Next Big Future: Solutions that are cared about most poll results
DrBalthar
· 1 year ago
Interesting results considering without solving Peak Oil all the other problems can't be solved either. So I would have expected it to be a lot higher in the list. Who cares about (triple growth economy???)
Electrification of transportation (cars, bikes, scooters) can happen very quickly. Peak oil is a relatively trivial problem.
Triple economic growth for one hundred years is the difference between the United States and Mexico in terms of per capita income. Wealthier nations and people can afford better healthcare and to pay for more expensive anti-pollution controls and to buy more expensive energy. Triple economic growth means that problems like peakoil would have to have been solved.
DrBalthar
· 1 year ago
I wouldn't say it's a trivial problem at all. It mostly is a problem of scale. And in this sense biofuel can only be a stop gap solution. Besides none of the common biofuel solutions have been proofed so far that they can work at massive scales (100 times higher than they are used right now globably) which are required to offset the droping of oil and natural gas we will see in the next decade. We need solutions that can scale up in less than 10 years to replace 40-50% of what is currently used in terms of (natural gas and oil). Never make the mistake by believing if something works in the lab it means it will work in grand scale. Don't forget you'll need the corresponding infrastructure that needs to be financed and build as well.
Hence even the airplane industry is struggling to find a replacement for common jetfuel and that sure is not a small bussiness
The main mistake people are doing when it comes down to Peak Oil is that they isolate the problem either to a single sector (transportation) or a single country but that perspective is doomed to fail. You have to see this problem in a global perspective and make all the connections.
nextbigfuture
· 1 year ago
Biofuels do not have to carry the whole load. (although if Algae or gene modified miscanthus or gene modified seaweed come through they could). There is also rising electrification and fuel efficiency. The 50% of fuel that is used for cars and trucks can be reduced to 15% or less with more efficient vehicles, plug in hybrids, and electric vehicles. There are 80 million electric bikes and scooters in China already. Home and office heating needs to be electrified (1 million barrels of oil per day.) At the same time the supplies of oil can be maintained or any drop slowed with better enhanced drilling, drilling in ANWR and everywhere else and superior oilsand and oilshale recovery.
Brazil: biofuels: Total production is predicted to reach at least 26.4 billion litres (6.97 billion U.S. liquid gallons) for 2008
Purdue researcher says US will consume 12 billion gallons of ethanol, produce 13 billion in 2008; return of ethanol glut looms
Over 20 billion gallons of ethanol/biofuels. And 10 billion gallons were added in 2008.
The USA uses about 146 billion gallons of gasoline in a year. The world needs about 600 billion gallons per year. If peakoil is hit in say 5 years and then oil supply drops by 4% per year, then ethanol/biofuels or other alternatives would need to supply 24 billion gallons per year. Then the rate of increase to offset the drop is 240% more than what was added in 2008. Oil supply is not yet dropping. Natural gas supply is increasing.
7 billion gallons per year to equal about 1 million barrels of oil per day. United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil each day. A barrel of oil (which contains 42 gallons or 159 liters) will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons (75 liters) of gasoline, depending on the refinery. Therefore, in the United States, something like 400 million gallons (1.51 billion liters) of gasoline gets consumed every day.
DrBalthar
· 1 year ago
You also forget that the return of energy of Oil sand, shale and all biofuels is far less than crude oil (some are even negativ) so you'll need more energy in the first place to get out the same amount of energy you would have gotten from just extracting and processing oil. Besides so far oil shale looks more like an energy sink. Fuel efficiency has to come through at a lot faster rate if wants to keep pace with oil decline (especially oil export decline) than currently. Besides people are not switching their car every year even in the rich parts of the world (like US, Australia, Japan or Western Europe) the majorarity simply can not afford this. Which means you will see cars that have been bought now still on the road in the next 5-15 years.
If you want efficient cars on the road the idea of car ownership has to be completely scraped. What impact that on the car industry and market would have? Who knows?
What about aviation and cargo shipping? Biofuels are not a real solution for them neither is electrification.
How long current oil production level can be sustained is hard to say even with excessive drilling, better recovery rates, deep water and all that things, one thing is clear your EROI will go further down so it all will become more expansive, more energy intensive and less economical. (Kiss goodbye to your tripple economic growth).
Again it seems to me you look at the problem just at one single isolated sector without looking at the bigger picture.
