Category Archives: Wind Power

The Deepwater Horizon After the Macondo Well Explosion

An Iceberg

First conclusion of a series that began after Earth Day and includes Fossil Fuels and a Walk on the Moon, Drill Baby Drill or Drill Baby Oops, Magnitude, Part 1, One Month After, The Chernobyl of Fossil Fuel?, and Magnitude, Part 2. )

As I wrote on Earth Day, “In 100 years our descendants will not be burning coal, oil, natural gas or using nuclear fission. They might be using terrestrial nuclear fusion. They will be using solar, wind, geothermal, marine current hydro, tidal energy systems – clean, renewable, sustainable energy systems. No fuel: No Waste. No mines, mills, wells, spills. No arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium, thorium – no carbon or fly ash to be contained, sequestered, or to leak.

“We have started. California and New Jersey lead the U. S. Germany and Spain lead Europe. Boeing and Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic want to build aircraft that run on biodiesel. We need to move forward in a big way – to 100% clean energy in 10 years, to retrain coal miners and oil rig operators to build and run solar arrays and wind turbines, and dig deep geothermal systems.”

Otherwise the Deepwater Horizon Explosion at the Macondo oil field, the oil spills in Ecuador and Nigeria, the coal ash floods like the TVA Kingston Steam Plant, coal mine disasters like at Upper Big Branch, spills like the Exxon Valdez, and events like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl will be ‘”Business as Usual.”

A friend of mine who works for BP, and who would like to work for BP Solar, tells me that most BP staff don’t go to work thinking “How can I destroy the earth today.“ They are, she says “focused on obtaining and selling oil.” Few consider themselves environmentalists. Many see this as business as usual. “Oil spills happen,” they say. They are “focused on getting petrochemicals to market.”

The Macondo oil field that was tapped by the Deepwater Horizon could have contained 1 Billion Barrels of crude. It could have been one of the largest oil discoveries in the world .” (Click here for CBS and here for Times of London). The well could gush oil for YEARS and could have met US needs in 2007 – 21 Million Barrels per Day – for 47 days (here).

This volume of crude oil – 1 Billion Barrels – could explain the explosion. The equipment was built to operate at 20,000 PSI and withstand 60,000 PSI. It the pressures exceeded the limits, then the equipment could have failed. Simple. And Catastrophic. When you consider the pressures under 5000 feet of ocean, and the pressure of 1 Billion Barrels of oil, when you have engineers scratching their head saying “I don’t know, I never saw anything like this. What do You think we should do?” One the thing to do is run like hell.

An Orca

As was noted earlier in the series, like the iceberg pictured above and the Orca pictured at left, this is a singularity. But it has precedents.

TVA Kingston: 1.2 Billion Gallons of toxic coal ash sludge, upstream of Kingston, Tennessee, 12/22/08.
Chevron Texaco: (alleged) 18 Billion Gallons (428.6 million barrels) of Oil Process Waste, Rainforests of Ecuador, 1964 to 1990.
Oil Fires of Kuwait: 6 Million Barrels per Day, up to 6 Months, 1991.
Exxon Valdez: 250,000 Barrels, Prince William Sound, 1989.
The Niger Delta, in Nigeria, 250,000 Barrels per year for the last 50 years (click here), “Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land….has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates…. Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, “

Flares in the Jungle

The TVA coal ash flood (here, here, here), the Upper Big Branch Mine accident (here, here), and the Deepwater Horizon at Macondo may be the “Trifecta” of American Fossil Fuel Disasters. But, like the problems in Ecuador (here) and Nigeria (here), these are “Systems Problems” – built into the system. The only way to eliminate them is to change the system.

