I gave my reasoning. Natural gas has the potential to become an oil substitute, whose energy price right now is far higher than natural gas. Or if liquified gas export is allowed, as the current european price is over four times the U.S. price. That the gas futures market disagrees with me is not proof I am wrong, merely that I am a hypocrite for not buying nat. gas futures contracts with every cent I have.

[Edited on January 26, 2012 at 10:37 AM. Reason : .,.]

1/26/2012 10:32:24 AM

Quote :

"natural gas will continue to get cheaper as the Marcellus shale continues to get developed"

ugh!

NG sustained a low price for years due to the shale gas boom. It is uber cheap right now because of an anomaly - a very warm winter. Even though there is strong consensus that it will stay cheap, it will not get cheaper than it is right now aside from other temporary market swings like this winter.

1/26/2012 10:50:01 AM

Quote :

"The problem is not the constant production, but the unpredictable nature of consumer demand which must be managed."

the problem is the constant production. You're not going to force consumers to flatten out demand completely; that's just dumb logic. We forecast the hell out of it with historical models, weather forecasts, and day ahead / hour ahead wheeling and trading, and we make our predicted generation match as much as possible. We've also implemented TOU metering and variable rates for large industrial consumers to encourage them to be more energy conscious during peak times and make use of cheap off-peak power production, but it only helps marginally. Picking up the changes in load will always be the responsibility of the G&T operators, and plants that are federally prohibited from load following do nothing to address the issue.

[Edited on January 26, 2012 at 11:31 AM. Reason : just watch and wait on Natural Gas. It's going to keep getting cheaper.]

1/26/2012 11:16:37 AM

Quote :

"Picking up the changes in load will always be the responsibility of the G&T operators"

A responsibility made more difficult when they can't even rely on the day plant suppliers to supply the energy they promised.

1/26/2012 12:35:11 PM

the energy trading industry is a lot smarter than you seem to think.

1/26/2012 1:20:50 PM

And a lot smarter than you seem to think, if you don't think they can handle a few nuclear plants unwilling to load follow.

1/26/2012 3:25:49 PM

Don't light a match, because there is an army of strawmen ITT!

1/26/2012 3:45:31 PM

Quote :

"day plant suppliers"

Quote :

"unwilling to load follow"

Quote :

"They also require hot backup"

Quote :

"some hot backup is required to cover the dips"

somehow this guy has managed to combine systems admin buzzwords with power grid technology and somehow pretend they are real

dude, don't quit your dayjob, and stick to backing up my servers and not providing me electricity.

1/27/2012 9:53:11 AM

Norway has the right idea. They're basically saving most of their oil, either in reserves or in the ground, until after peak oil hits and the price of it goes way up, and importing in the meantime. When things get hairy oil-wise, they'll have their choice of either using up their reserves internally or selling them at exorbitant prices.

1/27/2012 10:15:16 AM

Quote :

"Norway has the right idea. They're basically saving most of their oil, either in reserves or in the ground, until after peak oil hits and the price of it goes way up, and importing in the meantime."

Holy unsubstantiated claims Batman!

^^ and you just need to grow up.

1/27/2012 10:47:42 AM

n/m

[Edited on January 27, 2012 at 11:32 AM. Reason : .,.]

1/27/2012 11:09:20 AM

Quote :

"However, the feed-in tariff has been very successful in installing new capacity. Currently, Germany has 25GW of solar capacity—half of all solar capacity on the entire planet. In fact, Germany installed more capacity last December than the United States did in all of 2011. Unsurprisingly, Germany rarely has peak conditions for solar power. While FiT might work in places that are actually sunny (e.g. Gainesville, Florida), Germany averages only 1,528 hours of sunshine a year, or one-third of all daylight hours. That's actually less sun than Seattle gets. One utility CEO even compared subsidizing German solar to "growing pineapples in Alaska." Thankfully, fiscal sanity is starting to catch up with FiT. In Germany, a proposed new reform would slash FiT rates each year by 24 percent, and ultimately end the program by 2017."

http://reason.com/blog/2012/01/31/black-hole-sun-germany-spends-100-billio

2/1/2012 2:54:50 AM

As the EU cap on carbon tightens there will be less and less incentive for Germany to give extra subsidies to solar, as it will become competitive without them. Seems like the program was a success, it jumpstarted the countries capacity and helped make Germany one of the largest exporters of the technology, which atleast played some part in making them one of the best performing economies in Europe.