We have all these possibilities but if we do not bring them online fast and I mean really fast this problem will swallow us up and there will be no technology singularity ever if we can't get past the energy barrier.
nextbigfuture
· 1 year ago
I have forgotten nothing. You have not read all of the material on this site. I have considered all aspects but you have not read the consideration and assume that I missed something when I have not. I have looked at pace of rollout and displacement of vehicles.
there are many oil recovery methods from oilsand and oilshale with strongly positive EROI.
Tata is making an under $10000 electric car Cheap electric cars and scooters and e-bikes can be used as a 2nd, third or fourth vehicle but one which is used for most commute miles. The cost of fuel will determine the usage level but transportation and speed of movement will not be impacted and thus growth will not be negatively impacted. You talk about realistic consideration of factors and timely rollout and then toss out the idea of scrapping car ownership. That is an idea that is sure to bog down any implementation of better solutions. You are choosing to look for answers or at answers that fit your negative/doomer view and are choosing to assume decline.
they expect get get approvals and have their THAI (superior Alberta oilsand project) approved and with its first 10,000-15,000 barrels of oil production started late 2009. It will be expanded to 100,000 barrels of oil per day in 2010 through 2012.
THAI™ uses a system where air is injected into the oil deposit down a vertical well and is ignited. The heat generated in the reservoir reduces the viscosity of the heavy oil, allowing it to drain into a second, horizontal well from where it rises to the surface.
THAI™ is very efficient, recovering about 70 to 80 per cent of the oil, compared to only 10 to 40 per cent using other technologies.
Duvernay Petroleum’s heavy oil field in Peace River contains 100 million barrels and this will be a first test of THAI™ on heavy oil, for which THAI™ was originally developed. Duvernay Petroleum has signed a contract with the Canadian firm Petrobank, which owns THAI™, to use the process.
The THAI™ process was first used by Petrobank at its Christina Lake site in the Athabasca Oil Sands, Canada, in June 2006 in a pilot operation which is currently producing 3,000 barrels of oil a day. This was on deposits of bitumen - similar to the surface coating of roads - rather than heavy oil.
Petrobank is applying for permission to expand this to 10,000 barrels a day though there is a potential for this to rise to 100,000.
The 50,000 acre site owned by Petrobank contains an estimated 2.6 billion barrels of bitumen. The Athabasca Oil Sands region is the single largest petroleum deposit on earth, bigger than that of Saudi Arabia.
CAPRI is the catalytic variant of the THAI process. Imagine an annular sheath of solid catalyst surrounding the horizontal producer well in the bottom of the oil layer. Thermally cracked oil produced by THAI drains into the horizontal producer well, first passing through the layer of catalyst – like a radial inflow reactor. Thus, THAI and CAPRI can achieve very significant upgrading (conversion of the heavy oil, transforming it almost into a light oil). To achieve equivalent oil conversion in a surface upgrading plant would cost £100’s millions. THAI/CAPRI achieves the in situ upgrading virtually for free, compared to the cost of surface upgrading.
In recent field tests, improvements in viscosity from the range of 10° API to the range of 16° API have been achieved. In any case, the slide presentation discusses and details these important innovations which may lead to significantly enhanced oil recoveries from such "mature" fields as the North Sea.
Biofuels can the the solution for aviation and cargo shipping. Branson (Virgin Atlantic) is pushing biofuels for planes. Other companies are also going for biofuels for planes.
We will get by the energy barrier which is why there will be a technological singularity.
DrBalthar
· 1 year ago
Dude relax!
EROI of Oil sand in your articles between 3:1 to 6:1. You know that standard crude oil lies between 20:1 to 100:1 that's 3 to 30 times higher! Besides why use Uranium or other forms of nuclear power to extract fuel and not use the energy directly which is far more efficient than going through that extra conversion step. Even as for energy storage not sure if that's the best way to go.
Conventional first generation Biofuel is between 0.8 to 6:1 and the most common ones currently used in the US are between 1.1-2:1.
I know there are electric planes but they are lightweight planes not 747s or A380s not even shorthaul mass transists like 737s thats a completely different scale and aviation advantages take decades look how long it took them to bring in composite materials into conventional aviation compared to how long they exist.
Branson's tests so far haven't been really great look at the link I posted above it exaclty discusses the problem in broader detail.
