P21. Pick Points

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest.

When the normal supplies of fuel are cut-off, as electricity has become intermittent in Pakistan, and gas supplies are also restricted, then those that need the heat will find and use what is available. So now the nation is beginning to be worried about deforestation. As the Crown Prince of Belgium noted at the World Future Energy Summit, this has happened in Europe in the past.

Over in Bengal the situation is no better, with coal, of which India has plenty in the ground, running short to the power stations even as more come back on line, after being down for maintenance. Part of the problem appears to be delays in getting environmental permits for the increase in coal production.

While the immediate dispute between Russia and Ukraine appears over, Pravda wants you to know that Ukraine is near default on its loans. And others doubt that stability will last. Nevertheless gas has now arrived in Germany and so this years crisis is over.

But for those who think that this disturbance might help move the Nabucco pipeline forward, which includes a fair number of Eastern European countries there is good news and less good. With the discovery of gas in a lower field below the existing reservoir in the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan the prospects for a second stage is being contemplated and Iran (with 10% of the first phase) has some interest in investing in this production. It would also feed into the Nabucco pipeline, if Russia has not tied up the additional production, by purchase. And while Russia is supposedly buying all available Turkmen gas, one might note that General Petraeus did just happen to drop by there last week. Still Kazakhstan has caught on to the game, and has now raised the price for transiting the gas from Turkmenistan to Russia by 21%.

More information is available on the interesting conditions that will be met when the Shtokman field off Russia is developed. In the last 48 years a total of 220 icebergs have been registered, and the ice thickens to about 2 meters in winter. Production is thus being anticipated as being from a ship. Its impact on the Norwegian economy is expected to be small.

Hmm and h/t to WUWT it turns out that the switch to a portion of biodiesel in the tanks of the school buses in Minnesota brought some grief last week, at least to some, as the fuel gelled in the tanks in the bitter cold. However the reports may have the wrong cause, since some of the problem seems to have come from the petroleum part of the fuel, although many of the buses that did not have problems seem to have been left running all night. The explanation of gel points in biofuels can be seen on Youtube.

As usual more stories can be found at the Energy Bulletin and in Drumbeat at The Oil Drum.

From Wind to Waste - Changing Fuels in Changing Times

Today President-elect Obama is touring a company that makes the bolts for wind turbines and oil drilling platforms. Currently it employs 65 workers and was working mainly in the oil business, but added 15 of the current staff to cover the growth of the business into wind. It hopes to add 40 more. But in times of recession the demand for energy drops. It does not discriminate between solar, wind, coal or natural gas, but purely, in terms of what is pulled out of the grid, the numbers drop. The NYT points out that this drop is hurting wind turbine manufacturers as well as others. In Arkansas, whose Senator Lincoln quizzed Dr Chu earlier in the week about having a state that made turbines, but had no wind, they are laying off staff, as orders are delayed. This is shortly after the state began to anticipate that this would be a major growth industry.

Besides LM Glasfiber, Polymarin Composites USA Ltd. plans to begin operations in Little Rock this year along with Wind Water Technology, making windmill blades and turbines. Those operations comprise a $20 million investment and a projected work force of 800 employees. Also, Nordex USA Inc. announced in October plans for a $100 million wind turbine plant in Jonesboro that is expected to employ 700 people.

Even Boone Pickens is delaying construction of his wind farm, until energy prices become more congenial.

This drop in demand is helping those who are looking to install solar systems, since the concurrent increase in production has meant a drop in prices with prices for panels, that have dropped up to 10% since October, expected to drop by more that 15% in the months ahead.

In California, which accounts for nearly 70% of the U.S. solar market, a typical 4-kilowatt, $32,000 solar energy system cost a homeowner about $23,000 last year after state and federal incentives. This year, if prices sink as expected, that system is likely to cost $10,000 to $12,000.

Of course, on days like today, where in the Mid-West there is a gently falling snow, and no wind, neither system would help. The only renewable fuel, in this case that might help (in the short term) is wood.

(And a slight personal note I was diagnosed with “golfer’s elbow” yesterday from swinging the maul with too much vigor in splitting wood for the tile stove that mainly keeps us warm through the winter. It should make these coming cold months a little more interesting).

The British Government is encouraging schools and hospitals to install wood burning furnaces, which for some reason makes me think of Edward 1 (Longshanks) of England who banned the burning of coal in London in 1305 because of the fumes, throwing the burden back on charcoal. However the demand for lime in building (and the fact that his dad Henry III had licensed monks in Northumberland to collect coal, from which ere long he charged a commission) and that in those days a yeoman’s house required the wood from 2 acres of mature woodland (not to mention all the ships) meant that soon the burning of coal became ubiquitous in England and around Europe. Not that the fume problem went away, both Elizabeth I and Charles I also tried, without success, to limit its use in London. They did not, at the time have much in the way of an alternative and so coal continued to be used. (From “Coals from Newcastle”)

In the current recommendation the UK Carbon Trust is suggesting significant savings:

For example, using wood or straw can provide cost savings of 2-4 p/kWh (pence per kilowatt hour) relative to use of heating oil. A biomass system generating 1,600MWh of heat (roughly equivalent to the annual heating requirements of a typical school) could therefore save up to £50,000 per year on fuel costs relative to an existing oil-based heating system. The costs of biomass fuels also tend to be much less volatile than fossil fuels. . . . . . . Cwm Taff NHS Trust decided to replace heating oil with a 1.2MW biomass boiler burning woodchips. This will save an estimated £35,000 per year and pay back the initial investment within five years.

At the same time Christopher Booker, in the Telegraph, points to the waste paper and cardboard that is now becoming a problem for disposal, since there is no longer a demand and it is still being collected and stored.

If Defra was capable of reading EU law correctly, what a remarkable prospect this might open up for Britain, and for all those councils which are making such an outrageous mess of our waste disposal. If we consider waste paper and cardboard alone, we produce around 12.5 million tons a year. If all this could be burned as fuel to generate power, its calorific value is up to 60 per cent greater than that of the wood chips ad other vegetable matter we currently use as biomass, to help meet our EU target of 32 per cent of our electricity from renewables by 2020.

Drax in Yorkshire is planning to spend billions on four plants to generate 1.4 gigawatts of electricity from 5.9 million tons of biomass, importing wood chips from Canada and contracting for thousands of acres of English farmland to be switched from producing food to crops for fuel. On these figures, if all those 12.5 million tons of waste paper and cardboard could be used to generate power, 60 per cent more efficiently, it might produce 4.8 gigawatts, more than 10 per cent of our average national electricity needs. This alone would go more than a third of the way to meeting our renewables target, equivalent to the output of more than 10,000 wind turbines. Furthermore, because, under EU law, this is a "renewable" source, it would attract some £2 billion a year in subsidies under the Renewables Obligation.

So if you don't burn wood before it is processed into something else, then you can burn it after. Like many things this is likely to be practical on a smaller scale and as a local solution. The University power plant here, for example, burns wood products at a cost equivalent in $/Btu to that of the coal that makes up the rest of the mix. But there are not enough trees for this to be a global answer. But these are the things that we have to think of now, as ways of moving forward, because the problems are not getting further away.