LENKER TIL ALLE KAPITLENE I SNAKE OIL:
- SNAKE OIL: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future - Introduction
- SNAKE OIL: Chapter 6 - Energy Reality
- SNAKE OIL: Chapter 5 - The Economics of Fracking: Who Benefits?
- SNAKE OIL: Chapter 4 - Fracking Wars, Fracking Casualties
- SNAKE OIL: Chapter 3 - A Treadmill to Hell
- SNAKE OIL: Chapter 2 - Technology to the Rescue
- SNAKE OIL: Chapter 1 - This is What Peak Oil Looks Like
Her er noen sitat fra siste kapittel i Snake Oil:
"(it’s only just this year that the world’s solar power plants installed to date have produced as much energy as was required to build them)."
"A few energy financial analysts have explored the implications of EROEI, often without observing Hall’s methodological rigor and without properly citing his original work in this field. Andrew Lees of UBS, writing in The Gathering Storm, has argued that global EROEI is currently about 20:1, deriving this figure from energy’s 4 to 5% share of world GDP. Given recent trends, Lees calculated that the ratio might fall to 5:1 over the next decade, which would translate to a massive disruption of the world economy."
"Our calculated EROEIs both for 1990 (40:1) and 2010 (17:1) are reasonably close to the numbers cited for those years by Andrew Lees. For 2020, our projected EROEI (of 11.5:1) is not as catastrophic as 5:1, but would nevertheless mean that the share of GDP absorbed by energy costs would have escalated to about 9.6% from around 6.7% today. Our projections further suggest that energy costs could absorb almost 15% of GDP (at an EROEI of 7.7:1) by 2030. Though our forecasts and those of Mr. Lees may differ in detail, the essential conclusion is the same. It is that the economy, as we have known it for more than two centuries, will cease to be viable at some point within the next ten or so years unless, of course, some way is found to reverse the trend."
"Technology can trump geology for a while, at least in certain instances.19 But we have entered a new era in which geology is negotiating harder all the time, and the costs of new technology often outweigh the economic benefit promised. Some fossil fuels (coal and gas) still have a relatively high EROEI, but oil is crucial to the global energy mix since it fuels virtually all transport, and oil’s energy profit ratio is plummeting. The economy is not likely to respond in steady increments to declines in energy profitability. This is how Tim Morgan at Tullett Prebon puts the matter: “The critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel.”21 Failing to notice this historic shift, while celebrating a temporary breakout in oil and gas production numbers in Texas, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota, seriously hampers our ability to adapt to dramatically and quickly changing circumstances."
"Electric vehicles offer a partial solution, but market penetration is not occurring nearly fast enough. And there are problems with high energy and materials costs for manufacturing batteries. There are no electric airliners on the drawing boards and probably never will be. Hydrogen-powered vehicles have been hailed as a vector for renewably energized transport, but these have been very slow to deploy because fuel cells are expensive, and hydrogen is hard to store.
Advanced biofuels are another proposed solution. Companies are working to develop biofuels from city sewage, from contaminated grains and nuts, from cannery wastes and animal manures, and from forest wastes. Efforts are also under way to make liquid fuels from algae. Add up all these potential sources and they could nearly equal current transport energy; the remainder could be dealt with through better vehicle efficiency. But all biofuels have a low EROEI. Indeed, many of these potential fuel sources are likely to have a zero or negative net energy balance. Some make sense as ways of dealing with waste products, but as ways to economically produce energy—not so much. Alan Shaw, the chemist and former chief executive officer of Codexis, the first advanced biofuel technology company to trade on a US exchange, now says, “Cellulosic fuels and chemicals are not widely manufactured at commercial scale because their unit production economics have not yet been shown to be competitive with incumbent petroleum.”27
EROEI is not the only criterion by which we should assess energy sources. We also need to take into account their environmental risks and their long-term viability. On these latter criteria, renewable energy sources score better than fossil fuels, though renewables do entail environmental costs (building solar panels and wind turbines requires extraction of depleting nonrenewable resources and generates pollution). However, without a high EROEI, renewable energy sources will never power the kind of growing, fast-paced consumer society that policy makers mistakenly believe to be the necessary goal of all economies."
"Let’s start with prospects for oil. During the past couple of years, global prices have bounced around within a band ranging from $95 to $115. This results from an uneasy supply balance maintained by the ongoing depletion of conventional oil fields and the simultaneous appearance of more expensive oil from unconventional sources. This is an inherently unstable dynamic. One might think that higher oil prices would inevitably follow as drillers are forced to move to ever-more expensive prospects, but this is not necessarily the case. A renewed global recession would cut energy demand; in that case, oil prices could fall significantly. With a dramatic reduction in trade and higher unemployment, we would also see declining overall oil production.30 If the price of oil falls below $90 per barrel, new deepwater drilling will slow. At $80, new tar sands projects will be put on hold. At $70, nearly all drilling will be called off (except where required in order to maintain lease agreements). At $60, tar sands production from some existing projects will be throttled down."
