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By Edwin Black , THE JERUSALEM POST, Sep. 21, 2008
If we lose 1.5 million barrels per day, or approximately 7.5%, we will ask our allies in the 28-member International Energy Agency to open their SPRs and otherwise assist. If we lose 2 million barrels per day, or 10%, government crisis monitors say the chaos will be so catastrophic they cannot even model it.
It will come as a shock to most Americans and the media, but as the election reaches a crescendo on the issue of preparedness and energy, neither presidential candidate - nor anyone in local, state or federal government - has developed a contingency plan in the event of a protracted oil cut-off. It is not even being discussed. Government has prepared for hurricanes, anthrax, terrorism and every other disaster, but not the one threatened daily - a protracted oil stoppage, whether caused by terrorism, intervention in the Persian Gulf or a natural disaster.
It is like seeing a hurricane developing without a disaster plan or evacuation route. Our allies have oil shortage interruption contingency plans, but America does not.
THE CRUDE realities: America uses approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day, almost 70 percent of which is imported. If we lose just 1 million barrels per day, or suffer the type of damage sustained from Hurricane Katrina, the government will open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which offers a mere six-to-eight week supply of unrefined crude oil. If we lose 1.5 million barrels per day, or approximately 7.5%, we will ask our allies in the 28-member International Energy Agency to open their SPRs and otherwise assist. If we lose 2 million barrels per day, or 10%, government crisis monitors say the chaos will be so catastrophic they cannot even model it.
Exactly how could America be subjected to a protracted oil interruption, that is, a 10% shortfall lasting longer than several weeks? It will not come from hurricane action in the Gulf of Mexico, or even major refinery accidents or other oil infrastructure damage. Such damage would be repaired within days and the temporary losses absorbed by the small half million barrel per day global cushion available.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Recent Posts on September 22, 2008 - כ"ב אלול תשס"ח at 7:17 am
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By H.J. CUMMINS, Star Tribune, September 15, 2008
With oil costing about $100 a barrel, nuclear energy is enjoying a public-opinion comeback. But not everyone is warming to nuclear as the new ‘green’ energy.
Once the stuff of disaster movies and picket lines, nuclear energy is enjoying a renaissance.
But for 30 Minnesotans in a Red Wing public library last week, at the first public meeting over Xcel Energy’s proposed expansion of its nearby Prairie Island nuclear power plant, it was clear they want no part in the revival.
Many stood to tell state regulators and Xcel executives that they oppose any expansion of the plant. Even after living next to it for 35 years they don’t feel safe, they said. Charlotte Eastin of Lake City even suggested it’s time to shut it down, “before the unthinkable happens.”
They were harsh words for a plant that has operated without a major problem since it started up in 1973. And Xcel’s director of nuclear regulatory policy, Terry Pickens, said afterward that all the concerns raised about the expansion will be addressed through the long application process.
But some version of the evening’s exchange — between skeptics and utilities that are increasingly calling nuclear power the clean, carbon-free energy of the future — is going to play out in many more communities around the country as the push for nuclear grows.
After 30 years without a single application to build a new plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission received 12 over the past 12 months, and expects another five by year-end, said spokesman Scott Burnell in Washington. And while those wouldn’t come online for years — adding to the 104 reactors operating today — federal regulators point to another, current phenomenon: “upratings,” when utilities get permission to push more output from their existing nuclear reactors — part of Xcel’s plans. Over the years, these have added 5,200 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of more than five new reactors.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Nuclear Energy, Recent Posts, Science on September 17, 2008 - י"ז אלול תשס"ח at 10:54 pm
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by Jane Sasseen, Business Week, August 30, 2008
At his four-day fete in Denver, Democratic Presidential contender Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) sought to reframe the Presidential race (BusinessWeek.com, 8/29/08) around the lunch-bucket economic issues he thinks give him the strongest appeal to squeezed middle-class voters. Now, as the spotlight turns to the Republican convention in St. Paul-Minneapolis, rival Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) takes his turn at trying to define the race around the issues on which he hopes he has a winning hand.
Much of McCain’s campaign, of course, is based on his record on national security issues. But with the economy in the tank, he knows he has to make the sale on the economic front, as well. So at the top of the Arizona Senator’s Twin Cities To-Do List will be heightened efforts to convince working-class and independent voters that the Republican alternative he’s offering—low taxes, less government, and aggressive energy drilling—will do more to improve the economy and their lives than the spate of initiatives offered up by his rival.
