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Author Topic: Fossil Fuel Profits Getting Eaten Alive by Renewable Energy!  (Read 12990 times)

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AGelbert

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A sampling of several (36 at last count) comments on this article that pretty well sum up what is going out there in the REAL "real world".  8)

Quote
Terry Hallinan
January 4, 2015
"Due to the beliefs of those in power, and the stalemate that they have caused over climate change policy, it is time for people to look elsewhere"

To the "moneyed interests" the founding fathers so feared but hoped pitchforks would be an antidote, you think?

To the handmaidens of the fossil fuel purveyors, the dunces pushing undependable sometime renewable power, primarily wind and solar, that guarantees a major place for the fossil fuel misanthropes that threaten human and other life on the planet?

Aside from looking to building pitchfork factories, how about looking to cheap, abundant, baseload power?

Not enough money in that you think?

I beg your pardon. It is not enough monopoly, too much inertia and way too little intelligent thinking. Countries outside North America are doing very, very well with baseload renewable power like geothermal and biomass that are greener than the mythical St. Patrick was supposed to be. America mostly prefers fantasy to fact and that is very costly.

Best, Terry

sean o
January 4, 2015
Terry,
Instead of pitchforks, or waiting for some corporation to provide stable baseload, solar does nicely to cut your bills and sends a nice lil message to utilities. "hey we can do this too".

I think it was like 5% of rural amaerican homes with like 20kw of solar panels could produce enough energy to supply the us like 1/4 of an acre. You don't need the pitchforks just a few solar panels, and bonus points for having an EV.

Mele Coronato
January 6, 2015
If we want to win the race against time we really cannot afford to wait for CEO's and their corporations any more. Indeed it appears even the most fatal and stupid thing to do. Here is a crystal clear explanation, perfectly worded by someone who dedicated his life to the uncomfortable yet highly rewarding (sic) workload resulting from that insight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXAiJInAPGI&feature=player_embedded

PJ van Staden
January 6, 2015
All in all, if there is one thing, one most important thing for the renewable industry to do, I fully agree with Hermann Scheer that we should get the public educated and behind us.

Why should our world be held hostage by a small group of psychopathic control freaks who think they can keep us dependent on their monopolistic and undemocratic energy supplies? Why is control so important to them? Its because they cannot make a decent living on their own in a democratic regime!  

As the public voice rise against their polluting and killing CO2 empires, they immediately look and grasp for another control instrument, named "nuclear", upon which they can set forth their creation of a centralized dependence upon them for energy? As if they believe all the world is still blind to their inferior, corrupting and criminal mentality?
But then again, we have another alternative to the alternative: The knowledge they don't possess and are not aware of. So, let them, together with their lame puppets in politics, keep throwing their investments after their gluttonous desires.

For they shall faint. Instead of breeding more, these investments shall consume everything thrown at them. And these lame puppets, they shall walk out naked after their time in the office, stripped of all dignity.

Energy is soon going fully distributed! Centralized energy is dead! You believe it! 

William Fitch III
January 7, 2015
Hi: Coming late to the party, however, I did read a few of the posts, particularly the first post of Jared B. Fairly well put with a pretty good analogy via the medical area.

Regarding the article, CEO's to save us!! Are you kidding? If the article is just another form of a resume posting aimed at getting hired by FF industries, then a job well done.  ;D

Changes in internal management by extractive industries are aimed at cost cutting and PR value. Their very business is toxic. By definition they cannot solve the problem.

The carbon (GHG's) must be left in the ground. Naomi Klein in her book, "This Changes Everything", lays it out fairly well. Our very model of running this planet, capitalism of one form or another is the problem. You criticize politicians however they are just mouthing the desires of the extractive industries that OWN them. In short, just part of the puppet show.

Do you really think, author of this article, that the fossil fuel corporations are going to voluntarily strangle trillions of dollars in current "in ground" assets? The human animal, let alone the system, is not wired that way.

People smoke cigarettes even though it will give them cancer and a host of other diseases and painfully kill them. But they do it. Why? Because the death is too far away. It is not a gun pointed at their head at this moment. The same holds for the demise of our entire species. Pulling all that carbon from the ground will complete the sixth great mass extinction, including us.

Will we do it? Of course, because the death is too far off. This is a base human problem without even going to the problem of Capitalism(s).

Regarding Grace's comment where she repeats her idea of "buying off" the FF's corps., again, you cannot buy them off anymore than you can pay a blackmailer to stop blackmailing you. It is a false hope and ill-founded idea... Her other ideas are pretty much on track.

Most of what you see in our current world, 50 year window, is a result of income inequality. The disparity in wealth is so great it is almost unbelievable. The tolerance the masses have shown regarding this development is almost as equally unbelievable. The main reason for the tolerance shown, in my opinion, is that the masses want too badly to have a piece of the problem, and think they can, by the numbers get it, within the system. So it would seem, you can fool all the people all of the time....
Enough said....

.....Bill

Bill is definitely a Doomer! ;D Bill is a good guy and he and I are generally in agreement on most issues.

However, unlike him, I believe there is still some hope. The fact that an article like this DID NOT generate ANY mockery and hard truths a year ago shows people ARE waking up.