This is what precisely what some people are trying to do. Students and faculty in the Marlboro MBA in Managing for Sustainability at the Marlboro College Graduate Center in Brattleboro, Vermont. They think about “Changing the Climate of Business.” And they may be are on to something, as are like minded people at the Presidio, the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value, at Case Western, and Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

Here’s an idea that will enable BP to make things right, change their image, and even make money. Suppose BP Solar built new factories in Florida and Louisiana, and hire former petrochemical and seafood workers – and churned out 25,000 to 50,000 PhotoVoltaic solar modules and 1,250 to 2,500 inverters per day. This would be 5 to 10 megawatts per day, 160 to 300 mw per month, 600 mw to 1.2 gigawatts per year.

According to my back of the envelope calculations, we need about 50 gw of solar in this country, along with 200 gw of wind, and 50 to 100 gw of other CRS (Clean, Renewable, Sustainable) generating capacity, so this is a drop in the bucket. But this is real change. It’s defining moment, substantive, shake the cobwebs out of the attic, hurricane force, Dorothy we’re not in Kansas anymore, paradigm shifting change.

BP Solar, or Massey Energy, or Akeena, Evergreen, First Solar, Sunpower, could do the same thing in West Virginia – build factories to manufacture PV Solar Modules and Solar Hot Water Panels, and hire local people to work in the factories.

It is change we can wrap our arms around, change we can celebrate. As President Obama might say, “change we can believe in. ”

—

This was planned as the Final Post in this series on the Deepwater Horizon / Macondo oil well disaster which began after Earth Day. Other posts include:

However, I will continue to offer my thoughts and analysis once or twice per month as the oil continues to gush forth into the Gulf of Mexico.

Deepwater Horizon: 40,000 Barrels Per Day or 70,000?

Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday, June 13, 2010. Oil continues to flow from the wellhead some 5,000 feet below the surface. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

The Deepwater Horizon spill. Sunday, June 13, 2010, AP Photo/Dave Martin

Part 6 in a Series that began after Earth Day (1 Fossil Fuels and a Walk on the Moon, 2 Drill Baby Drill or Drill Baby Oops, 3 The Magnitude, 4 One Month After, 5 Like Chernobyl?)

Last month I wrote on Popoular Logistics “BP and the government say … 5,000 barrels per day is reaching the surface and most of the oil – 80% to 90% – is below the surface. So I think it’s on the order of 25,000 to 50,000 barrels per day.” (click here)

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This was a “back of the envelope” reflection of NPR’s analysis, reported May 14 (click here) that the spill was 70,000 barrels per day, with a margin of error of 14,000 barrels – so maybe as low as 56,000 Barrels per Day and maybe as much as 84,000 Barrels per Day.

In their article “Deepwater Horizon round up: it’s worse than you think (again) – June 11, 2010,” Nature.com noted “At the end of May the official estimate was raised again to between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels day. Now the Flow Rate Technical Group has produced a bevy of new estimates ranging from 25,000 to 40,000. Crucially, legal liability established for a spill can be linked to its size.” (click here) and here for the Flow Rate Technical Group.

It looks like I’m in good company. But I’d prefer to be wrong.

I also note that this is “business as usual” for BP and other fossil fuel companies, and compared it to the accident at the Kingston Steam Plant, 12/22/08, the Upper Big Branch Mine, 4/5/10, the Exxon Valdez, and Chevron-Texaco’s alleged dumping of 18 BILLION Gallons

of oil process waste in Ecuador between 1964 and 1990 (click here).

It is obvious to me that we MUST move to a post-carbon economy.

100 gigawatts – offshore wind, $300 Billion
100 gigawatts – land based wind $200 Billion
50 gigawatts – solar $200 Billion (price is going down)
50 gigawatts – marine current – $200 Billion.
Clean Energy Infrastructure: $900 Billion.
Save the World: Priceless.

Emergency phone numbers.

