Energy / Energy-General

• The Time of Big Government is Coming to an End

  As economies contract, a global popular uprising confronts power elites over access to the essentials of human existence. What are the underlying dynamics of the conflict, and how is it likely to play out? 1. PrologueAs the world economy crashes against debt and resource limits, more and more countries are responding by attempting to salvage what are actually their most expendable features—corrupt, insolvent banks and bloated militaries—while leaving the majority of their people to languish in “austerity.” The result, predictably, is a global uprising. This current set of conditions and responses will lead, sooner or later, to social as well…

• Kazakhstan - One of the Safest Former Soviet Republics for Investment

  When the USSR collapsed in December 1991, the emerging fifteen new nations scrambled amidst hyperinflation to restructure their economies away from a centrally planned economy directed by Moscow to sovereign, free market ones that could attract desperately needed foreign direct investment (FDI). The clear winners in this have been two Caspian nations, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. While Azerbaijan might have won the initial PR investment race, knowledgeable investors are also closely eying Kazakhstan. Azeri President Heydar Aliyev, realizing that his nation’s indigenous resources were insufficient to develop the country’s hydrocarbon riches, in September 1994 signed the $7.4 billion “deal of the…

• Which Trends Are Changing the World of Energy

  Technology and global competition are profoundly impacting our energy future.  The evidence is all around us in wind and solar energy advances, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing creating a new North American oil and gas boom market, and the technologies driving smart grid, microgrids, and constant energy management. What are the forces of change taking place in energy today? 1. Global competition for energy resources from emerging economies like China2. Struggle over energy policy and greenhouse gas emissions around the world3. Growth in unconventional oil and gas from shales and oil sands4. Uncertainty of environmental regulations forcing power plant retirements5. Game changing technology  is turning…

• How The Human Population Explosion Defies Nature

  There are seven billion people on earth now. I originally thought that the primary reason for the recent human population explosion was that fossil fuels enabled a larger food supply and better medicine, and thus a higher population. Figure 1. World population from US Census Bureau, overlaid with fossil fuel use (red) by Vaclav Smil from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects. While the addition of fossil fuels is part of the story, after reading Craig Dilworth’s Too Smart for Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Mankind, I realized that there might be another contributing factor. Animals of all types…

• President Obama's 2013 Energy Budget: Good News or Political Nothingness

  President Barack Obama’s FY2013 budget includes $27.2 billion for the Department of Energy. US DOE says the budget priorities are focused on the ‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy laid out in the President’s state of the union message. There are many lofty energy goals articulated in the budget: • R&D support for clean energy technologies including $276 million for clean coal and carbon capture and storage; $350 million for more ARPA-E early stage R&D;• Reduce the cost of solar energy by 75% and achieve grid parity without subsidies by 2020;• Reduce dependence on oil by one-third by 2025;• Invest in basic science, research and innovation to…

• Former OPEC Member Indonesia Diversifies its Energy Matrix

  Indonesia, which had begun producing oil in the early 20th century, had such substantial production that it was a major impetus for Japan invading the Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was then known, in December 1941. Over the last several decades the country has seen its production relentlessly slide, so much so that it left OPEC in 2008, seemingly confirming Marion King Hubbert’s “peak oil” theory. But, rather than looking back, Jakarta is looking forward on a number of post-oil energy fronts. The archipelago is the biggest country in Southeast Asia and already a huge exporter of oil and liquefied petroleum gas…

• Putin Looking to Modernize Russia's Energy Sector, Bureaucrats Fight Back

  Largely overlooked in the non-Russian press, an incipient struggle is developing between Russian Prime Minister Putin and his attempts to privatize some of the largest and most economically inefficient legacies of the USSR, the bloated behemoths of the Russian Federation’s energy infrastructure. While foreign commentators increasingly decry that the Putin administration is centralizing authority and squeezing out capitalist initiatives to jumpstart the economy, the issue of privatization of the Russian Federation’s Soviet-era “crown jewels” should be attracting more foreign media attention, if for no other reasons than Russia competes with Saudi Arabia for the title of world’s leading oil producer…

• The Age of Fossil Fuels is Far From Over

  Having looked at the major alternatives to fossil fuel energy production (summarized here), we come away with the general sentiment that the easy days of cheap energy are not evidently carried forward into a future without fossil fuels.  That’s right, fossil fuels will be dead and gone.  Is it time to pile them on the cart to be hauled away? In the slapdash scoring scheme I employed in the alternative energy matrix, the best performers racked up 5 points, whereas by the same criteria, our traditional fossil fuels typically achieved the near-perfect score of 8/10. The only consistent failing is…

• Fracking and Water: A New Way To Profit from the Industry's Biggest Problem

  While oil and water don’t mix, for the fracking industry... the two go hand-in-hand. You see, while WATER is one of the oil industry’s biggest threats – it's also one of investors’ biggest opportunities. Consider this:  Each horizontal well in North America that uses hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, uses 2-6 MILLION gallons of sweet fresh water. And the entire North American industry will use an estimated 72 BILLION gallons in 2012. The cost involved in handling that water could be in the billions of dollars within a couple years. That's why a multi-billion dollar Water Services industry is emerging right…

• Regenerative Agriculture: Feeding the Future

  It is an illusion to think we can continue to use as much energy as we do now. No one can entirely rule-out that some extravagant technology will be forthcoming, e.g. solar power or nuclear fusion on the full-scale of 500 EJ/year as we get through now, but the particular issue of matching liquid fuels derived currently almost entirely from petroleum appears insurmountable. The "solution" is probably the collective of individual solutions, and that means adopting a completely different paradigm of human philosophy and intention. The most pressing demand is how to feed the population of the world, and how…