Here's a nice comment with some "touchy feely" stuff the fossil fuelers hate.  ;D But this fellow is a real 'do the math' inventor that understands energy thermodynamics quite well. His first language is not English so please ignore his grammar. He makes his point(s) quite eloquently, in my opinion.  

Quote
Fartadi Marian   
 January 4, 2015 

You should be looking for better technologies than the ones that aren´t convincing everybody.
"--------------------------" for helping the inventors of the new and better renewable tech, instead of helping the non efficient old tech.
":--------------------------" for money and economical benefits rather than only for spiritual meanings.

¿Did you know that having a 5 MW/year Captor of sun and wind ( CSW ) on your roof the equivalent production of energy that you will get out of your own property is between 25000 liters and 75000 liters of pure gasoline for a period of 25 t0 50 year?

And an average roof can handle more than 5 to 10 units of CSW that will make your house/property even more valuable than any oil whole, and will pay you back the equivalent of about 250000$ and 750000$ during your life time and you will leave to your children the most valuable heritage, because a renewable roof is forever, instead of selling your house to buy the oil that you will run out of it anyway!

Give the chance to every citizen by offering them better and affordable renewable products and then expect things to get better, because you won't make the spring with few flowers but with many yes you will .

Not CEOs or politicians running this world, are the MEDIA PEOPLE who makes CEOs and politicians, and makes you buy the products that consumes fossils or renewable.

With the social networks/bidirectional media ( dark social networks about 75% and FB TW G+ the rest of it ) you can shape the way people get aware of their own problems and how they can transform the problems in something that can give them material and spiritual benefits.

Fight for your freedom  and the freedom of the those like you, and break down the chains of the slavery that the fuels tied you with and watching you dying and suffering, and choose freedom and renewable. and you will win for ever for you for your people and for all the generations that will come, without violence.

Be smart, be clever, get yourself rich and powerful, go ONLY ELECTRIC and forget about fuels that are the past, ELECTRIC IS THE FUTURE.

The fuel century, the worst one in the human history is over with all the crimes and damage that were are and still doing to you and to your people.

Chose only ELECTRIC and CLEAN EFFICIENT AND RENEWABLE, and help this world to be a spring with your flower too.

I love you, we love you, we want you free healthy and rich, this is why we work even the sundays, but you have to UNDERSTAND and to CHOSE the right for you and for the others, be a good CEO or politician, and don´t you be afraid of anybody because the hugest army in the world: the HUMANITY will always be with you.. 

LOVE AND PEACE
 




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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01/09/2015 04:58 PM     

Republican Pushes Solar Forward in Florida

SustainableBusiness.com News

In Florida, where regulators recently eliminated solar rebates, there's a new group pushing for "energy freedom" in the state and it's led by a Republican.

Tory Perfetti   
heads Conservatives for Energy Freedom, which is already gathering signatures for a referendum in the 2016 elections. If it passes, it would be a milestone for clean energy because it would allow people who generate solar to sell the electricity to others, avoiding utilities altogether.  

Quote
"Floridians have a right to choose where their energy comes from,"
Perfetti told Tampa Bay Times. Giving people a choice is a core conservative principle, and it brought the Tea Party and environmental community together to get solar going in Georgia under the Green Tea Coalition.

The measure would allow business or property owners to produce up to 2 megawatts of solar and sell the power to people at the same or contiguous property. Building owners, for example, could sell electricity to tenants and homeowners could sell to neighbors.

Florida Referendum 2016

Florida law says only utilities can sell electricity - one of five states that bars solar leasing companies like SolarCity from selling electricity  - they can only make money (not much) through monthly lease payments for the systems they install. Utilities in Wisconsin and Iowa recently tested the waters on banning solar leasing altogether and failed. 

 The political action committee, Floridians for Solar Choice, has been formed to drive the referendum forward and it's getting support from other local Republican groups, Democrats, the local solar industry and environmental groups.
Quote

"I think the people understand that ... the power companies have been running the show in Florida for too long,"
Rep. Dwight Dudley (D-St. Petersburg), told the Times.
Quote
"I'm very excited and happy they're doing it."

They need 683,149 signatures to get it on the ballot and then 60% of voters have to say Yes for it to pass as an amendment to the state's constitution.

 Clearly, there will be lots of pushback from utilities and the usual suspects
 
- ALEC, Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity and many other conservative groups who say ::)  they are for individual freedom, except when it comes to policies they don't like.

Debbie Dooley, who was behind the Green Tea Coalition in Georgia, is helping out in Florida and is also looking at Virginia and Wisconsin, with a goal of a national push that challenges utilities' monopoly on electricity sales. 

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26087
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Here's some excellent information about fossil fuel demand rejection: 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Ahem. My dear fellow,what you are observing is a head fake gone awry.

You see, Big Oil figured WRONGLY that if they gamed the price lower on the partially true premise that tanking economies destroy demand, thereby increasing supply and causing lower prices  (see Zero Hedge, TBP and Mking economics world view  ;D), we-the-dumb-**** would all go out and buy SUVs, among other "usual" activities the fossil fuelers have gamed us into doing for about a century.



