We are in the midst of reviewing our plug-in electric vehicle forecasts, which means scouring data and news sources to get an understanding of how issues are playing out in the court of public opinion. It’s always the fun part of the job to learn what is “news” and what the public is talking about on forums and the like. One of the interesting trends that is getting more attention in the last year is a concept entitled “peak cars.” Over the years, we’ve heard a lot about peak oil, usually as an argument for electrification of the automobile, but now are we seeing peak in the number of cars in the United States?

Recently, the The New York Times had an article on European cities rejecting cars of any type. Many cities in the United States are also looking to remove cars from specific parts of the city whether that’s through tolls or turning roads into pedestrian avenues. Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of Ford Motor, recently spoke at a TED conference on the change to mobility that will have to include a variety of modes and connected cars. Even Detroit (aka Motor City) is updating our public transportation options.

It makes sense that at some point there will be just too many cars to physically fit within the finite space of a city (I realize this may strike Texans as a foreign concept, but ask anyone in Manhattan and they will know what I am talking about). The Earth Policy Institute argues that the United States has already hit peak cars and the decline is the result of a saturated market with five cars for every four drivers. A study by Lee Schipper and Adam Millard-Ball suggests that despite growing GDP per capita in developed nations, motorized travel peaked in 2003.

The question though remains what does this mean for the automotive industry? Leaving drivetrain aside for the moment, the challenge to an automobile company regardless of the energy source, is sales. If they don’t move metal, they don’t make money. Can big automotive companies still make money if we’ve seen peak sales in the United States at 17 or 18 million vehicles per year?

This is essentially a question of where the peak actually is and, perhaps more importantly, how far below peak is stable sales. To date, U.S. light duty vehicle (LDV) sales peaked in 2000 with 17.4 million vehicles (though 2006 was close with 17.1 million). The number of LDVs in the United States has continued to climb through 2008 (latest data available) with 238.4 million LDVs. So, while the sales of vehicles peak, that number does not necessarily represent the peak number of vehicles in the country.

There are a lot of pieces that come together attempting to calculate whether we have hit peak vehicles in the United States (global is a whole different ball of wax, so we will leave that for another day). With such a precipitous sales fall and climbing vehicle scrappage rates, it should not be surprising to see the overall fleet slip lower. The question is whether it will stay lower.

So what is driving the scrappage rates? Are these being driven by a more urban population that no longer needs vehicles or is it being driven by something else? While it’s not hard to imagine a small nation or a specific area hitting peak cars, what would it mean for automakers, if the majority of the United States has hit peak cars?

Article by Dave Hurst, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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When Gerry Cunningham started building his Southern Arizona zero-energy home in the 1980s, he likely never dreamed that, after his death this year at the age of 88, his solar-powered house would become famous not for its earth-friendly footprint, but as a contender for one of the nation’s weirdest homes.

The contest is called Top 10 Weirdest Homes in the United States (though you won’t actually find any mention of it at the site). The real estate firm sponsoring it is called Top Ten. The motive is obviously increased traffic and potentially, sales, in a U.S. housing market that is a shadow of its former pre-recession self. The implication, that environmental consciousness equates with peculiarity, is insulting, to say the least.

I’m sure if Cunningham were alive, he’d have plenty to say about the contest, and the paradigm behind it. His home, comprised of two concrete-domed areas tucked into 40 acres of Arizona wilderness, uses solar panels for power; wind power to draw groundwater; passive or “daylighting” captured via south-facing expanses of glass; and skylights highlighted with colored glass sprouting from the desert landscape like colorful cacti.

The home is a prime example of an “earthship” shelter, drawing its insulative capabilities from the earth that almost covers it, so that it remains cool even during a hot Arizona summer day, and warm at night when desert temperatures typically plummet. This passive heating technique also means that most of the solar energy can go for more important functions than heating and cooling.