2/1/2012 6:38:09 AM

^ I doubt it:

Quote :

"To avoid a ton of CO2 emissions, one can spend €5 on insulating the roof of an old building, invest €20 in a new gas-fired power plant or sink about €500 into a new solar energy system. Meanwhile, using renewable energy avoided 120 million tons of carbon in 2010. But solar energy represents just 7.6 percent of these avoided emissions, even though solar took more than half of all renewable energy subsidies."

2/1/2012 1:13:13 PM

^ But to continue that point...

What would it ever take to make individuals, on their own, invest in the energy efficiency measures we need to accomplish what we're talking about? Even if these measures are above break-even at current electricity prices in most of Europe (not sure about the US, but the US has less efficient homes anyway), then what prices will it take to get the majority of homes to do this?

Plus, air and vehicle travel have a resource problem much more imminent than electricity production does. Electricity, at least, is flex fuel. And we can't make airplanes or cars much more efficient unless we actually address the weight of the vehicles and reduce personal space.

There is a finite set of efficiency gains that can be had without lifestyle change, and we should take those, absolutely. But the price mechanisms have got a long way to go before they allow us to address our Carbon goals, and individuals will feel the hurt.

2/1/2012 2:27:56 PM

every day:
86000 Terawatts of energy hit the earth in the form of solar energy
870 Terawatts of wind is blowing around
32 Terawatts pop up through geothermal sources

humans consume 16 TW of energy per day. pwnt. (car fuels,electricity, everything)

2TW of those 16TW come from renewables...

we have about 30 years of coal and oil left. (at this current rate we possibly have longer but the rate is going to keep increasing for a little bit b/c of china and europeans affording more cars)

in conclusion, in less than 30 years, you better have an electric car, and some solar panels on your house or you're fucked...

unless we get to clean hydrogen fusion first

[Edited on February 9, 2012 at 10:09 PM. Reason : ,]

2/9/2012 9:45:28 PM

The Iter first D-T plasma is planned for 2026.

But that date is before the 2011 delays. The earlier dates have now been pushed back, but we don't know how far yet. The only reason they can say 2026 is because they haven't (and can't) update it in response to the recent delays.

So let me be generous, I'll give them 2030, they'll have D-T plasma in 2030. Again, generous. This is a test plasma to see if the sustained confinement with the fusion energy input is a workable idea. It could give a negative result! The spectrum of possibilities goes from really expensive to unworkable entirely.

So best case scenario is that by 2030 we'll have a well-founded approach to produce expensive but clean energy. Then come the engineering issues for commercializing it.

Did I mention this is funded mostly by the EU? Yeah, that EU. The one on the verge of a financial crisis.

I want fusion energy just as bad as the next person. No, more. In fact, I want it enough to admit that we'll never have it from these tokomaks.

2/9/2012 9:59:24 PM

Quote :

"we have about 30 years of coal and oil left"

we have a few hundred years of nat gas, no?

2/9/2012 9:59:41 PM

^the problem is we don't know. existing 'known' gas is only a few dozen years. we are simply 'hoping' we continue to find new places to mine at the current rate so that we can keep up that trend and have '100 years' possibly. huge gamble.

either way natural gas fracking is so horrible it shouldn't even be considered. go watch 'gas land' if you want to be sickened about the bastards pretending there is a thing called 'clean natural gas'.... such bullshit


i mean in the end no matter how you slice it, we are running out of resources incredibly fast. and it's growing every year. it just can't stay like that long. plus co2 is proven to warm the atmosphere and we know how that turns out...

[Edited on February 9, 2012 at 10:06 PM. Reason : ,]

2/9/2012 10:05:05 PM

Oh sheesh I was just out of date, I didn't realize they dropped the exploration moratorium in the Barents Sea in 2005. Doesn't really affect the debate in the US anyway as our reserves are paltry and even the most wild estimates of the total reserves under Alaska, California, and the Gulf wouldn't sustain our consumption for a year. Conservatives are slowly realizing this and rushing to support NG, I suspect because admitting that prioritizing a non-fossil-fuel energy source might imply liberals have been right about something.