But their "too clever by  a half" ruse did not figure DEMAND REJECTION (from renewable energy) into their profit over people and planet calculus; an error of judgement that will help ensure their bankruptcy. Boo hoo.

Renewable energy=                                 =Fossil Fuelers




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8HCiwa9FWI&feature=player_embedded

First Country in the World Dumps Fossil Fuels As Divestment Movement Heats Up 

Cole Mellino

Snippet:


Quote
February brought even more excitement for the global divestment campaign. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global reported yesterday that a total of 114 companies had been dumped because of their risk to the climate, according to The Guardian. While the wealth fund moved billions of dollars in assets out of shares in fossil fuel companies, it still has billions invested in other fossil fuel companies.

Still, as the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, its move to divest has a large impact. Here’s a tweet by Bill McKibben yesterday sharing the news:

Norway made all its $ on oil, but now dumping fossil fuel stocks. The Rockefeller of countries http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/05/worlds-biggest-sovereign-wealth-fund-dumps-dozens-of-coal-companies?CMP=share_btn_tw

http://ecowatch.com/2015/02/06/divestment-movement-heats-up/

Renewable energy=                                 =Fossil Fuelers
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Stockholm Power Goes Green as Biomass Ousts Coal

 Jesper Starn, Bloomberg 
 February 09, 2015

Stockholm, Sweden -- For a lesson in global energy history, look no further than Stockholm’s oldest power plant. Since 1903, Fortum Oyj’s Vaerta harbor site has generated power using coal, oil, natural gas and even considered nuclear. Now it’s phasing out the last coal furnace and replacing it with the world’s largest combined heat and power generator that will burn just wood chips and timber scraps by next year.

“It’s like looking at the growth rings of Swedish energy policy,” Ulf Wikstroem, an environmental manager at Fortum, said by phone Jan. 13 from Stockholm. “We plan to have the whole plant running on biomass by 2030 at the latest.”


Fortum’s $530 million project is part of the region’s push toward green energy. Biomass, which can include everything from waste and residue from wood to leftover food and cow dung, is poised to supplant fossil fuels as early as 2018, according to Markedskraft ASA, an energy adviser in Arendal, Norway.

Denmark’s Dong Energy A/S is switching half of its coal generators to biomass by 2020. Sweden’s Vattenfall AB is also increasing biomass use, while limiting output at fossil-fuel units, the main source of global carbon-dioxide emissions.

While not the cleanest form of energy, burning wood has little impact on the climate because it has already soaked up from the atmosphere during its lifetime as much carbon dioxide as it releases as a fuel.

Sweden, the Nordic region’s biggest economy, surpassed its 2020 European Union target of 49 percent renewable energy in 2012. The share will reach 57 percent by 2030 with current policies, according to the Swedish Energy Agency.

Global Push   

The EU’s target is 20 percent renewable energy by 2020, from 14 percent in 2012. In the U.S., President Barack Obama has ordered the federal government to get 10 percent of its energy from renewables this year. China, the world’s biggest energy user, plans to generate 15 percent of its needs from non-fossil sources by 2020.

Envoys from 190 nations will meet at United Nations- sponsored talks in Paris in December to draw up carbon-dioxide emission limits. The current goal calls for policy makers to keep global warming increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.

Across Sweden, facilities burning biomass to generate electricity increased 26 percent since 2009 to 201, according to a report in September by Svebio, a Stockholm-based group lobbying for biomass. Output was 10.4 terawatt-hours in 2013, according to Entso-E, a regional grid lobby group. That compares with 9.2 terawatt-hours of electricity from Oskarshamn-3, the nation’s biggest reactor, last year.

As much as 6 percent of the Nordic region’s power was generated by burning biomass in 2013, compared with 3 percent in Europe, Entso-E data show.

Dong, based in Copenhagen, plans to boost biofuel use at 10 power plants to 50 percent in the next five years, from 18 percent now, said Jens Price Wolf, the director of asset management for the utility’s thermal units.

Vattenfall has sold two of its three Danish coal-fired plants “and is looking to divest the last one,” Chief Executive Officer Magnus Hall told reporters and analysts on Thursday. The company also has plans to convert the 610-megawatt coal- and oil-fired plant to run on biomass, according to its website.

When Finland’s 1,600-megawatt Olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor starts in about four years, most of the Nordic fossil-fuel generators will be too expensive, according to Olav Botnen, an analyst at Markedskraft. This means power output from burning biomass will surpass coal for the first time, he said.

Rainy Morning

Amid the smell of wood chips on a rainy December morning, the rounded exterior of Fortum’s new boiler sits under towers of scaffolding. It stands in contrast to the 28-acre (11.5-hectare) site’s older, high-ceilinged brick structures, with tiled walls and ornamental cast-iron railings.

“The new plant has a more ambitious form, with a proper outside and not just a concrete box,” Anders Johnson, an industrial economist and author of Norra Djurgaardsstaden, a history of the area, said in a Jan. 27 interview. It’s a step back to the designs of public buildings a century ago, he said.

