The end result is a lower average fuel consumption, although you do end up driving like a ninety year old volvo driver.

The SMH is at is usually low standard of reporting again. FYI for those not in Queensland the Go Card is sh*t. Rant about Go Cards to follow - it will eventually have something to do with oil right at the bottom of the post.

The card system is not necessarily a bad idea but the execution has been atrocious. Firstly it was a year behind schedule and I am still not certain about how much the government actually paid. Last I heard it was near $100 million - just to replace a good paper-ticketing system with plastic/magnetic cards. And after all that they are keeping the paper system anyway!!! No doubt they have plans to abolish the paper ticket but I don't see it happening in the next say 2-5 years.

Also the card system costs more compared to a weekly or monthly ticket. Weekly and/or monthly tickets have unlimited travel in that time period. With the card you pay for each trip. After paying for 6 full price trips the cost per trip drops down to 50%. The Go card people like to say that if you are a weekly commuter ie 10 trips a week you will be paying the same for a weekly paper as a go card. Which is nice if you are a Monday to Friday commuter however in these economic times how many people are 9-5 Monday to Friday commuters?

The paper tickets are frankly a much more appropriate system. With the Go cards you have to swipe on and off on each end of your trip. During peak hour QR opens the turnstiles and people just walk through enmasse. Those with paper tickets just hold them up for the attendents to check the dates. The attendants only look at the colour of the tickets and pull the odd person over for a random check anyway. Those with Go cards just run the card over the swipe terminal at the open turnstile.

Many times over the last few months - my swipes have not registered. I am assuming this happens becuase there needs to be an approximately 3 seconds in between people swiping and the system to reset after each swipe. 3 seconds seems to be the time that it takes the screen to come up with your fare and your now reduced card value. However during peak hour I would guess that you would have 1 to 2 people going through the open turnstile per second. Not enough time to reset.

Unfortunatley I don't know that it hasn't registered at the time. I could wait for the 3 seconds in peak hour to ensure that it has registered however I would also cause a massive stoppage of the hoards of people leaving the station. It is extremely dangerous to stop which is why QR keeps the turnstiles open during peak hour.

So I don't know I haven't swiped off until the next time I swipe on and I get a $5 fine for a $4.10 fare!

This is not just a Central problem, my card also hasn't registered at suburban stations when it has been raining. I don't know whether it is the rain itself that causes the problem and interfers with the magneticism or whether the terminals have shorted in the wet! When it first happened I tried complaining and getting my fine reimbursed however it was too much of a hassle.

Which brings me to my next point. The Go cards can't be policed! The only 'good' thing from the commuters perspective is that you can have a little plastic card in your wallet and not have swiped on and off. If the transit cops ask you for your ticket you simply show them your plastic card and because they don't have any readers to check whether you swiped or not they just assume that you have paid. With a paper ticket they can always just read the date. With plastic they can't!!!

Which is why everytime Translink wants to fine me $5 because their readers don't work I take the next trip free simply by deliberately not swiping on and off. Tit for tat. I am also not the only person doing it - it now seems to be standard practice. Even more absurd is that the fine is $5. People who travel more than 7 zones pay a minimum ticket of over $5. Anyone who travels from the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast or Ipswich to Brisbane can simply not sign off and get a cheaper fare!!!!

My assesement of the whole Go card implementation is that it was implemented solely to obtain more revenue. There really is no other rationale explanation. It was badly planned, badly executed, no thought was put into policing it, and no thought was put into the ramifications and the flow-on effects of such a system.

If Translink was serious about providing a linked system for all the public transport then they would have provided a SYSTEM. This is one of the great failures of most governments is that they don't look at SYSTEMS. What they tend to focus upon is a specific aspect. They don't look at cause and effect. They don't look at positive and negative ramifications.

Similarly when it comes to alternative energy they NEVER look at systems. All governments seem to want to do is substitute single elements within a system. Systems are complex. System thinking is complex.

The Go card system only involves a hand full of elements. The current energy systems we have involve hundreds if not thousands of elements. There will be numerous examples of effects of peak oil, oil price shock, alternative energy forms which will cause massive flow-on effects both positive and negative.

It reminds me of an episode of The West Wing where there was a governmental shut down of services because the budget had not been approved by congress. People understood that this would mean that primary services may have been unavailable and they compensated for it but no-one realised that the social security cheques would not be printed. It is the little things that people forget that can cause the most problems.