EnCore spuds Catcher North appraisal well
Posted: 24 January 2010
EnCore Oil plc reported the Catcher North appraisal well 28/9-3 in Central North Sea Block 28/9 was spudded at 08.00 hours on Monday 24 January 2011.
The EnCore operated well is being drilled using the Transocean Galaxy II heavy duty jack-up rig and is being managed by Applied Drilling Technology International (ADTI), a turnkey drilling services provider with over 30 years' experience. The well is expected to take approximately 20 days, subject to weather and operational requirements.
The main objective of the well is to appraise the Tay and Cromarty reservoirs to the North of the Catcher discovery made in June 2010, at estimated depths of approximately 4,300 feet (Tay) and 4,500 feet (Cromarty) True Vertical Depth Sub Sea.
Catcher North is the second well in the current drilling campaign after the group took advantage of a weather window suitable for mobilisation from Varadero to the Catcher North location. Burgman will now be drilled following Catcher North.
The equity in the Catcher joint venture partnership is as follows: EnCore Oil plc (15 per cent., Operator), Premier Oil (35 per cent), Wintershall (UK North Sea) Limited (20 per cent), Nautical Petroleum (15 per cent) and Agora Oil & Gas (15 per cent).
�
Posted by Richard Price, Editor, energyme.com.
Follow energyme.com on Twitter @energyme.
Information supplied by companies or PR agencies who are responsible for content. Send press releases in Word format to richard@energyme.comPowered By WizardRSSMagnetic Generators
Free Energy Home
Home Power Generator
Green Energy
Green Energy Sources
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The New American Home Incorporates Energy-Saving Technologies
This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.
January 19, 2011
The New American Home 2011 near Orlando, Florida, displays a range of energy efficiency and renewable energy features.Credit: James F. Wilson
The National Council of the Housing Industry and Builder Magazine have revealed the 2011 edition of "The New American Home," which aims to use 42% less energy than would a similar house built to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code. Each year, The New American Home provides a demonstration of current innovations in architecture, construction techniques, and new products, including the latest energy-saving technologies. The current model, near downtown Orlando, Florida, highlights DOE's Building America strategies to conserve energy and building materials. The builder deconstructed existing homes on the site rather than demolishing them, recovering the maximum amount of materials for reuse. The new house features an airtight, energy efficient thermal shell, including concrete block exterior walls insulated with spray foam.
The home also uses solar energy for a portion of its space conditioning. This new HVAC offering bundles the space conditioning system with four dedicated photovoltaic panels, so that when the system is not running, other electrical devices in the home can use the solar power instead. A solar thermal hot water system with an 80-gallon storage tank provides most of the home's hot water. And, 60% of all interior and exterior lamps are energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps, linear fluorescent lamps, and LEDs. Energy Star appliances are used throughout the structure. The home's energy performance helped it achieve the "emerald" level, the highest score under the National Green Building Program of the National Association of Home Builders. IBACOS, Inc., a member of the Building America program, worked with the National Council of the Housing Industry to help ensure energy innovations in the home.
Building America is an industry-driven research program, sponsored by DOE and designed to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced building energy technologies in new and existing homes. The New American Home is the official showcase home of the annual International Builders' Show (IBS), which this year was held January 12-15 in Orlando. See The New American Home Web site on the IBS Web site and the New American Home 2011 fact sheet .
Powered By WizardRSSFree Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator
January 19, 2011
The New American Home 2011 near Orlando, Florida, displays a range of energy efficiency and renewable energy features.Credit: James F. Wilson
The National Council of the Housing Industry and Builder Magazine have revealed the 2011 edition of "The New American Home," which aims to use 42% less energy than would a similar house built to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code. Each year, The New American Home provides a demonstration of current innovations in architecture, construction techniques, and new products, including the latest energy-saving technologies. The current model, near downtown Orlando, Florida, highlights DOE's Building America strategies to conserve energy and building materials. The builder deconstructed existing homes on the site rather than demolishing them, recovering the maximum amount of materials for reuse. The new house features an airtight, energy efficient thermal shell, including concrete block exterior walls insulated with spray foam.
The home also uses solar energy for a portion of its space conditioning. This new HVAC offering bundles the space conditioning system with four dedicated photovoltaic panels, so that when the system is not running, other electrical devices in the home can use the solar power instead. A solar thermal hot water system with an 80-gallon storage tank provides most of the home's hot water. And, 60% of all interior and exterior lamps are energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps, linear fluorescent lamps, and LEDs. Energy Star appliances are used throughout the structure. The home's energy performance helped it achieve the "emerald" level, the highest score under the National Green Building Program of the National Association of Home Builders. IBACOS, Inc., a member of the Building America program, worked with the National Council of the Housing Industry to help ensure energy innovations in the home.
Building America is an industry-driven research program, sponsored by DOE and designed to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced building energy technologies in new and existing homes. The New American Home is the official showcase home of the annual International Builders' Show (IBS), which this year was held January 12-15 in Orlando. See The New American Home Web site on the IBS Web site and the New American Home 2011 fact sheet .
Powered By WizardRSSFree Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator
eIQ Energy?s Parallel Solar Technology Chosen For 1.8 Megawatt Solar Power Install in Murrieta, CA
eIQ Energys Parallel Solar Technology Chosen For 1.8 Megawatt Solar Power Install in Murrieta, CA
Visit http://www.eiqenergy.com for further information
Six-figure up-front savings achieved by shifting array wiring away from traditional series-wired string architecture
Submitted on 01/25/11, 10:54 AM
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 25, 2010 eIQ Energys Parallel Solar technology has been selected for a new 1.8 megawatt solar power installation at a Bee Safe Storage facility in Murrieta, Calif., creating significant up-front cost savings and ongoing energy harvest benefits. Installation will be completed by EcoOneEnergy of Escondido, Calif., using crystalline solar modules driving multiple inverters. An array of this size requires thousands of solar modules. Traditionally, they would have been connected in series-wired strings (each typically containing a dozen or two modules), with each string being wired to a combiner box and then routed to an inverter. By opting instead for the parallel wiring approach enabled by eIQ Energys vBoost DC-to-DC voltage optimizer, the need for cabling, combiner boxes, and other hardware is sharply reduced as is the amount of labor needed during installation. Hardware savings alone on the Bee Safe Storage project will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than offsetting the cost of the eIQ Energy vBoost, which are installed on each panel or group of panels. Over the lifetime of the installation, eIQ Energys Parallel Solar technology will also provide distributed MPPT, precision panel-level monitoring of performance, and Web-based access to operational data. The vBoost also eliminates power-sapping interactions between panels on the same string that have different output levels due to shading, soiling, aging, or other issues. The Parallel Solar approach was an obvious choice for this installation, said Eugene Wilkie, CEO of EcoOneEnergy. It freed up our designers to focus on what would provide the best power output, rather than having to worry about string architecture and voltage management. Were also saving a substantial amount on combiner boxes, cable and conduit, and the snap-together connection on the vBoost modules are a tremendous time-saver. As we approach the first anniversary of vBoosts entry into the market, were seeing Parallel Solar gaining increasing traction in the marketplace, noted eIQ Energy CEO Oliver Janssen. The Bee Safe Storage project is our largest to date, and an indicator of the interest were seeing in commercial-scale installations where the cost savings really add up. In addition to generating electricity, the trellis installation at Bee Safe Storage in Murrieta will provide valuable shading for a vehicle storage area located at the storage facility, stated Mike Delaney, CEO of Bee Safe Storage. About eIQ Energy eIQ Energy, Inc. uses unique power management technology to make solar energy more effective and affordable. The companys Parallel Solar technology, built around the vBoost converter module, reduces overall system costs and enables a true parallel architecture, benefiting system designers, installers and operators. eIQ Energy was founded in 2007 with the principal goal of improving the performance and the return on investment for clean energy sources such as photovoltaic systems. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., eIQ Energys executive team combines sophisticated knowledge of power supply design, semiconductors and energy management with broad entrepreneurial skills. For more information, please visit www.eiqenergy.com About EcoOneEnergy EcoOneEnergy, LLC is a renewable energy systems developer and integrator specialist focused on renewable energy projects (PV solar and wind) for power generation and the reduction of energy consumption in the industrial, commercial and educational markets. The company's target markets are the Southwest United States and Mexico. Projects range in size from commercial roof mount systems to utility size PV solar ground mount and wind farm systems, anywhere from 1MW to 1GW in size.
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
The Peak Oil Catastrophe-in-waiting
Peak oil is the point at which global oil production reaches a maximum and then declines. The speed of the decline is a key unknown and if it is relatively fast, the results could be truly dire for economies around the world.�
We saw prices as high as $147 a barrel in mid-2008 (the dominant factor for gasoline prices well over $4 a gallon), which played a strong role, perhaps the dominant role, in the global Great Recession -- as high oil prices have in most recessions over the last fifty years. Once the recession hit, oil demand dropped and prices plummeted as low as $33 a barrel.
Prices steadily recovered since their low in early 2009 and are back to dangerous levels in early 2011 (about $90 a barrel). We can expect far higher prices as the global recovery continues. An increasing number of analysts are projecting prices as high or higher than the 2008 peak in the next couple of years.
More importantly, global net exports of oil continue to drop as major oil exporters increase their own consumption at the same time as their production is stagnant or falling. As a major oil-importing nation (about 2/3 of our oil is imported, by far the largest import dependency in the world), net oil exports are far more important to the U.S. than total oil production. Even if global oil production increases in the coming years, if there is less available for oil-thirsty nations like ours the situation will be far worse than total oil production figures would otherwise suggest. More on this below.
It is time for public discussion of this issue to reach the same prominence as climate change. Indeed, many solutions to these ?twin crises? are the same because reducing petroleum dependence will ameliorate peak oil and climate change.
This article is an update on the peak oil situation at the beginning of 2011 and a follow-up to my many previous pieces on peak oil (one with Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn). First, some facts.
Global oil production has plateaued since 2004, despite the fact that oil prices have risen dramatically. Figure 1 shows this history, demonstrating that oil production has not been very response to market forces, suggesting strongly that we are at a global peak.
Figure 1. Global oil production and oil price 2004-2010. (Source: EIA, chart courtesy of www.TheOilDrum.com).
Bloomberg reported a summary of oil price forecasts for 2011, selecting for their summary those forecasters who have the most accurate track records. The dominant view was that average oil prices will rise almost as high in 2011 as seen in 2008 ? to $87 a barrel for the year as a whole (the average price for 2008 was $99). It?s likely, however, that the actual average 2011 price will be significantly higher because we are already over this price at about $90 a barrel in early January and the large majority of economic forecasts project a robust global recovery this year, with attendant increases in oil demand.
More anecdotally, but with perhaps more impact because of its source, Shell?s recent ex-president John Hofmeister predicts $5 gas by 2012 due to the global economic recovery and very tight supply.
A number of comprehensive reviews of the global oil supply situation have appeared in the last year.
Lloyds and Chatham House: ?We are heading towards a global oil supply crunch and price spike.? ?A supply crunch appears likely around 2013? given recent price experience, a spike in excess of $200 per barrel is not infeasible.?
The U.S. Department of Defense issued a stark warning in its 2010 Joint Operating Environment (JOE) report, including discussion of ?peak oil?: "By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day.?
Similarly, the German military is taking peak oil very seriously, made clear by a report leaked to Der Spiegel in 2010: ?[The report] warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the ?total collapse of the markets? and of serious political and economic crises.?
The same article reports on secret British government planning for peak oil: ?The leak has parallels with recent reports from the UK. Only last week the Guardian newspaper reported that the British Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is keeping documents secret which show the UK government is far more concerned about an impending supply crisis than it cares to admit. According to the Guardian, the DECC, the Bank of England and the British Ministry of Defence are working alongside industry representatives to develop a crisis plan to deal with possible shortfalls in energy supply.?
The UK?s Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security (a non-governmental group) issued its second major report on peak oil in late 2010, concluding: ?[W]e face a situation during the [next few years] where fuel price unrest could lead to shortages in consumer products and the UK?s energy security will be significantly compromised. This has the potential to hit UK business and commerce as well as the most disadvantaged in society with yet another crisis.?
In August of 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the official energy watchdog for the western world, was even more strident in its warnings. The UK?s Independent newspaper reported:
The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.
Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.
Later in 2009, two IEA whistleblowers went public and claimed that the situation was even worse than the IEA was stating publicly. The UK?s Guardian newspaper reported in November of 2009: ?A ? senior IEA source, who has now left but was ? unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organization was that it was ?imperative not to anger the Americans? but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as has been admitted. ?We have (already) entered the ?peak oil? zone. I think that the situation is really bad,? he added.?
IEA has changed its public tune yet again, however. IEA?s 2010 World Energy Outlook (WEO), a major forecast released each year, apparently ignored the IEA?s own previous analysis by reverting to its previous policy of simply assuming ? literally ? that projected petroleum demand will be met with the needed supply. IEA states in WEO 2010: ?Energy prices ensure that projected supply and demand are in balance throughout the Outlook period in each scenario?.?� In other words, IEA simply assumes that supply will meet demand due to market forces. This is obviously true at a very basic level: supply will always match demand if we define demand as that which is actually consumed. But if we define demand instead as the desired oil consumption, all else being equal, we reach a very different conclusion ? far more in line with the US JOE report that projects a possible 10 million barrel per day shortfall by 2015.
WEO 2010 does, however, include some discussion of peak oil and it projects that the 2006 peak in global conventional oil production will never be exceeded (p. 8 of the Exec. Summary). That is, IEA has officially concluded that 2006 was the annual peak for conventional oil production. We are, accordingly, past the point of peak oil if we define this term to include only conventional oil.
Even based on official IEA projections (which are likely far too rosy considering the whistleblower claims), we have a major problem facing us, made clear by the chart below. The key point from this chart is that IEA thinks we?ve already passed the peak for global conventional oil production, as just mentioned. As a consequence, a huge amount of new oil must be found to replace declining conventional oil production ? a deficit of about 75 million barrels per day by 2035. This is equivalent to nine new Saudi Arabias coming online by 2035 (Saudi Arabia currently produces about 8 million barrels per day).
IEA projects (Figure 2) that this new oil will come from a combination of new conventional oil production, from known fields yet to be developed and fields not even found yet; from natural gas liquids; and from unconventional oil like tar sands and oil shale.
Figure 2. IEA projections for oil supply through 2035 (Source: IEA WEO 2010.)
For those who worry about national security and energy dependence, the report offers an even more worrying conclusion: the large majority of new oil will come from OPEC nations, with only Brazil, Canada and Kazakhstan as non-OPEC nations projected to have significant new production (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Sources of new oil by 2035 (Source: IEA WEO 2010).
We must keep in mind, however, that these new production figures don?t take into account the growing petroleum demand in these producing nations. The key issue, from a U.S. national security and energy dependence perspective, is not oil production itself but ?net oil exports.? The public version of the 2010 WEO does not discuss net oil exports, but private analysts Jeffrey Brown and Samuel Foucher have produced forecasts of net oil exports, concluding that the top five oil exporters will have literally zero oil for export by 2030. Even if, for some reason, their model is substantially off the mark (it?s not been peer-reviewed, to my knowledge), we must consider the net export issue in our analysis because any analysis that ignores rapidly growing consumption in oil-producing nations will be highly inaccurate.