The 330-megawatt Austrian-made boiler adds to Vaerta’s production capacity that includes oil and biofuel-fed burners, as well as one of Sweden’s last coal-fired generators, modified in 2010 to run partly on olive pits.  


The complex will generate enough heat to warm 30 percent of Stockholm’s 900,000 homes as well as meet as much as 8 percent of the city’s electricity consumption, according to data from Fortum and Statistics Sweden.

The city, which controls 49.5 percent of the site, wants Vaerta’s coal plant shut before the end of the decade and replaced with the new boiler, according to Katarina Luhr, the vice mayor overseeing environmental issues. Burning biomass will help the Nordic area’s biggest metropolis meet its goal to be fossil-fuel free by 2040, she said.

“It’s unacceptable having a coal plant in the city of Stockholm,” Luhr said in a Jan. 23 interview. “It’s important for our brand to show other cities we can do this. We have been able to do it, you can also do it.” 

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2015/02/stockholm-power-goes-green-as-biomass-ousts-coal#comment-139796

A. G. Gelbert   
 February 9, 2015 

Excellent! Any nail in the fossil fuel coffin is a step towards recovering civilizational sanity.

Move over, fossil fuels, BIOMASS is going to industrially EAT YOUR LUNCH (and profits too!  ;D).

Understanding selected biomass sources:  BioPAD


Pyrolisis oil refining adjustments affect properties of the final product. 

January 16, 2014/in Refining Wood /by BioPad01

Pyrolysis Oil    

Pyrolysis or dry distillation is process where wood, or other biomass that includes carbon, is heated to a high temperature without oxygen in order to make the biomass decompose into different fractions. Typically the final product conducts carbon, different tars, fenols and acids. The common name for liquid fuel produced by pyrolysis process is pyrolysis oil. Pyrolysis oil is flammable liquid with a complex chemical composition. Pyrolysis oil can be used for replacing fossil fuels and as a raw material in different chemical processes. The pyrolysis process can be modified and adjusted by changing the reaction pressure, temperature and time. All these adjustments affect properties of the final product.


Rapeseed Oil Production
Pre-treatment, Dehulling, Oil Extraction

A prepress processing steps include:
 1. Seed cleaning
2. Preconditioning
3. Flaking
4. Cooking
5. Screw pressing
6. Solvent extraction
7. Desolventizing
8. Distillation
9. Degumming

Oil Purification
1. Degumming
2. Neutralization
3. Drying
4. Bleaching


http://www.biopad.eu/?Sections=refining
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Demand Destruction PLUS Demand Rejection equals future BANKRUPTCY for the Fossil Fuel Planet Polluting Criminals!    
 

Please bear in mind that the FORMULA used to determine the AMOUNT of oil we NEED per day is flawed BECAUSE that amount is shrinking DAILY by tiny amounts due to Renewable Energy input.   

When they finally get around to plugging in the new numbers, that 460 day max scale on the chart will have to be DOUBLED!  8)
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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From the keyboard of Thomas Lewis Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter @Doomstead666

A coal train once supplied the city of Holland, Michigan with fuel for its electric generating plant. They converted the plant to natural gas. Their costs are down, their emissions are down, and coal is down for the count. (Photo by wsilver/Flickr)

First published at The Daily Impact March 27, 2015

After bestriding the mountains of Appalachia, among many other places, like the proverbial Colossus for a century and more, the U.S. coal industry has been taken to hospice, a pathetic wasted shadow of its former self, its physical condition terminal, its thought processes derailed by dementia. It’s not a pretty sight (except perhaps to the survivors of the ruin, destruction and death it has brought to thousands upon thousands of helpless people) and there are those who say its fate foreshadows that of the oil fracking industry, which is now in the ICU, and the legacy oil bidness, which has started to have dizzy spells and occasional sudden hemorrhaging.

A report out this week from the think tank Carbon Tracker, titled “The U.S. Coal Crash,” itemizes the problems listed on the patient’s chart:

  • 26 coal companies bankrupt in the last three years;
  • Peabody Energy Corp., the world’s largest private coal company, has lost 80% of its share value, and that is representative of the industry as a whole (or as a hole);
  • 264 mines were closed in just two years — 2011-2013.
  • The last best hope for coal, China, which burns more than the rest of the world combined, has rendered much of its territory including its capital virtually uninhabitable because of the resulting air pollution, and is cutting back. A little. Down 3% last year.

Oh, and the dementia part? Peabody Energy issued a “forecast” this year “foreseeing” increased coal demand of 10-30 million tons, and global demand increasing by 500 million tons. Not only that, but the industry professes to believe in “clean” coal, and that its woes are caused entirely by President Obama’s “war on coal.” It’s sad, really, next we’ll find them wandering in the WalMart parking lot, unable to remember where they put their car.

What the industry calls the “war on coal” — the U.S. government’s limp-wristed efforts to reduce air pollution before it a) boils the planet and b) makes all the monuments in Washington invisible, like the skyline of Beijing — is not the primary cause of the industry’s demise. That mortal wound was delivered by the natural gas frackers, who in 2008 began to flood the market with cheap, fracked gas and inspired every electric generating plant that could do it to convert to burning gas instead of coal.