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* Report oiled shoreline or request volunteer information: (866) 448-5816
* Submit alternative response technology, services or products: (281) 366-5511
* Submit your vessel for the Vessel of Opportunity Program: (281) 366-5511
* Submit a claim for damages: (800) 440-0858
* Report oiled wildlife: (866) 557-1401
* Medical support hotline: (888) 623-0287

The Series, following “Earth Day for the Future”

(Here)

Fossil Fuels and a Walk on the Moon (Here)
Drill Baby, Drill – or Drill Baby, Oops (Here)
The Magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon Spill (Here)
One Month After The Spill BP Siphoning 3,000 Barrels Per Day (Here)
Deepwater Horizon – the Chernobyl of Deep Water Drilling? (Here)
Deepwater Horizon: 40,000 Barrels Per Day or 70,000? (Here)

Drill Baby, Drill – or Drill Baby, Oops

Second in a series (1, 2) that began on “Earth Day” (0).

“In order to make Policy, you have to be good at Politics.”

– Deborah Stone, “Policy Paradox”

President Obama, Official Photo

I like and respect President Obama. I think he’s a well educated lawyer and law school professor, with a good grasp of the Constitution, and the realities of Chicago machine politics and Inside-The-Beltway politics. He understands Stone. He’s also a moderate liberal. However, his economic advisors – Tim Geithner and Larry Sommers – only know what’s good for Wall Street, so every answer is “what’s good for Wall Street.” They don’t appear to know anything about ecological economics. Obama needs to listen to Herman Daly, Robert Costanza, Paul Krugman, Robin Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and others with a long term view and a better understanding of what neoclassical economists call “externalities.”

Perhaps worse, his energy secretary, Steven Chu, is focused on carbon sequestration, nuclear power, and what we might as well call “Drill Baby, Opps.” Continue reading →

Sustainability and Carbon Sequestration

Abstract. By burning fossil fuels we have put 3.6 trillion tons of Carbon Dioxide, CO₂ in the atmosphere^¹ in the last 200 years – most in the last 60. This has changed the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ from 270 parts per Million, ppm, to 390 ppm, an increase of approximately 31%. This increase of atmospheric CO₂ is resulting in changing precipitation and rising temperatures, from the equator to the poles.

The typical modern reductionist approach is to simplify the problem to develop a solution:

“Burning coal, oil, and natural gas puts CO₂ into the atmosphere. All we need to do to solve the problem is modify the machines so they burn fossil fuel without releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere. How do we do that? We should capture the carbon dioxide, and the arsenic, mercury, other heavy metals, radionucleotides, etc, and store it somewhere.”

But we need to remember that we are burning coal, oil, and natural gas for a reason: to generate heat, hot water, electricity and transportation. There are alternative energy technologies, including nuclear, solar, and wind.

Coal with Carbon Sequestration is estimated to cost $10 to $15 Billion per gigawatt, without considering the costs of mining, processing and transporting the coal, cleaning up after mining, and isolating the arsenicals, mercury, and radionucleotides released from burning coal. Solar is estimated to cost $6.5 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes. Wind $2 to $3 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes.

We at Popular Logistics think, feel and believe that we need to replace coal with solar and wind immediately.

Continue reading →

NREL: "30% Wind Power by 2024"

Arklow Bank Wind Farm, photo Courtesy GE Power

NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a branch of the Department of Energy, released the findings of the “Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study, (Summary) that said:

“wind energy could provide 20 to 30 percent of the eastern half of the country’s energy needs by 2024: here’s how … “

Rush Holt, the Democrat who represents the 12th Congressional District of New Jersey, described the study in an e-mail to his constituents. Holt wrote:

“Achieving this goal would require a substantial investment both onshore and offshore. The production of wind energy is increasing rapidly. According to the American Wind Energy Association, last year energy production increased by more than 9,000 megawatts, bringing America’s total wind power generating capacity to 35,000 megawatts, enough to power 2.4 million homes. Little of this wind energy, however, is being produced in the Northeast.”