Figure 4. Brown and Foucher?s 2008 projections for top five oil exporting nations? net oil exports by 2030, in millions of barrels per day (mbpd).
It?s not all bad, however. A more encouraging forecast from the IEA report can be found in their cost savings projections. They conclude that the ?new policies scenario? (what used to be called the ?reference scenario,? which codifies existing policies) and the 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent scenario (which codifies new policies required to prevent atmospheric emissions from reaching this level) result in very substantial net cost savings on a global basis and, in particular, for oil importing nations. This is the case because fossil fuel demand is dramatically reduced in these scenarios. This reduction in demand lowers both average prices for fossil fuels and the amount of fossil fuel that needs to be purchased.
Figure 5. Oil-import bills as share of gross domestic product in selected countries (Source: IEA WEO 2010).
It is time to get very serious about managing a reduction in petroleum demand in the U.S. and around the world. I write ?managing? because it is my view that this reduction in demand will happen whether we want it to or not due to declining oil supplies. The question, then, is how we best manage this decline. A high quality analysis of the possible scenarios for an oil-constrained world, by Oxford University professor J�rg Friedrichs, appeared in 2010. Friedrichs examines three possible trajectories: ?Predatory militarism,? ?totalitarian retrenchment,? and ?socioeconomic adaptation.?
At least two rigorous policy solutions have been offered in recent years. The Rocky Mountain Institute completed Winning the Oil Endgame in 2007, suggesting a suite of policy and technology solutions that can get the U.S. off oil, ?led by business for profit.? Richard Heinberg offered his own book-length solution, The Oil Depletion Protocol, in 2008, suggesting how the U.S. and other nations could manage declining oil supplies by achieving a three percent per year reduction in demand through various policies.
As we continue a global economic recovery in 2011, higher oil prices are inevitable, super price spikes are a strong possibility, and even shortages are not out of the question. We must ask ourselves: should we manage the decline in a way that avoids economic catastrophe or do we continue our generally laissez faire attitude toward this major problem?
Tam Hunt is president of Community Renewable Solutions, LLC, a renewable energy consulting and project development company. He is also a Lecturer in climate change law and policy at UC Santa Barbara?s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. His blog, Thought, Spirit, Politik, is at www.tamhunt.blogspot.com.�
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator
We saw prices as high as $147 a barrel in mid-2008 (the dominant factor for gasoline prices well over $4 a gallon), which played a strong role, perhaps the dominant role, in the global Great Recession -- as high oil prices have in most recessions over the last fifty years. Once the recession hit, oil demand dropped and prices plummeted as low as $33 a barrel.
Prices steadily recovered since their low in early 2009 and are back to dangerous levels in early 2011 (about $90 a barrel). We can expect far higher prices as the global recovery continues. An increasing number of analysts are projecting prices as high or higher than the 2008 peak in the next couple of years.
More importantly, global net exports of oil continue to drop as major oil exporters increase their own consumption at the same time as their production is stagnant or falling. As a major oil-importing nation (about 2/3 of our oil is imported, by far the largest import dependency in the world), net oil exports are far more important to the U.S. than total oil production. Even if global oil production increases in the coming years, if there is less available for oil-thirsty nations like ours the situation will be far worse than total oil production figures would otherwise suggest. More on this below.
It is time for public discussion of this issue to reach the same prominence as climate change. Indeed, many solutions to these ?twin crises? are the same because reducing petroleum dependence will ameliorate peak oil and climate change.
This article is an update on the peak oil situation at the beginning of 2011 and a follow-up to my many previous pieces on peak oil (one with Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn). First, some facts.
Global oil production has plateaued since 2004, despite the fact that oil prices have risen dramatically. Figure 1 shows this history, demonstrating that oil production has not been very response to market forces, suggesting strongly that we are at a global peak.
Figure 1. Global oil production and oil price 2004-2010. (Source: EIA, chart courtesy of www.TheOilDrum.com).
Bloomberg reported a summary of oil price forecasts for 2011, selecting for their summary those forecasters who have the most accurate track records. The dominant view was that average oil prices will rise almost as high in 2011 as seen in 2008 ? to $87 a barrel for the year as a whole (the average price for 2008 was $99). It?s likely, however, that the actual average 2011 price will be significantly higher because we are already over this price at about $90 a barrel in early January and the large majority of economic forecasts project a robust global recovery this year, with attendant increases in oil demand.
More anecdotally, but with perhaps more impact because of its source, Shell?s recent ex-president John Hofmeister predicts $5 gas by 2012 due to the global economic recovery and very tight supply.
A number of comprehensive reviews of the global oil supply situation have appeared in the last year.
Lloyds and Chatham House: ?We are heading towards a global oil supply crunch and price spike.? ?A supply crunch appears likely around 2013? given recent price experience, a spike in excess of $200 per barrel is not infeasible.?
The U.S. Department of Defense issued a stark warning in its 2010 Joint Operating Environment (JOE) report, including discussion of ?peak oil?: "By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day.?
Similarly, the German military is taking peak oil very seriously, made clear by a report leaked to Der Spiegel in 2010: ?[The report] warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the ?total collapse of the markets? and of serious political and economic crises.?
The same article reports on secret British government planning for peak oil: ?The leak has parallels with recent reports from the UK. Only last week the Guardian newspaper reported that the British Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is keeping documents secret which show the UK government is far more concerned about an impending supply crisis than it cares to admit. According to the Guardian, the DECC, the Bank of England and the British Ministry of Defence are working alongside industry representatives to develop a crisis plan to deal with possible shortfalls in energy supply.?
The UK?s Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security (a non-governmental group) issued its second major report on peak oil in late 2010, concluding: ?[W]e face a situation during the [next few years] where fuel price unrest could lead to shortages in consumer products and the UK?s energy security will be significantly compromised. This has the potential to hit UK business and commerce as well as the most disadvantaged in society with yet another crisis.?
In August of 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the official energy watchdog for the western world, was even more strident in its warnings. The UK?s Independent newspaper reported:
The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.
Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.
Later in 2009, two IEA whistleblowers went public and claimed that the situation was even worse than the IEA was stating publicly. The UK?s Guardian newspaper reported in November of 2009: ?A ? senior IEA source, who has now left but was ? unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organization was that it was ?imperative not to anger the Americans? but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as has been admitted. ?We have (already) entered the ?peak oil? zone. I think that the situation is really bad,? he added.?
IEA has changed its public tune yet again, however. IEA?s 2010 World Energy Outlook (WEO), a major forecast released each year, apparently ignored the IEA?s own previous analysis by reverting to its previous policy of simply assuming ? literally ? that projected petroleum demand will be met with the needed supply. IEA states in WEO 2010: ?Energy prices ensure that projected supply and demand are in balance throughout the Outlook period in each scenario?.?� In other words, IEA simply assumes that supply will meet demand due to market forces. This is obviously true at a very basic level: supply will always match demand if we define demand as that which is actually consumed. But if we define demand instead as the desired oil consumption, all else being equal, we reach a very different conclusion ? far more in line with the US JOE report that projects a possible 10 million barrel per day shortfall by 2015.
WEO 2010 does, however, include some discussion of peak oil and it projects that the 2006 peak in global conventional oil production will never be exceeded (p. 8 of the Exec. Summary). That is, IEA has officially concluded that 2006 was the annual peak for conventional oil production. We are, accordingly, past the point of peak oil if we define this term to include only conventional oil.
Even based on official IEA projections (which are likely far too rosy considering the whistleblower claims), we have a major problem facing us, made clear by the chart below. The key point from this chart is that IEA thinks we?ve already passed the peak for global conventional oil production, as just mentioned. As a consequence, a huge amount of new oil must be found to replace declining conventional oil production ? a deficit of about 75 million barrels per day by 2035. This is equivalent to nine new Saudi Arabias coming online by 2035 (Saudi Arabia currently produces about 8 million barrels per day).
IEA projects (Figure 2) that this new oil will come from a combination of new conventional oil production, from known fields yet to be developed and fields not even found yet; from natural gas liquids; and from unconventional oil like tar sands and oil shale.
Figure 2. IEA projections for oil supply through 2035 (Source: IEA WEO 2010.)
For those who worry about national security and energy dependence, the report offers an even more worrying conclusion: the large majority of new oil will come from OPEC nations, with only Brazil, Canada and Kazakhstan as non-OPEC nations projected to have significant new production (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Sources of new oil by 2035 (Source: IEA WEO 2010).
We must keep in mind, however, that these new production figures don?t take into account the growing petroleum demand in these producing nations. The key issue, from a U.S. national security and energy dependence perspective, is not oil production itself but ?net oil exports.? The public version of the 2010 WEO does not discuss net oil exports, but private analysts Jeffrey Brown and Samuel Foucher have produced forecasts of net oil exports, concluding that the top five oil exporters will have literally zero oil for export by 2030. Even if, for some reason, their model is substantially off the mark (it?s not been peer-reviewed, to my knowledge), we must consider the net export issue in our analysis because any analysis that ignores rapidly growing consumption in oil-producing nations will be highly inaccurate.
Figure 4. Brown and Foucher?s 2008 projections for top five oil exporting nations? net oil exports by 2030, in millions of barrels per day (mbpd).
It?s not all bad, however. A more encouraging forecast from the IEA report can be found in their cost savings projections. They conclude that the ?new policies scenario? (what used to be called the ?reference scenario,? which codifies existing policies) and the 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent scenario (which codifies new policies required to prevent atmospheric emissions from reaching this level) result in very substantial net cost savings on a global basis and, in particular, for oil importing nations. This is the case because fossil fuel demand is dramatically reduced in these scenarios. This reduction in demand lowers both average prices for fossil fuels and the amount of fossil fuel that needs to be purchased.
Figure 5. Oil-import bills as share of gross domestic product in selected countries (Source: IEA WEO 2010).
It is time to get very serious about managing a reduction in petroleum demand in the U.S. and around the world. I write ?managing? because it is my view that this reduction in demand will happen whether we want it to or not due to declining oil supplies. The question, then, is how we best manage this decline. A high quality analysis of the possible scenarios for an oil-constrained world, by Oxford University professor J�rg Friedrichs, appeared in 2010. Friedrichs examines three possible trajectories: ?Predatory militarism,? ?totalitarian retrenchment,? and ?socioeconomic adaptation.?
At least two rigorous policy solutions have been offered in recent years. The Rocky Mountain Institute completed Winning the Oil Endgame in 2007, suggesting a suite of policy and technology solutions that can get the U.S. off oil, ?led by business for profit.? Richard Heinberg offered his own book-length solution, The Oil Depletion Protocol, in 2008, suggesting how the U.S. and other nations could manage declining oil supplies by achieving a three percent per year reduction in demand through various policies.
As we continue a global economic recovery in 2011, higher oil prices are inevitable, super price spikes are a strong possibility, and even shortages are not out of the question. We must ask ourselves: should we manage the decline in a way that avoids economic catastrophe or do we continue our generally laissez faire attitude toward this major problem?
Tam Hunt is president of Community Renewable Solutions, LLC, a renewable energy consulting and project development company. He is also a Lecturer in climate change law and policy at UC Santa Barbara?s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. His blog, Thought, Spirit, Politik, is at www.tamhunt.blogspot.com.�
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator
Energy 101: Cool Roofs
This edition of Energy 101 takes a look at how switching to a cool roof can s...
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Wind Powering America Employment Opportunity
Wind and Water Power Program Home |
EERE Home |
U.S. Department of Energy
Webmaster |
Web Site Policies |
Security & Privacy |
USA.gov
Content Last Updated: 5/4/2010
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Fits and Starts: Ontario's Green Energy Growth
Since the launch of the FIT program in October 2009, several big wind and solar manufacturers have announced plans to set up or expand their operations in the province to capitalize on growing demand for Ontario-made products. Global manufacturer Canadian Solar is building a new facility in the town of Guelph that will be capable of manufacturing 200 megawatts of modules a year and create around 500 jobs. Some sixty miles down the road, Siemens is establishing Canada?s first wind turbine blade factory in Tillonsburg, representing a $20 million dollar investment and the creation of 300 jobs. South Korea?s Samsung is, of course, the largest foreign investor in the market to date with its $7 billion contract from the Ontario government to develop the province?s wind and solar industries.
Through the FIT program, Ontario is becoming a hot bed of green energy development, manufacturing and job creation. In December, Ontario Energy Minister Brad Duguid said he?d recently announced 1,700 clean energy jobs across the province.
The solar business in particular is seeing a surge in activity with new local content rules driving partnerships and investment. �Starting this year, solar projects must meet a 60% domestic content requirement. Suppliers and manufacturers have responded by developing products and alliances to allow developers to meet the steep local content threshold. SunEdison, for instance, has begun deploying a locally-produced racking system for solar rooftop installations across the region. The company is also manufacturing fully-bankable solar PV panels in Newmarket, Ontario and has doubled production since December due to high demand.
According to data from Toronto-based ClearSky Advisors, prior to FIT?s launch, there were three solar manufacturers in the Ontario market: 6N silicon, SolGate and SatCon. Today, there are 18 module manufacturers, three of which are manufacturing through a local contract manufacturer and 15 inverter manufacturers, six of which are using local contractors. In addition, there are numerous racking/mounting manufacturers that have sprung up since the program?s debut.
Developments on the wind side are slower with many OEMs and suppliers looking for more certainty about the long-term viability of the program before investing. Along with Siemens, Vestas and GE Energy are very active in the region. In terms of new manufacturing facilities, India?s Suzlon Wind Energy is said to be eyeing the province as a possible venue but nothing definitive has been announced. Current wind manufacturing capacity in Ontario will not allow for developers to meet the increased local content requirement of 50% which kicks in next year. So the market needs more OEMs to set up and form partnerships with local manufacturers and service providers.
The big elephant in the room for Ontario?s green energy industries is the upcoming provincial election set for next October. The opposition Conservative party is currently leading in polls and has been making negative comments in the press about the future of the FIT program, which was passed by the current Liberal government. Ontario taxpayers are being subjected to diametrically opposed narratives in the media about the potential impact FIT will have on the provincial economy with critics blaming the program for energy rate hikes while supporters point to job creation and investment. Experts say some of the big players are waiting to see what happens next fall before making a sizable investment in the market.
The other big question is grid capacity. Developers and manufacturers are very concerned about the timing and extent of the province?s transmission expansion plans to accommodate renewables. There are over 250 renewable projects awaiting approval from the OPA which was supposed to begin a testing process last August. The Economic Connection Test (ECT) will determine which grid expansion plans will go forward allowing projects to connect. The timing for this test remains uncertain and with expansion projects requiring long lead times, developers are wondering when or if their projects will get a greenlight.
Despite this uncertainty, Ontario?s green energy industry is continuing to grow and there are plenty of opportunities for wind and solar manufacturers and service providers to play a role in building the local supply chains. The next few months are critical as FIT projects seek financing, transmission expansion plans become clearer and supplier arrangements are finalized. While the future of FIT will not be entirely certain until after the election, the future looks bright for Ontario?s renewable energy industries.
Adrienne Baker is a director of Canadian Clean Energy Conferences and produces the Ontario Feed-in Tariff Supply Chain Forum which takes place April 19-20 in Toronto.�
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Green Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator
Through the FIT program, Ontario is becoming a hot bed of green energy development, manufacturing and job creation. In December, Ontario Energy Minister Brad Duguid said he?d recently announced 1,700 clean energy jobs across the province.
