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Ed note:  Sorry I didn’t get this up earlier, I was away this past weekend.  Thanks to Prof. Hall who filled in a few blank spots in my memory, and gave his thoughts at the end of this review.

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ASPO-USA Day 3:  Now Where?  Choices for the Long Haul

Tuesday 8:15 – 9:45 a.m.

David Hughes, from the Canadian Geological Survey, started off the final day of the conference by speaking about coal.  He called coal “a dirty four letter word”, and noted how the 19^th century view of coal was “a wonderful resource…” and skipping ahead to the 21^st century, “Coal is the enemy of the human race.”  David noted that China has built 500 coal plants in 6 years, India 200, while 59 of 151 plants scheduled to be built in the U.S. were cancelled.   U.S. continues to be a slight net exporter.  However, the graph of exports showed a steady decline.  Coal is the #2 energy source in the world – and is not going away any time soon.  The average world citizen consumes the same amount per capita renewable resources today as they did in 1850 (11% renewable).  The average world citizen uses the same amount of coal per capita as they did in the beginning of 20^th century.  Coal makes up 2/3’s of the world’s remaining hydrocarbon resource.  Since 2002 coal use has grown 33% since 2002.  Fastest growing hydrocarbon.  50% of coal used by human race consumed since 1972.  

The energy content of coal peaked in 2006.  David states that a study shows a world coal production peak in 2030, with a peak in China in 2025.  Another study performed a Hubbert linearization for coal.   There are 1.6 Tboe of coal remaining.  90% will be gone in 2076 if we burn hydrocarbons if we burn them as fast as we can produce them.  EIA – coal will grow to 46% of world energy production in 2030 and will grow to 57% in U.S.

David spoke next about “clean coal” and ways that the efficiency of coal use are improving.  He notes that “clean coal” technologies can clean up particulates 99%, NOx, Hg 90%, SOx 99% and get a 25% reduction in CO2.  Denmark is a world leader in ultrasupercritical plants and utilizes them in district heating.  Use of waste heat from coal plants dramatically increases their efficiency.  IGCC plants have a 27 to 35% efficiency, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) plants are 31.2% efficient and require increased coal consumption to 124% of prior levels.  David feels that the best way to get the most energy out of coal, and thus burn the least amount of it, is by using ultrasupercritical plants with their 43.3% efficiency and add waste heat use (district heating) to get an approximate 70% efficiency rating.  Even old coal technology combined with heat capture improves efficiency to 51%.  He notes that proponents of CCS often assume there is NO ENERGY PROBLEM.

Bottom line, the simplest and lowest tech method to reduce carbon emissions from coal is not to burn it.  We have to use the highest efficiency we can when using hydrocarbons.

Robert Rapier  spoke next on “Biofuels Facts and Fallicies”

Robert started by letting us know what he does now.  He is an engineering director for Axis technologies which uses a process to turn soft wood into a material durable as tropical hardwood.  This wood has the strength of steel (and is being used to make a bridge in Denmark).

Robert said, “I don’t want to be the guy who debunked everything, and solved nothing,” so he attempted to do both during his presentation.  On, corn ethanol – “the horse has been beat to death”.  For people who think that “corn ethanol is a bridge…  This argument assumes that there is something on the other side.  Otherwise it is another ‘bridge to nowhere’.”  Sugar cane ethanol – gas byproduct used to help refine the ethanol.  Shows promise as a local energy source for countries like Brazil, and cannot by extrapolated to the U.S.  Cellulosic ethanol produced at 50 million gal/year, which is less than 4400 barrels per day, would consume 850,000 Douglas firs in a year.

He next moved to biodiesel which he differed from green diesel.  Biodiesel is a distinct compound, an alkyl ester, not a hydrocarbon.  Green diesel is the process of turning biomass to diesel, which uses the Fischer-Tropsch method.  He feels that this technology may be more promising.  It is done by “cracking” biomass (vegetable oil?) in a oil refinery to produce a true hydrocarbon.

Butanol – the biobutanol process produces only 2% solutions of biobutanol.  Takes 3 BTU to produce 1 BTU of biobutanol.

Despite Brazil’s high production of ethanol from sugar cane, oil use in Brazil is still 9 times as high as ethanol.  They are energy independent due to an oil find, NOT their ethanol production.  “If we would like to be truly like Brazil we would have to cut our energy use by 75% in order to use what we produce, not fill in gasoline use with ethanol.”

Robert used the phrase “Photoshop technology” to describe algal biodiesel’s potential, which faces many R&D hurdles before it can be practicable.  Currently a a factory with a cost of $100 per square meter, will only produce 1 gallon of biodiesel per meter, per year.

Lastly he warned us to stop waging war with the oil companies.  They have the most experience at delivering mass volumes of energy.  “We don’t want a company like Exxon-Mobil moving to Dubai”.