With his surprise pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain may just have made that task a good deal easier. Soaring oil prices have caused energy to emerge as a central issue in the race.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Opinion, Recent Posts on August 30, 2008 - כ"ט אב תשס"ח at 9:55 pm
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By Avi Bar-Eli, The Marker Correspondent, August 28, 2008
Israel’s first solar power station is up and running. Moshe Tenne built the plant on his Negev farm for NIS 1.3 million, and he estimates he will sell NIS 220,000 of electricity a year to the national power grid.
The state incentives to produce solar power took effect on July 1; they allow home and industrial customers to install solar power panels and receive NIS 2.01 per kilowatt hour for the electricity they produce compared with the NIS 0.50 per kilowatt hour they pay the Israel Electric Corporation.
The new agreement is for photovoltaic cell array technology, and the power produced is intended for the producer’s use, while any extra power may be sold to the IEC. The state limits household power plants to 15 kilowatts, and business customers to 50 kilowatts.
Tenne inaugurated his 50-kilowatt solar array this week. It will provide two-thirds of the needs of his central Negev farm, located on the region’s so-called Wine Route. The Tenne family established its farm three years ago, and makes its living from a sophisticated dairy barn with 70 cows producing about 800,000 liters of milk a year.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Business and Commerce, Middle East Report, Science and Technology, Solar Energy on August 27, 2008 - כ"ו אב תשס"ח at 9:10 pm
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Funding will help 639 small businesses and farmers save energy, improve operations
USDA Press Release, August 27, 2008
BISMARCK, North Dakota, August 27, 2008 -Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer today announced that 639 individuals and businesses in 43 states and the Virgin Islands have been selected to receive $35 million in grants and loan guarantees for renewable energy systems or to improve energy efficiency in farm and business operations.
"America is a world leader in renewable energy and energy efficiency," Schafer said. "These projects are good for business, good for the economy, good for jobs, and they help secure more self sufficient energy resources for our country."
The grants and loan guarantees are being awarded through USDA Rural Development’s Section 9006 Renewable Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency Improvements program. The program provides financial assistance to agricultural producers and rural small businesses to support renewable energy projects across a wide range of technologies encompassing biomass (including anaerobic digesters), geothermal, hydrogen, solar and wind energy. It also provides support for energy efficiency improvements, helping recipients reduce energy consumption and improve operations. Of the $35 million announced today, $27.5 million are grants and $7.4 million are guaranteed loans.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Business and Commerce, Recent Posts, Science and Technology on August 27, 2008 - כ"ו אב תשס"ח at 8:57 pm
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Hatch talked about how developing oil shale will require far less water and land than ethanol production. He said the entire process of oil shale production, even without carbon capture technology, emits only 7 percent more carbon than gasoline, compared to 93 percent more with ethanol or 50 percent more by turning to switchgrass for alternative fuel development. Hatch also pointed out how the U.S. has between 1 trillion and 2 trillion barrels of recoverable oil from shale, compared to the world’s current oil reserves of about 1.6 trillion barrels.
By Stephen Speckman, Deseret News, August 20, 2008
For the second time in two months, Sen. Orrin Hatch was at the state Capitol stumping for the development of Utah’s oil shale.
Utah Republicans Hatch and Rep. Rob Bishop appeared in front of the state Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee Wednesday to talk about how progress of shale development is being held up by "liberals" in Washington, lawsuits by environmental groups and a moratorium on leasing federal land for shale development.
It is estimated that there is about 800 billion recoverable barrels of oil locked in shale under the Green River formation, which is in portions of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.
Hatch said the trend since 2000 shows that there has been an increase of 100 percent in the number of applications for permits to drill, permits granted by the Bureau of Land management and wells completed, while "environmentalist protests" are up 700 percent in that time. He based the drilling figures on data collected from a Utah BLM office in Vernal. Hatch said the current climate allows for any "wacko" to file a lawsuit and hold up energy development projects.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Clean Coal, Climate Change on August 21, 2008 - כ' אב תשס"ח at 7:17 am
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Press Release from Weizmann Institute, August 14, 2008
REHOVOT, ISRAEL – August 14, 2008 – Tons of soot are released into the air annually as forest fires rage from California to the Amazon to Siberia and Indonesia. Climate scientists have generally assumed that the main effect of smoke on climate is cooling, as the floating particles can reflect some solar energy back to space as well as increasing cloud size and lifespan. But new research by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); and NASA may cause them to rethink soot’s role in shaping the Earth’s climate.