The solar business in particular is seeing a surge in activity with new local content rules driving partnerships and investment. �Starting this year, solar projects must meet a 60% domestic content requirement. Suppliers and manufacturers have responded by developing products and alliances to allow developers to meet the steep local content threshold. SunEdison, for instance, has begun deploying a locally-produced racking system for solar rooftop installations across the region. The company is also manufacturing fully-bankable solar PV panels in Newmarket, Ontario and has doubled production since December due to high demand.
According to data from Toronto-based ClearSky Advisors, prior to FIT?s launch, there were three solar manufacturers in the Ontario market: 6N silicon, SolGate and SatCon. Today, there are 18 module manufacturers, three of which are manufacturing through a local contract manufacturer and 15 inverter manufacturers, six of which are using local contractors. In addition, there are numerous racking/mounting manufacturers that have sprung up since the program?s debut.
Developments on the wind side are slower with many OEMs and suppliers looking for more certainty about the long-term viability of the program before investing. Along with Siemens, Vestas and GE Energy are very active in the region. In terms of new manufacturing facilities, India?s Suzlon Wind Energy is said to be eyeing the province as a possible venue but nothing definitive has been announced. Current wind manufacturing capacity in Ontario will not allow for developers to meet the increased local content requirement of 50% which kicks in next year. So the market needs more OEMs to set up and form partnerships with local manufacturers and service providers.
The big elephant in the room for Ontario?s green energy industries is the upcoming provincial election set for next October. The opposition Conservative party is currently leading in polls and has been making negative comments in the press about the future of the FIT program, which was passed by the current Liberal government. Ontario taxpayers are being subjected to diametrically opposed narratives in the media about the potential impact FIT will have on the provincial economy with critics blaming the program for energy rate hikes while supporters point to job creation and investment. Experts say some of the big players are waiting to see what happens next fall before making a sizable investment in the market.
The other big question is grid capacity. Developers and manufacturers are very concerned about the timing and extent of the province?s transmission expansion plans to accommodate renewables. There are over 250 renewable projects awaiting approval from the OPA which was supposed to begin a testing process last August. The Economic Connection Test (ECT) will determine which grid expansion plans will go forward allowing projects to connect. The timing for this test remains uncertain and with expansion projects requiring long lead times, developers are wondering when or if their projects will get a greenlight.
Despite this uncertainty, Ontario?s green energy industry is continuing to grow and there are plenty of opportunities for wind and solar manufacturers and service providers to play a role in building the local supply chains. The next few months are critical as FIT projects seek financing, transmission expansion plans become clearer and supplier arrangements are finalized. While the future of FIT will not be entirely certain until after the election, the future looks bright for Ontario?s renewable energy industries.
Adrienne Baker is a director of Canadian Clean Energy Conferences and produces the Ontario Feed-in Tariff Supply Chain Forum which takes place April 19-20 in Toronto.�
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Green Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator
Vaclav Smil's ?Energy Myths and Realities? - A review
Vaclav Smil, professor of Environment and Environmental Geography at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, has written a new book called ?Energy Myths and Realities.? In the book, he looks at a number of things he considers myths:
1. The future belongs to electric cars
2. Nuclear electricity will be too cheap too meter
3. Soft-energy illusions (local generation, etc.)
4. Running out: Peak oil and its meaning
5. Sequestration of carbon dioxide
6. Liquid fuels from plants
7. Electricity from wind
8. The pace of energy transitions
Smil is well-respected in the world of energy, so I think it is also worthwhile looking at what he has to say. I think that it is even worthwhile looking at what he has to say about peak oil, because it may give us some insights as to where our thinking needs to be refined, or better explained, if it is to be understood by the ?mainstream?.
I might note that Smil is not entirely in disagreement with peak oil. He says,
It is fairly probable that its [conventional crude oil?s] extraction will peak within the next two decades, and it is inevitable that its share of the world?s primary energy supply will continue to decline.
A major point he makes in the peak oil section is that he is not convinced that peak oil will have a terrible impact, even if the decline does occur in the near future?something that quite a number of Oil Drum readers would agree with.
Let?s look at a few things Vaclav Smil has to say:
Electric Cars
Smil points out that electric cars have been around a long time and are still expensive compared to internal combustion cars. But his major concern seems to be that the amount of additional electricity required would be more than could reasonably be added within a short time frame. And, given the limitations of renewables, there would probably need to be a big ramp-up in fossil fuel use, to accommodate the additional cars.
According to Smil:
An electric car whose size would correspond to today?s typical American vehicle (a composite of passenger cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks) would translate to 3 MWh of electricity consumption.
In 2010, the United States had about 245 million passenger cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks; hence, an all-electric fleet would call for a theoretical minimum of 750 TWh/year. . . The charging and recharging cycle of Li-ion batteries is about 85% efficient, and about 10% must be subtracted for self-discharge losses; consequently, the actual need to be close to 4 MWh/car, or about 980 TWh of electricity per year. This is a very conservative calculation, as the overall demand of a midsize electric vehicle would be more likely around 300 Wh/km or 6MW/year.
But even this conservative total would be equivalent to 25% of US electricity generation in 2008, and the country?s utilities needed fifteen years (1993-2008) to add this amount of new production. As this power for electric cars would have to come on top of the demand growth by households, services, and industries, it would be exceedingly optimistic to expect such an increment could be in place in less than twenty years.
He later goes to explain how much fuel would be needed for all this.
The average source-to-outlet efficiency of U. S. electricity generation is about 40 percent, and adding 10 percent for internal power plant consumption and transmission losses, this means that 11 MWh (nearly 40 GJ) of primary energy would be needed to generate electricity for a car with an average annual consumption of about 4 MWh.
This would translate to 2 MJ for every kilometer of travel, a performance equivalent to about 38 mpg (9.25L/100 km)?a rate much lower than that offered by scores of new pure gasoline-engine car models, and inferior to advanced hybrid designs or to DiesOtto designs. . .
He explains that there would be no CO2 savings in all of this, unless renewable sources were used for all of the additional energy required. He also notes that a European report by the European Federation for Transport and Environment called How to Avoid an Electric Shock offers analogical conclusions. A complete change to electric cars in the EU would increase European electricity consumption by 15%, and would not lower CO2.
Wind Power
Smil?s conclusion regarding wind is
Conversion of wind?s kinetic energy by large turbines by large turbines can become an important contributor to the overall electricity supply, but, except for relatively small regions, it cannot become the single largest source, even less so the dominant mode of generation.
One of the limits he sees on wind power is the quantity of roads needed to service all of the wind power sites. He says:
But even when assuming a large average turbine size of 2?3 MW, the access roads (which are required to carry heavy loads, as the total weight of foundations, tower, and turbine is more than 300 tons per unit) needed to build roughly 2 million turbines and new transmission lines to conduct their electricity would make a vastly larger land claim than the footprint of the towers; and a considerable energy demand would be created by keeping these roads, often in steep terrain, protected against erosion and open during inclement weather for servicing access.
He also sees wind intermittency as a limiting factor. He says that many studies have shown that these variations do not cause any unmanageable problems as long as the total power installed in wind turbines is no more than about 10% of the system?s overall output.
He quotes P. A. Ostergaard, in the 2008 Energy article ?Geographic Aggregation and Wind Power Output Variance in Denmark,? saying:
Drawing on the Danish experience, he finds, predictably, that demand and wind variations in different areas help even out fluctuations and reduce imbalances in systems with high reliance on wind power, and that exploiting these variations allows for reductions in reserve capacity in other modes of electricity generation. But, no less predictably, he also finds limits to what can be done: The average requirement for the reserve thermal capacity may drop, ?but the same is not generally the case with the maximum required condensing mode capacity. . . . There will simply be times with wind production in neither of the interconnected areas.?
He is also concerned about the high installation rates that would be required to reach high penetrations, and the fact that at this point we cannot be certain of average life spans of wind turbines and of their need for maintenance and replacement requirements, particularly in harsh and offshore environments.
Peak Oil and Its Meaning
In the chapter ?Running Out: Peak Oil and Its Meaning?, Smil starts by looking at individual peak oil predictions that turned out not to be exactly correct. He argues that contrary to the assumptions of Richard Duncan in his Olduvai Gorge theory, average per capita energy consumption did not peak in 1978. Instead, based on BP data for all types of energy and UN population figures, world per capita energy consumption was 10% higher in 2008 than in 1978. He also says,
but even a lower rate would not signify anything catastrophic; because of steadily falling energy intensity?the energy consumption per unit of economic product?of the global economy, it could be a sign of progress for the world to use less energy.
It would seem to me that this is one area where there is considerable additional work that needs to be done. Is oil a limiting factor on all other forms of energy use, or will efficiency and other changes lead to higher GDP relative to energy use? There is probably room for a range of views on this subject.
Smil also points out that the predictions of M. King Hubbert, Andrew Flower, Collin Campbell, Kenneth Deffeyes and others were not exactly right, partly because the estimates of ultimately recoverable oil were not correct and partly because the deterministic approaches being used were too simple. Smil says:
The fundamental problem with the notion of predicting a peak for oil extraction is that it rests on three simple assumptions?that recoverable oil resources are known with a high level of confidence, that they are fixed, and that their recovery is subsumed by a symmetrical production curve?which happen not to be true. These three claims mix incontestable facts and sensible arguments with indefensible assumptions, and they caricature complex processes and ignore realities that do not fit preconceived conclusions. There is, obviously, a finite amount of liquid oil in the earth?s crust, but estimates of this grand total remain uncertain.
He mentions Adam Brandt?s 2007 article ?Testing Hubbert? from Energy Policy. Smil says regarding Brandt?s article, ?the symmetrical model of oil extraction is just one of many possibilities, and we now have a rigorous quantitative proof that it is not either a dominant or a modal choice.?
He also mentions R. Nehring?s conclusion,
The task facing us now is not to continue to use an obsolete and irrelevant method [that is, Hubbert?s model] but to develop further understanding of recovery growth.
Smil also has sections on untapped resources and non-conventional oil reserves.
The point of all of Smil?s analysis is that the amount of oil available could very well be considerably more than what an analysis simply using a Hubbert curve would project. But I think an equally valid argument could be made in the other direction?the amount of oil that can actually be extracted may prove to be considerably less than what a Hubbert curve would project.
It seems to me that Hubbert curves are valuable as giving a first-order approximation to what may happen in the future. In that regard, Hubbert curves have been helpful in saying that the peak in conventional oil production is about now. Smil mostly agrees with this?he says that there is a high probability that conventional oil production will peak in the next 10 to 20 years.
But it seems to me that Smil is correct in saying that Hubbert curves really don?t tell us precisely what lies ahead. Smil lays out the favorable scenario, where untapped resources, nonconventional oil reserves, and higher percentages of oil recovery act to increase the total amount of oil available to society. But Smil never looks at what the real limiting factor is. It seems to me that this limiting factor is declining energy return from the oil that is extracted, and the impact that this has on the world economy and the ability to do reinvestment. After a certain point, net energy obtained is so low that it is not possible to justify the ever-higher energy investment required to maintain production.
If net energy is the limiting factor, one would also expect that Hubbert curves are, as Smil says, not very helpful in predicting what is likely to happen in the future. In the case of net energy being the limiting factor, the result could well be that the downslope is more severe than a Hubbert curve would suggest.
Perhaps we do need to back away from Hubbert curve as a primary way of estimating what will happen in the future. While that approach was valuable as a rough approximation in the past, now that we are approaching the down slope, maybe we need to be looking at other approaches, to give a more refined understanding of what limits we are really up against, and how these can be expected to affect the entire process. More refined approaches are also likely to give us more credibility with the non-peak oil community, who see Hubbert curves as discredited, and see analyses of demand as important as analyses of supply.
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy Green Energy Sources
1. The future belongs to electric cars
2. Nuclear electricity will be too cheap too meter
3. Soft-energy illusions (local generation, etc.)
4. Running out: Peak oil and its meaning
5. Sequestration of carbon dioxide
6. Liquid fuels from plants
7. Electricity from wind
8. The pace of energy transitions
Smil is well-respected in the world of energy, so I think it is also worthwhile looking at what he has to say. I think that it is even worthwhile looking at what he has to say about peak oil, because it may give us some insights as to where our thinking needs to be refined, or better explained, if it is to be understood by the ?mainstream?.
I might note that Smil is not entirely in disagreement with peak oil. He says,
It is fairly probable that its [conventional crude oil?s] extraction will peak within the next two decades, and it is inevitable that its share of the world?s primary energy supply will continue to decline.
A major point he makes in the peak oil section is that he is not convinced that peak oil will have a terrible impact, even if the decline does occur in the near future?something that quite a number of Oil Drum readers would agree with.
Let?s look at a few things Vaclav Smil has to say:
Electric Cars
Smil points out that electric cars have been around a long time and are still expensive compared to internal combustion cars. But his major concern seems to be that the amount of additional electricity required would be more than could reasonably be added within a short time frame. And, given the limitations of renewables, there would probably need to be a big ramp-up in fossil fuel use, to accommodate the additional cars.
According to Smil:
An electric car whose size would correspond to today?s typical American vehicle (a composite of passenger cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks) would translate to 3 MWh of electricity consumption.
In 2010, the United States had about 245 million passenger cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks; hence, an all-electric fleet would call for a theoretical minimum of 750 TWh/year. . . The charging and recharging cycle of Li-ion batteries is about 85% efficient, and about 10% must be subtracted for self-discharge losses; consequently, the actual need to be close to 4 MWh/car, or about 980 TWh of electricity per year. This is a very conservative calculation, as the overall demand of a midsize electric vehicle would be more likely around 300 Wh/km or 6MW/year.
But even this conservative total would be equivalent to 25% of US electricity generation in 2008, and the country?s utilities needed fifteen years (1993-2008) to add this amount of new production. As this power for electric cars would have to come on top of the demand growth by households, services, and industries, it would be exceedingly optimistic to expect such an increment could be in place in less than twenty years.
He later goes to explain how much fuel would be needed for all this.
The average source-to-outlet efficiency of U. S. electricity generation is about 40 percent, and adding 10 percent for internal power plant consumption and transmission losses, this means that 11 MWh (nearly 40 GJ) of primary energy would be needed to generate electricity for a car with an average annual consumption of about 4 MWh.
This would translate to 2 MJ for every kilometer of travel, a performance equivalent to about 38 mpg (9.25L/100 km)?a rate much lower than that offered by scores of new pure gasoline-engine car models, and inferior to advanced hybrid designs or to DiesOtto designs. . .
He explains that there would be no CO2 savings in all of this, unless renewable sources were used for all of the additional energy required. He also notes that a European report by the European Federation for Transport and Environment called How to Avoid an Electric Shock offers analogical conclusions. A complete change to electric cars in the EU would increase European electricity consumption by 15%, and would not lower CO2.
Wind Power
Smil?s conclusion regarding wind is
Conversion of wind?s kinetic energy by large turbines by large turbines can become an important contributor to the overall electricity supply, but, except for relatively small regions, it cannot become the single largest source, even less so the dominant mode of generation.
