Official (Alberta) Oil Discussion Thread

[trew]

Originally Posted by Dan02

As a roofer I can assure you the number of roofs in this city which fit your specifications are approximately 0%. I'm not sure the improbable scenario is what you should be using to try to justify economics.

Cells don't have to be pitched the same as a roof. The top edge can be raised to increase the angle. There's lots of room on that roof to avoid shading from one row to the next.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Locke

Its not a 'caveman mentality.'

Solar doesnt generate enough net energy for its cost.

I'm not saying that we should burn oil forever, thats hilariously misguided, but that is not my point.

All I've said is that trotting solar power out as some sort of viable and renewable alternative is straight up misinformed.

Just on the bent of getting your facts straight.

Do you want to through in some research and links on why solar doesn't produce enough net energy for its costs?

Do you know the EROEI metric? Solar PV returns about 20 to 1 in primary energy equivalent. In secondary energy, electricity modern solar cells return about 10 to 1.

Do you know what synthetic crude returns? About 6 or 7 to 1.

If solar was such a financial loser as you're saying it is then show me some real numbers. I've provided you with many, that solar installations are expanding rapidly and their levelized cost is approaching that of conventional (subsidized) coal generation.

You have provided vague verbiage.

Please expand.

[stampsx2]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Do you want to through in some research and links on why solar doesn't produce enough net energy for its costs?

Um, from the last page.....

http://imgur.com/a/aJ4BG

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

Um, from the last page.....

http://imgur.com/a/aJ4BG

One of the issues when discussing energy is the boundaries and scope.

I'm talking utility scale solar which makes up the vast majority of solar installations and will continue to do so.

Yes your one off example is how solar on a residence may not make economic sense. It depends on the jurisdiction, terms, market framework, costs of other fuels etc.

To point to your example and say, "see all solar investment is a waste" is like pointing to the Oilers and saying all pro hockey is bad.

[stampsx2]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

One of the issues when discussing energy is the boundaries and scope.

I'm talking utility scale solar which makes up the vast majority of solar installations and will continue to do so.

Yes your one off example is how solar on a residence may not make economic sense. It depends on the jurisdiction, terms, market framework, costs of other fuels etc.

To point to your example and say, "see all solar investment is a waste" is like pointing to the Oilers and saying all pro hockey is bad.

Isn't the ontario solar program subsidized? Wouldn't a better arguement be, yes it costs money but it's better for the environment and our health and can possibly reduce long term health care costs?

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

Isn't the ontario solar program subsidized? Wouldn't a better arguement be, yes it costs money but it's better for the environment and our health and can possibly reduce long term health care costs?

That's been the argument all along yes. Although the specific argument in this thread is that the AB government's efforts to provide more incentives for solar energy is a waste of money because solar is a terrible expensive technology.

Again on subsidies, all energy sources are subsidized. The coal fired generators outside of Edmonton have been subsidized with no public health or carbon charges. That's changing, but we need to be intellectually honest about subsidies explicit or implicit.

[Tinordi]

And there's a significant and growing body of evidence that Ontario's renewable energy policies have not been the main cost driver for the rate increases in the last 7 years. Not only that, of the scenarios I've seen, Ontario's renewable energy strategy is looking like it will be a least-cost pathway compared to continued reliance on gas and coal.

The amount of bleating, foot stamping, and mouth foaming on renewables in Ontario is bewildering. If you actually go and read reports by the regulators and independent research you'd find that truth is much further from the narratives that have spun out from it.

[calumniate]

Nice writeup by Bob macdonald on fusion energy

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bo...ower-1.3436210

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Wait...what?

We haven't improved the efficiency of how we burn oil?

Compared to when?

The Ford Model T got 25 MPG over one hundred years ago. The average MPG of all vehicles sold in the US in 2015 was 25 MPG.

Just sayin...

[oilyfan]

It's not about mpg (this is Sierra club drivel), it's about efficiency. And modern cars are certainly way more efficient.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...arbonemissions

But Monbiot then uses preposterous comparisons and dubious "facts". For instance, his assertion that "the average car sold in the States today is less efficient than the 1908 Ford Model T". This is based on a Detroit News report which claims the Model T could achieve 25mpg, and data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which says the average consumption of 2008 "light duty vehicles" (ie cars and light trucks) in the US is 20.8mpg. A reasonable comparison? Not even close.

In what way is fuel consumption a measure of efficiency? Which of these is more efficient: a bus, carrying 50 people, which consumes fuel at 7.3mpg; or a car, carrying four people, which consumes 20.8mpg? In terms of fuel use per passenger per mile, the bus wins by a wide margin.

The Model T has poor weather equipment, poor brakes, poor road-holding, nonexistent secondary safety and a hopeless lack of reliability - not to mention minimal performance. Give any major car manufacturer the chance to build a car to the same specification and it would trounce the Model T for fuel consumption - and generate far fewer harmful emissions.

[OldDutch]

^ There is a bigger arguement here, but saying the average car today it no more efficient than a Model T is plain intellectual dishonesty. It is an emotional arguement plain and simple.

[AcGold]

Intellectual dishonesty is doublespeak, lawyer jibjab, plausible deniability and whatnot. It's a say nothing phrase, why not use actual words that lawyers don't use to manipulate people?

[FurnaceFace]

Somewhat related, I found this article about coal vs solar in India interesting. You could say "well, that's in India" but I think the limitations they find there are interesting when it comes to solar farms.

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/climate-change-in-india/

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

The Ford Model T got 25 MPG over one hundred years ago. The average MPG of all vehicles sold in the US in 2015 was 25 MPG.