There went coal’s last reliable market, and that is why the doctors expect to see a flat line on the monitor any day now. Incidentally, the gas frackers did so well at driving down the price of their product that many of them went under, too, and the rest are hanging on with teeth and fingernails. You can’t get poetic justice to rhyme any better than that.

You’ve heard of those people who get diagnosed as terminal, check into hospice, and five years later get kicked out because they refuse to die? Coal will probably be like that for the remainder of the Industrial Age. It will remain the cheapest option for some, and cheap trumps everything else in our values-deprived world. Same with oil. It will endure long past its prime, in palliative care.

Yes, the mighty are falling, and it’s hard not to gloat, until we remember their ultimate justification: they were only giving us what we wanted.


Thomas Lewis is a nationally recognized and reviewed author of six books, a broadcaster, public speaker and advocate of sustainable living. He also is Editor of The Daily Impact website, and former artist-in-residence at Frostburg State University. He has written several books about collapse issues, including Brace for Impact and Tribulation. Learn more about them here.


Quote
Yes, the mighty are falling , and it’s hard not to gloat , until we remember their ultimate justification: they were only giving us what we wanted. 


It's ABOUT TIME the coal pollution stopped! And they gave us anything but respiratory diseases and cancer for "cheap" energy that cost us our health. That is NOT what we wanted.  They LIED. They were giving us what THEY WANTED FROM US, not what we wanted.

I just went through that in another article on Electrical monopolies. The coal corporations, like ALL fossil fuel industries, NEVER were about giving us ANYTHING but just enough addiction to be able to jack up the price with "resource" wars and "international instability" BALONEY.


I commented the following after this article:



Electricity’s Un-Natural Monopoly


 John Farrell 
 April 02, 2015

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2015/04/electricitys-un-natural-monopoly


Excellent summary of the situation and proper analysis of the most reasonable way forward. I agree with you 100%.

But you left out the profit over planet agenda that has existed in this country for over a century. This agenda was based on the centralized power (both of energy AND political) "business model" based on fossil fuels.

Yes, the hydropower option was a function of the logical natural monopoly a utility should provide. In fact, by the early 1940's the electrical power percentage provided by hydropower was nearly 40%. That figure (yes, I know the grid has grown enormously - that was not a valid excuse for adding more dirty energy instead of renewable energy) has never been surpassed.

The bottom line is that the fossil fuel industry (coal, oil and gas) and the nuclear power industry obtained both visible and invisible "subsidies" that, when actually figured into the cost of providing electrical power to we-the-people, never were cost effective or natural monopolies.

If that had been the case, the massive subsidies, without even beginning to figure in the externalized GDP costs for health care (days absent from work, respiratory diseases, etc.) and deleterious biosphere impact, would not have been necessary when those technologies matured (after the 1930s for fossil fuels and after the 1970s for nuclear power).

But the taxpayer massive giveaways to these dirty energy welfare queens continue to this day. From Cleveland's electrical wind turbines put up in the late NINETEENTH century being taken down to the sabotage and burning of the Chemurgy refinery (plant carbohydrates to hydrocarbons for fuels, plastics, pharmaceuticals and textiles were a threat to the fossil fuel oligarchs) in the 1930s to the 1950s refusal to fund PV research and development until they needed electrical energy in space (and then only in limited fashion DESPITE recommendations AT THAT TIME by a Congressional committee to develop solar energy) to NASA's 1970s foiled attempts to power electrical utility unserved Native American settlements with solar power because the utilities didn't like the idea (worried it would force them to lower their rates) of solar power (despite claiming it wasn't "cost effective" to send power cables that way), it has been corruption and skullduggery in government circles to the detriment of the American public.

Then came Ronal Reagan with his single handed destruction of Wind and solar power subsidies along with a war over 25 years ago that cost the U.S. public over $400 a barrel of oil in subsides.

For those who think that s hyperbole, read the following:

The following quote from a peer reviewed book is of extreme importance to all Americans:

Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.

So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. "

Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.

This totally unjustified profit, never mind the needless lose of lives, then increases the power of the fossil fuel corporations to perpetuate a biosphere harming dirty fuel status quo. How? By "funding" politicians with rather large "donations" to keep renewable energy from competing with dirty energy.

There's more. It continues to this day.

Fossil fuels and nuclear power, when all the costs are computed, were never cost effective. They were never natural monopolies either. What they were, and continue to be, is a source of centralized political power and profit.

John, they are not going to give up that undemocratic power that they have stolen from the American public with their "subsidies" and 24/7 attempt to block distributed renewable energy at every turn.

In other words, despite the clear logic of everything you said, those people that profit from the dirty energy industries are not interested in cost effectiveness. They are interested in political power. They used (and still use) that power to turn a level energy playing field into an alpine slope. They sit at the top rolling bribed political boulders at Renewable energy.

That corruption is what has held Distributed, Democratic Renewable Energy back for over half a century (at least!) in this country.

But now, despite all the corruption of the dirty energy industries, Renewable Energy is so inexpensive for the average user that centralized power is going the way of the Dodo bird. Let us hope that centralized dirty energy political power goes the same way.