"Higher natural gas prices would be welcomed by the US coal industry, which has been struggling for the last few years under the onslaught of (temporarily) cheap shale gas. American coal producers want to export their product to China, which has nearly maximized domestic mining capabilities. China’s options for new energy sources to fuel economic growth include imported oil, imported coal, imported LNG, nuclear, solar, wind, and shale gas; all are more expensive than the country’s own fast-depleting coal. If China begins importing coal from the United States at the same time as American domestic natural gas prices soar (which would entice util-ities to burn more coal once again), the result could be a spike in domestic coal prices. Higher coal prices would be abated only by a serious recession or falling gas prices. Several recent studies conclude that world coal extraction rates have little headroom: despite the vastness of the resource base, most of the high-quality, easily accessible coal is already gone."
"We have not discussed nuclear power thus far, and readers who see nuclear as a major future energy source will have found this frustrating. However, I generally agree with the analysis of the Economist magazine, which recently published a special report calling nuclear power “The Dream that Failed.”33 Nuclear is just too expensive and risky. It was a technology that seemed to make sense in an earlier era of high fossil energy returns from minor investments, when enormous research, development, and construction costs for fission power could easily be shouldered. Today it is far more difficult to divert capital away from other energy projects. Even though nuclear electricity is inexpensive once power plants are built, the initial investments—several billion dollars per project, with inevitable cost overruns and the requirement for government loan guarantees and insurance subsidies—are now just too high a barrier. Currently, the industry is expanding in only a few nations, principally China—a country that gets most of its energy from cheap, high EROEI coal."
"The only regions relatively immune to the economic whipsaw of fossil fuel dependency will be those reliant on renewable energy. But new investments in renewables, as we saw in the previous section, have slowed due to the systemic anemia of the Western economies and the false expectation of cheap and abundant natural gas for decades to come. The trend to ease back on renewable energy incentives cannot be allowed to continue. The world may have a fairly brief window of time in which major investments in renewable energy are feasible. Beyond that point, the volatility of fossil fuel prices and declining overall societal EROI may drain the vitality of economies to the point that financing major new projects will become ever more difficult. This is perhaps the most important reason that the conventional wisdom of a new golden era of oil and gas abundance must be countered."
"Perhaps the most concise way to convey this complexity is by way of two equally true statements:
Hydrocarbons are so abundant that, if we burn a substantial portion of them, we risk a climate catastrophe beyond imagining.
There aren’t enough economically accessible, high-quality hydrocarbons to maintain world economic growth for much longer."
"Fortunately, there is one element of simplicity in all this complexity, at least in terms of communication—and that is what we must do: as a global society, we must reduce our dependency on fossil fuels as quickly as possible. It is the only realistic answer both to climate change and our economic vulnerability to declining fossil fuel resource quality and EROEI. This is literally humanity’s project of the century, probably the most important in all of history. It is an enormous challenge, but it is not optional. Either we break the addiction, or we suffer the consequences—which would impact not only ourselves, but future generations as well."
"People need jobs and businesses need growth. If plentiful fossil fuels can provide jobs and growth (we tend to believe they can because they have a track record, and we already have the infrastructure to use those fuels), then can’t we somehow find a way to eat our cake, yet have it too? “Let’s think about this for a while longer before making any rash decisions,” the masses murmur in unison. In this context, “a while” could mean a decade or longer. By that time, it will be far too late to begin a successful energy transition.
The choice is rigged. The promise of economic fossil energy abundance is a mirage. Like a thirsty desert castaway, we chase that mirage even though it lures us to our doom. Dazzled by the prospects of a hundred years of cheap natural gas or oil independence, we embrace an energy policy of “all of the above” that is hardly distinguishable from having no energy policy at all. With every passing year the fossil fuel industry consumes a larger portion of global GDP, reducing society’s ability to fund an energy transition. And every year the environmental costs of continued fossil fuel reliance compound."
Dette var noen utdrag fra kapittel 6, men les selvsagt hele boka.
I forhold til norske medias sløve reportasjer om USAs nye rolle som energigigant som en følge av "skiferoljerevolusjonen", vil jeg gjengi et sitat fra en omtale av Snake Oil:
"With per-well production decline rates of between 81 and 90 percent in the first 24 months, wells must be constantly replaced by new ones just to keep production flat. The higher production gets, the more new replacement wells have to be drilled. Before the end of the decade, this bubble will collapse on its own accord and fracked oil and gas production will begin dropping. As usual there are disputes as to just when this downturn will begin, but the best available analysis suggest that four or five years from now will be the time period when fracked oil peaks in the US and a few years later for gas."
Se: http://www.postcarbon.org/article/1831339-the-peak-oil-crisis-a-review
Et aspekt som ikke berøres i artikkelen er de økte energibehovene for å utvinne andre essensielle ressurser, som kobber og helium. Mens man for 100-150 år siden hadde en utvinningsgrad for kobber på 20 present, er denne i dag sunket til 0,2 prosent. Kobber er helt essensielt i et industrisamfunn.
En flott forelesning om dette temaet:
- Simon Michaux on the Implications of Peak Mining
Meget overraskende hadde forskning.no en god artikkel om problemene med fornybare energikilder i uka som gikk:
