Energy Literacy Advocates Newsroom

While not written for Energy Literacy Advocates, this article by former Senator and ELA board member Gary Hart cuts to the chase and hits the nail on the head for some of the more hard to discuss points about our current energy policy.

Read the article here.

Labels: energy policy

The following article points out some of the pitfalls of biofuels, all of which help frame the need for a far greater diversity in transportation energy sources (i.e. biofuels are no silver bullet). However biofuels should also not be ruled out, as the US has idle and unfarmed lands that could provide cellulosic derived biofuels at small but meaningful levels. This is paritcularly true in the arid great plains region, where biofuel production could literally create new local economies. For more facts and figures on biofuels see our previous post here, or visit the energy comparison section of our website here.



Feb 27, 2008
Washington Post
The Problem With Biofuels
More proof that there are no easy solutions to climate change
Wednesday, February 27, 2008; A16
As the United States searches for alternative ways to feed its addiction to petroleum, ethanol and other biofuels derived from organic material have been considered a miracle motor vehicle elixir. The energy bill signed by President Bush in December mandates that at least 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year be used by 2020. Yet separate studies released this month by Princeton University and the Nature Conservancy reveal that biofuels are not a silver bullet in the battle against global warming. In fact, they could make things worse.
Corn and sugar cane are common sources of ethanol. Aside from emitting fewer greenhouse gases than coal or oil when burned as fuel, these biofuel crops remove carbon from the atmosphere while they are growing -- thus making them nearly carbon-neutral. But the studies show that ethanol may be even more dangerous for the environment than fossil fuels are. As the Princeton study points out, clearing previously untouched land to grow biofuel crops releases long-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. While planting corn and sugar cane in already tilled land is fine, a problem arises when farmers churn up new land to grow more fuel or the food and feed displaced by biofuel crops.
The impact of these land-use changes is enormous. As the study from the Nature Conservancy warns, "converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia and the United States creates a 'biofuel carbon debt' by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels they replace." There are other negative effects. Massive amounts of water are needed to irrigate cornfields, setting up potential competition between farms and homes. The runoff of pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizers used by farmers could lead to increased pollution and oxygen-depleted waterways. The natural gas used to make the fertilizer adds to the carbon deficit created by biofuels.
An essay in the May-June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs by two professors from the University of Minnesota highlighted still another problem: The biofuels craze could starve people. "By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world," they wrote. "If oil prices remain high -- which is likely -- the people most vulnerable to the price hikes brought on by the biofuel boom will be those in countries that both suffer food deficits and import petroleum."
The problems with corn-based ethanol, long regarded as a transitional fuel source, have been debated for years. One alternative is to squeeze ethanol out of cellulose from switch grass, cornhusks and other biomass sources. But because cellulosic ethanol remains experimental, it might be years before it makes it from the laboratory to the gas tank. It all adds up to another example that there is no quick, cheap and easy way to confront the menace of global warming.

Labels: biofuels

This article, by National Geographic, does an excellent job of laying out a balanced case for and against biofuels use, and also provides baseline facts and figures for each potential source.

Read the article here.

Labels: biofuels

This article, from Bloomberg, provides accurate and interesting facts and figures and also discusses the oil issue from the car makers perspective.

Read the article here.

Labels: biofuels, energy policy

Below is an excerpt from an ASPO (an organization that studies oil supplies) newsletter - interesting to note more and more mainstream oil and gas executives are warning about supply problems in the near future.


"Shell’s CEO, Jeroen van der Veer, made headlines last week when in an email to company staff he stated that "Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand."
In face of the declining availability of oil, Shell envisions one of two scenarios. The first is a "Scramble" in which the world’s oil importers engage in a mad dash to secure oil supplies and an increasing use of coal and biofuels. The alternative scenario, "Blue-prints", envisages a world of political cooperation between governments on efficiency standards and taxes, a convergence of policies on emissions trading, and local initiatives to improve environmental performance of buildings.
Van der Veer joins an increasing list of organizations, newspapers, government officials who are willing to publicly acknowledge the reality of imminent peak oil…without using that wording. With a few notable exceptions, such as ExxonMobil and BP, most major oil companies and the International Energy Agency have at least hinted that serious problems are just ahead."

Labels: oil supply

This blog entry at the Wall Street Journal cites data and a possible reason for the economy's ability to absorb the oil price increases we have seen for the last several years. The short answer - a weaker US dollar and solid global economic growth generated export revenues that nearly matched extra amount spent on oil imports.

Read the blog entry here.

Labels: oil price

The following letter excerpt appeared in the February 4th, 2008 edition of the Oil and Gas Journal in response to a recent study by Cambridge Energy Resources (CERA) that estimated an average 4.5% annual decline rate in oil production (view the press release accompanying this study here):

"The January 17th 2008 press release by Cambridge Energy Research Associates…reported the world’s oil supplies were to rise to 112 million b/d by 2017. This rise is in spite of CERA’s other conclusion that the world’s oil fields are declining in capacity at the average rate of 4.5%/year. These conclusions are clearly suspect.
"Although it is unlikely that global oil production is likely to drop significantly in the next few years, major sustainable increases are equally unlikely. Given the current global production of 86 million b/d and CERA’s 4.5% decline, global capacity would have to increase by 7.5 million b/d each year for the next 10 years to reach 112 million b/d. This is a total of 75 million b/d of new capacity in 10 years. Even excluding the effect of declining rates, achieving 112 million b/d within a decade represents a massive leap of 26 million b/d in global capacity.
"To put this in perspective, 75 million b/d of new capacity is the equivalent of eight new Saudi Arabias or 14 new Irans in just 10 years. Considering the reality that Saudi Arabia, with 25% of the world’s best proven reserves, is already investing $50 billion to increase its production capacity by 2 million b/d, where does CERA expect the additional 24 million b/d of production capacity to come from, let alone the replacement for the 51 million b/d of declines?"