« Last Edit: April 05, 2015, 12:19:52 am by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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The Oil Industry's $26 Billion Life Raft
Bloomberg

Snippet 1

 
The swift decline in U.S. oil prices -- $107.26 on June 20, $46.39 seven months later -- caught market participants by surprise.

Agelbert NOTE:
KARMA for MKing's hero, Harold Hamm (the father of the Fracking monstrocity in the USA).   

Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources Inc., cashed out his company’s protection in October, betting on a rebound. Instead, crude kept falling.

Agelbert NOTE: See 1980's style GAMING DOWN of crude oil prices (to sucker the people back into buying "cheap" oil) BACKFIRING due to MASSIVE demand rejection by a people SICK of the wars, externalized pollution costs, lies AND Renewable Energy disruptive (to fossil fuelers but constructive to the biosphere ) technologies. 

Snippet 2
Counterparty Names

Other companies purchased insurance. The fair value of hedges held by 57 U.S. companies in the Bloomberg Intelligence North America Independent Explorers and Producers index rose to $26 billion as of Dec. 31, a fivefold increase from the end of September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Though it’s difficult to determine who will ultimately lose money on the trades and how much, a handful of drillers do reveal the names of their counterparties, offering a glimpse of how the risk of falling oil prices moved through the financial system. More than a dozen energy companies say they buy hedges from their lenders, including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America.

Agelbert NOTE: No wonder politicians are trying to cook up a war, the banks need ANOTHER excuse to fleece we-the-people in the service of the fossil fuel welfare queen/polluters. 

Snippet 3

Energy Trading


These aren’t, of course, the kind of figures that would trigger any sort of systemic-risk concerns.  Commodities are generally smaller parts of banks’ businesses compared with lending and underwriting, and banks hedge their oil-price risk.

New York-based JPMorgan had $2.57 trillion in assets at the end of last year compared with net liabilities for commodity derivatives of $2.3 billion, not including cash from settled trades and physical commodity assets, according to regulatory filings. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo had $1.69 trillion in total assets compared with net commodity liabilities of $241 million.

Agelbert NOTE: The above statement is a large serving of BALONEY because it says NADA about the TRILLIONS of dollars in derivatives at risk HELD BY the five big bastard corporations we know as "banks" that are TOAST without Federal Reserve Counterfeiting.

It's ALL a part of our Fascist Fossil Fuel Government's mens rea MO. When they are making money off of us, they scold us about "fiscal responsibility" and "investing wisely" to the point (see MKing's prudent, measured, balanced, predatory capitalist advice.  ::) ) of ACCEPTING the consequences of YOUR LOSSES from "not investing wisely" (i.e. making stupid decisions)  .  When they are losing money, they steal what they want from us so they can claim they are "profitable". 

Snippet 4


Still, $26 billion is $26 billion. 

U.S. oil companies already netted at least $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014 on their hedges, according to data compiled on 57 U.S. companies in the Bloomberg Intelligence index.

Oil companies would rather be losing money on the trades and making money selling crude at higher prices, Kilduff said.

“It’s like homeowners’ insurance,” he said. “You don’t buy it hoping the house burns down.”   


Offset Risk
 

The $26 billion of protection won’t last forever. Most hedging contracts expire this year, according to company reports. Buying new insurance today means locking in prices below $60 a barrel. The alternative is following Hamm’s example and having no cushion if crude keeps falling.

Financial institutions act as a go-between, selling oil derivatives to one company and buying from another while pocketing fees and profiting on the spread, said Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners LLC in New York. The question is whether the banks were able to adequately offset their risk when the market took a nosedive, he said.

Agelbert NOTE: No it isn't!

“The banks always tell us that they try to lay off the risk,” Peabody said. “I know from history and practice that it’s great in concept, but it’s hard to do in reality.”

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-industrys-26-billion-life-065303430.html

Agelbert NOTE: The banks ALWAYS LIE. They are part and parcel of the fossil fuel industry welfare queen, profit over planet, fascsist network that BS's us 24/7 while rigging absolutely everything for their benefit and out detriment.

THAT is why they are scheming to get another war going. The price drop in crude is driving them up a wall because they cannot control it like they always have done. We have been here before, people. 

ALL this happened in the decade from 1980 to 1990. The difference NOW is that Renewable Energy has not had its TEETH knocked out by the fossil fuel government(s), despite intense propaganda and regulatory hurdle skullduggery.

So, YEAH, expect a war.  That is their standard backup when all their other low life tricks do not work. Prison is too good for these fossil fuel/banking/Federal Reserve hypocritical elite criminals that claim to operate on a level business playing field.
Remember folks, the only way the planet wins    is if the fossil fuel/banking/Federal Reserve hypocritical elite criminals LOSE!

If the fossil fuel government is not dismantled and neutered, the biosphere will be destroyed by profit over planet insanity. Please pass this on. People need to know the truth. 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables    

This is the beginning of the end. 
 

Tom Randall, Bloomberg
April 15, 2015 | 2 Comments

The race for renewable energy has passed a turning point. The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. And there's no going back.

The shift occurred in 2013, when the world added 143 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity, compared with 141 gigawatts in new plants that burn fossil fuels, according to an analysis presented Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance annual summit in New York. The shift will continue to accelerate, and by 2030 more than four times as much renewable capacity will be added.