The fact that the dwelling is considered an oddity is sad testimony to an antiquated home building archetype that sets man against Nature, rather than creating synergy between the two (I’m channeling Cunningham as I write this).

But perhaps not for long. In the coming era of Peak oil and heating/cooling bills from Hell, we may all want to learn to channel Cunningham. In fact, we must, if we want to insure that our home planet has breathable air, drinkable water, and soil capable of growing nourishing food. And what better way to do so than by starting with clean, renewable solar energy systems?

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The International Energy Agency says that the world has already reached its peak oil production, a surprising conclusion that could have significant effects on future oil prices. In its annual report, the group suggests that production rates likely topped out at about 70 million barrels a day in 2006. Two years ago, the group projected that conventional oil production would likely climb slowly for decades to come.

The new analysis does not predict imminent shortages and projects that oil production will reach an “undulating plateau” of about 68 to 69 million gallons per day from 2020 to 2035. But the study says that as oil production levels off and begins to decline, global demand for liquid energy supplies will climb by 20 percent in the coming decades. That new demand will have to be met with other sources of energy, such as oil from tar sands, liquid natural gas, or biofuels, the report says.

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While Western governments from the U.S. to the UK debate the validity of “peak oil”, and obfuscate the probability under a cloak of secrecy, the working world wrings its hands, wondering what will happen when the day arrives and the energy needed to fuel industry – the lifeblood of national economies – is no longer available.

Peak oil, as first proposed by geophysicist Dr. M. King Hubbert, describes the moment when global oil extraction reaches a maximum and begins to gradually decline, setting up a scenario where each barrel of oil is increasingly valuable, and where difficult-to-extract reserves (like tar sands and deep-well ocean drilling) are re-evaluated in terms of these higher prices.

Optimistic assessments suggest peak oil is still a decade in the future. Pessimists think we passed the peak in 2005. Time, of course, will tell, because time doesn’t lie. The same can’t be said for world governments, as evinced by the fact that, late in July, the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) refused to release peak oil policy documents under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

The incident came about when DECC officials, under the guidance of Chief Scientific Advisor David McKay, sent out appeals to oil recovery experts asking for advice and information.

At the same time, industrialists – led by billionaire Sir Richard Branson (Virgin label) – were pushing the government to turn over documents critical to oil policy, and institute contingency plans in the event of a peak oil scenario.

Industry experts responded. The DECC’s response was halfhearted at best. Based on a policy of “don’t see, don’t tell” drafted at a 2009 oil reserves workshop, officials admitted that they could only release some of the information on file. They also acknowledged that “greater transparency” – e.g., releasing all the documents, which would quell rumors and fear – was “impossible”, since it somehow hampered information exchange and negotiations between ministers and advisors.

Part of toeing this invisible line was the caveat that UK government officials maintain the polite fiction that the Paris-based International Energy Agency, or IEA, was the leading authority in the field.

This position has been increasingly hard to hold since 2009, when a whistleblower said that the IEA’s oil estimates had been “distorted” by key U.S. policy makers in order to prevent global panic buying. In addition, news came out that some IEA senior staff members privately disagreed with the agency’s official position on oil reserves, calling them “unduly optimistic”.

Since the IEA insists that there is enough oil in reserve to meet global demand until 2030 – with the caveat that investment in new reserves must be maintained – the UK has insisted that government-initiated discussions of peak oil be abandoned, at least where their substance might be leaked to the public.

IHS Energy Research Associates, a far-from-unbiased observer, says that oil production will actually rise, from 79 to 85 million barrels, by 2030. But the increase will be due to extracting from more difficult sources, like tar sands and deep oceans, with rising demand beyond the 85-million-barrel mark addressed by liquid fuels, either from coal, gas, or the emergent biofuel industry.