Andy Weismann’s presentation was entitled, “Natural Gas, time to stop playing Russian Roulette with the US Economy.”

Unless we make some radical changes, all our energy costs will move to parity to the price of a barrel of oil.  The path we are on, expected marginal source of supply in US is imports of LNG.  If that is what happens is that (not immediately) in 3-4 years, global demand for LNG will significantly exceed global supply of LNG.  Therefore, if we let the US get dependent on LNG imports…  $½ trillion shock to economy if LNG reaches parity with crude oil.  The problem made severe, by explosive demand for natural gas in US.  We may see very near term leveling off of price for natural gas.  “But don’t be fooled by that.  The planning horizon takes years (to deal with problems in 2012), and solutions need to be implemented within 3 years.”

“[The EIA] doesn’t get it, in regards to supply and demand of natural gas.”  It has underestimated natural gas demand growth each year, saying power sector consumption will essentially be flat.  The EIA has understated future US demand by as much as 6 to 10 Tcf/year  (16-27 Bcf/day).

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Charlie Hall:  From 10:15 to 11:45 we had presentations on coal to liquids, carbon capture and a special presentation by ASPO co founder Randy Udall.   The first two were relatively technical, rather optimistic (from the perspective of their issue) and indicated some real possibilities with coal.  (I do not have my notes so this is from memory).    There is, of course, a penalty for the conversion, I think around 40 percent.   There are several technologies, all old (and including Fischer Tropsch and Rasool) .  Nazi Germany was producing more than half its gasoline from coal in 1944, as has South Africa.   It is possible to sequester a lot of CO2 in geologic reservoirs and probably the main issue, other than the enormous infrastructure required, is the 40 percent or so energy penalty for doing it.  A real problem is that the CO2 molecule is roughly the same size as other molecules (e.g. H2O, SOx) making it tough to sieve the CO2.  BUT we can do it if we really want to do that.  

Randy Udall gave what I thought was a very innovative and courageous talk asking why is it that global warming has made such impact with the public and government relative to peak oil which he believes is much more important and much more immediate.   He thinks we need our own Al Gore to sell it to the public (can it be Matt Simmons? someone asked).   Randy is a great speaker I thought.   Throughout the meeting there was some tension between those who think peak oil should supersede global climate change or they should be pushed forth together.  

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Michael Boyd gave the lunchtime presentation on the future of aviation.  As an aside, I have to mention that the lunch on day 3 was a meatless dish of rigatoni with marinara.  We later found out that this was chosen on purpose to reduce ASPO’s environmental impact.  Mr. Boyd’s presentation seemed to be based on the idea of continued growth and reorganization of the aviation industry.  While he was peak oil aware, I believe that he was of the impression that the peak was off in the near future and not in 2005 or 2008 like prior speakers.  He did note the precarious position that regional airports in small cities and towns were in, due to the high cost of oil, and the decreasing margins for small (<50 seat) jets.  If the price of oil were to quickly increase, over 1-2 years in his estimation, hundreds of air trips would become unprofitable and would be cancelled.  Small airports could not survive the cancellation of numerous flights and may have to close.  He noted that “no plane was designed to be flown at oil prices of $50” with jet fuel at > $2.50/gallon.

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1:30 – 3:00 p.m.  From Fuels to Flows:  Is the Future Electric?

Morey Wolfson moderated this panel, which included Paul Gipe from WindWorks.org, Denis Hayes, the creator of Earth Day, and President of the Bullit Foundation, and John Geesman, the commissioner of the California Energy Commission.

Morey gave a few brief comments at the onset of the panel, noting that there is a strong likelihood that we would see carbon restrictions in some form some time in the near future.  He reported that Colorado had a dramatic increase in wind power with a new wind turbine blade factory and a platform factory coming into production.  Colorado has had $750 million in wind and renewable energy investments since legislation passed that mandated a certain percentage of renewable energy (RE).

Paul Gipe entitled his lecture “From a Nation of Consumers to a Nation of Producers, A Challenge Worth of Great Nations”.  He started out by noting “complacency is not a policy”, and that RE was exciting, signicant, but not nearly enough.  He walked the audience through a conversion of the automotive fleet from gas/diesel to electric in the U.S.:

5000 billion km/year driven * 1/3 kWh per km = ~1,500 TWh (10⁹ kWh)

This would need an additional 800,000 more MW of energy production.

To achieve Al Gore’s plan of converting our entire electricity production to RE within 10 years would require 1,600,000 MW wind, then an additional 800,000 MW for autos.  Can it be done?

The heavy truck industry capacity transformed to making wind turbines, could produce 200,000 MW of wind turbines/year.  This would mean it would take ~12 years, and $5 trillion, to produce enough wind capacity (24,000,000 as noted above) to power our homes businesses and autos on wind.  However, with anecdotal evidence of his family’s ability to cut home electricity use, he believes that as a nation we could reduce electricity demand by 50%.  With that reduction in demand, it would take less time to produce the needed turbines, less money, and less land area (<7% of lower 48 land area).