One of the limits he sees on wind power is the quantity of roads needed to service all of the wind power sites. He says:
But even when assuming a large average turbine size of 2?3 MW, the access roads (which are required to carry heavy loads, as the total weight of foundations, tower, and turbine is more than 300 tons per unit) needed to build roughly 2 million turbines and new transmission lines to conduct their electricity would make a vastly larger land claim than the footprint of the towers; and a considerable energy demand would be created by keeping these roads, often in steep terrain, protected against erosion and open during inclement weather for servicing access.
He also sees wind intermittency as a limiting factor. He says that many studies have shown that these variations do not cause any unmanageable problems as long as the total power installed in wind turbines is no more than about 10% of the system?s overall output.
He quotes P. A. Ostergaard, in the 2008 Energy article ?Geographic Aggregation and Wind Power Output Variance in Denmark,? saying:
Drawing on the Danish experience, he finds, predictably, that demand and wind variations in different areas help even out fluctuations and reduce imbalances in systems with high reliance on wind power, and that exploiting these variations allows for reductions in reserve capacity in other modes of electricity generation. But, no less predictably, he also finds limits to what can be done: The average requirement for the reserve thermal capacity may drop, ?but the same is not generally the case with the maximum required condensing mode capacity. . . . There will simply be times with wind production in neither of the interconnected areas.?
He is also concerned about the high installation rates that would be required to reach high penetrations, and the fact that at this point we cannot be certain of average life spans of wind turbines and of their need for maintenance and replacement requirements, particularly in harsh and offshore environments.
Peak Oil and Its Meaning
In the chapter ?Running Out: Peak Oil and Its Meaning?, Smil starts by looking at individual peak oil predictions that turned out not to be exactly correct. He argues that contrary to the assumptions of Richard Duncan in his Olduvai Gorge theory, average per capita energy consumption did not peak in 1978. Instead, based on BP data for all types of energy and UN population figures, world per capita energy consumption was 10% higher in 2008 than in 1978. He also says,
but even a lower rate would not signify anything catastrophic; because of steadily falling energy intensity?the energy consumption per unit of economic product?of the global economy, it could be a sign of progress for the world to use less energy.
It would seem to me that this is one area where there is considerable additional work that needs to be done. Is oil a limiting factor on all other forms of energy use, or will efficiency and other changes lead to higher GDP relative to energy use? There is probably room for a range of views on this subject.
Smil also points out that the predictions of M. King Hubbert, Andrew Flower, Collin Campbell, Kenneth Deffeyes and others were not exactly right, partly because the estimates of ultimately recoverable oil were not correct and partly because the deterministic approaches being used were too simple. Smil says:
The fundamental problem with the notion of predicting a peak for oil extraction is that it rests on three simple assumptions?that recoverable oil resources are known with a high level of confidence, that they are fixed, and that their recovery is subsumed by a symmetrical production curve?which happen not to be true. These three claims mix incontestable facts and sensible arguments with indefensible assumptions, and they caricature complex processes and ignore realities that do not fit preconceived conclusions. There is, obviously, a finite amount of liquid oil in the earth?s crust, but estimates of this grand total remain uncertain.
He mentions Adam Brandt?s 2007 article ?Testing Hubbert? from Energy Policy. Smil says regarding Brandt?s article, ?the symmetrical model of oil extraction is just one of many possibilities, and we now have a rigorous quantitative proof that it is not either a dominant or a modal choice.?
He also mentions R. Nehring?s conclusion,
The task facing us now is not to continue to use an obsolete and irrelevant method [that is, Hubbert?s model] but to develop further understanding of recovery growth.
Smil also has sections on untapped resources and non-conventional oil reserves.
The point of all of Smil?s analysis is that the amount of oil available could very well be considerably more than what an analysis simply using a Hubbert curve would project. But I think an equally valid argument could be made in the other direction?the amount of oil that can actually be extracted may prove to be considerably less than what a Hubbert curve would project.
It seems to me that Hubbert curves are valuable as giving a first-order approximation to what may happen in the future. In that regard, Hubbert curves have been helpful in saying that the peak in conventional oil production is about now. Smil mostly agrees with this?he says that there is a high probability that conventional oil production will peak in the next 10 to 20 years.
But it seems to me that Smil is correct in saying that Hubbert curves really don?t tell us precisely what lies ahead. Smil lays out the favorable scenario, where untapped resources, nonconventional oil reserves, and higher percentages of oil recovery act to increase the total amount of oil available to society. But Smil never looks at what the real limiting factor is. It seems to me that this limiting factor is declining energy return from the oil that is extracted, and the impact that this has on the world economy and the ability to do reinvestment. After a certain point, net energy obtained is so low that it is not possible to justify the ever-higher energy investment required to maintain production.
If net energy is the limiting factor, one would also expect that Hubbert curves are, as Smil says, not very helpful in predicting what is likely to happen in the future. In the case of net energy being the limiting factor, the result could well be that the downslope is more severe than a Hubbert curve would suggest.
Perhaps we do need to back away from Hubbert curve as a primary way of estimating what will happen in the future. While that approach was valuable as a rough approximation in the past, now that we are approaching the down slope, maybe we need to be looking at other approaches, to give a more refined understanding of what limits we are really up against, and how these can be expected to affect the entire process. More refined approaches are also likely to give us more credibility with the non-peak oil community, who see Hubbert curves as discredited, and see analyses of demand as important as analyses of supply.
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy Green Energy Sources
Vids 4 Grids
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), in partnership with George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College, is producing a series of videos designed to inform today?s students about tomorrow?s possibilities. Targeting high school seniors and first-year college students, Vids 4 Grids will (when all have been produced) consist of 12 ten-minute videos and three 30-minute podcasts to be posted on YouTube. Each video in the series will highlight a particular piece of grid equipment or fundamental concept integral to the deployment of Smart Grid systems.
Through integration into curricula and online posting for open usage, Vids 4 Grids aims to increase awareness and create interest in power systems careers, and ultimately lead to expanded enrollment in classes leading to power system careers. The project encourages industry participation in curriculum development for power engineering and, through the open access of YouTube, increase general public knowledge of the power sector. NEMA expects Vids 4 Grids to help develop the well-trained, highly skilled electric power sector workforce that is essential to implementing a national clean-energy Smart Grid.
Vids 4 Grids is funded by the Department?s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability as one of 52 Recovery-Act funded awards for Workforce Development, and is the only one of those selected specifically developing videos. Filming for the videos is done on-site at the facilities of leading power equipment manufacturers. The Podcasts will incorporate open-ended questions with student-selected experts on their experiences in the power sector.
Below are the first two videos in the series:
Check back for more updates at: http://www.youtube.com/vids4grids.
Deborah J Buterbaugh is Energy Project Specialist with the National Energy Technology Laboratory.�
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Vids 4 Grids
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), in partnership with George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College, is producing a series of videos designed to inform today?s students about tomorrow?s possibilities. Targeting high school seniors and first-year college students, Vids 4 Grids will (when all have been produced) consist of 12 ten-minute videos and three 30-minute podcasts to be posted on YouTube. Each video in the series will highlight a particular piece of grid equipment or fundamental concept integral to the deployment of Smart Grid systems.
Through integration into curricula and online posting for open usage, Vids 4 Grids aims to increase awareness and create interest in power systems careers, and ultimately lead to expanded enrollment in classes leading to power system careers. The project encourages industry participation in curriculum development for power engineering and, through the open access of YouTube, increase general public knowledge of the power sector. NEMA expects Vids 4 Grids to help develop the well-trained, highly skilled electric power sector workforce that is essential to implementing a national clean-energy Smart Grid.
Vids 4 Grids is funded by the Department?s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability as one of 52 Recovery-Act funded awards for Workforce Development, and is the only one of those selected specifically developing videos. Filming for the videos is done on-site at the facilities of leading power equipment manufacturers. The Podcasts will incorporate open-ended questions with student-selected experts on their experiences in the power sector.
Below are the first two videos in the series:
Check back for more updates at: http://www.youtube.com/vids4grids.
Deborah J Buterbaugh is Energy Project Specialist with the National Energy Technology Laboratory.�
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Solar Energy International Launches Free Introduction to Renewable Energy Online Course
Submitted on 01/24/11, 01:42 PM | Source AltEnergyMag.com
Introduction to Renewable Energy is Solar Energy International's NEW free online course for those who wish to learn the basics of renewable energy - including where it is found, how we can harvest it for use in our homes and how it can help ease pressures on the environment. You will not become an expert through this course, but you will get to know renewable energy in its many forms - helping you to decide whether solar, wind or other renewable technologies are right for you. If you've never taken an online course from SEI, this is a great preview into our online course structure and learning experience. We hope this will lower any inhibitions you may have in taking an online course by giving you this free opportunity to experience the SEI Online Campus. This free 10-lesson course includes education on conservation and efficiency, sustainable building, solar thermal, solar electricity, wind power, microhydro power, renewable energy for the developing world, and the economics of renewable energy.
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
UK businesses 'failing to invest in green growth'
Many UK businesses are failing to invest in green growth opportunities, despite the fact that 92 per cent of firms believe the industry is important, a new survey shows.A report from the Carbon Trust shows that just one-third of businesses in the UK are investing money in the research and development of green products and services.In addition to this, just one in eight of the firms surveyed believe that the UK is the most prepared country to benefit from green growth. Germany was thought to be the most prepared by the majority of respondents.Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said: "Green growth is the only show in town. No other sector can drive the recovery."Commenting, Neil Bentley, director of business environment at the Confederation of British Industry, said: "Unlocking green growth is one of the key challenges for businesses and the government, and much more needs to be done to get us on track to meet our ambitious climate change targets."The government must deliver the right policy framework to attract global investors to low-carbon projects."Posted by Emily Thomas Sign up for regular email updates to help you save money and energy
For more information please see: Green growth campaign� The news feeds on this site are independently provided by Adfero Limited � and do not represent the views or opinions of the Energy Saving Trust.
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
For more information please see: Green growth campaign� The news feeds on this site are independently provided by Adfero Limited � and do not represent the views or opinions of the Energy Saving Trust.
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Monday, August 29, 2011
Public health in the era of peak oil (Canada)
Introduction by EB contributor Dr. Dan Bednarz
Donald Spady, MD, discusses the potential impacts of peak oil on the social determinants of health in Canada. These are the factors that are associated with keeping people healthy and are critical to maintaining personal health in a post-peak world. They also are integral to the infrastructure of both the health care system and the public health system.
There are at least three salient differences between Canada the United States. First, Canada is geographically large with a relatively small population of approximately 34 million. Approximately 21 million live in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, with 13 million spread across the vast geography of the eight other provinces and three territories. The entire province of New Brunswick, for example, is 28,000 square miles and has approximately 750,000 residents; in contrast, Massachusetts has 6.5 million residents on 7,800 square miles. The point is that health care systems must cover wide expanses.
Second, Canada has a national health plan; anyone who has seen Michael Moore?s ?Sicko? will recall the scenes from the health clinic in Windsor, Ontario ?across the river from Detroit- in which Moore asks Canadians how much their medical care will cost; they don?t know and find his question humorous. In 2006 Canada spent US $3,678 per capita on health care, while the U.S. spent $6,714, per-capita for health care.
Third, Canada is a relatively energy rich nation and an exporter to the US. These importance differences shape Canadians vulnerability to the health consequences of peak oil.
Excerpts from the Interview
Human life is impossible without energy. It can indeed be understood as a process of energy exchange between human beings and their environment. Oil today is the single most important energy resource for the lives and the way of life of Canadians.
However, oil is a finite resource, and there is an ongoing debate surrounding what has been termed ?peak oil? . Current discussions are not so much focused on whether peak oil will happen, but rather, on when it will happen, and what will be the scope and range of its effects.
Some U.S. researchers have begun to examine how this phenomenon affects health outcomes and to consider possible responses by the public health sector. Many of these researchers attended a conference entitled ?Peak Oil and Health? organized by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in March, 2009. Canadian public health circles have thus far been less engaged with these issues. To begin to clarify what is at stake specifically for Canadian public health with regards to peak oil, Fran�ois Gagnon from the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP) interviewed Dr. Donald W. Spady, a paediatrician/epidemiologist in the Departments of Pediatrics and Public Health Sciences of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, who is keenly interested in this issue and has been following these debates and engaging in conferences and webinars about them for the past few years.
---
Fran�ois Gagnon (NCCHPP) ? Why should public health professionals be concerned with peak oil?
Dr. Donald Spady (DS) ? Since there are no clear and easy sources of energy to replace oil, and adequate amounts of affordable energy are essential to Canadian life, peak oil could affect the health of Canadians in significant ways. It will affect many parts of the infrastructure of Canadian society that largely determine the health of the Canadian population. For public health professionals, peak oil is significant because it will affect what are commonly called the social, environmental and economic determinants of health. For example, it will significantly affect, and require some reorganization of, our economic, transportation, and food systems. It is also important to public health professionals because it will very likely affect how health services are organized (the use of products and services dependent on petroleum permeates our health care system), but I understand the mandate of the NCCHPP does not cover this area and thus I will not expand on this now.
---
NCCHPP ? Can you share your thoughts on the links between peak oil, the food system and health outcomes?
DS ? Petroleum is used in virtually all aspects of food production and transportation, therefore peak oil presents a significant threat to Canadian food security. While this could pose a problem as petroleum supplies diminish, the immediate problem in Canada is not food production, it is food security; i.e. finding and buying adequate amounts of affordable and nutritious food. Peak oil will likely affect every component of food security: accessibility, availability, adequacy, acceptability, and agency. It will do so mainly and initially through economic factors, but ultimately also through the consequences of the lack of fuel and fertilizers which will be secondary to an absolute lack of petroleum. Food security is a common problem in an economic downturn where unemployment is high, but it is always and specifically the case in more remote areas of the country and on native reserves, where food is expensive and choice is limited. As well, some segments of the population, such as the elderly or single parent families, are always more exposed
to food insecurity because they may lack the ability to find and purchase adequate amounts of nutritious food.
The 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey found that 9.2% of Canadian households were food insecure at some point in the previous year and 8.8% of the population lived in food insecure households in 2004. It was the poorer person, often on social assistance, worker's compensation or unemployment insurance, who was at greatest risk. Another group, at risk for many problems besides food insecurity, was the Aboriginal household living off the reserve. Lone-parent families, larger families, and families with young children were at particular risk. Housing costs can play a role in determining food security status in low-income households and living in rental housing posed a particular risk. Quite possibly rent trumps food; these days a mortgage or a high energy bill may do the same.
In Canada in 2008, food prices rose 7.3% over the year, as compared to a rise in the Consumer Price Index of only 1.2%. Reasons for these rises include: high oil costs, climate change and associated crop losses and decreased yield, more land and food crops being used for biofuel production, and market speculation. It is reasonable to expect that these factors will persist over the next decades.
Depending on where you live, food prices in Canada can vary by as much as six-fold for the same product, and it has been reported that between 14% and 40% of Canadians face a problem of no or limited access to desirable nutritious foods, even when money is adequate. Food costs and value are particular problems in remote areas of Canada, especially Northern Canada, the high Arctic and on First Nations Reserves, where the types of food are less varied and the food is often of lower quality. For all Canadians, a lack of food access and variety may become a significant issue as long distance transport becomes increasingly expensive or even absent.
