I also seems to have read on this site that Paris Hilton had the right idea. This was to combine the energy agendas of Obama and McCain (and Palin), to which I can add cut away the bad edges. Where the latter are concerned, some backward induction might be useful if I could figure out exactly how fossil fuels fit into the new package (together with mmore nuclear and more renewables). Maybe you and your colleagues at Cal (Santa Barbara) could handle that 'mission'.

Cap-and-trade or carbon taxes may very well be a scam but is it really of any great surprise that it's on every government's radar screens these days. Remember there are huge vested interests in fossil fuel use, and whether we like it or not the US will heavily depend on them for quite some time yet. If the game must be rigged somehow in favor of all their competition for the purpose to mostly phase fossil out over time, what other ways do you propose to discourage expansion of fossil use.

This thing with cap and trade is extraordinarily interesting though, because what we have here is important people, serious people, people with real power taking the word of academic hacks that the logic implicit in make-believe economic models from Econ 101 is applicable to billion dollar industries. I was talking to a graduate student today, and he saw the nuttiness in it right away.

Is there anything good about Tam's article. Oh, yes. Everybody needs to be familiar with the oil decline rate, and if it really is 9% (on average), then that is some very bad news, regardless of where the oil price ends up before the macro and financial decline burns out. With that kind of decline rate, discussions of 'peak oil' are superfluous.

The 2008 IEA WEO - The Oil Drum Initial Review (Part 1 of a Series)

However, IES's outlook to 2030 indicates that they expect non-conventional, undiscovered, gas liquids and undeveloped to step in and bring total world production to 103? mm bpd from present about 80. That predicted drop-off in world crude production (blue) though looks dramatic, and they're counting on some enormous development projects. Like about a new S Arabia every year from now to 2030. ??

"Under the reference scenario, production reaches 104 mb/d in 2030, requiring 64 mb/d of gross capacity additions –(six times the current capacity of Saudi Arabia) –to meet demand growth & counter decline. Historically, the 1960's was the decade with the largest capacity addition, with about 30 Mb/d added during that 10 year period. So, the IEA Reference Scenario assumes we need to do as well as the best decade ever over the next 22 years. "

Then what's the point? Why are we confronted with nonsense? The answer is that some powerful people, somewhere, want to be told certain things about the world oil market, and the decision makers at the IEA understand that giving these big shots what they want is the best career move. I'm sure that most people contributing to this forum are aware that you can't run around telling people things that they don't want to hear, even if those things happen to be the truth.

The world is full of people in high-profile positions that tell the public what they or some vested interests want to hear. More often than not it is BS.

As Tam suggests regardless of what happens to oil production rates, the wheels are already spinning to foster much more renewables. The efforts he is part of in California are now being recognized and incentivized on a much wider scale in the US. It would seem our western economies have been stung and shocked once too often by fossil sources. Combining this with the climate change crisis and irate voters are finally getting their politicians to intervene to help foster energy alternatives on a much bigger scale, whether it makes good economic sense today or not. Hopefully for our sake it will in time.

I wouldn’t count nuclear out either. Renewables alone will never be totally practical enough to completely replace many of the large central generators we now have, and in time nuclear will still be there when fossils are disappearing.

Jude said that researchers at Carnegie-Mellon have said that there will be a backlash against.... No Jude, maybe they talked about a backlash at some storefront university on Rodeo Drive, but not at Carnegie Mellon or your university or mine, because talking about backlashes is for fools.

You've got a point. Back in the days before spinning reels, there was a device called the level-wind bait casting reel. Always did feel pretty foolish when I tried toss that Heddon River Runt or Johnson Silver Minnow too far past the lily pads!

The best quote from the IEA's report is that "radical action is necessary at the local" and other levels to mitigate oil supply difficulties and climate change. This is a remarkable statement for the highly conservative IEA. And my rule of thumb is that when an organization makes a statement that is contrary to their usual role or predisposition, it should carry even more weight.

It's great that Obama will be in office soon, because I think he gets these issues much better than the current denizens of the White House. He also said some encouraging things on 60 Minutes last night about not losing focus b/c of temporarily lower oil prices. But anything that Obama and this Congress will get done in the next four years won't come close to being enough. We need "radical" action at all levels of government to deal with these problems. Now.