The IHS report sounds like a cheerleading campaign designed to reassure industry, though it does admit to a “disproportionate” environmental cost for the difficult-to-extract oil. This cost, though clearly demonstrated in the BP Gulf oil spill, is likely to be driven forcefully home when Arctic exploration begins – an event expected to occur as soon as oil companies are able to acquire and plan drilling operations, now that the ice is no longer a significant impediment to year-round extraction.

Even online news sites like The Oil Drum, formerly a cheerleader for the industry, has adopted a more cautious tone lately, with industry experts like José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, the CEO of Petrobras (a multinational energy company headquartered in Brazil), predicting peak oil in 2010.

With the Arctic viewed as a last-ditch resource by oil-hungry nations – a resource that might well provoke war among border nations like Russia, Canada, the U.S., Denmark, Iceland and Norway – peak oil could get very ugly as a world addicted to fossil fuels struggles to get the last drop from one of the world’s last pristine wildernesses.

“This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot observed. “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Article by Jeanne Roberts, appearing courtesy Celsias.

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The successful development of the controversial oil sands in Canada has prompted oil companies to invest in similar operations elswhere, including Russia, Venezuela, the Congo, and Madagascar, according to a new report.

With the price of crude oil rising, companies — including BP and Shell — are increasingly looking to so-called “unconventional” oil deposits similar to the massive resources of bituminous sands found in Alberta, according to the report by the environmental group, Friends of the Earth.

While Canada remains the only major center of oil sands production, BP is beginning to tap into deposits in Venezuela — which has the world’s second-biggest supply — and Shell is targeting a reserve in Tatarstan in the Russian Federation.

In its report, the Friends of the Earth urged the European Union to resist supporting further expansion of the industry, calling it more harmful to the environment than conventional oil production because it requires more energy and produces more greenhouse gases.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

photo: SkyTruth

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Route 80 is an amazing American road. It stretches from New York City and the Atlantic ocean to San Francisco and the Pacific. I had the pleasure of traveling on this American road (our second longest) for 15 hours from New York to Iowa. Countless trucks. And two enduring images.

First: An eighteen wheeler carrying a wind turbine blade. The blade curves gently over the length of the truck. Its huge length means it’ll produce more energy than anyone thought possible with wind ten years ago. Energy with no greenhouse gases and no contribution to climate crisis.

Second: An eighteen wheeler carrying a massive tiller. Dragged across farms soil to kill weeds and prepare for planting. As the metal tears open the soil, carbon in the soil reacts with oxygen in the air and is released as carbon dioxide. When farmers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on plows like this, they must farm huge fields of commodities to pay of their debt, growing high fructose corn syrup.

They have no incentive to add compost to their soil or build their soil by growing winter cover crops. This kind of farming, produces about one fifth of greenhouse gas emissions.

When we reach peak oil in 2014, which type of truck will be likely to see??

Article by Eliav Bitan appearing courtesy Celsias

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Oil supply is not infinite. Sooner or later it will run out. The interesting speculation is when that will happen. In a recent publication  of ACS Energy and Fuels, several Kuwaiti scientists have studied this matter with a multicycle Hubbert model. The original Hubbert model in 1956, accurately predicted that oil production would peak in the United States around 1970.

The model has since gained in popularity and has been used to forecast oil production worldwide. However, recent studies show that the model does not take into account more complex oil production cycles of some countries. Those cycles can be heavily influenced by technology changes, politics, social upheavals, and other factors.

In 2008 there were dramatic and unprecedented fluctuations in oil prices. The price per barrel rose to $140 which was an all time high; then the price plunged to less than $50 per barrel by the end of the year losing more than 64 percent of the maximum price in less than a three months period.

The supply of crude oil in the international market oscillated accordingly. This behavior affected oil production in all exporting countries.

Yet despite the fluctuations demand for crude oil in some developing countries, such as China and India, has increased in the past few years because of the rapid growth in the transportation sector and consumer demand. The rapid growth in fuel demand has forced policy makers worldwide to include uninterrupted crude oil supply as a vital priority in their economic and strategic planning. Yet world oil supplies have to come to an end.