Two other issues that may affect the Canadian food supply are long-distance foods and corn-based biofuels. Much of our food travels thousands of kilometres to reach our table. These ?long-distance? foods may be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than similar local foods, especially if foods are transported in large volumes, and thus long-distance foods should not be dismissed arbitrarily. Biofuels grown in North America are more problematic, with concerns about their energy benefits, their high fertilizer, fuel and water requirements, and their potential competition with food production contributing to concerns of food security. Other forms of biofuel, such as sugar cane and palm oil, are less 'food' based and have better energy characteristics; but, they also can have significant environmental impacts.
Full interview is here:
English: http://www.ncchpp.ca/67/New_Publications.ccnpps?id_article=541.
French: http://www.ccnpps.ca/88/Nouvelles_publications.ccnpps?id_article=542.
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Donald Spady, MD, discusses the potential impacts of peak oil on the social determinants of health in Canada. These are the factors that are associated with keeping people healthy and are critical to maintaining personal health in a post-peak world. They also are integral to the infrastructure of both the health care system and the public health system.
There are at least three salient differences between Canada the United States. First, Canada is geographically large with a relatively small population of approximately 34 million. Approximately 21 million live in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, with 13 million spread across the vast geography of the eight other provinces and three territories. The entire province of New Brunswick, for example, is 28,000 square miles and has approximately 750,000 residents; in contrast, Massachusetts has 6.5 million residents on 7,800 square miles. The point is that health care systems must cover wide expanses.
Second, Canada has a national health plan; anyone who has seen Michael Moore?s ?Sicko? will recall the scenes from the health clinic in Windsor, Ontario ?across the river from Detroit- in which Moore asks Canadians how much their medical care will cost; they don?t know and find his question humorous. In 2006 Canada spent US $3,678 per capita on health care, while the U.S. spent $6,714, per-capita for health care.
Third, Canada is a relatively energy rich nation and an exporter to the US. These importance differences shape Canadians vulnerability to the health consequences of peak oil.
Excerpts from the Interview
Human life is impossible without energy. It can indeed be understood as a process of energy exchange between human beings and their environment. Oil today is the single most important energy resource for the lives and the way of life of Canadians.
However, oil is a finite resource, and there is an ongoing debate surrounding what has been termed ?peak oil? . Current discussions are not so much focused on whether peak oil will happen, but rather, on when it will happen, and what will be the scope and range of its effects.
Some U.S. researchers have begun to examine how this phenomenon affects health outcomes and to consider possible responses by the public health sector. Many of these researchers attended a conference entitled ?Peak Oil and Health? organized by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in March, 2009. Canadian public health circles have thus far been less engaged with these issues. To begin to clarify what is at stake specifically for Canadian public health with regards to peak oil, Fran�ois Gagnon from the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP) interviewed Dr. Donald W. Spady, a paediatrician/epidemiologist in the Departments of Pediatrics and Public Health Sciences of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, who is keenly interested in this issue and has been following these debates and engaging in conferences and webinars about them for the past few years.
---
Fran�ois Gagnon (NCCHPP) ? Why should public health professionals be concerned with peak oil?
Dr. Donald Spady (DS) ? Since there are no clear and easy sources of energy to replace oil, and adequate amounts of affordable energy are essential to Canadian life, peak oil could affect the health of Canadians in significant ways. It will affect many parts of the infrastructure of Canadian society that largely determine the health of the Canadian population. For public health professionals, peak oil is significant because it will affect what are commonly called the social, environmental and economic determinants of health. For example, it will significantly affect, and require some reorganization of, our economic, transportation, and food systems. It is also important to public health professionals because it will very likely affect how health services are organized (the use of products and services dependent on petroleum permeates our health care system), but I understand the mandate of the NCCHPP does not cover this area and thus I will not expand on this now.
---
NCCHPP ? Can you share your thoughts on the links between peak oil, the food system and health outcomes?
DS ? Petroleum is used in virtually all aspects of food production and transportation, therefore peak oil presents a significant threat to Canadian food security. While this could pose a problem as petroleum supplies diminish, the immediate problem in Canada is not food production, it is food security; i.e. finding and buying adequate amounts of affordable and nutritious food. Peak oil will likely affect every component of food security: accessibility, availability, adequacy, acceptability, and agency. It will do so mainly and initially through economic factors, but ultimately also through the consequences of the lack of fuel and fertilizers which will be secondary to an absolute lack of petroleum. Food security is a common problem in an economic downturn where unemployment is high, but it is always and specifically the case in more remote areas of the country and on native reserves, where food is expensive and choice is limited. As well, some segments of the population, such as the elderly or single parent families, are always more exposed
to food insecurity because they may lack the ability to find and purchase adequate amounts of nutritious food.
The 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey found that 9.2% of Canadian households were food insecure at some point in the previous year and 8.8% of the population lived in food insecure households in 2004. It was the poorer person, often on social assistance, worker's compensation or unemployment insurance, who was at greatest risk. Another group, at risk for many problems besides food insecurity, was the Aboriginal household living off the reserve. Lone-parent families, larger families, and families with young children were at particular risk. Housing costs can play a role in determining food security status in low-income households and living in rental housing posed a particular risk. Quite possibly rent trumps food; these days a mortgage or a high energy bill may do the same.
In Canada in 2008, food prices rose 7.3% over the year, as compared to a rise in the Consumer Price Index of only 1.2%. Reasons for these rises include: high oil costs, climate change and associated crop losses and decreased yield, more land and food crops being used for biofuel production, and market speculation. It is reasonable to expect that these factors will persist over the next decades.
Depending on where you live, food prices in Canada can vary by as much as six-fold for the same product, and it has been reported that between 14% and 40% of Canadians face a problem of no or limited access to desirable nutritious foods, even when money is adequate. Food costs and value are particular problems in remote areas of Canada, especially Northern Canada, the high Arctic and on First Nations Reserves, where the types of food are less varied and the food is often of lower quality. For all Canadians, a lack of food access and variety may become a significant issue as long distance transport becomes increasingly expensive or even absent.
Two other issues that may affect the Canadian food supply are long-distance foods and corn-based biofuels. Much of our food travels thousands of kilometres to reach our table. These ?long-distance? foods may be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than similar local foods, especially if foods are transported in large volumes, and thus long-distance foods should not be dismissed arbitrarily. Biofuels grown in North America are more problematic, with concerns about their energy benefits, their high fertilizer, fuel and water requirements, and their potential competition with food production contributing to concerns of food security. Other forms of biofuel, such as sugar cane and palm oil, are less 'food' based and have better energy characteristics; but, they also can have significant environmental impacts.
Full interview is here:
English: http://www.ncchpp.ca/67/New_Publications.ccnpps?id_article=541.
French: http://www.ccnpps.ca/88/Nouvelles_publications.ccnpps?id_article=542.
Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
BOEMRE, N Carolina Offshore Renewable Energy Task Force
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) held its first offshore renewable energy task force meeting in cooperation with North Carolina?s Department of Commerce. This intergovernmental task force was established to facilitate communication between BOEMRE and state, local, tribal and federal stakeholders concerning commercial renewable energy leasing and development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off the coast of North Carolina. The task force includes state government officials designated by Governor Bev Perdue, officials from affected federal agencies, elected local government officials, and tribal leaders.�
?BOEMRE created this task force to facilitate the effective and efficient review of proposed renewable energy projects on the OCS offshore North Carolina,? said BOEMRE Director Michael R. Bromwich. ?We will work together with the state to enable North Carolina to develop renewable energy off its coast, thereby expanding our nation?s energy resource portfolio.?��
?North Carolina appreciates the cooperation of the Bureau and this opportunity for this good start in developing the policies and procedures to expand the state?s renewable energy resources in ways that are compatible with the lives and livelihoods of those who make the coast their home and depend upon it for their livelihood,? said Jennifer Bumgarner, North Carolina Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Energy.
Interior Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Ned Farquhar delivered opening remarks at today's task force meeting. The meeting featured a discussion about the commercial leasing process for OCS renewable energy and a presentation of the draft task force charter. The task force members discussed options for starting the leasing process and the procedure for specific actions required by BOEMRE and the state for developing offshore renewable energy.��
In April 2009, President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the final framework for renewable energy development on the OCS. This framework establishes the process BOEMRE uses for granting leases, easements, and rights-of-way for offshore renewable energy development activities, such as the siting and construction of wind generation facilities on the OCS. The framework also allows BOEMRE to use task forces in carrying out its responsibilities for authorizing OCS renewable energy activities in partnership with state, local, and tribal governments, and federal agencies. As part of the ?Smart from the Start? wind initiative announced by Secretary Salazar in the fall of 2010 to facilitate offshore wind development, this task force will help identify priority areas on the OCS that have generally bountiful wind energy and relatively fewer potential environmental and use conflicts than other areas offshore North Carolina. BOEMRE will use that information to identify wind energy areas along the OCS that may be particularly suitable for potential offshore wind development.
Task forces have previously been established with Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina and New York, and are in process for South Carolina and Florida.Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
?BOEMRE created this task force to facilitate the effective and efficient review of proposed renewable energy projects on the OCS offshore North Carolina,? said BOEMRE Director Michael R. Bromwich. ?We will work together with the state to enable North Carolina to develop renewable energy off its coast, thereby expanding our nation?s energy resource portfolio.?��
?North Carolina appreciates the cooperation of the Bureau and this opportunity for this good start in developing the policies and procedures to expand the state?s renewable energy resources in ways that are compatible with the lives and livelihoods of those who make the coast their home and depend upon it for their livelihood,? said Jennifer Bumgarner, North Carolina Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Energy.
Interior Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Ned Farquhar delivered opening remarks at today's task force meeting. The meeting featured a discussion about the commercial leasing process for OCS renewable energy and a presentation of the draft task force charter. The task force members discussed options for starting the leasing process and the procedure for specific actions required by BOEMRE and the state for developing offshore renewable energy.��
In April 2009, President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the final framework for renewable energy development on the OCS. This framework establishes the process BOEMRE uses for granting leases, easements, and rights-of-way for offshore renewable energy development activities, such as the siting and construction of wind generation facilities on the OCS. The framework also allows BOEMRE to use task forces in carrying out its responsibilities for authorizing OCS renewable energy activities in partnership with state, local, and tribal governments, and federal agencies. As part of the ?Smart from the Start? wind initiative announced by Secretary Salazar in the fall of 2010 to facilitate offshore wind development, this task force will help identify priority areas on the OCS that have generally bountiful wind energy and relatively fewer potential environmental and use conflicts than other areas offshore North Carolina. BOEMRE will use that information to identify wind energy areas along the OCS that may be particularly suitable for potential offshore wind development.
Task forces have previously been established with Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina and New York, and are in process for South Carolina and Florida.Powered By WizardRSSCheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home
Renewables & efficiency - Feb 25
Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Does Facebook deserve the hell it?s catching from Greenpeace?David Roberts, Grist
Social networking giant Facebook has been taking heat from enviros recently for its decision to site a massive new data center in Prineville, Ore. The issue? Pacific Power, the utility that serves Prineville, gets most of its power from coal, the enemy of the human race. Greenpeace International has started a Facebook group opposing the move.
Facebook, clearly feeling some heat, responded to the controversy over the weekend. Its new data center will involve all sorts of efficiency efforts, but the company?s main argument is that the dry, temperate climate in Oregon will allow it to forego any mechanical chillers or air conditioners (an evaporative cooling system will be used instead).
... Anyway, from my non-expert perspective, it looks like Facebook is getting a bit of a raw deal here, PR-wise.
However! I still like Greenpeace?s campaign, for a simple reason: it reinforces a social norm. You shouldn?t use coal. You should use clean energy. Not everyone is able to control where they get their electricity, of course, but when a choice presents itself, choosing clean energy is the right thing to do. There?s more to it than short-term economics, namely social responsibility and reputation.
There?s immense power in changing social norms. Economists don?t know quite how to capture their impact in models, but history reveals their potency.
(21 February 2010)Saudi Arabia to export solar power soon, US saysAbdul Rahman Shaheen, gulfnews
Riyadh: US Energy Secretary Steven Chu expects that Saudi Arabia will emerge as a major exporter of solar energy and this could reach the current level of the kingdom's oil exports.
He also dismissed fears of a looming crisis caused by dwindling oil production.
Chu, a strong backer of alternative energy, said that there is big scope for Saudi Arabia to tap into its vast solar energy sources.
"The kingdom's drive to invest a portion of its oil revenue on scientific and technical research will enable it to strengthen diversification of energy sources and promote renewable energy programmes.
"This will contribute to achieving remarkable growth in its industrial output and increasing productivity potential," he said.
Chu made these remarks during his meeting with a number of senior government officials and media persons following a lecture at the office of the International Energy Forum here on Monday. He also held talks with King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz.
Speaking to reporters with regard to oil supply, Chu said the market would adjust even if supplies were to decline. "I don't see any peak in oil," Chu said, dismissing the idea that global oil production was at or near a peak and is expected to slide because depletion was outrunning new discoveries. "I see a transition to more expensive forms of oil like that produced from harder-to-access fields and secondary recovery schemes.
(24 February 2010)
Energy expert Lovins brings conservation messageHugh Fisher, Salisbury (NC) Post
Amory Lovins has been preaching energy efficiency for decades.
He co-founded Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit entrepreneurship group focused, among other things, on growing efficiency and alternative energy sources.
People from across the region packed Keppel Auditorium Tuesday night to hear Lovins share his presentation, "Reinventing Fire."
"Tonight, I invite you to re-imagine the world," Lovins said to start his talk.
His primary message: Saving fuel costs less than buying fuel.
And old-fashioned engineering and outdated ideas about power and transportation are costing the world lots of money.
... "Our whole society is fueled with primeval swamp goo and dinosaur poop," Lovins said.
However, he dismisses doomsday scenarios of "peak oil" ? the theory that oil shortages will lead to economic collapse and wars ? with studies showing that worldwide oil usage is dropping slightly.
"In short, oil is becoming uncompetitive even at low prices before it becomes unavailable even at high prices."
Even so, Lovins said that a combination of new systems could further improve efficiency.
(24 February 2010)Lovins seems to blow hot and cold on peak oil. He was talking about it many years ago, but in the comments reported in this article, he seems to be downplaying its effects. -BA
The new wave: Harnessing the power of the oceanCNN
Producing electricity using the power of the oceans could start a new wave in renewable energy. But some fear that "wave farms" could damage the livelihoods of fishermen by rendering coastal waters off limits.
Hydropower accounts for 19 percent of the world's electricity, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and mainly uses the power of falling water at man-made dams.
But wave power is still an untapped resource, which some believe could one day generate a tenth of the world's renewable energy.
Off the coast of Hawaii, Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is looking to produce electricity using the island's famously wild surf.
The U.S. Navy is backing OPT's research on the PowerBuoy 40 -- a wave energy converter that is 16 meters high and 14 meters in diameter, most of which is submerged in the ocean.
A float on the PowerBuoy bobs up and down with the waves, working an internal plunger that is connected to a hydraulic pump. The pump drives a generator to produce electricity, which can be sent to the shore via an underwater cable. Once it's connected to the energy grid this spring the buoy will produce 40 kilowatts (kW) of electricity -- enough to power 20 to 25 homes.