Airborne particles such as soot – known collectively as aerosols – rise into the atmosphere where they interact with clouds. Understanding what happens when the two meet is extremely complicated, in part because clouds are highly dynamic systems that both reflect the sun’s energy back into space, cooling the upper atmosphere, and trap heat underneath, warming the lower atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. Aerosols, in turn, can have both heating and cooling effects on clouds. On the one hand, water droplets form around the aerosol particles, which may extend the cloud cover. On the other hand, particles, especially soot, absorb the sun’s radiation, stabilizing the atmosphere and thus reducing cloud formation.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Recent Posts, Science on August 17, 2008 - ט"ז אב תשס"ח at 10:01 am
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ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2008) — Say the word “biofuels” and most people think of grain ethanol and biodiesel. But there’s another, older technology called gasification that’s getting a new look from researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University.
By combining gasification with high-tech nanoscale porous catalysts, they hope to create ethanol from a wide range of biomass, including distiller’s grain left over from ethanol production, corn stover from the field, grass, wood pulp, animal waste, and garbage.
Gasification is a process that turns carbon-based feedstocks under high temperature and pressure in an oxygen-controlled atmosphere into synthesis gas, or syngas. Syngas is made up primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (more than 85 percent by volume) and smaller quantities of carbon dioxide and methane.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Biomass fuels, Recent Posts, Science on August 15, 2008 - י"ד אב תשס"ח at 8:32 am
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By Karin Kloosterman, Israel 21C, July 24, 2008
As soon as the summer is over and the fall begins, people in the northern United States start winterizing their vehicles. With more than 250 million cars on the road, and winter tires needed for many, it’s frightening to imagine where all those old tires go.
Most people do not realize that old tires are a health, safety and environmental hazard. Disease-carrying mosquitoes nest in them, and if they catch fire, they can burn for weeks, releasing toxic fumes into the air, and chemicals into our groundwater.
An Israeli company based in the Ukraine, has found a safe and environmentally friendly way to dispose of old tires: the pollution-free process consumes no energy and produces attractive byproducts, such as gas for your car.
Using an electromagnetic field and depriving the system of oxygen, Coral Group applies its “soft pyrolysis” method to break down old tires into basic components. Pyrolysis is a process that decomposes organic materials in the total absence of oxygen. And in Coral’s method, attractive end products are created. They include kerosene (jet fuel), benzene (automobile fuel), diesel, oil and black carbon.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Business and Commerce, Climate Change, Middle East Report, Science and Technology on July 27, 2008 - כ"ד תמוז תשס"ח at 5:01 am
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Press Release, National Academy of Sciences, July 17, 2008
WASHINGTON — A transition to hydrogen vehicles could greatly reduce U.S. oil dependence and carbon dioxide emissions, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council, but making hydrogen vehicles competitive in the automotive market will not be easy. While the development of fuel cell and hydrogen production technology over the past several years has been impressive, challenges remain. Vehicle costs are high, and the U.S. currently lacks the infrastructure to produce and widely distribute hydrogen to consumers. These obstacles could be overcome, however, with continued support for research and development and firm commitments from the automotive industry and the federal government, concluded the committee that wrote the report.
Light-duty vehicles, such as cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks, are responsible for 44 percent of the oil used in the United States and over 20 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted. Concerns over climate change, oil imports, and recent spikes in gasoline prices have spurred interest in the development of alternative fuels. In 2003, President Bush announced a $1.2 billion initiative to encourage development of hydrogen production technology and fuel cell vehicles, which are powered through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen and emit only water and heat as exhaust.
The committee estimated the maximum number of hydrogen vehicles that could be on the road in the coming decades, assuming that practical technical goals are met, that consumers want hydrogen cars, and that government policies are in place to help drive the transition from oil to hydrogen fuel. The findings therefore represent potential best-case scenarios rather than predictions.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Recent Posts on July 20, 2008 - י"ז תמוז תשס"ח at 11:00 pm
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