Just sayin...

My snowblower has as much HP as a Model T.

Just sayin..

[jayswin]

Haha, wow, when Tinordi gets away from his standard one line drive-by then disappear style, and engages, it certainly shows him in a different light.

And by that I certainly don't mean he's stupid, just more on the same level as many other posters, where as his abrasive one line, non engaging persona would lead you to believe he held much more knowledge than the everyone else.

[photon]

Originally Posted by FurnaceFace

Somewhat related, I found this article about coal vs solar in India interesting. You could say "well, that's in India" but I think the limitations they find there are interesting when it comes to solar farms.

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/climate-change-in-india/

I haven't read it yet, do they go into what an effort it would be to convert from coal to solar?

I remember reading an article about it a few years ago and basically the problem was that to convert they'd need to monopolize the world's output of multiple resources (like concrete, steel) for 25 years or something.

The argument was that Nuclear was at least possible since, while still using lots of steel and concrete, it was far far less per GW.

Anyway it was interesting.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by jayswin

Haha, wow, when Tinordi gets away from his standard one line drive-by then disappear style, and engages, it certainly shows him in a different light.

And by that I certainly don't mean he's stupid, just more on the same level as many other posters, where as his abrasive one line, non engaging persona would lead you to believe he held much more knowledge than the everyone else.

All of which undermines his message which is likely is correct in this instance.

A case study in how to manage your forum persona...

[Tinordi]

Didactic but interesting column by Amory Lovins on the oil industry in terminal decline:

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2016_02_01_...s_disadvantage

Yet as oil prices gyrate, it’s important to understand that underlying trends are shifting too, to oil’s disadvantage. It’s happened before. In the 1850s, whalers—America’s fifth-largest industry—were astounded to run out of customers before they ran out of whales. Over five-sixths of their dominant market (lighting) vanished to competitors—oil and gas both synthesized from coal—in the nine years before Drake struck “rock oil” (petroleum) in Pennsylvania in 1859. Two decades later, Edison’s electric lamp beat whale oil, coal oil, town gas, and John D. Rockefeller’s lighting kerosene. Today in turn, most traditional lighting is being displaced by white LEDs, which each decade get 30x more efficient, 20x brighter, and 10x cheaper. By 2020 they should own about two-thirds of the world’s general lighting market...

...Oil companies worry about climate regulation, but they’re even more at risk from market competition. The oil that’ll be unburnable for climate reasons is probably less than the oil that’ll be unsellable because efficiency and renewables can do the same job cheaper. An oil business that sputters when oil’s at $90 a barrel, swoons at $50, and dies at $30 will not do well against the $25 cost of getting U.S. mobility—or anyone else’s, since the technologies are fungible—completely off oil by 2050. That cost, like the $18 per saved barrel to make U.S. automobiles uncompromised, attractive, cost-effective, and oil-free, is a 2010–11 analytic result; today’s costs are even lower and continue to fall...

In short, like whale oil in the 1850s, oil is becoming uncompetitive even at low prices before it became unavailable even at high prices. Today’s oil glut, we hear, is caused by fracking, a bit by Canadian tar sands, and most of all by the Saudis’ awkward (though impeccably logical) unwillingness to give up their market share to higher-cost competitors. But less noticed, and equally important, is that demand has not lived up to irrationally exuberant forecasts.

Gasoline demand has trended down in the U.S. for the past eight years and in Europe for the past ten, for fundamental and durable reasons of technology, urban form, shifting values, and superior ways to get mobility and access. Suppliers have invested to supply more oil than customers want to buy. Had crimped budgets not curtailed investment budgets, oil companies would still be building pre-stranded production assets as fast as they could.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Just on the bent of getting your facts straight.

Do you want to through in some research and links on why solar doesn't produce enough net energy for its costs?

Do you know the EROEI metric? Solar PV returns about 20 to 1 in primary energy equivalent. In secondary energy, electricity modern solar cells return about 10 to 1.

Do you know what synthetic crude returns? About 6 or 7 to 1.

If solar was such a financial loser as you're saying it is then show me some real numbers. I've provided you with many, that solar installations are expanding rapidly and their levelized cost is approaching that of conventional (subsidized) coal generation.

You have provided vague verbiage.

Please expand.

You might get farther if you stopped pouting and stomping your feet any time someone dared not to take you at your word.

It is fascinating to me that you continue to focus on the solar as a financial loser argument when the majority of Locke's argument was the upstream environmental costs. Given how hardcore of an environmentalist you seem to paint yourself as being, it is rather interesting to see you continually ignore the elephant in the room to focus on the mouse.

However, responding to one of your sets of figures, I would appreciate it if you show your work with respects to your EROEI figures. Because most of what I am finding online suggests "oil and gas" at >11-15 for Canada (depending on whether you look at conventional only, or include oil sands), up to over 30 for other jurisdictions that still have easily extractable oil. You, of course, specifically noted "synthetic crude", which is obviously different. And knowing you, that specific usage was not accidental. The various tables I have seen put solar pv in wide ranges noting anywhere from 3.5 to 12, though the most common forms of solar pv used today trend toward the high end of that range.

[puckedoff]

Gasoline demand has trended down in the U.S. for the past eight years and in Europe for the past ten, for fundamental and durable reasons of technology, urban form, shifting values, and superior ways to get mobility and access. Suppliers have invested to supply more oil than customers want to buy. Had crimped budgets not curtailed investment budgets, oil companies would still be building pre-stranded production assets as fast as they could.

Good thing there is a 'rest of the world'