Forecasting the future is always difficult. With oil some new supply source may be discovered in some unsuspected geographical location as one example. Demand may also increase and wars may consume yet more.  Alternate energy sources may also be used or discovered.

Accurate prediction of oil production is affected by fluctuating ecological, economical, social, and political factors, which impose many restrictions on its exploration, transportation, and supply and demand.

The Kuwait study was done to develop a model to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy than the existing models.

The original Hubbert peak theory posits that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell shaped curve.

Choosing a particular curve determines a point of maximum production based on discovery rates, production rates and cumulative production. Early in the curve (pre-peak), the production rate increases because of the discovery rate and the addition of infrastructure. Late in the curve (post-peak), production declines because of resource depletion. Hubbert’s Peak was achieved in the continental US in the early 1970s. Oil production peaked at 10.2 million barrels a day. Since then, it has been in a gradual decline.

The new Kuwait approach originates from  the Hubbert model, it overcomes the limitations and restrictions associated with the original Hubbert model. As opposed to Hubbert single cycle model, this model has more than one cycle depending on the historical oil production trend and known oil reserves.

The world production is estimated to peak in 2014 at a rate of 79 million barrels per day. OPEC has a remaining reserve of 909 barrels, which is about 78 percent of the world reserves. OPEC production is expected to peak in 2026 at a rate of 53 million barrels per day. On the basis of 2005 world crude oil production and current recovery techniques, the world oil reserves are being depleted at an annual rate of 2.1 percent.

Other models predict peak oil production to occur anywhere from today to 2030. The exact date, of course, will not be known until it happens. Dramatic fluctuation in oil prices will continue and a new lifestyle for all of us will have to happen sooner or later.

Article by Andy Soos appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

photo: chrisjfry

We’re in for some climate chaos. The Copenhagen Accord means at least two to four degrees of warming over the next fifty years — and who knows how much “global weirding.” As greenhouse gases trap more heat, or energy, close to the earth, and that energy is used by large weather systems, which move faster and are more intense than ever.

This means more Category 5 hurricanes. More likelihood of Florida snow. My biggest concern about all this change? Eating. If crop yields drop 80 percent as they’re expected to, if we don’t adapt to a changing climate, I might get hungry.

So how do we produce food in a changing climate? How do we produce food with shortages of oil and fuel around the corner? Well we might start, like Joel Salatin’s family-owned Polyface Farm in Virginia, by decreasing inputs to the farm.

While 50 percent of the cost of most food comes from fuel to run the system, in Polyface’s beyond-organic, pasture-based system, only one percent of the cost is coming from fuel. That helps Joel Salatin sleep better at night.

The part that helps me sleep better is how resilient his system is to catastrophe. There is so much biodiversity, so much life, that it can withstand a lot of disturbance. Salatin grows his grass long and tall before bringing his cows in to eat it. And then the chickens follow the cows.

So when the rain comes, all those long grass roots hold the soil in place. When the cows come through the fields and eat the grass down to the ground, all the roots build the soil. And the cow’s manure is deposited right there. When the chicken follows the cow, it pecks in the manure, breaking it down into the soil.

All that organic matter holds water, as organic matter such as decomposing manure and grass acts like a sponge. In a dry year, the grass stays green, using water stored in the soil.

The most hopeful thing I can see is that farms like Salatin’s are the exception. As more farmers start doing this kind of work, results can only get better.

To hear Joel Salatin himself explain his farm’s resilience, go to 5:05 in the video below.

Article by Eliav Bitan appearing courtesy Celsias.

photo: WizardOne

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With so much volatility in the price of oil over the last decade, who can blame the airline industry for “going big” these past couple months and placing bets on emerging renewable jet fuel companies?