However, you seem to endorse the "broken window fallacy" as it applies to energy. That is, the more "green jobs" the better. In fact, the FEWER people employed making energy, the better since that leaves more net energy left over for the community to use in general economic activity. And, since the individual worker productivity is higher, they can be better compensated.

As a gedanken experiment, let's put half the population of the US on treadmills to make electricity for the other half. That would maximize "green jobs" but it would result in very little electricity and very low pay for the treadmillers.

While I admittedly have a self-interested point of view, it is generally preferable for society to have a few highly paid nuclear engineers making 20% of the country's juice than to have lots of windmill and solar panel installers making 10% of our megawatt-hours.

Electric energy shortage articles are appearing.

We've been attending PNM electric resource planning meetings for over a year and have become aware that there appear to be electric supply problems looming in the very near future - 1-4 years.

http://home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/pnmelectric/altreport/altreport.htm#altreport

We learned that powder river basin coal contains about 8,800 per POUND.

We're concerned that green energy sources may not have the BTUs IN to have much effect on any future electric supply problem.

PNM forecaster Steve Martin showed us that new construction is the main problem with increased load.

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what will happen.

In terms of going after Big Oi, let me say this about that; if you remember Jimmy Carter's Wind-fall tax on the oil companies. It was intended to accomplish the same thing. If you remember then you will remember that Oil companies stopped drilling. They didn't start in earnest until the that tax was appealed. It was a terrible idea. So it all sounds great, but I wish the new administration luck with that.

It is wonderful to be idealistic, that is why I became a geologist, but these policies should not be at the expense of the taxpayer, me and you.

thanks great article

Little-noticed ballot Issue 1A in Boulder County, CO, passed by nearly 2:1 on November 4th, marking a historic milestone in our country's quest for energy independence/security. Ballot 1A approved $40M in local EE/RE bonds for local residents and businesses who wish to invest in energy efficiency or green energy generation, and who will then pay back the bonds on their property tax each year.

A $40M initial investment in this pilot program could make $2K per house available to 20K homes for such simple steps as increased insulation, CFL lighting, weatherproofing, etc. (http://www.boulderweekly.com/20080918/coverstory.html).

While we desperately need strong and sustained federal leadership regarding strategic energy policy, the actual war will be fought in the trenches of local communities such as Boulder. Congratulations to Boulder County on taking a critical first step in building community awareness and creating a viable path forward.

The Boulder County, CO, ballot win is very interesting. It says a majority of consumers are prepared to pay for conservation and efficiency upgrades to their homes given affordable financing incentives.

Do you think this concept be extended perhaps to finance other conservation and efficiency measures for residential consumers? Like for instance paying for in-home electronic technologies that communicate with the local utility company's smart meter to enable home automation, real-time energy monitoring, and potentially real-time electricity markets for every consumer as Len Gould has proposed in his IMEUC reform ideas tabled on this website. Other measures might be installing solar thermal or PV micro-generators on rooftops of homes to enable some consumers to become independent of the grid, and perhaps even sell excess power back into the grid.

I agree "cap-and-trade" is a sham and the policing of it will be very difficult. No, my friends, we must convert to solar energy as quickly as possible.

You seem to be missing a step when you say "The Boulder County, CO, ballot win is very interesting. It says a majority of consumers are prepared to pay for conservation and efficiency upgrades to their homes given affordable financing incentives."

What the voters are saying is they are fine with energy conservation investments so long as the costs are somehow hidden or displaced to someone else. They would benefit directly by using tax-advantaged municipal loans. The taxes NOT paid on those loans is a hidden subsidy from ALL the nation's taxpayers,

Just another liberal sleight of hand move.

Since when is a loan made to a consumer from ANY source not required to be paid back? A loan is a loan is a loan. If a consumer defaults on paying it back, his property taxes go into arrears and he risks losing his house. The only "subsidy" from the nation's taxpayers is presumably the low interest on it because it is a municipal loan.

But then any government interventionist measures from your perverse point of view is deemed "liberal", isn't it? In my neck of the woods you would be deemed a "neoconservative", in favor of total deregulation and free markets to solve all our problems. Well the anti-neocons are saying just look at the economic mess AND energy mess the neocons have gotten the US and Canada into today. Don’t get me wrong either, I am not an against free markets strictly speaking, but at some point government intervention is the only way to solve some problems when an effort on a national scale is required.