"The electricity system is shifting to clean,'' Michael Liebreich, founder of BNEF, said in his keynote address. "Despite the change in oil and gas prices there is going to be a substantial buildout of renewable energy that is likely to be an order of magnitude larger than the buildout of coal and gas."

The Beginning of the End

Power generation capacity additions (GW). Credit: Bloomberg New Energy Finance.


The price of wind and solar power continues to plummet, and is now on par or cheaper than grid electricity in many areas of the world. Solar, the newest major source of energy in the mix, makes up less than 1 percent of the electricity market today but will be the world’s biggest single source by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

The question is no longer if the world will transition to cleaner energy, but how long it will take. In the chart below, BNEF forecasts the billions of dollars that need to be invested each year in order to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change, represented by a benchmark increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius.

The blue lines are what's needed, in billions; the red lines show what's actually being spent. Since the financial crisis, funding has fallen well short of the target, according to BNEF.

Investment Needed to Minimize Climate Change


Credit: Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Copyright 2015 Bloomberg
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2015/04/fossil-fuels-just-lost-the-race-against-renewables
 

Brian Donovan

April 15, 2015
Solar is doubling every 2 years. It's far cheaper than fossils or nuclear even when it's life is incorrectly stated as 20 years instead of the 30+ years expected. Even the warranties are 25 years or more. at 1% of our electrical now, and doubling every 2 years, it will be over 100% of electrical demand in 14 years. That's 2029, not 2050.

Offshore wind can also double every 2 years is we stop propping up fossils and nuclear and put that into wind, solar, wastefuels and ecars instead.

A fossils tax/fine is a logical, fossils pollute.

But just stopping the gov breaks would do.


William Freimuth

April 15, 2015
Checkout James Hansen's 'Golden Opportunity' and compare it with Charles Krauthammer's "Tax gas - a lot". This is the best way to put a Price on Carbon (pollution). It would transform the world's fossil fuel addiction and create millions of jobs leading to the well-being of people and the Planet.

http://www.daily-times.com/farmington-opinion/ci_27333148/commentary-use-cheap-gas-window-levy-revenue-neutral

http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2015/01/12/golden-opportunity/ 

SNIPPET:
Quote
We can still avoid cataclysmic climate change, keeping global warming much less than 2°C.  However, we need a nation or state that will showcase an across-the-board rising carbon fee.  The public, including conservatives, will accept a simple, honest carbon fee if all of the money is distributed to the public, not one dime to make the government bigger and more intrusive.

Golden Opportunity.


Current low oil and gas prices present a golden opportunity to solve the climate problem.

Today we could jump-start a carbon fee at a large rate, say $100 per ton of CO2, collected from fossil fuel companies on the first sale at domestic mines and ports-of-entry.  This initial fee generates more than $600B per year in the U.S., which should be 100% distributed electronically (to bank accounts or debit cards) to all legal residents.      With half a share for children up to two per family, a family of four or more would receive about $6000/year.  Subsequent increase of the carbon fee would be slow, e.g., $10/ton per year, to allow people and entrepreneurs time to make changes and investments, as we move toward carbon-free energies and energy efficiency.

$100/ton would increase the price of gasoline at the pump about $1/gallon.  However, such a price rise will occur in the near future anyhow.  It is only a matter of whose pocket the added money will go into: the fossil fuel industry’s pocket or the public’s pocket.

The ultimate price at the pump will be similar in carbon-fee and no-carbon-fee cases.  In the carbon-fee case, fuel demand falls over time as fuel use declines, in the U.S. by more than 30% in 10 years and 50% in 20 years.  Thus conventional fossil fuels will suffice to carry us beyond fossil fuels. Expensive unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands and deep Arctic oil would mostly be left in the ground, regardless of pipelines.

Technology development is crucial to move us to a clean energy future, but it will be rapid only if there is a carbon fee that entrepreneurs and business people can count on to continue to rise. Government R&D was once a prime driver of technology progress, but not today. >:(

I speak from experience and understanding of how government bureaucracy has grown and now slows technical progress in even the most “can do” of agencies.  Yes, it is worth reforming present agencies, but primarily so they can facilitate progress in private enterprise, rather than impede it.


http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2015/01/12/golden-opportunity/

Agelbert NOTE: I KNOW where a LOT OF MONEY is, that is being misspent on fossil fuel exploration, that could be used for Renewable Energy instead  ;D.


This affront to common decency and the scientific evidence of the deleterious effects of burning fossil fuels must stop. That money spent is actually deducted from corporate taxes, adding insult to biosphere injury.

ADD that exploration money to the fund Hansen's Golden Opportunity fund wants for distribution directly to we-the-people and we solve this problem of conscience free polluters even quicker! And make it illegal to deduct what they have spent on exploration as well as disallow any tax deduction for previous exploration too!

IT'S TIME TO STOP THIS INSANE, DESTRUCTIVE GREED-FEST, PEOPLE!   