Charles Dunleavy, CEO of OPT, told CNN, "One of the big advantages of wave energy is it's close to shore, and as you look around the world the majority of the world's population is very close to shore."...
(25 February 2010)
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Green Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Does Facebook deserve the hell it?s catching from Greenpeace?David Roberts, Grist
Social networking giant Facebook has been taking heat from enviros recently for its decision to site a massive new data center in Prineville, Ore. The issue? Pacific Power, the utility that serves Prineville, gets most of its power from coal, the enemy of the human race. Greenpeace International has started a Facebook group opposing the move.
Facebook, clearly feeling some heat, responded to the controversy over the weekend. Its new data center will involve all sorts of efficiency efforts, but the company?s main argument is that the dry, temperate climate in Oregon will allow it to forego any mechanical chillers or air conditioners (an evaporative cooling system will be used instead).
... Anyway, from my non-expert perspective, it looks like Facebook is getting a bit of a raw deal here, PR-wise.
However! I still like Greenpeace?s campaign, for a simple reason: it reinforces a social norm. You shouldn?t use coal. You should use clean energy. Not everyone is able to control where they get their electricity, of course, but when a choice presents itself, choosing clean energy is the right thing to do. There?s more to it than short-term economics, namely social responsibility and reputation.
There?s immense power in changing social norms. Economists don?t know quite how to capture their impact in models, but history reveals their potency.
(21 February 2010)Saudi Arabia to export solar power soon, US saysAbdul Rahman Shaheen, gulfnews
Riyadh: US Energy Secretary Steven Chu expects that Saudi Arabia will emerge as a major exporter of solar energy and this could reach the current level of the kingdom's oil exports.
He also dismissed fears of a looming crisis caused by dwindling oil production.
Chu, a strong backer of alternative energy, said that there is big scope for Saudi Arabia to tap into its vast solar energy sources.
"The kingdom's drive to invest a portion of its oil revenue on scientific and technical research will enable it to strengthen diversification of energy sources and promote renewable energy programmes.
"This will contribute to achieving remarkable growth in its industrial output and increasing productivity potential," he said.
Chu made these remarks during his meeting with a number of senior government officials and media persons following a lecture at the office of the International Energy Forum here on Monday. He also held talks with King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz.
Speaking to reporters with regard to oil supply, Chu said the market would adjust even if supplies were to decline. "I don't see any peak in oil," Chu said, dismissing the idea that global oil production was at or near a peak and is expected to slide because depletion was outrunning new discoveries. "I see a transition to more expensive forms of oil like that produced from harder-to-access fields and secondary recovery schemes.
(24 February 2010)
Energy expert Lovins brings conservation messageHugh Fisher, Salisbury (NC) Post
Amory Lovins has been preaching energy efficiency for decades.
He co-founded Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit entrepreneurship group focused, among other things, on growing efficiency and alternative energy sources.
People from across the region packed Keppel Auditorium Tuesday night to hear Lovins share his presentation, "Reinventing Fire."
"Tonight, I invite you to re-imagine the world," Lovins said to start his talk.
His primary message: Saving fuel costs less than buying fuel.
And old-fashioned engineering and outdated ideas about power and transportation are costing the world lots of money.
... "Our whole society is fueled with primeval swamp goo and dinosaur poop," Lovins said.
However, he dismisses doomsday scenarios of "peak oil" ? the theory that oil shortages will lead to economic collapse and wars ? with studies showing that worldwide oil usage is dropping slightly.
"In short, oil is becoming uncompetitive even at low prices before it becomes unavailable even at high prices."
Even so, Lovins said that a combination of new systems could further improve efficiency.
(24 February 2010)Lovins seems to blow hot and cold on peak oil. He was talking about it many years ago, but in the comments reported in this article, he seems to be downplaying its effects. -BA
The new wave: Harnessing the power of the oceanCNN
Producing electricity using the power of the oceans could start a new wave in renewable energy. But some fear that "wave farms" could damage the livelihoods of fishermen by rendering coastal waters off limits.
Hydropower accounts for 19 percent of the world's electricity, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and mainly uses the power of falling water at man-made dams.
But wave power is still an untapped resource, which some believe could one day generate a tenth of the world's renewable energy.
Off the coast of Hawaii, Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is looking to produce electricity using the island's famously wild surf.
The U.S. Navy is backing OPT's research on the PowerBuoy 40 -- a wave energy converter that is 16 meters high and 14 meters in diameter, most of which is submerged in the ocean.
A float on the PowerBuoy bobs up and down with the waves, working an internal plunger that is connected to a hydraulic pump. The pump drives a generator to produce electricity, which can be sent to the shore via an underwater cable. Once it's connected to the energy grid this spring the buoy will produce 40 kilowatts (kW) of electricity -- enough to power 20 to 25 homes.
Charles Dunleavy, CEO of OPT, told CNN, "One of the big advantages of wave energy is it's close to shore, and as you look around the world the majority of the world's population is very close to shore."...
(25 February 2010)
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Green Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator
UK businesses 'failing to invest in green growth'
Many UK businesses are failing to invest in green growth opportunities, despite the fact that 92 per cent of firms believe the industry is important, a new survey shows.A report from the Carbon Trust shows that just one-third of businesses in the UK are investing money in the research and development of green products and services.In addition to this, just one in eight of the firms surveyed believe that the UK is the most prepared country to benefit from green growth. Germany was thought to be the most prepared by the majority of respondents.Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said: "Green growth is the only show in town. No other sector can drive the recovery."Commenting, Neil Bentley, director of business environment at the Confederation of British Industry, said: "Unlocking green growth is one of the key challenges for businesses and the government, and much more needs to be done to get us on track to meet our ambitious climate change targets."The government must deliver the right policy framework to attract global investors to low-carbon projects."Posted by Emily Thomas Sign up for regular email updates to help you save money and energy
For more information please see: Green growth campaign� The news feeds on this site are independently provided by Adfero Limited � and do not represent the views or opinions of the Energy Saving Trust.
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy
For more information please see: Green growth campaign� The news feeds on this site are independently provided by Adfero Limited � and do not represent the views or opinions of the Energy Saving Trust.
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy
Wave and Tidal Energy on the Rise: But Will it Work?
Companies have been developing marine energy devices for more than 100 years ? but success has been limited.
With more advanced materials and a long track record of failures to learn from, a number of companies are working on promising technologies. However, leading technology developers like Aquamarine Power, Atlantis Resources Corporation, Ocean Power Technologies, OpenHydro, Ocean Renewable Power Company and Pelamis have been secretive about the performance of their devices.
Because there is little data to evaluate, it's still uncertain how successful wave and tidal companies will be as larger projects are deployed.
The report from Douglas Westwood highlights the many challenges the sector faces: Reliability, cost of electricity, environmental protection issues and availability of project finance. There are many unknowns facing the industry that may prevent companies from reaching the 150-MW projection outlined in the report.
With that said, more governments are providing R&D funding and incentives for project developers, providing a needed boost for these early-stage companies.
According to Douglas-Westwood, The UK, Canada and US will be the three biggest markets through 2015. The UK leads with 110 MW of projected installations. Driven by a strong tidal resource, excellent R&D and support, Canada is the second largest market. The US is also making progress, again with much R&D funding attracting developers.
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators
EnCore spuds Catcher North appraisal well
EnCore spuds Catcher North appraisal well
Posted: 24 January 2010
EnCore Oil plc reported the Catcher North appraisal well 28/9-3 in Central North Sea Block 28/9 was spudded at 08.00 hours on Monday 24 January 2011.
The EnCore operated well is being drilled using the Transocean Galaxy II heavy duty jack-up rig and is being managed by Applied Drilling Technology International (ADTI), a turnkey drilling services provider with over 30 years' experience. The well is expected to take approximately 20 days, subject to weather and operational requirements.
The main objective of the well is to appraise the Tay and Cromarty reservoirs to the North of the Catcher discovery made in June 2010, at estimated depths of approximately 4,300 feet (Tay) and 4,500 feet (Cromarty) True Vertical Depth Sub Sea.
Catcher North is the second well in the current drilling campaign after the group took advantage of a weather window suitable for mobilisation from Varadero to the Catcher North location. Burgman will now be drilled following Catcher North.
The equity in the Catcher joint venture partnership is as follows: EnCore Oil plc (15 per cent., Operator), Premier Oil (35 per cent), Wintershall (UK North Sea) Limited (20 per cent), Nautical Petroleum (15 per cent) and Agora Oil & Gas (15 per cent).
�
Posted by Richard Price, Editor, energyme.com.
Follow energyme.com on Twitter @energyme.
Information supplied by companies or PR agencies who are responsible for content. Send press releases in Word format to richard@energyme.comPowered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator
Posted: 24 January 2010
EnCore Oil plc reported the Catcher North appraisal well 28/9-3 in Central North Sea Block 28/9 was spudded at 08.00 hours on Monday 24 January 2011.
The EnCore operated well is being drilled using the Transocean Galaxy II heavy duty jack-up rig and is being managed by Applied Drilling Technology International (ADTI), a turnkey drilling services provider with over 30 years' experience. The well is expected to take approximately 20 days, subject to weather and operational requirements.
The main objective of the well is to appraise the Tay and Cromarty reservoirs to the North of the Catcher discovery made in June 2010, at estimated depths of approximately 4,300 feet (Tay) and 4,500 feet (Cromarty) True Vertical Depth Sub Sea.
Catcher North is the second well in the current drilling campaign after the group took advantage of a weather window suitable for mobilisation from Varadero to the Catcher North location. Burgman will now be drilled following Catcher North.
The equity in the Catcher joint venture partnership is as follows: EnCore Oil plc (15 per cent., Operator), Premier Oil (35 per cent), Wintershall (UK North Sea) Limited (20 per cent), Nautical Petroleum (15 per cent) and Agora Oil & Gas (15 per cent).
�
Posted by Richard Price, Editor, energyme.com.
Follow energyme.com on Twitter @energyme.
Information supplied by companies or PR agencies who are responsible for content. Send press releases in Word format to richard@energyme.comPowered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The history and processes of milling
I believe in eating local, nutritious foods. It is relatively easy to do this with vegetables, eggs and dairy products but buying bread that I feel good about is much more challenging.� This past summer, during the Our Daily Bread Course, I learned more about why buying local healthy bread is very difficult because bread is a highly processed product by its very nature. Beyond this, there are a variety of issues including where different varieties of grain are grown, how grains are milled into flour, how and whether the flour is processed, whether bakeries purchase local grains and how much time, effort, and money individuals spend on ensuring they have access to good quality flour. I learned about our current mode of flour production, and the smaller scale alternatives of home milling and stone grinding and the systems associated with these alternatives.� In this essay, I will explore the history of milling, the processes involved, the impact on our nutrition and the directions that we can choose to go in, if we want to consume healthier, more localized bread.
To begin with, a field of wheat is converted into a loaf of bread by breaking the grain open and grinding it in a process called milling, which is one of the common processes for making grains digestible and making their nutrients available to us. However, mainstream flour production, for the most part, takes the nutritious grain and turns it into nutritionally poor flour. To understand why this happens, we have to think about the structure of wheat, which is made up of the bran, the germ and the endosperm. The husk of the wheat grain, called the bran, contains some protein as well as many vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, including potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, niacin, phytic acid and dietary fiber. The germ is the embryo of the grain, containing proteins, fats, lipids, sugar and B vitamins. The endosperm contains a lot of the protein and carbohydrates to make flour. The aleurone layer between the germ and the endosperm contains essential amino acids. Since the endosperm contains most of the dry matter it is technically the only part of the grain needed to make flour. However, the majority of the nutrition is contained in the bran and the germ.
Stone milling was the only way to make grain into flour for millennia. Farmers would sell their grain to the mill in their area and the mill would process that grain and sell it to bakers. Stone mills were powered by water or wind to grind the grain between two large stones. Stone mills were common throughout Europe and they were excellent for grinding soft wheat varieties. The grain is poured into a hole in the upper stone, called the runner, and is distributed across the bottom stone, called the sleeper. The movement of the stones crushes the entire grain, which gives the flour a nutty flavor and retains all the vitamins, enzymes, amino acids and fiber contained in the grain (Marriage). The friction between the stones heats the flour up gradually preventing the loss of the enzymes and the vitamins in the flour without compromising the baking quality. The grain is ground once and then sifted to remove large parts of leftover grain.� These pieces can be milled once again to even out the size of the flour. Screens are also used to remove the bran, because it is unappealingly dark, and the germ, because it contains lipids that could cause the flour to go rancid. Flours with different proportions of bran and germ are graded differently.
Despite this spectrum of flour grades, there were two main types in Europe during the nineteenth century. ?Low grinding? was the unsifted flour from a single pass through the millstones. This flour had a 100% extraction, meaning it contained all parts of the original grain.� This flour made dark hearty bread that retained all of the original nutrients of the grain. However, the whiter grades of flour were always more desirable to the higher classes and they were therefore more expensive. ?High grinding? was flour that had been reground multiple times and sifted extensively to remove the bran. Ironically, the flour consumed by the upper classes, who could have eaten the very best, was the less nutritious flour that had the bran and germ taken out.
The Northeastern area of the United States also produced soft wheat varieties, so stone milling was also used there. In the late 18th century, Oliver Evans invented the first automated flour mill in the United States that did the work of seven men (Basey 7). It used millstones, had an enormous amount of levers and pulleys, and was very noisy. Evans? mills were water powered, so they were situated along rivers. This invention dramatically increased flour production, but produced only one grade of wholemeal flour.
Meanwhile, in Hungary, stone grinding was not adequate to grind the hard wheat varieties that grew well there. New ways of milling were explored and the steam roller mill was invented in 1865. During the next two decades, over 300 of these new mills were built in Hungary to support the growing flour milling industry, which became the country?s largest sector (Perren 430).� The new mode of milling was much faster and therefore more economical than stone milling had been.� In the roller milling process, the grain is ground into middlings, which are then sifted by hand and reground. The extensive amounts of sifting to remove the bran and the germ required a large labor force. �
The US ignored the new ?high grinding? system for a while because of its labor-intensity.� However, a conglomeration of factors quickly shifted the perception of roller milling. First of all, the United States was shifting from growing wheat in the harsh weather and rocky soils of the northeast to the optimal Midwest conditions where hard wheat varieties were grown instead of soft wheat varieties because they have a higher gluten content and a more easily removed bran. This transition required a new type of milling because stone mills were not sufficient to grind hard wheat. Secondly, flour was needed that would not go rancid on the long migrations that some people were beginning to make westwards across the continent. The last and, perhaps most important factor, was the invention of the purifier machine which uses air streams to blow the bran off of the wheat middlings. This removed the unappealing labor-intensive aspect of hand sifting the bran out.
In 1875, the Americans combined the European roller mill, Oliver Evan?s automated mill, and the recent invention of the purifier to create an outstanding new version of the roller mill.� The process of the roller mill system is to clean the grain of straw, dust, stones, and any other debris. Afterwards, the grain is fed between two corrugated steel break rollers, where it is broken in half along its midline, becoming break stock. The pieces, consisting of layers of bran and germ with an endosperm covering, are put through the roller system again and then they are mechanically sifted according to size. The purifier then removes most of the bran and the germ and the endosperm goes through the system several more times.� The following step in the process is reduction, in which the grain pieces are crushed into flour with flat textured rollers. Any remaining germ and bran is completely removed in this stage. These roller mills are able to process a large quantity of grain, so rather than bringing grain to local stone mills, significant quantities of grain were transported to centralized roller mills. This meant that along with the loss of nutrition when the new system was introduced, there was also a loss of small-scale milling on the community level.