He is optimistic, and believes that North America is capable of huge undertakings.  We need a massive reconstruction of our infrastructure, and demanded new policies, increased public participation and feed-in (advance) renewable tariffs: payment for renewable power generation by the government or utilities, not a mandate for % of total use.  This would enable participation by all businesses and private citizens, not just larger corporations.

Denis Hayes:  “Revolutionizing the Entire U.S. Energy Strategy”

Denis started his lecture with a discussion of “black swan” events and how they change the face of human history.  The attack at Pearl Harbor promoted a massive change from consumer manufacturing to a war machine with produced an incredible amount of tanks, planes, and army vehicles over 3 years.  However, he believes that our biggest contribution to WWII was our 833 million tonnes of oil.  All his career, he has been waiting for the “energy pearl harbor” where an event would spark a massive redevelopment of our energy infrastructure to renewable sources.  He has participated in 3 planning events which never came to fruition, and feels that we may have missed our chance for such an event.  He went on to compare the information revolution with changes in renewable energy over the same time periods – the reasons that the information revolution succeeded and the RE revolution failed to take off.  The bottom line, it was a direct result of government policy that pushed for increased technology for computing and the internet, and that slowed growth in solar, electric-hybrid cars, wind power and the like.  He mentioned that there are increases in RE industry over the recent years, and that the first 1 GW solar plant (capable of producing 1 GW worth of PV panels per year) came on line this year.  He envisions a world where a plant this size will be added each month, and eventually each week.  He is hopeful that the bad news of peak oil, depletion, etc. will spawn the development of technologies like advanced geothermal drilling, super capacitors, distributed electric production, etc.

John Geesman spoke next about the Feed-In Tariff Initiative.  He believes that there are 3 drivers in energy policy:  1. Energy security, 2. Environmental improvement (climate change in recent years), 3. Economic development.  He also believes that the federal government will dominate energy policy in the coming years.  If the government is offering 5-7% of GDP to stabilize the banking system, aren’t our energy concerns just as pressing?  His discussion focused on the efforts being made in California, in the policy realm of Feed-In Tariffs.  I was impressed with the idea, and thought personally that it held an advantage over percentage mandates from the state and federal government.  Feed-In tariffs can work from the bottom up, as this incentivizes small businesses and home-owners to produce RE as well.

During the Q&A session, I am not sure who spoke about this, but I found it very interesting.  They talked about a device about the size of the iPod that would connect between a plug-in hybrid and the wall outlet that could would monitor and change electricity flow to and from the batteries on the hybrid.  For example, if the company is selling electricity at $0.04/kWh “I’m buying”, if it is buying electricity at $0.20/kWh, “I’m selling”.  This type of device could help to provide emergency power to homes in case of a black-out or brown-out.  In my opinion this is a very interesting piece of technology.

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The final panel of the conference was on sustainable mobility.  It had a diverse group of speakers, from Dan Sperling, the Director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC-Davis, Brian Jungers from the UC-Davis 100-mpg car design team, Geoff Wardle a seasoned car designer and current Director of Advanced Mobility Research that Art Center College of Design, and Christer Lindstrom who spoke about the development of Pod Cars as an alternative urban transportation form.  I had less personal interest in these speakers, but the panel was well attended, and many others showed interest in their ideas.

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The conference wrapped up with a review and discussion of the prior day’s lectures.  The panelists, lead by Debbie Cook, the Mayor of Huntington Beach, CA were forthright in their assessment of our situation, and discussed ways that we could spread our message.  Charlie Hall got up and announced the creation of a clearing house website for peak oil and energy papers and information which was well received.

Since the panelists wrapped up with their thoughts on the conference, we should do the same.  Prof. Hall and I thought that the conclusions of the conference were these:

Oil – We’re screwed.

Gas – We need to study the Shale Gas play better.  Future supplies look grim without it.

Solar – Probable, and necessary, but China owns (we think???) the land rights and mines to 98% of the rare earth minerals needed to create solar PV panels.

Wind – It would take a re-directing of our production capabilities on the scale of the post-Pearl Harbor war machine, to produce the necessary number of turbines to make a sizable difference in energy production.  Storage problems persist.

Biofuels – Corn? no way, “a bridge to nowhere”.  Sugar cane? only locally.  Cellulosic? not for years and maybe not even then.  Algae? only by Photoshop at the present time.

Conservation – a must in any event, but not enough.

What does that leave if you believe that the rest cannot fill in the gap?   Coal.  We don’t like it, but maybe we can’t avoid it, and we’ll have to figure out how to use it in the best way we can.  What if the choice is either a continuation of last week’s economic news indefinitely and at all levels or coal?   We need to think about that, and of course examine in much more detail the EROI Of all alternatives.