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Gail Tverberg Article from China
Gail Tverberg said,
Quote
Prof. Lianyong Feng of Petroleum University of China, Beijing, hired me to put together a short course (eight sessions, each lasting about 1.5 hours) on the nature of our current problems for students majoring in “Energy Economics and Management."

Well, thank you Gail, for giving readers an excellent of idea of where your PRIORITIES have ALWAYS been.  ;D

Why do I get the feeling that "OUR" in the "our current problems" part of your quote MEANS the PETROLEUM INDUSTRY?  ;)

Get this, Gail. The COST of those externalities you have never wanted to add into your computations is PRECISELY what is making fossil fuels AND nuclear power "inefficient" (i.e. more expensive to extract form your point of view). All the other costs you mention are a function of globalizing predatory capitalist practices that are certainly NOT limited to the energy industry. They are part of that "race to the bottom" shafting people all over the world in every business predatory capitalism has corrupted (most of them) that you have never showed too much concern for.

So, in reality, financing costs, employment costs, plant and equipment costs and so on are IRRELEVANT to the LACK of cost effectiveness of producing dirty energy fuels when you compare those costs with the environmental push back going on right now.

But I am not surprised that you are silent as a mouse on that subject.  ;) I am also not surprised that you are incapable of discussing the visible and invisible welfare queen handouts (subsidies, "depletion" LOL! allowances, etc.) the fossil fuel industry and nuclear power polluters CONTINUE to rob from  the people while Renewable Energy gets a PITTANCE in comparison.

Gail, what you DON'T say tells more about your bias than what you DO say.

Dirty energy fuels were NEVER cheap or inexpensive. But the planetary polluted SEWERS took a century or so to back up while the profit over planet gravy train lasted.

I realize you will not stop your love affair with "cheap" fossil fuels until they are below 50% of the energy picture. But it's coming, dear; MUCH sooner than your actuarial math expects. Make sure you take a peek at what is happening to battery prices if you can handle the shock of peer reviewed paper projections of price drops for 2030 ALREADY HERE in 2016.

And don't forget to add the lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry and remedy awards for harming the health and stability of THOUSANDS of species, not just humans, to the COSTS lowering the "efficiency" of producing dirty energy fuels.

There is NO statute of limitations on the CRIMES your fossil fuel pals have committed over the last century.

I suggest you start figuring THOSE COSTS to dirty energy production. Yep, that DOES make them even more "inefficient" to produce.  ;D

It's over for dirty energy. Live with it.

 
 

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Quote
In 2000, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, former oil minister of Saudi Arabia, gave an interview in which he said:

“Thirty years from now there will be a huge amount of oil – and no buyers. Oil will be left in the ground. The Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have a lack of oil."
 

It’s time to take the Clean Energy Would Kill the Economy show off the air once and for all.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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Posted at a logic challenged site called the Doomstead Diner.  ;D

Most Doomstead Diners are locked into an ideological meme lense through which they view price action in regard to just about everything that has a price on it. In fact, the "carry capacity" worshipping segment of this crowd (you know who you are ;)) believe EVERYTHING has a carrying capacity/thermodynamics price on it. They don't DO ethics or CARING CAPACITY. They consider that a bit of benny fluff luxury afforded the predators that want to feel good about themselves, not a sine qua non requirement to avoid extinction (as I have repeatedly asserted).

Consequently, I mostly avoid banging my head against the Doomstead Diner Wall present in some threads here.

But today I am in a good mood so I will provide you worthies with some advice that you can print on your toilet paper to your peril.  ;D

Why are people so ready to accept groundless assertions? For example, the entire academic community in this country had essentially written off Irish persecution in the USA as a myth just because some professor with no real evidence said it didn't happen.

And it was so EASILY REFUTED!

Keep questioning authority and orthodoxy about 'fossil fuels as our savior', thermodynamics, carrying capacity, commodity prices, 'clean energy will kill the economy', 'Renewable Energy is not practical due to low energy density', EROI, and situational ethics. 

ALL the above are presented as scientific objective truths when they are either bold faced lies or cherry picked science leaving out the entire truth. Know bullshit when you see it.  There is no reason you have to remain loyal to ideology that masquerades as objective truth.

Yes, of course those that will respond to this will undoubtedly claim I am the one locked in an ideological straight jacket denying the "scientific" carrying capacity and energy "truth".

For your sakes, I hope you are right.   8)

Have a nice day.


Quote
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley

Quote
"Technical knowledge of Carrying Capacity will not save us; only a massive increase in Caring Capacity will." -- A. G. Gelbert

Quote
"We can’t have a healthy business on a sick planet."-- Ashley Orgain, manager of mission advocacy and outreach for Seventh Generation, Burlington, Vermont

Quote
"We do not need a 'new' business model for energy because we never had one. What we need, if we wish to avoid extinction, is to plug the environmental and equity costs of energy production and use into our planning and thinking. " -- A.G. Gelbert

http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php/topic,4539.msg82338.html#msg82338
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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For how much longer will frackers be able to goose production to offset falling revenues?



There's a lot of blue sky between price and production in Merika, but not to worry...they say only the lord Fed knows the hour and the day...


...since the lord Fed don't need no stinking physics anymore, coz he's got money!

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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