Although the United States seized this opportunity to improve the efficiency of their flour production system, Great Britain was slow to adopt the newly improved technology. They grew soft wheat varieties, so it was not until 1900, when the United States began exporting surplus wheat to England and Wales, that they needed to use roller mills (Perren 431). When this occurred, there was a lot of backlash from the British medical society due to the fact that the roller mills produce less nutritious flour. For example, in 1924 medical doctor Charles Edward Shell wrote to the British Medical Journal,
When the steel ?roller flour mill? were introduced into this country from America a vital injury was inflicted on our national well-being?.[the flour] lacks the proteins, fat, vitamins, and mineral constituents present in the original grain, providing only an emasculated substitute which is not merely inefficient, but also directly harmful. For a dietary overloaded with starchy material produces fermentation and flatulence : it favours the development of an abundant intestinal flora embarrassing to the digestive economy, burdensome to the gastro-intestinal organs, and favourable to the free development and increased virulence of such pathogenic microbes as may obtain access to the intestinal tract. (Shell 789).
There was also resistance to the roller mills in the United States. In the early 1900?s, some people protested the new flour systems because of these nutritional concerns. In 1920, the first head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Harvey Wiley who advocated for pure foods and drugs in the United States tried to outlaw refined, bleached white flour because of the processes involved with making it, and the loss of nutrition (Basey 23).� �
Despite the backlash in the beginning of the introduction of roller mills, the nutritional loss of flour due to the usage of roller mills has fallen out of the public?s sight. Efficiency took priority over nutrition when it comes to milling, as seen from the fact that ninety-nine percent of the world?s grain is ground in roller mills (Marriage).
Although the current automated way of milling may seem better in the economical sense, it caused us to lose the many nutritional benefits of the bran and the germ.� Medical professionals protested the introduction of roller mills because of the severe loss of nutrition. As can be seen from the following chart, the vitamins A and B1 are almost entirely lost in roller-milled, bleached flour.
�� � � � � � � � � � � �� Stone-Ground White Flour�� �Roller-mill Bleached White Flour
Extraction�� � �������������������������������������������� 81%�� ������������������������������������������������� 72%
Protein�� ����������������������������������������������� 11.20%�� ������������������������������������������� 10.70%
Fat�� �������������������������������������������������������� 1.20%�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 0.70%
Carbohydrate�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� 67%�� ������������������������������������������������ 80%
Calcium mg. per 100 g�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 50�� ���������������������������������������������������� 22
Iron mg. per 100 g�� ������������������������������������� 4�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� 1
Vitamin A (units per 100 g)�� ���������������� 200�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� 0
Vitamin B1 (units per 100g)�� � � � � � � � �� 150�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 22
Calories per 100 g�� ���������������������������������� 370�� ��������������������������������������������������� 370
������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� (adapted from Drummond 942)
Bread could be, and used to be, one of our main sources of Vitamin B1, yet as we can see from the chart, this is one of the most notable losses in roller-milled, bleached flour. The removed bran and germ are currently sold either as animal feed or as health supplements and pharmaceuticals. This means that rather than receiving our nutrition directly from the milled grain, we buy it from a bottle.
As Hannah Jones from the Organic Research Centre in England points out, when we transitioned to roller milling, we lost the essential amino acids contained in the aleurone cell layer in the endosperm of the wheat. Our bodies are unable to make these essential amino acids so we need to have a dietary source of these amino acids to be healthy individuals.� Another problem with removing all the bran and germ is that all the fiber is removed from the finished product.� Fiber is important in our diets because it helps with digestion and smooth bowel movements.
More processes occur after the grain is milled that further undermine its nutrition. It is conditioned or heated to adjust the moisture content of the flour. According to Doug Brown, a Canadian baker at the Kneading Conference, it is easier to add moisture to the flour than it is to remove it.� Two types of conditioning are used -- warm and hot. In warm conditioning, the flour is heated up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. With hot conditioning, the flour is heated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes the gluten less elastic, thereby lowering the baking quality. Another issue with hot conditioning is that almost all the naturally occurring enzymes in the grain are denatured.
The next step is to add chemicals that make the flour act as though it had been stored for a month?s time because aged flour provides better baking results due to its lower pH. It is cheaper to add either potassium bromate or ascorbic acid to achieve this than to actually store the flour.� After this, bleaching agents such as chlorine dioxide, nitrogen peroxide, chlorine, benzoyl peroxide or acetone peroxide are added to the flour to whiten the naturally yellow endosperm. �
In the United States, a wartime health measure in 1941 required that mills add synthetic vitamins to the flour to replace all of the lost nutrition (Basey 14). Thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and iron all must be added to flour. This is intended to replace what was removed when the bran and germ were taken out; however, the full amounts are not added back. Andrew Whitley of the Real Bread Campaign, among others, believes that our bodies cannot incorporate these supplemental vitamins as well as we could absorb the naturally occurring forms.
Often times people buy whole wheat rather than white flour to avoid these processing problems. A little known fact is that most whole wheat flour has undergone all of the same processes as white flour. The millers add back some of the bran and germ after the flour has gone through the system (Basey 20).
At this point in time, it is worthwhile to search for wholemeal grain on the market. This is flour in which nothing has been added and nothing has been taken away. That means that all of the bran, germ and endosperm, and all the associated vitamins, enzymes, and amino acids are contained within the flour. This flour also goes by the names of unbolted wheat meal, entire wheat flour, and graham flour.� Along with the benefit of retaining the nutrition and fiber in the grain, wholemeal flour is less processed, less energy intensive, and it bakes delicious bread.
Due to the fats contained in the germ of the wheat, it is important to use the wholemeal flour soon after it is ground. Some bakeries deal with this restriction by grinding their own grain. This way they can ensure that the flour is used before it has a chance to go rancid. We visited Backhuas in Germany where the bakery contains a small stone mill. They purchase grain from local farmers which supports the local community as well as reduces the distance that the grain has to travel to reach the mill. The flour is used within a couple of days of being ground, so the nutrition of the bran and germ is retained without giving the lipids the chance to go rancid. We were offered a variety of breads that they had baked and all were delicious!
The issues of rancidity and nutrition are dealt with through the positive solution of returning to localized grain systems. This has positive implications on many levels. There are many ways to bring the grain system to the local level. One is through a model like Backhaus in Germany. In Western Massachusetts, Wheatberry Bakery is following a similar model where the bakery buys local grain and mills it in the bakery.� Another important possibility is establishing connections between millers and bakers, such as the connection between Aurora Mills and Borealis Bread in Maine. The overall goal is to set up local food systems that include local grains.
For people who would rather bake their own bread rather than buy it, a home mill provides a way to bake with fresh, wholemeal flour. Home bakers can choose whether to get their grain from local sources. Wheatberry has pulled in the concept of community supported agriculture ? they have set up a grain CSA. The members can use the mill in Wheatberry Bakery to grind their own flour.
We lost a lot of important things when we switched to roller milling, most notably, the nutrition that our daily bread ought to provide and the connections between farmers, millers and bakers.� New England used to grow soft wheat, so we could begin doing this again and be able to mill our own grain. We can restore local connections between farmers and bakers by re-establishing stone mills. We can support local grain farmers by buying their grain and milling it at home to bake into bread. There are many solutions to this, depending on whether you are interested in buying bread made from local grain or grinding your own grain to home bake with. No matter which path you choose to take, it will help bread become more nutritious, and it will help to implement the whole grain system into our local communities.
Bibliography
Basey, Marleeta F. Flour Power: a Guide to Modern Home Grain Milling. Albany, Or.: Jermar, 2004. Print.
Brown, Doug, and Kate Conway. "Baking Pastries with Whole Wheat and Alternative Grains." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Kneading Conference, Skowhegan, Maine. 29 July 2010. Lecture.
Drummond, J.C. "The Nations Larder in Wartime -- Food in Relation to Health in Great Britian ? The Historical Background." The British Medical Journal (1940): 941-43. Print.
"Harvey Washington Wiley." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Washington_Wiley>.
Jones, Hannah. "Cereal Grain Quality." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Organic Research Centre, Hamstead Marshall, England. 12 Aug. 2010. Lecture.
Marriage, Michael. "Introduction to Dove's Farm." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Dove's Farm, North Wessex Downs, England. 10 Aug. 2010. Lecture.
Perren, Richard. "Structural Change and Market Growth in the Food Industry: Flour Milling in Britain, Europe, and America, 1850-1914." The Economic History Review 43.3 (1990): 420-37. Print.
Shelly, Charles Edward. ?Millstone Flour and National Nutrition.? The British Medical Journal. Correspondence. (1924) Print.
Whitely, Andrew. "Bread Nutrition." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Organic Research Centre, Hamstead Marshall, England. 11 Aug. 2010. Lecture.�� �
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy Green Energy Sources
To begin with, a field of wheat is converted into a loaf of bread by breaking the grain open and grinding it in a process called milling, which is one of the common processes for making grains digestible and making their nutrients available to us. However, mainstream flour production, for the most part, takes the nutritious grain and turns it into nutritionally poor flour. To understand why this happens, we have to think about the structure of wheat, which is made up of the bran, the germ and the endosperm. The husk of the wheat grain, called the bran, contains some protein as well as many vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, including potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, niacin, phytic acid and dietary fiber. The germ is the embryo of the grain, containing proteins, fats, lipids, sugar and B vitamins. The endosperm contains a lot of the protein and carbohydrates to make flour. The aleurone layer between the germ and the endosperm contains essential amino acids. Since the endosperm contains most of the dry matter it is technically the only part of the grain needed to make flour. However, the majority of the nutrition is contained in the bran and the germ.
Stone milling was the only way to make grain into flour for millennia. Farmers would sell their grain to the mill in their area and the mill would process that grain and sell it to bakers. Stone mills were powered by water or wind to grind the grain between two large stones. Stone mills were common throughout Europe and they were excellent for grinding soft wheat varieties. The grain is poured into a hole in the upper stone, called the runner, and is distributed across the bottom stone, called the sleeper. The movement of the stones crushes the entire grain, which gives the flour a nutty flavor and retains all the vitamins, enzymes, amino acids and fiber contained in the grain (Marriage). The friction between the stones heats the flour up gradually preventing the loss of the enzymes and the vitamins in the flour without compromising the baking quality. The grain is ground once and then sifted to remove large parts of leftover grain.� These pieces can be milled once again to even out the size of the flour. Screens are also used to remove the bran, because it is unappealingly dark, and the germ, because it contains lipids that could cause the flour to go rancid. Flours with different proportions of bran and germ are graded differently.
Despite this spectrum of flour grades, there were two main types in Europe during the nineteenth century. ?Low grinding? was the unsifted flour from a single pass through the millstones. This flour had a 100% extraction, meaning it contained all parts of the original grain.� This flour made dark hearty bread that retained all of the original nutrients of the grain. However, the whiter grades of flour were always more desirable to the higher classes and they were therefore more expensive. ?High grinding? was flour that had been reground multiple times and sifted extensively to remove the bran. Ironically, the flour consumed by the upper classes, who could have eaten the very best, was the less nutritious flour that had the bran and germ taken out.
The Northeastern area of the United States also produced soft wheat varieties, so stone milling was also used there. In the late 18th century, Oliver Evans invented the first automated flour mill in the United States that did the work of seven men (Basey 7). It used millstones, had an enormous amount of levers and pulleys, and was very noisy. Evans? mills were water powered, so they were situated along rivers. This invention dramatically increased flour production, but produced only one grade of wholemeal flour.
Meanwhile, in Hungary, stone grinding was not adequate to grind the hard wheat varieties that grew well there. New ways of milling were explored and the steam roller mill was invented in 1865. During the next two decades, over 300 of these new mills were built in Hungary to support the growing flour milling industry, which became the country?s largest sector (Perren 430).� The new mode of milling was much faster and therefore more economical than stone milling had been.� In the roller milling process, the grain is ground into middlings, which are then sifted by hand and reground. The extensive amounts of sifting to remove the bran and the germ required a large labor force. �
The US ignored the new ?high grinding? system for a while because of its labor-intensity.� However, a conglomeration of factors quickly shifted the perception of roller milling. First of all, the United States was shifting from growing wheat in the harsh weather and rocky soils of the northeast to the optimal Midwest conditions where hard wheat varieties were grown instead of soft wheat varieties because they have a higher gluten content and a more easily removed bran. This transition required a new type of milling because stone mills were not sufficient to grind hard wheat. Secondly, flour was needed that would not go rancid on the long migrations that some people were beginning to make westwards across the continent. The last and, perhaps most important factor, was the invention of the purifier machine which uses air streams to blow the bran off of the wheat middlings. This removed the unappealing labor-intensive aspect of hand sifting the bran out.
In 1875, the Americans combined the European roller mill, Oliver Evan?s automated mill, and the recent invention of the purifier to create an outstanding new version of the roller mill.� The process of the roller mill system is to clean the grain of straw, dust, stones, and any other debris. Afterwards, the grain is fed between two corrugated steel break rollers, where it is broken in half along its midline, becoming break stock. The pieces, consisting of layers of bran and germ with an endosperm covering, are put through the roller system again and then they are mechanically sifted according to size. The purifier then removes most of the bran and the germ and the endosperm goes through the system several more times.� The following step in the process is reduction, in which the grain pieces are crushed into flour with flat textured rollers. Any remaining germ and bran is completely removed in this stage. These roller mills are able to process a large quantity of grain, so rather than bringing grain to local stone mills, significant quantities of grain were transported to centralized roller mills. This meant that along with the loss of nutrition when the new system was introduced, there was also a loss of small-scale milling on the community level.
Although the United States seized this opportunity to improve the efficiency of their flour production system, Great Britain was slow to adopt the newly improved technology. They grew soft wheat varieties, so it was not until 1900, when the United States began exporting surplus wheat to England and Wales, that they needed to use roller mills (Perren 431). When this occurred, there was a lot of backlash from the British medical society due to the fact that the roller mills produce less nutritious flour. For example, in 1924 medical doctor Charles Edward Shell wrote to the British Medical Journal,
When the steel ?roller flour mill? were introduced into this country from America a vital injury was inflicted on our national well-being?.[the flour] lacks the proteins, fat, vitamins, and mineral constituents present in the original grain, providing only an emasculated substitute which is not merely inefficient, but also directly harmful. For a dietary overloaded with starchy material produces fermentation and flatulence : it favours the development of an abundant intestinal flora embarrassing to the digestive economy, burdensome to the gastro-intestinal organs, and favourable to the free development and increased virulence of such pathogenic microbes as may obtain access to the intestinal tract. (Shell 789).
There was also resistance to the roller mills in the United States. In the early 1900?s, some people protested the new flour systems because of these nutritional concerns. In 1920, the first head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Harvey Wiley who advocated for pure foods and drugs in the United States tried to outlaw refined, bleached white flour because of the processes involved with making it, and the loss of nutrition (Basey 23).� �
Despite the backlash in the beginning of the introduction of roller mills, the nutritional loss of flour due to the usage of roller mills has fallen out of the public?s sight. Efficiency took priority over nutrition when it comes to milling, as seen from the fact that ninety-nine percent of the world?s grain is ground in roller mills (Marriage).