It's no different than marketing of consumer products by big name companies. For example when the latest smart phone comes out (like Apple's IPhone did) or the latest kid's toy (like the Tickle-Me Elmo doll did), when it's mass promoted by a big name company, most consumers bend over backwards to get one because it becomes "fashionable" to have one. Governments promoting new initiatives have the mass marketing power to do exactly the same thing.

For example one of the incentive programs offered through our utility companies is an offer to pick up any 10-year-old or older refrigerator or freezer from a residence and dispose of it free of charge if a consumer is willing to replace it with a newer energy efficient one. Called the "Refrigerator Roundup" program, there have been over 100,000 units disposed of since the program started a couple of years ago, saving the province energy consumption measured in many megawatts.

You clearly didn't read the link and instead graced us with uninformed, ideological blather - which the nation's voters overwhelmingly rejected on Nov. 4th.

What the voters of the clearly-progressive Boulder County said with their 2:1 vote was that borrowing local funds to finance the low-hanging fruit of EE and weatherization is well worth it. The local bonds are paid back annual via increased property taxes, which remain attached to the house if sold until paid back in full.

How do I flag this thread so that I'm informed of additional comments? I don't see an RSS feed. Also suggest a reply-to comment function to support threaded conversations. Thanks. George

The voters in Boulder County are a beacon that tells politicians a very important message - if governments sanction private investment in something that saves consumers money on their energy bills by helping to finance it, then voters will embrace it. This concept could easily be extended to financing many other ideas to help our energy industries mitigate the looming energy crisis in North America.

Case in point. I have personal experience in developing real-time in-home energy display technology that communicates with one of the state-of-the-art smart meters being commercialized on the market, but our utility industry is in most cases not interested in funding any technology in consumers' homes beyond their service meters and AMI systems. This is in spite of the proven conservation benefits of this technology, and the fact a substantial portion of consumers would be willing to PAY for it if they were offered the chance to do so. Our utilities by and large would prefer to enable it for every customer, not commercialize it to only those willing to pay for it. Unfortunately enabling it for every customer would require unpalatable rate increases to pay for it, and a stalemate results without government intervention.

I do think that RE/EE community bonds could be used for some micro-generation and solar hot water in particular. But I'm leery of it working for many of the demand response programs you mentioned - primarily because of mismatched costs vs. benefits.

Community-based RE/EE bonds are inherently focused on improving the local economy. Most energy management solutions are regional or national in scope. Perhaps if we could get Federal Net Metering standards in place it would make more sense. But as it stands right now, utilities' focus is a DEVICE (electric meter), not an integrated energy management solution.

I've also worked on in-home wireless energy management systems, and think that one product that consumers would absolutely LOVE is a simple fridge magnet that communicates with the electric meter. Red = highest electricity pricing, yellow = less outrageous prices, and green = simply painful pricing. In other words, a key problem the industry and federal policy has failed to address is the need for cost-effective and practical feedback mechanisms in support of real time prices.

Demand response programs are indeed costly particularly if they require in-home technologies. The problem with the benefits mismatch I think you are talking about is that the benefits are mostly to the consumer in reduced energy bills, not the utility company. So there is little incentive for the utility company to invest in it.

Real-time in-home energy monitoring has been proven to foster close to 10% sustained reduction in energy consumption on average, some consumers by as much as 20%. For an average consumer spending say $100 per month on electricity on average, many consumer would gladly pay perhaps $100 if the payback time was measured in months. But when the benefits are not realized by the utility company on their balance sheet, they have little interest in investing in it. This is where governments have the potential to help consumers much more by helping utilities invest in it this sort of thing, and then require participating consumers to pay back the investment.

As you correctly point out, consumer feedback mechanisms for real-time electricity pricing is an identified need, and anything that communicates with a smart meter can do this if the utility company sets up their AMI system to push that information down to the meters in the field. The smart meter though is not the only place the real-time price can be found, it can in theory be obtained over the internet directly from the utility company in near real time also.