Rush Holt, D, NJ-12

“If we are to take advantage of wind power – particularly offshore wind – then we would need to begin to install turbines in windy places in the East and begin to develop rapidly our capacity to manufacture turbines in the United States. Just miles off New Jersey’s shore, the ocean breeze blows reliably at up to 20 miles an hour, the same rate as in the Great Plains. Last year the Department of the Interior conducted a survey of the resources that could be recovered from the Outer Continental Shelf. It found that responsibly developing offshore wind could provide 1,000 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power the electricity use of 60 percent of cities on the East Coast and replace 3,000 medium-sized coal powered power plants. New Jersey has been at the forefront of this effort, as I discussed with the Secretary of the Interior last year in New Jersey. One private venture has committed to build a $1 billion, 345 megawatt wind farm in the ocean off Atlantic City, and two other projects have been approved by the Department of the Interior. Congress should encourage more investment to ensure we take advantage of this resource and help fuel the transition to a sustainable energy future.”

At Popular Logistics we believe that we can achieve 100% clean energy by 2020. However, we will be happy to see 30% wind power for the eastern half of the country, coupled with 30% wind power for the western half of the country, 30% solar, and the balance from hydro, geothermal, and conservation, by 2024.

Holt, a PhD physicist, was Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory before running for Congress. He understands energy. We hope his colleagues in the Congress, and the White House, listen.

God, Keynes, and Clean Energy

Columbia University

NY. Jan. 25. Mark Fulton, “Climate Change Strategist” Deutsche Bank Asset Management, spoke at Cary Krosinsky’s class in Sustainable Investing at the CERC, the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Earth Institute, Columbia University.

Krosinsky, Vice President of Trucost, recently co-edited and wrote the book Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long Term Performance with Nick Robins of HSBC. He is an Advisory Board member of the Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO) and founder director of InvestorWatch. Trucost has built and maintains the world’s largest database of carbon emissions and other environmental impacts as generated by the world’s largest public and private companies. Their data and expertise is used by leading global fund managers and asset owners to manage carbon risk. Continue reading →

Copenhagen, Climate Change, China, and Dessert

Earlier today one of my friends handed me a copy of some satire published in the New York Post, a tabloid in the tradition of the London rags, on the subject of “Climate-Gate.” At about the same time, Roger Saillant, co-author of Vapor Trails, who heads the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value at Case Western Reserve University pointed me to Elizabeth May’s post on the hacked computers and stolen e-mails at East Anglia University. Ms. May leads Canada’s Green Party.

Patrick Michaels, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is really a public relations arm of Exxon Mobil, was once a scientist at the University of Virginia. He is famous for giving testimony attacking Dr. James Hansen to the U.S. Senate. However, when interviewed by Elizabeth May on Canada’s CBC Sunday Morning’s “Kyoto on Trial” in 2002, Michaels admitted to redrawing Hansen’s graph to make it wrong. Michaels, who has traded the scientific method for Stanislavsky’s acting method, admitted to perjury in his testimony before the United States Senate.

The graph shows the amount of sea ice from July thru November from 1979 to 2000, then in 2005, 7, 8, and July thru Sept., 2009. It is from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder Colorado (here) published Oct. 6, 2009. The dark gray line shows Arctic sea ice from 1979 to 2000. The gray band shows 2 standard deviations from the mean. The colorful lines show that Arctic sea ice is at or well below two standard deviations from the mean levels of 1979 to 2000. Clearly there is less ice in the Arctic then there used to be. Continue reading →

Jobs, National Security, Energy, Environment, Economy

Architecting a Clean, Secure, Sustainable, Non-Carbon and Non-Nuclear Energy Future

Middelgrunden, Denmark, near Copenhagen

100 Gigawatts offshore wind. $300 Billion.
100 GW land based wind. $200 Billion.
50 GW solar. $325 Billion.
250 GW Clean, renewable, sustainable Energy. $825 Billion.
Save the World: Priceless Continue reading →

Business News That's Fit To Print

There’s a lot in these articles, and a lot to read between the lines in these articles from the New York Times

– Business Section. (Between the Lines Concept 1

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– the Business Section, not the Science

section.)