All these things you post here are nice and enjoy reading them because they make things look more bright but don't be deceived in the end they mostly are just peanuts compared to the global amount of fossil fuels used in the world each day and we have to replace relatively soon.
About the car ownership thing well think about it if you could have every year the most efficient car by leasing or renting it instead of owning it would that not increase adaption rate by a tremendous amount. Instead of having zillions of cars in your garage besides not everyone has a huge garage to keep all of them not everyone in the world lives in a US suburbia?
I still hold my standpoint that your view of the problem is far to local centric (in your case the US).
nextbigfuture
· 1 year ago
Substantially >1 EROI is substantially positive. Using nuclear power to extract oil from the oilsands is because it can be cheaper than natural gas for the extraction. Cost advantage.
All Comments
This site has proposed energy plan solutions for peak oil
Japan is working on a large scale genetically modified seaweed to biofuels plan and using that seaweed to get uranium from seawater
There is also Malcanthus grass for biofuels and algae
Electrification of transportation (cars, bikes, scooters) can happen very quickly. Peak oil is a relatively trivial problem.
Triple economic growth for one hundred years is the difference between the United States and Mexico in terms of per capita income.
Wealthier nations and people can afford better healthcare and to pay for more expensive anti-pollution controls and to buy more expensive energy. Triple economic growth means that problems like peakoil would have to have been solved.
Hence even the airplane industry is struggling to find a replacement for common jetfuel and that sure is not a small bussiness
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19...
The main mistake people are doing when it comes down to Peak Oil is that they isolate the problem either to a single sector (transportation) or a single country but that perspective is doomed to fail. You have to see this problem in a global perspective and make all the connections.
Brazil: biofuels: Total production is predicted to reach at least 26.4 billion litres (6.97 billion U.S. liquid gallons) for 2008
Purdue researcher says US will consume 12 billion gallons of ethanol, produce 13 billion in 2008; return of ethanol glut looms
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/02/04/...
Over 20 billion gallons of ethanol/biofuels. And 10 billion gallons were added in 2008.
The USA uses about 146 billion gallons of gasoline in a year. The world needs about 600 billion gallons per year. If peakoil is hit in say 5 years and then oil supply drops by 4% per year, then ethanol/biofuels or other alternatives would need to supply 24 billion gallons per year. Then the rate of increase to offset the drop is 240% more than what was added in 2008.
Oil supply is not yet dropping. Natural gas supply is increasing.
7 billion gallons per year to equal about 1 million barrels of oil per day.
United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil each day. A barrel of oil (which contains 42 gallons or 159 liters) will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons (75 liters) of gasoline, depending on the refinery. Therefore, in the United States, something like 400 million gallons (1.51 billion liters) of gasoline gets consumed every day.
If you want efficient cars on the road the idea of car ownership has to be completely scraped. What impact that on the car industry and market would have? Who knows?
What about aviation and cargo shipping? Biofuels are not a real solution for them neither is electrification.
How long current oil production level can be sustained is hard to say even with excessive drilling, better recovery rates, deep water and all that things, one thing is clear your EROI will go further down so it all will become more expansive, more energy intensive and less economical. (Kiss goodbye to your tripple economic growth).
Again it seems to me you look at the problem just at one single isolated sector without looking at the bigger picture.
We have all these possibilities but if we do not bring them online fast and I mean really fast this problem will swallow us up and there will be no technology singularity ever if we can't get past the energy barrier.
I have considered all aspects but you have not read the consideration and assume that I missed something when I have not.
I have looked at pace of rollout and displacement of vehicles.
there are many oil recovery methods from oilsand and oilshale with strongly positive EROI.
Energy returned on energy invested compared
EROI of oilsand and oilshale processes at the Oildrum (a peak oil site)
Uranium hydride nuclear reacotors can be used to help recover oilsand and oilshale
Nuclear oilsands and water
Nuclear powered oilsand recovery
The nuclear oilsand article was republished and discussed at the oildrum
There are electric planes
and hybrid planes
Tata is making an under $10000 electric car
Cheap electric cars and scooters and e-bikes can be used as a 2nd, third or fourth vehicle but one which is used for most commute miles. The cost of fuel will determine the usage level but transportation and speed of movement will not be impacted and thus growth will not be negatively impacted. You talk about realistic consideration of factors and timely rollout and then toss out the idea of scrapping car ownership. That is an idea that is sure to bog down any implementation of better solutions. You are choosing to look for answers or at answers that fit your negative/doomer view and are choosing to assume decline.
