Tag Archives: energy

Be More Like Europe

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Maybe we should, at least in one area.

The Strasbourg-based European Parliament passed an amendment to limit the amount of transport fuel, such as gasoline and diesel, that can be obtained from food and energy crops to 6% of total energy consumed for transport by 2020, from 10% previously. … The new limit is meant to ease concerns about the amount of agricultural land that is turned over to growing crops for biofuel use….

There shouldn’t be any requirement, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

Corinne Lepage, the lawmaker driving the legislation [says] “Taking indirect land-use change into account is important for the integrity of the EU climate-change policy.”

Because, among other concerns, “food prices could rise if crops are diverted from the dinner plate to the fuel tank.”  Our…environmentalists…need to understand this.  It diverts, here in the US, actual food crops—like corn—from the mouths of our poor to the gas tanks of “environmentalists'” cars.  And it jacks up the costs of food crops that substitute for corn.  And it jacks up the price of food that eats corn—like cows, pigs, and chickens.

Be like Europe.  At least in this.

“All of the Above” is just Obamatalk

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Kelly David Burke has the sorry tale in a recent Fox News article.

The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres….

I’ll elide Burke’s poor arithmetic—the 600,000 acre reduction amounts to a reduction of a bit under 50%–he is, after all, a journalist; his point remains valid: this is an enormous reduction in oil resource availability.

President Barack Obama’s BLM has its excusesrationale all lined up though.  It’s

…not against oil shale and tar sands development, but will restrict the amount of public lands available for leasing until the processes are proven, and proven safe.

Never mind that Canada has been successfully and safely extracting oil from shale and from tar sands for decades, and US companies have been extracting from shale for nearly as long with similar success and safety.

This is, in the end, just part of Obama’s effort to artificially suppress the price of otherwise unviable solar and wind energy sources with enormous subsidies and loans while trying to restrict the supply of oil (and gas) in an attempt to price these sources up into the stratospheric range of even the subsidized “green” energy…sources.

It’s all of a piece with his decision elsewhere to slow walk oil leases and drilling permits.

We’re Capable of So Much More

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In a related article, I described how even Progressive Europe recognizes the retreat of the US from the global stage and from our responsibilities as a major power.  Yet we have the economic and resource capacity to do so much better, as Spiegel International Online notices.  Fracking provides an example of both our capacity and of our willful impotence.

The United States is sitting on massive natural gas and oil reserves that have the potential to shift the geopolitical balance in its favor.  Worries are increasing in Russia and the Arab states of waning influence and falling market prices.

And

American drilling experts began using a method called “fracking,” with which oil and gas molecules can be extracted from dense shale rock formations.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the United States will replace Russia as the world’s largest producer of natural gas in only two years.  The Americans could also become the world’s top petroleum producers by 2017.

And

…the boom could generate 600,000 new jobs, and some experts even believe that up to 3 million new jobs could be created in the coming years.

And

…the United States will benefit the most from the development of shale gas and oil resources.  …the political threat potential of oil producers like Iran will decline. Optimists assume that, in about 15 years, the United States will no longer have to send any aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf to guarantee that oil tankers can pass unhindered through the Strait of Hormuz….

However.  There’s always a however.

President Barack Obama’s EPA continues to manufacture “investigations” of ground water pollution from fracking where none exists—their Wyoming fiasco, for instance.  His EPA continues its war on oil, gas, and coal by instituting output regulations that Congress already had rejected.

Obama continues to slow-walk oil and gas drilling permits on Federal lands and at offshore sites.  He has moved to cancel unused oil leases, never caring that the lessees had been reluctant to act on their leases due to uncertainty over Obama’s handling of hydrocarbons generally.

Obama even is slow-walking approval (and that approval is not a foregone conclusion, even now) of the Keystone XL Pipeline project, now that all environmental objections have been cleared with Nebraska’s approval of an alternate route.  This pipeline doesn’t directly address the resource explosion that fracking provides, but it remains symptomatic of his administration’s disdain for practical energy self-sufficiency.

It’s very unclear whether we will be allowed to realize the fruits of this technology and to bring into use these vast energy resources.

When even the Courts

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…ridicule Progressives.

From Bloomberg comes this item.  Our illustrious regulatory engine, the Environmental Protection Agency, has (rather, had) a rule that required refiners to mix 8.65 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol into their gasoline output last year.  In light of the fact that last year’s actual US production was 20,000 (!) gallons, all of which was exported to Brazil, the American Petroleum Institute went to court to get the mandate overturned.

Last week, the DC Circuit agreed.  In the court’s ruling is this gem:

Apart from their role as captive consumers, the refiners are in no position to ensure, or even contribute to, growth in the cellulosic biofuel industry.  “Do a good job, cellulosic fuel producers.  If you fail, we’ll fine your customers.”

Of course, the court also was serious in its ruling.  Citing Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n v. Nat’l

Mediation Bd in the bowlegs, the court noted

(“Were courts to presume a delegation of power absent an express withholding of such power, agencies would enjoy virtually limitless hegemony….”).  Yet that is precisely what EPA appears to have done in projecting cellulosic biofuel production for 2012.

The case is American Petroleum Institute v U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the ruling can be seen here.

Naturally, in response to the ruling, Progressive whining has begun.  Bloomberg reports this, as well.

As a result of the ruling and uncertainty, investments in the nascent industry may fall, said Michael Frohlich, a spokesman for Growth Energy, which represents ethanol producers.

“It dampens any future investment, and creates a further level of vulnerability[.]”

Never mind that if the “nascent industry” can’t stand without government favoritism, it’s not ready for market in the first place.  But the collective views of individual Americans—free market imperatives—don’t count.  Only the collective views of Big Government do.

Well, Isn’t This Special?

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The British newspaper The Sun ran this interesting article the other day.  It seems the Brits have found a way to make petrol—gasoline to us colonials—from thin air.

[Air Fuel Synthesis] from the north of England has developed “air capture” technology which creates synthetic petrol with only air and electricity.

The technology was presented to a London engineering conference this week.

It mixes sodium hydroxide with carbon dioxide before zapping the resulting sodium carbonate with electricity, to form pure carbon dioxide.

At the same time, hydrogen is produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.

The carbon dioxide and hydrogen are then used to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.

Wait, what?

This process works on air, but it adds sodium hydroxide to the mix?  But that’s minor; it’s not at all unusual to identify a process with a primary source, while adding additional chemicals along the way.

The really confusing part, to me, is this.  This process takes CO2 as an input and then messes with it to get, as a goal, CO2 as an output?  And then, to get the hydrogen, the process captures water vapor from the air and electrolyzes that?  I confess, I don’t understand.

Aside from processing carbon dioxide to get carbon dioxide, unless things have changed a bit since I took high school chemistry, reacting sodium hydroxide (NaOH) with carbon dioxide (CO2) generally produces “the resulting sodium carbonate” (Na2CO3) and…wait for it…water.  No need to collect water vapor with a dehumidifier.  Unless they wanted more water than that reaction would produce.  But that reaction produces a lot of water.

I’m no engineer, but a “breakthrough” isn’t what I see here.

Do the Brits do April Fool’s in mid-October?