From E.U. Plan to Curb Carbon Dioxide Would Favor Solar Power

By James Kanter.

“The European Commission is expected to introduce a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that directs the largest slices of €50 billion available for research and development to solar power and capturing and burying emissions from coal plants.”

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“But the plan also signals the need for a reordering of the bloc’s priorities by requiring governments to spend significantly greater sums of money on clean energy even as the world emerges from a deep financial crisis.”

16 Billion Euros for Solar.
13 Billion Euros for emissions capture and storage.
11 billion Euros for enhanced urban efficiency.
7 billion Euros for improving nuclear energy – produce less radioactive waste, minimize proliferation.

Between The Lines Concept 2: Euros 13 Billion for Emissions Capture and Storage – that’s a lot of money. Assuming they can make it work – Carbon Capture and Storage has never been done, and other coal waste storage is expensive and difficult. Kingston, Tennessee Coal Ash Spill – Nasa / National Geographic / Popular Logistics 1 / Popular Logistics 2

Continue reading →

HOW WE WILL READ IN 100 YEARS

Google asked “How will we read in 100 years?”

Here’s what I think.

If we reinvent our economy to run on solar, geothermal, and kinetic energy, we will get our news and technical information electronically. We will still read classics on paper and mount on our walls images of loved ones and special places. If we don’t those left will struggle for survival.

Shades of Green – Energy, Economics, and the Environment

Green, Your Place in the New Energy Revolution, at Amazon.

A review of Green, Your Place In The New Energy Revolution, by Jane Hoffman and Michael Hoffman, Palgrave Macmillian, 2008, ISBN: 0230605443.

May you live in interesting times.” – Old Chinese curse.
“The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast” – Dylan

Jane Hoffman, a policy wonk, and Michael Hoffman, a professional capitalist, have written a terrific book on the challenges and opportunities we face in moving from a fossil fuel based economy to a sustainable energy economy. Their intended audience includes people who think about where the energy they use comes from, who work, or want to work in the field. If you’re in a position in which you make vote, or make policy, then you should read this book. If you’re life expectancy is greater than 4 years, or you have children or grandchildren, then you should read this book. Unless you’re living off the grid, then you should read this book.

The Challenges

“Remaining reserves of oil in the world are just enough to last us for another thirty-six to forty-five years.”
“The global demand for electricity is projected to grow by 75% in the next 12 years.”
Americans threw over 95 billion barrels of oil in the garbage last year by not recycling plastic bottles.
Burning fossil fuels pushes tons of greenhouse gases and other things – mercury, oxides of sulphur, and oxides of nitrogen into the air we breathe.

The Opportunities

“It is possible to significantly cut the bottom line of your electricity bill by switching to a renewable power source.”
Switching to renewable and sustainable energy systems will enhance or national security, our economy, the environment, and our international competitiveness.

A Secure Energy Future, they say, is a function of Renewable Energy, Conservation, and New Technology.

If “assets = liabilities + equity” is the canonical equation of accounting, then the next fundamental equation is:

A Secure Energy Future = Renewable Energy + Conservation + New Technology.

Continue reading →

Stretching the Conventional Wisdom

I was invited to join a panel on Jumpstarting the Green Economy hosted by the Sustainable Business Incubator at Fairleigh Dickenson University on May 21, 2009. Copies of the conference presentations are available from the organizers for about $50. Copies of my presentation in audio and powerpoint format are available for $15, including shipping and taxes. Call or E-Mail me here or at Furman Consulting Group.