The list of deals is long: AltAir signing an MOU with 14 airlines to supply camelina-based fuel, BioJet and Great Plains working together to develop their own green fuel derived from camelina, Kingfisher Airlines working with three companies on R&D for renewable jet fuel, and Qatar Airways leading a consortium to investigate potential biofuels, just to name a few.

Despite what the reports may indicate, renewable jet fuel is not about reducing emissions — the carbon regime is not sufficiently developed or binding at this point to drive investment — but about the emerging inevitability of higher fuel costs.

According to the Air Transport Authority (ATA), the industry trade organization for the leading U.S. airlines, fuel expenses have historically ranged from 10 to 15 percent of U.S. passenger airline operating costs, but averaged more than 35 percent in the third quarter of 2008.

Projections from the International Energy Agency suggest that oil prices will remain high in the near term. According to the IEA, $40 oil is still high and capacity constraints, geopolitical uncertainty, and demand growth will not disappear overnight and will continue to provide price support in the next few quarters.  Long term is anyone’s guess, but the oil market’s growing volatility is driving demand for alternative sources of fuel.

The graph below, taken from this article, shows a dramatic increase in oil price volatility:

Within this context, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) blasted governments and oil companies for failing to invest in the development of aviation biofuels.  This article from Flight International notes:

Both IATA and Airbus are calling for government authorities to support the aviation industry’s efforts to gain priority access to biofuel, arguing that the industry does not have other energy options because, unlike the automotive industry, it cannot use electricity, while hydrogen would not be economically viable even if it were technically achievable.

IATA’s criticism touches on a difficult question: in the face of growing fuel price uncertainty and volatility, are biofuel products best invested in auto transport or aviation?

As demonstrated by recent movements in the “crack spread” of jet fuel, which is the difference between crude oil and jet fuel prices, acute supply shortages tip the balance in favor of auto transport.  This was demonstrated in the weeks following hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, when major oil supply disruptions prompted refiners to focus their operations on producing gasoline.

With aviation accounting for only 12 percent of transportation fuel demand, the auto transportation sector will maintain a distinct market advantage over aviation.  But with Renewable Fuel Standard mandates already difficult to meet, it is unlikely that the aviation industry will receive much federal support.

As such, the aviation industry may be fighting this battle on their own.  The hope, of course, is that scalable biofuel technologies will make this decision moot.

Mackinnon Lawrence is an attorney, principal consultant with Biomass Advisors, and editor & publisher of Biomass Intel.

[photo credit: wvs]

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With the United States of America’s ever-mounting trade and budget deficits, unemployment above 10 percent (and, dependent on counting, un- and under-employment above 20 percent), looming peak oil and other resource (water, for example) limitations, environmental challenges, and ever-mounting climate chaos , America faces a very serious situation.

In fact, to one degree or another, these same intertwined challenges (with the exception of trade/budget deficits for some countries) are those face by societies and nations throughout the globe in our networked, systems-of-systems global community.

These serious challenges are a networked system-of-systems that interact and reinforce each other. As we strive to stop digging the holes deeper and climb our way out, we can seek to deal with these challenges in a stove-piped manner or address them with W6 solutions that have wins across multiple arenas:

• Move toward sustainable energy system
• Create and protect jobs
• Foster economic activity (cost effectively)
• Strengthen long-term economic prospects
• Address negative environmental impacts (from local pollution to acidification of the oceans)
• Help mitigate climate change

As some are wont to say, crises create opportunities. One good piece of news, amid all the serious concerns that that list above should create for all of us (the US and globally), is the reality that many Win-Win-Win-Win-Win-Win (Win to the Sixth) opportunities lie before us, if we choose to seize them.

Very briefly, here are eight examples that meet these criteria:

Energy Efficiency: The “negawatt” and “negagallon” is the least expensive incremental power source available in the United States (and much of the world). At a cost of less than 4 cents per kilowatt hour, the United States could cut its power demand by over 20 percent over the coming decade (at less than half the cost of the cheapest new power source options).