There are other potential benefits though of communicating with a smart meter. One is simple education of consumers if they can monitor real-time power consumption in watts. Most consumers have no clue how much power the myriad of loads in their house use, but an active real-time power display permits them to see the effects of flipping a switch on or off.

The savings of real-time displays are mostly from a display's ability to track and show a consumer their running energy bill in their face every day since the start of the billing period. Most energy display products have had this capability but they had to be manually programmed with billing rates, which is prone to programming and later display errors. Communicating electronically with a smart meter or utility company in real time alternatively would allow automatic billing rate programming whenever rates change, and eliminate errors.

Smart meters and AMI systems also have the potential to serve as a communications link into other in-home demand response load controls that automatically respond to real-time price changes or requests from the utility company. These could be set up by a consumer to respond or not respond as they see fit, and potentially communicate back to the utility company whether they have in fact responded to a price change or demand response request, and even report local power outages back to the utility that can help with outage management if the display has other communications built into it.

Another but perhaps less important benefit of communicating with a smart meter is the potential ability for utility companies to send text messages to customers in real time.

All of the above capabilities require investments to enable them in AMI systems, and investments in the in-home hardware. The question is investments by who.

I've proposed a Manhattan Project type approach' for several years - or maybe that should be centuries - but not recently, because this suggestion does not seem to have caught on. However, I dont really see how this energy thing can be handled without a comparable effort. Had it not been for the macro-financial meltdown, the price of of oil MIGHT be at or moving toward$200/b now, because it was clear that had the price reached that level, Bill and Sally Sixpack would have given strong consideration to paying it rather than acting in an anti-social fashion. Believe me, if President Obama had found it necessary to deal with an oil price of that magnitude, the words 'change' and 'hope' would have had a different ring.

That brings us to Green Energy initiative. I wish the president and Tam all the luck in the world, but I don't believe in it, and even if it's not 'pie in the sky' and can be pulled off, it could turn out to be a sub-optimal undertaking (cost wise) if it is going to be handled the way that Tam describes it, and the way that he and his academic friends want it. We're talking gut feeling here, and so I could be wrong, but whether I'm wrong or right my way is still the best way. What is my way? Well, I don't really know, except for the first part, which is working with the French to improve third generation nuclear equipment, and make a reality of the fourth generation equipment, and marginally expanding the nuclear base WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT. In the present circumstances, thought isn't necessary.

I made some proposals like this a month or so ago, and was told that I was off my cork, and that I was passing out illusions. Hmm. I can still remember hearing Franklin Roosevelt announcing what the US was going to do to make WW2 come out the way that he wanted, which incidentally happened, despite some fantastic blunders.

In spite of the efforts by California and Tam's circle of people, nuclear is getting the attention you are suggesting. In the nuclear industry it is being described as a renaissance with new demand for nuclear plants emerging responsible for the recent driving up of construction costs.

Nuclear is far from dead. There are plans here in Ontario for expanding big nuclear substantially with a new plant contract to be awarded soon, maybe next year sometime. I also heard there have been several new big nuclear plants tabled for the eastern half of the US, and if approved by the regulators in Washington, construction for several are slated all to start all within 12 months of each other, in 2010 or 2011.

California may not build them within the foreseeable future but it may end up being surrounded by new ones in neighboring states.

As for Obama's energy fantasy.....er.."plan"... as expressed by Tam, where are the specifics? How does one go about providing "short-term relief to American families facing pain at the pump"? Cut the federal gas tax (and subsequently bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund)? Or perhaps eliminate the EPA's requirement for 863 different boutique fuel blends (which by the way would have no impact on the environment whatsoever)? The latter is the obvious responsible choice, but of course will never happen under the current sociofascist government.

"Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future"? See Joseph Somsel's reference to the Broken Window analogy.

"Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined"? The only way to do this in a realistic proactive manner without damaging the economy is to aggressively develop CTL plants to supplement domestic/NA/friendly import sources. Everything else would cause serious damage to the ecomomy. Have we learned nothing from our ethanol debacle?

"Put one million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America"? Another fantasy, put out there during the campaign to suck in all those uneducated/indoctrinated Democrat voters. Who is going to pay for all these cars? Where are we going to get the electricity to power all these cars, especially with the ecofascist pressures being foisted upon coal and nuclear power, e.g. the only realistic sources for future baseload generation? Do you even think in your most extreme fantasies that you can get 1 million people to actually buy these things? You seem to think that it is a good thing to try and transfer an auto's power supply from an on-board source to a centralized souce, a train of thought that runs counter to basic economic principles. Mobile energy users require distributed power sources.

"Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025"? Quite simply, this is impossible.....unless you allow hydropower to count as a renewable, in which case we are already over 10 percent. But to achieve 25 percent will require a whole bunch of new dams to be built at sites currently off limits due to environmental regulations. Now, if you are one of those folks who thinks we can achieve 25 percent striclty from solar and wind......well, you truly are an idiot or a liar, one who sees environmentalism as a means to a more draconian political end.......

"Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050"? Again, this is quite simply an impossibility. IT CAN'T BE DONE!!! Even if we replace all coal-fired and natural gas-fired generation with nuclear (a theoretically possible if not entirely practical construct), that will cut maybe 50 percent of CO2, but of course it will result in an increase of that other more prevalent but entirely ignored greenhouse gas known by some as dihydrogen monoxide, by others as simply water vapor. Let me remind you of this little axiom - in order for the greenhouse effect to take place, you need reflection and refraction. Only water droplets and ice crystals have the necessary surface area to enable this phenomenon in most of our atmosphere. At 385 ppm, there isn't enough CO2 in our atmosphere to even start to form these physical characteristics, even if upper stratospheric temps are low enough to allow dry ice to form.

So where is the other 30 percent cut in CO2 supposed to come from? I'll tell you where - a complete collapse of our remaining industrial sector combined with a severe reduction in peoples' auto purchasing and driving habits, enforced by a multi-times increase in a policing force to enforce such draconain mandates, necessatating a confistication of people's private firearms......

Yep, that's a world I'd like to live in - communism without any supporting industrial infrastructure. So it wouldn't be Soviet-style communism, more like Cuban-style communism!

Good times for all, eh Tam?

Dave Smith Moscow ID USA

Ed

About the new president's energy ambitions. As far as I can tell they fall into line with the ambitions of a majority of American voters. That being the case I'd really and truly love to hear more about his program, and especially a lot of details. Lots and lots, because on the basis of what I know about it now, I am afraid that I have to grade it F - for fruitcake.

I published a comment somewhere remarking on what was done in the way of mobilization and industrialization in the US during WW2, expecting that everyone would throw out their chests and say 'ain't we great'. Instead I had to take guff about the shortage of engineers and canned salmon and things like that. The truth of the matter is that if the United States is a shadow of the US I grew up in, solving this energy thing could be 'a piece of cake'.

Yup, sounds like Len. Ignore EVERY valid point Dave makes and throw an ad hominem bomb over the wall. Try rebutting the points one by one there Len, or is that too much for your limited intelligence to comprehend? (See how fun ad hominem attacks are? And isn't it fun to be on the receiving end of one?) :)

BTW Len, I sincerely hope thinking one day IS in charge instead of hyperbole and political machinations. IF you have an intelligent rebuttal for each of Dave's points above, let's see them, discuss them and perhaps THINKING can rule the day. But if you just want to play grade school games, go back to your playground and leave adult talk to the adults.

Dave Smith doesn’t need Len to argue all his points, the majority of the population has already votged against most of them in electing Obama. Although the average Joe voter may not have been highly educated in casting their votes for Obama, it doesn't take much science or education for anyone over 40 to recognize the status quo is no longer acceptable. Something is very wrong on the climate scene, in our decimated manufacturing economy, and in our energy industries, and the average voter knows that SOMETHING must change. If we all thought like Dave, as Len alludes to, we would just carry on doing most things as before.

In a sense I don't blame Dave that much, the old ways of doing things worked very well for decades in times of booming prosperity in the US. I don't envy Obama's administration and the daunting problems they face, and I only pray they don't make too many huge blunders given they will be fostering much widespread change into uncharted territory.

Start saving your pennies, you're going to need them because the days of plentiful energy being a low-cost bargain are numbered, in the US and elsewhere.

Give us a break, please.

Len, no need to put words in your mouth, they speak loudly and clearly on the page. If you don't like being called out for your snarky comments, don't make them.

Called out?? Ha. Not likely.