It boils down to this: Wind, Solar, Geothermal, other sustainable energy and Negawatts vs. Coal, Oil, and Nuclear; to Sustainable Business or Bernie Madoff and the Mafia. Continue reading →

There’s Something About Mary – And Keynes

There's Something About Mary

Back in 1931, John Maynard Keynes wrote:

“Assuming no important wars, and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or at least within sight of a solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not – if we look into the future – the permanent problem of the human race.” – John Maynard Keynes, “Economic possibilities for our grand-children.’ In Essays in Persuasion, 1931.

Keynes wrote that wealth would grow because of compounded interest, and we would live off of the interest. This would fuel technical inventions and dramatically increase the standard of living for a stable, peace-loving world. He thought boredom would become the permanent problem of the human race.

We would become a world populated by dilettantes flitting from party to party; a world of people like Prince Charles and Paris Hilton, although most, presumably, would not be famous and very few could become king. While some would work a few hours per week, most would have a life of leisure. People would live like the physician played by Cameron Diaz in the 1998 film “There’s Something About Mary.” They would work more on “lifestyle” issues like their golf swing than their profession.

Four factors, Keynes wrote, would effect this transition:

Power to control population,
Determination to avoid wars and civil dissentions,
Entrust to science that which is the domain of science,
Compound interest.

Continue reading →

Eco-Watts v Killer-Watts

Burning fossil fuels and using nuclear power create tremendous waste problems. Harnessing the sun, the wind, and the heat of the earth use energy with no fuel – therefore no pollution. The question is Eco-Watts v Killer-Watts. The choice is ours!

Back in the late ‘1970’s Amory Lovins , a physicist, coined the term “NegaWatts” to describe the energy that could be saved with conservation and efficiency. “The cheapest energy,” he said, “and the cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use.” A negawatt is a unit of power not consumed.

Lovins’ associate, Marvin Resnikoff, PhD, another physicist, currently at Radioactive Waste Management Associates, then teaching environmental thinking at SUNY University of Buffalo – Rachel Carson College, used the term “nuclear constipation” to describe the nuclear waste problem. It’s an apt metaphor – the waste doesn’t go away.

We are struggling not only with nuclear constipation, but carbon constipation. We burn carbon to get from place to place, to heat and cool our homes. But the carbon doesn’t go away. It goes into the air from under the ground. To paraphrase Al Gore,

We are borrowing from China to buy oil from the middle east and pull coal out of the ground to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. But enough wind blows through the midwest corridor in a day, enough sunlight falls on the earth in FORTY MINUTES to provide the power we need for a year.

Harnessing the wind, the sun, and the earth eliminates these problems. Rather than burning a fuel; wind, solar, and geothermal harness a process. The sun shines whether or not we use solar panels to capture some photons. The wind blows regardless of our decision to use a few particles to spin a turbine. We are hitchin’ a ride on a moving train.

Negawatts – units of power not consumed.

Eco-watts – units of power generated by clean energy systems, by harnessing a process rather than consuming a fuel.

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Killer-watts – units of power generated by consuming a fuel, which produces a quantity of pollution, such as carbon dioxide, radioactive wastes, mercury, arsenic, etc.

The Trouble With CERES, BICEP, and the Way Forward

The Trouble with CERES, BICEP, and the Way Forward (audio)

Back in the fall of 1989, CERES announced the creation of the Ceres Principles, a ten-point code of corporate environmental conduct to be publicly endorsed by companies as an environmental mission statement or ethic. Today, the Waxman/Markey Bill brings together energy efficiency, renewable energy, and cutting greenhouse gases. … good for business and consumers. Makes it easier to move toward a clean energy economy.

BUT the CERES principles fall short in some very important ways.

Adherence to the CERES Principles is voluntary; not mandatory.
The “CERES Principles” are just that – principles. They are not goals.
The government must fully support them, and back them, and push them, and enforce them.
While there are milestones in the 20 year history the Ceres Principles, there are no dead-lines for the future.

And we need to act now. As Gore noted, “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. …that’s got to change. … Enough wind blows through the Midwest corridor every day to meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. … Enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year.

Here are the details. Continue reading →