[Edited on February 10, 2012 at 1:50 PM. Reason : .]

2/10/2012 1:49:35 PM

U.S. oil production is rising and oil consumption is falling. A reality which has had nothing to do with the government.

2/10/2012 4:18:58 PM

^ obama will take full credit for that to get his share of votes

and romney needs to jab the shit out of obama on the GM fuck-up. 50 billion to sell about 600 chevy volts, when tesla, toyota, and nissan are around the corner pwning the fuck out of them in the only sustainable future possible.

50 billion in Ford F450's. As opposed to say 0.5 billion given to Tesla and Nissan as a fucking loan. The difference is some of those companies made money during that shit storm, and other didn't for damn good reasons.

motherfucker. pisses me off to no end. investing in shitty companies. and don't come at me with a bullshit stat that last week GM finally made some profits.

2/10/2012 5:01:20 PM

Quote :

"COPENHAGEN – One of the world’s biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere. Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies – totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University – to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned, and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong? There is a fundamental problem with subsidizing inefficient green technology: it is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic (PV) capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill. In the words of the German Association of Physicists, “solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants.” On short, overcast winter days, Germany’s 1.1 million solar-power systems can generate no electricity at all. The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. When the sun failed to shine last winter, one emergency back-up plan powered up an Austrian oil-fired plant to fill the supply gap. Indeed, despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3% of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”). Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts. Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany’s CO2 emissions by roughly eight million metric tons – or about 1% – for the next 20 years. When the effects are calculated in a standard climate model, the result is a reduction in average temperature of 0.00005oC (one twenty-thousandth of a degree Celsius, or one ten-thousandth of a degree Fahrenheit). To put it another way: by the end of the century, Germany’s $130 billion solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours. Using solar, Germany is paying about $1,000 per ton of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $8. Germany could have cut 131 times as much CO2 for the same price. Instead, the Germans are wasting more than 99 cents of every euro that they plow into solar panels. It gets worse: because Germany is part of the European Union Emissions Trading System, the actual effect of extra solar panels in Germany leads to no CO2 reductions, because total emissions are already capped. Instead, the Germans simply allow other parts of the EU to emit more CO2. Germany’s solar panels have only made it cheaper for Portugal or Greece to use coal. Germany’s experiment with subsidizing inefficient solar technology has failed. "

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg81/English

3/4/2012 8:19:59 AM

Click link.

See author Bjørn Lomborg.

Close window.

3/4/2012 12:30:45 PM

"Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world."

What a crazy, crazy man.

3/4/2012 3:06:14 PM

I can't imagine it can be that controversial to point out Germany is planning to reduce subsidies for solar power.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,809439,00.html
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LZUHHX0UQVI901-0IPDJT384IGPFALA0VNK4P7FKF
http://www.bna.com/solar-subsidies-germany-n12884908022/


I don't know why you would dislike some college professor from Copenhagen. Did he forge a document or something I don't know about?

3/4/2012 3:12:34 PM

^ the reasoning for the cuts according to those links is vastly different than the reasoning for the cuts from your initial post.

3/4/2012 3:42:46 PM

buddy of mine works at a solar panel manufacturer here in the states


all he said was china is buying literally 100% of their products.


usa pwnt.

3/4/2012 5:40:58 PM

^^ In what way? Bjorn says it was very expensive and the government can no longer afford it. Der Spiegel says "But now even members of her own staff are calling it a massive money pit." BNA didn't say why Germany was reducing the subsidy. And businessweek says the purpose is to dramatically slow the growth of capacity, without saying why the government would want to do that.

What reason did you get out of them?

3/4/2012 6:46:20 PM

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/03/thin-film-solar-power-to-be-sold-for-less-than-coal/

Quote :

"According to a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between El Paso Electric Company and First Solar, electricity will be sold from First Solar’s thin-film solar panels to El Paso Electric Company for 5.8 cents per kWh (a good 2 cents per kWh lower than coal’s median price of 8 cents per kWh)."

2/4/2013 10:50:41 PM

This is the follow up to Gasland called "The Sky Is Pink"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXL1jpIBskI

It is a response to the Nat. Gas industry propaganda

2/5/2013 12:14:24 PM