Microwave recovery of oil shale
enhanced oil recovery
Petrobanks Toe to Heel process:
they expect get get approvals and have their THAI (superior Alberta oilsand project) approved and with its first 10,000-15,000 barrels of oil production started late 2009. It will be expanded to 100,000 barrels of oil per day in 2010 through 2012.
THAI™ uses a system where air is injected into the oil deposit down a vertical well and is ignited. The heat generated in the reservoir reduces the viscosity of the heavy oil, allowing it to drain into a second, horizontal well from where it rises to the surface.
THAI™ is very efficient, recovering about 70 to 80 per cent of the oil, compared to only 10 to 40 per cent using other technologies.
Duvernay Petroleum’s heavy oil field in Peace River contains 100 million barrels and this will be a first test of THAI™ on heavy oil, for which THAI™ was originally developed. Duvernay Petroleum has signed a contract with the Canadian firm Petrobank, which owns THAI™, to use the process.
The THAI™ process was first used by Petrobank at its Christina Lake site in the Athabasca Oil Sands, Canada, in June 2006 in a pilot operation which is currently producing 3,000 barrels of oil a day. This was on deposits of bitumen - similar to the surface coating of roads - rather than heavy oil.
Petrobank is applying for permission to expand this to 10,000 barrels a day though there is a potential for this to rise to 100,000.
The 50,000 acre site owned by Petrobank contains an estimated 2.6 billion barrels of bitumen. The Athabasca Oil Sands region is the single largest petroleum deposit on earth, bigger than that of Saudi Arabia.
Thai/Capri
http://www.lloydminsterheavyoil.com/thaiandbeyo...
CAPRI is the catalytic variant of the THAI process. Imagine an annular sheath of solid catalyst surrounding the horizontal producer well in the bottom of the oil layer. Thermally cracked oil produced by THAI drains into the horizontal producer well, first passing through the layer of catalyst – like a radial inflow reactor. Thus, THAI and CAPRI can achieve very significant upgrading (conversion of the heavy oil, transforming it almost into a light oil). To achieve equivalent oil conversion in a surface upgrading plant would cost £100’s millions. THAI/CAPRI achieves the in situ upgrading virtually for free, compared to the cost of surface upgrading.
In recent field tests, improvements in viscosity from the range of 10° API to the range of 16° API have been achieved. In any case, the slide presentation discusses and details these important innovations which may lead to significantly enhanced oil recoveries from such "mature" fields as the North Sea.
Presentation on thai/capri, needs to be viewed in Internet Explorer browser
Biofuels can the the solution for aviation and cargo shipping. Branson (Virgin Atlantic) is pushing biofuels for planes. Other companies are also going for biofuels for planes.
We will get by the energy barrier which is why there will be a technological singularity.
EROI of Oil sand in your articles between 3:1 to 6:1. You know that standard crude oil lies between 20:1 to 100:1 that's 3 to 30 times higher! Besides why use Uranium or other forms of nuclear power to extract fuel and not use the energy directly which is far more efficient than going through that extra conversion step. Even as for energy storage not sure if that's the best way to go.
Conventional first generation Biofuel is between 0.8 to 6:1 and the most common ones currently used in the US are between 1.1-2:1.
I know there are electric planes but they are lightweight planes not 747s or A380s not even shorthaul mass transists like 737s thats a completely different scale and aviation advantages take decades look how long it took them to bring in composite materials into conventional aviation compared to how long they exist.
Branson's tests so far haven't been really great look at the link I posted above it exaclty discusses the problem in broader detail.
All these things you post here are nice and enjoy reading them because they make things look more bright but don't be deceived in the end they mostly are just peanuts compared to the global amount of fossil fuels used in the world each day and we have to replace relatively soon.
About the car ownership thing well think about it if you could have every year the most efficient car by leasing or renting it instead of owning it would that not increase adaption rate by a tremendous amount. Instead of having zillions of cars in your garage besides not everyone has a huge garage to keep all of them not everyone in the world lives in a US suburbia?
I still hold my standpoint that your view of the problem is far to local centric (in your case the US).
Using nuclear power to extract oil from the oilsands is because it can be cheaper than natural gas for the extraction.
Cost advantage.