A serious focus on energy efficiency would improve business competitiveness globally, reduce fossil fuel usage (and health impacts Greening Public Schools represents one of those ‘no-brainer’ actions that we should all embrace as it is potentially the only path to improve educational performance, improve youth health, improve community and global environment, create jobs, and strengthen local government financing (enabling money to spent on true educational costs (teacher salaries, supplies) rather than on over-paying to heat poorly insulated structures.

Financing Net Zero (& Lower Energy Demand) Building : As discussed here, Architecture 2030 developed The 2030 Challenge Stimulus Plan that would create roughly nine million (yes, 9,000,000) jobs and several trillion dollars of building activity through a two-year, $192.47 billion program focused on using financial instruments to spark investment in energy efficiency in private buildings throughout the nation. Buildings account for roughly 40 percent of America’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This program would put a serious dent into that figure while skyrocketing the United States in a global leadership position in building energy efficiency.

Rail Electrification: A $100 billion federal commitment over the coming decade could spark a matching private sector investment that would cut perhaps ten percent of America’s oil use, more than paying for the total cost via reduced imported oil costs (without even considering the benefits through reduced pollution, etc …).

Rail electrification is occuring throughout the globe with the notable exception of the United States. More cargo can be moved with less energy and less pollution as a rail system is moved to electricity from diesel.

Plug-In Hybrid Electric School Buses : Current school buses get about 5.5 mpg of diesel. Conversion to PHESB improves this to about 11 mpg. Diesel fumes from school buses are a top threat to the health of America’s K-12 population. PHESBs cut diesel fume exposure by half or more.

In addition to helping cut America’s oil addiction (by 2020, a decent PHESB program could lead to a 0.5 day reduction in US oil demand (about 11 million barrels, year), PHESBs offer the opportunity for improved disaster services (imagine 5000 mobile generator / storage systems ready to move into the Gulf Coast from surrounding communities post Katrina), improving electricity energy efficiency (through having distributed power storage in PHESB parks).

DESERTEC: One of the most powerful images for a renewable energy future, a burning hot one we might suggest, is TREC, which is a grand vision for connecting solar power in North Africa, wind power from the Eastern Mediterranean to the North Sea, bio-mass, and hydropower with a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) system of power lines to provide assured renewable electricity for the Mediterranean basin and Europe.

This concept, which has seemed ever so Renewable Energy COOL to me from the first time I encountered it, looks to be moving down a path from fantastic innovative concept to potential reality as Europe is beginning investments that might total into the $100s of billions in the coming decades to make this a reality.

This system won’t necessarily just produce clean power, but a ‘waste’ product will be clean water than can support agriculture and local jobs. If connected to a serious bio-char/agro-char program for enriching the soil, this could lead to ever-increasing agricultural productivity in employment and water-starved regions while sequestering serious amounts of carbon. (Thus lowering emissions due to clean energy production and lowering CO2 levels via enhanced-natural sequestion: attacking the GHG problem from two ends.)

Imagine this in employment starved and conflict prone areas like Israel-Palestine or along the US-Mexico border.

Trent (OMEGA) Algae: This a developing OMEGA effort , led by Jonathan Trent of NASA, to make algae biofuel in a renewable energy process that will clean up sewage currently being dumped into the world’s oceans. There is also the potential that electrical power generation could be connected to the fuel production. (OMEGA Algae is still in testing, but is a great example of the looming Win to the Sixth opportunities there for the taking … if we would only choose to seize them.)

Concepts to provide multi-faceted solutions were core to Energize America from its earliest moments. How to ‘make the right choice, the easy and preferred choice’ with paths that would address energy, environmental, and economic challenges in a systems fashion rose to the top above stove-piped concepts. We must, as individuals and as a nation, pursue such Win to the Sixth opportunities or risk stove-piped approaches that seemingly solve one problem while exacerbating others.

Article by A. Siegel appearing courtesy of Celsias

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