Dr. Moujahed Al-Husseini, GeoArabia; Manama, Bahrain
Dr. Sadad Al-Husseini, Saudi Aramco (retired); Dharan

Labels: oil supply/demand, peak oil

The answer this article proposes for the current production process of biofuels - yes. While I haven't seen the research in Science yet, this is the first study to take into account land use change as a factor in determining the environmental friendliness of biofuels. But before we throw out the notion of biofuels pay particular attention to the end of this piece, which states, "... [the] focus of the biofuels industry needs a rapid change of direction, away from using cropland — which is where most U.S. biofuels come from today — and toward other sources of starting material. " And, "Environmentally friendly biofuels could also be made from agricultural waste or grasses grown on land that's not suitable for crops. "

This is where the future of biofuels likely rests. On lands that are not currently used for farming (such as a huge swath of the great plains in the US) and where a net carbon gain could be realized by planting cellulosic type crops for biofuels production.

Read the article here.

Labels: biofuels

The article below, from Time magazine, does a wonderful job of framing 1) how the mountain west region is more vulnerable to energy price spikes and climate change, 2) how the mountain west can play an integral (and profitable) role in a new energy future, and 3) how states might provide a "prototype" environment for new energy policies prior to their adoption by the federal government.

Read the article here.

Labels: energy policy, environment, oil prices, renewables

The article below appeared today in the Wall Street Journal, and is right on the mark in regards to the vehicle miles driven issue and its ramifications and causes...


Next Car Debate: Total Miles DrivenFebruary 5, 2008
WSJ – Joseph White
I lead a double life.
Monday through Wednesday, I get to work by walking a block and a half from a high-rise apartment building to a stop on Washington, D.C.'s Metro subway. I emerge three stops later a half block from my office. My commute is pretty close to a zero petroleum experience (never mind how the Metro gets its electricity.)
The rest of the week, I am back in Detroit, where I return to the 20th century. I drive about 20 miles to my office, which is located by the side of a freeway in a suburban "edge city." I sometimes walk to a sub shop for lunch, but it's an arduous slog along busy four lane streets that sometimes have sidewalks, and sometimes don't. To get just about anywhere from my office requires another car trip.
It turns out I am straddling the frontier of the next big debate over the role of the automobile in America. Congress and President Bush late last year agreed to order car makers to boost the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
Last year's energy debate centered around CAFE, the acronym for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. The next phase of the energy/climate change debate over cars will force us to learn another piece of technical jargon: VMT, or vehicle miles traveled.
Car makers and consumers will bear considerable costs to switch to a fleet of cars that meets the 35 mgp CAFE goal. But that might not result in a significant reduction in U.S. petroleum consumption or cut the CO2 we add to the atmosphere if we keep driving more and more miles.
From 1977 to 2001, the number of miles driven every year by Americans rose by 151% -- about five times faster than the growth in population, according to data compiled for a 2006 report to the U.S. Department of Transportation written by Stephen Polzin, a transportation researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The reasons for the big growth in miles traveled are pretty obvious if you don't live in the center of a big city endowed with functioning public transport. To make space for ever larger suburban homes, housing developers pushed further and further from city centers and shopping areas. New neighborhoods often had street layouts cluttered with cul de sacs that forced people to drive farther to get to main roads or stores. Local zoning laws -- reflecting the preferences of residents -- tended to separate commercial and residential uses, and single family from multi-family dwellings.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the money spent on transportation infrastructure was directed to building more and bigger highways. We could have subsidized bullet trains and more light rail systems, but we didn't.
Now, many of the environmentalists, politicians and scientists who made the case for boosting vehicle fuel efficiency are turning their attention to the problem of how much we drive -- and the legacy of 20th century land use and transportation choices.
Just how much more driving Americans will do is a matter of some debate. Higher gas prices, changes in demographics, and a recent upturn in urban redevelopment aimed at luring empty nesters back to city neighborhoods all could result in vehicle miles traveled growing more slowly in the future than it did during the past 30 or so years.
Still, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that miles driven will keep increasing in coming years, and by 2030 could grow by 59% compared with 2005 levels -- still outpacing population growth, though not by as much in the last three decades of the past century. That means even though we'll be driving vehicles that slurp less petroleum per mile, carbon dioxide emissions could grow by as much as 41%, according to a report titled "Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change," published by the Urban Land Institute.
Deron Lovaas, a transportation researcher with the Natural Resources Defense Council, predicts that the debate over how to curb driving will come to the fore next year, when Congress is scheduled to debate a massive bill to fund transportation projects using federal gasoline tax revenue. The NRDC and other environmental groups, fresh from their victory in the fuel-efficiency debate, are turning their attention to issues such as reforming land use rules to promote denser development and concentrating more public spending on better mass transit systems for metro areas, he says.
Meanwhile, the Energy Department, in response to a 2005 congressional mandate, has enlisted an arm of the National Academy of Sciences to study how travel behavior will change as people live in communities that are designed to have different services closer to their homes, and more homes closer together.
How all this will affect the experience of driving and what we want to drive is a problem that's starting to keep executives of big car companies up at night. If you live the way I do in Washington, you don't really need a $35,000, all-wheel drive luxury wagon. On the other hand, the challenge of dictating to Americans where and how they should live is a problem that will likely keep politicians up at night. There's a reason why so many of us live in big single-family houses, and it's not because living in a small apartment wasn't available as an alternative.As for me, I think it's time for a pair of new shoes.

Labels: efficiency, energy policy