Although the current automated way of milling may seem better in the economical sense, it caused us to lose the many nutritional benefits of the bran and the germ.� Medical professionals protested the introduction of roller mills because of the severe loss of nutrition. As can be seen from the following chart, the vitamins A and B1 are almost entirely lost in roller-milled, bleached flour.
�� � � � � � � � � � � �� Stone-Ground White Flour�� �Roller-mill Bleached White Flour
Extraction�� � �������������������������������������������� 81%�� ������������������������������������������������� 72%
Protein�� ����������������������������������������������� 11.20%�� ������������������������������������������� 10.70%
Fat�� �������������������������������������������������������� 1.20%�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 0.70%
Carbohydrate�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� 67%�� ������������������������������������������������ 80%
Calcium mg. per 100 g�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 50�� ���������������������������������������������������� 22
Iron mg. per 100 g�� ������������������������������������� 4�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� 1
Vitamin A (units per 100 g)�� ���������������� 200�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� 0
Vitamin B1 (units per 100g)�� � � � � � � � �� 150�� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 22
Calories per 100 g�� ���������������������������������� 370�� ��������������������������������������������������� 370
������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� (adapted from Drummond 942)
Bread could be, and used to be, one of our main sources of Vitamin B1, yet as we can see from the chart, this is one of the most notable losses in roller-milled, bleached flour. The removed bran and germ are currently sold either as animal feed or as health supplements and pharmaceuticals. This means that rather than receiving our nutrition directly from the milled grain, we buy it from a bottle.
As Hannah Jones from the Organic Research Centre in England points out, when we transitioned to roller milling, we lost the essential amino acids contained in the aleurone cell layer in the endosperm of the wheat. Our bodies are unable to make these essential amino acids so we need to have a dietary source of these amino acids to be healthy individuals.� Another problem with removing all the bran and germ is that all the fiber is removed from the finished product.� Fiber is important in our diets because it helps with digestion and smooth bowel movements.
More processes occur after the grain is milled that further undermine its nutrition. It is conditioned or heated to adjust the moisture content of the flour. According to Doug Brown, a Canadian baker at the Kneading Conference, it is easier to add moisture to the flour than it is to remove it.� Two types of conditioning are used -- warm and hot. In warm conditioning, the flour is heated up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. With hot conditioning, the flour is heated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes the gluten less elastic, thereby lowering the baking quality. Another issue with hot conditioning is that almost all the naturally occurring enzymes in the grain are denatured.
The next step is to add chemicals that make the flour act as though it had been stored for a month?s time because aged flour provides better baking results due to its lower pH. It is cheaper to add either potassium bromate or ascorbic acid to achieve this than to actually store the flour.� After this, bleaching agents such as chlorine dioxide, nitrogen peroxide, chlorine, benzoyl peroxide or acetone peroxide are added to the flour to whiten the naturally yellow endosperm. �
In the United States, a wartime health measure in 1941 required that mills add synthetic vitamins to the flour to replace all of the lost nutrition (Basey 14). Thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and iron all must be added to flour. This is intended to replace what was removed when the bran and germ were taken out; however, the full amounts are not added back. Andrew Whitley of the Real Bread Campaign, among others, believes that our bodies cannot incorporate these supplemental vitamins as well as we could absorb the naturally occurring forms.
Often times people buy whole wheat rather than white flour to avoid these processing problems. A little known fact is that most whole wheat flour has undergone all of the same processes as white flour. The millers add back some of the bran and germ after the flour has gone through the system (Basey 20).
At this point in time, it is worthwhile to search for wholemeal grain on the market. This is flour in which nothing has been added and nothing has been taken away. That means that all of the bran, germ and endosperm, and all the associated vitamins, enzymes, and amino acids are contained within the flour. This flour also goes by the names of unbolted wheat meal, entire wheat flour, and graham flour.� Along with the benefit of retaining the nutrition and fiber in the grain, wholemeal flour is less processed, less energy intensive, and it bakes delicious bread.
Due to the fats contained in the germ of the wheat, it is important to use the wholemeal flour soon after it is ground. Some bakeries deal with this restriction by grinding their own grain. This way they can ensure that the flour is used before it has a chance to go rancid. We visited Backhuas in Germany where the bakery contains a small stone mill. They purchase grain from local farmers which supports the local community as well as reduces the distance that the grain has to travel to reach the mill. The flour is used within a couple of days of being ground, so the nutrition of the bran and germ is retained without giving the lipids the chance to go rancid. We were offered a variety of breads that they had baked and all were delicious!
The issues of rancidity and nutrition are dealt with through the positive solution of returning to localized grain systems. This has positive implications on many levels. There are many ways to bring the grain system to the local level. One is through a model like Backhaus in Germany. In Western Massachusetts, Wheatberry Bakery is following a similar model where the bakery buys local grain and mills it in the bakery.� Another important possibility is establishing connections between millers and bakers, such as the connection between Aurora Mills and Borealis Bread in Maine. The overall goal is to set up local food systems that include local grains.
For people who would rather bake their own bread rather than buy it, a home mill provides a way to bake with fresh, wholemeal flour. Home bakers can choose whether to get their grain from local sources. Wheatberry has pulled in the concept of community supported agriculture ? they have set up a grain CSA. The members can use the mill in Wheatberry Bakery to grind their own flour.
We lost a lot of important things when we switched to roller milling, most notably, the nutrition that our daily bread ought to provide and the connections between farmers, millers and bakers.� New England used to grow soft wheat, so we could begin doing this again and be able to mill our own grain. We can restore local connections between farmers and bakers by re-establishing stone mills. We can support local grain farmers by buying their grain and milling it at home to bake into bread. There are many solutions to this, depending on whether you are interested in buying bread made from local grain or grinding your own grain to home bake with. No matter which path you choose to take, it will help bread become more nutritious, and it will help to implement the whole grain system into our local communities.
Bibliography
Basey, Marleeta F. Flour Power: a Guide to Modern Home Grain Milling. Albany, Or.: Jermar, 2004. Print.
Brown, Doug, and Kate Conway. "Baking Pastries with Whole Wheat and Alternative Grains." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Kneading Conference, Skowhegan, Maine. 29 July 2010. Lecture.
Drummond, J.C. "The Nations Larder in Wartime -- Food in Relation to Health in Great Britian ? The Historical Background." The British Medical Journal (1940): 941-43. Print.
"Harvey Washington Wiley." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Washington_Wiley>.
Jones, Hannah. "Cereal Grain Quality." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Organic Research Centre, Hamstead Marshall, England. 12 Aug. 2010. Lecture.
Marriage, Michael. "Introduction to Dove's Farm." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Dove's Farm, North Wessex Downs, England. 10 Aug. 2010. Lecture.
Perren, Richard. "Structural Change and Market Growth in the Food Industry: Flour Milling in Britain, Europe, and America, 1850-1914." The Economic History Review 43.3 (1990): 420-37. Print.
Shelly, Charles Edward. ?Millstone Flour and National Nutrition.? The British Medical Journal. Correspondence. (1924) Print.
Whitely, Andrew. "Bread Nutrition." 2010 Our Daily Bread: Following Grains Through The Food System. Organic Research Centre, Hamstead Marshall, England. 11 Aug. 2010. Lecture.�� �
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy Green Energy Sources
Got a Question? See if We Have an Answer!
Have you ever had a question?maybe about energy efficiency, renewable energy, the Department of Energy, or the like?and not had any idea where to find the answer? Have you ever gone through the EERE website and not known where to find what you're looking for?
The reason I am asking all these hypothetical questions is because I wanted to bring your attention to an well-established resource of EERE's that you might not know about: the EERE Information Center!
You can call them; e-mail your question; or contact them through their new "live chat" system, which lets you ask your questions right from your browser window. And if you have a common or pretty basic question, you might want to check out their Frequently Asked Questions first, just to make sure your answer isn't there.
It's a totally free service provided by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to U.S. citizens. So the next time that you have a question about energy efficiency, renewable energy, or anything like that, you might want to consider seeing if they can find an answer for you.
Elizabeth Spencer is a communicator at DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which assists EERE in providing technical content for many of its Web sites.
Powered By WizardRSSHome Power Generator Green Energy Green Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity
Solar Estimates in Quickbooks: Free Webinar
Join us Friday, January 28, 2011, 9:00 - 10:00 AM PST
Tips & tricks to create a solar estimate in Quickbooks.
Also, Solar for Quickbooks Plug-in & Add-ons developer Q&A.
REGISTER HERE to receive Login Instructions
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy
Tips & tricks to create a solar estimate in Quickbooks.
Also, Solar for Quickbooks Plug-in & Add-ons developer Q&A.
REGISTER HERE to receive Login Instructions
Powered By WizardRSSMagnetic Energy Generator Magnetic Generators Free Energy Home Home Power Generator Green Energy
Energy security
It has become popular to talk about climate change policy in terms of energy security. Rather than saying we need more renewables, efficient building and public transport to meet climate change targets we now say that we need them to achieve energy security.
This trend is likely to continue. In November the British Government will introduce the Energy Security and Green Economy�Bill.�Eager to influence and improve the Act, development NGOs with climate campaigns and environmental organisations will have to talk about what they want in terms of energy security. If we want to be part of the debate we will have to stop calling for cuts in emissions to protect the world's most vulnerable people. We will have to start saying we must get more energy from renewables to increase energy security.?This might appear no different. Just another way of talking about the same thing. Both could involve investing in renewables, reducing the amount of fossil fuels we burn, building efficient buildings.
But when we talk about security we mean a world of peace and stability. For us security means peace-building. It means resolving conflicts, not military intervention. It means producing our own energy rather than fighting wars to secure oil and gas from other countries. We waved our ?no war for oil? placards in the run up to the Iraq war. For us security means addressing the root causes of instability. We mean changing the things that make the world unstable and prone to conflict: climate change, competition over resources, the gap between rich and poor. When we talk to people about energy security we imagine that they share this vision.
But we forget that there are other ways of looking at security. And our vision of security is not the dominant one. The approach that most western governments have to security is the exact opposite. Stability is achieved through the vigorous use of force. ?Rogue nations? are contained by military intervention. Insurgents and rebels are contained by special forces. Access to secure supplies of energy is achieved through war. The aim is to keep a lid on instability. Not to question why that instability exists or to do anything about it. The prime example of this approach to security is the ?War on Terror?.
Perhaps we mistakenly think when we talk to people about energy security they buy into our definition of security. Let's not be naive. There is a reason they didn't listen when we talked about preventing drought, floods and disappearing islands. There is a reason they didn't listen when we talked about a just deal in Copenhagen, indigenous land rights and living within our environmental means. It?s because all of these things are inconsistent with their approach to security. In a world with a safe climate, economic justice and fair access to natural resources, their approach to security would be irrelevant.
When nowadays we talk about what we want in terms of energy security what we are actually saying is this: our vision for a renewably powered country is consistent with your vision for containing instability using violence. Our vision for energy efficient homes is consistent with your vision for military intervention. Let?s increase energy security by using renewables, but let?s also secure new energy reserves using force. Crucially we say our vision for energy security does not challenge your approach to global security. Our vision for energy security does not require you to do anything about the actually causes of instability and violence.
Without thinking we?ve given our support to an approach to dealing with the world?s problems that goes completely against our values. The situation is likely to get worse in the run up to the Energy Security and Green Economy Bill. In being forced to frame our demands for better climate policy in terms of energy security, our efforts to improve the Bill will unwittingly add force to a broader programme that is completely at odds with what we believe.
So what should we do? We must be explicit about why we want good domestic climate and energy policy. Let?s say that it is needed to achieve peace and stability. Let?s say that climate change and competition for dwindling energy reserves are both causes of instability and violence. We should make it clear that there the other causes of instability and violence - like nuclear proliferation and inequality - need to be dealt with too. Finally let?s be very clear that our vision for renewables and good domestic climate policy is totally inconsistent with the dominant approach to security.
Alex is a campaigner and activist on climate change and energy issues.
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator
This trend is likely to continue. In November the British Government will introduce the Energy Security and Green Economy�Bill.�Eager to influence and improve the Act, development NGOs with climate campaigns and environmental organisations will have to talk about what they want in terms of energy security. If we want to be part of the debate we will have to stop calling for cuts in emissions to protect the world's most vulnerable people. We will have to start saying we must get more energy from renewables to increase energy security.?This might appear no different. Just another way of talking about the same thing. Both could involve investing in renewables, reducing the amount of fossil fuels we burn, building efficient buildings.
But when we talk about security we mean a world of peace and stability. For us security means peace-building. It means resolving conflicts, not military intervention. It means producing our own energy rather than fighting wars to secure oil and gas from other countries. We waved our ?no war for oil? placards in the run up to the Iraq war. For us security means addressing the root causes of instability. We mean changing the things that make the world unstable and prone to conflict: climate change, competition over resources, the gap between rich and poor. When we talk to people about energy security we imagine that they share this vision.
But we forget that there are other ways of looking at security. And our vision of security is not the dominant one. The approach that most western governments have to security is the exact opposite. Stability is achieved through the vigorous use of force. ?Rogue nations? are contained by military intervention. Insurgents and rebels are contained by special forces. Access to secure supplies of energy is achieved through war. The aim is to keep a lid on instability. Not to question why that instability exists or to do anything about it. The prime example of this approach to security is the ?War on Terror?.
Perhaps we mistakenly think when we talk to people about energy security they buy into our definition of security. Let's not be naive. There is a reason they didn't listen when we talked about preventing drought, floods and disappearing islands. There is a reason they didn't listen when we talked about a just deal in Copenhagen, indigenous land rights and living within our environmental means. It?s because all of these things are inconsistent with their approach to security. In a world with a safe climate, economic justice and fair access to natural resources, their approach to security would be irrelevant.
When nowadays we talk about what we want in terms of energy security what we are actually saying is this: our vision for a renewably powered country is consistent with your vision for containing instability using violence. Our vision for energy efficient homes is consistent with your vision for military intervention. Let?s increase energy security by using renewables, but let?s also secure new energy reserves using force. Crucially we say our vision for energy security does not challenge your approach to global security. Our vision for energy security does not require you to do anything about the actually causes of instability and violence.
Without thinking we?ve given our support to an approach to dealing with the world?s problems that goes completely against our values. The situation is likely to get worse in the run up to the Energy Security and Green Economy Bill. In being forced to frame our demands for better climate policy in terms of energy security, our efforts to improve the Bill will unwittingly add force to a broader programme that is completely at odds with what we believe.
So what should we do? We must be explicit about why we want good domestic climate and energy policy. Let?s say that it is needed to achieve peace and stability. Let?s say that climate change and competition for dwindling energy reserves are both causes of instability and violence. We should make it clear that there the other causes of instability and violence - like nuclear proliferation and inequality - need to be dealt with too. Finally let?s be very clear that our vision for renewables and good domestic climate policy is totally inconsistent with the dominant approach to security.
Alex is a campaigner and activist on climate change and energy issues.
Powered By WizardRSSGreen Energy Sources Magnetic Generator Cheap Electricity Free Energy Generator Magnetic Energy Generator
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)