BACK TO ENERGY

This blog site began with renewable energy, added the environment, then expanded in all other directions because of my book, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.   Today, back to energy, and mostly from Energy Matters, soundbites from the American Energy Society.

• Top 5 hot topics at the end of 2022
• Energy security.
• U.S. policy successes.
• Hydrogen.
• Transmission/pipeline infrastructure.
• Tie:  liquified natural gas and fusion.

• 
  Five years ago (end of 2017) it was:
• President Trump.
• U.S. LNG production.
• Battery storage.
• Smart-grids.
• Autonomous vehicles.

• 
  Here are the top stories this past year.
• January.
• There are 13 new lithium gigafactories under construction, just in the U.S., causing a supply imbalance.
• Solar power accounts for half of the new electric generating capacity in the U.S.
• 
  February.
• Russian invades Ukraine.
• Global coal markets set new production records.

• 
  March.
• Oil prices jump above $100/barrel.
• Electricity and nickel prices go haywire.
• Countries ignore United Nations emission requirements.

• 
  April.
• The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act takes effect.
• Two Pacific atolls in Kiribati, Abanuea and Tebua Tarawa, permanently disappeared because of rising sea-levels.

• 
  May.
• U.S. largest offshore wind lease in history.
• India and Pakistan set records for highest temperatures (120s F).
• Retail gasoline reaches $4.17 in the U.S.  Saudi Arabia and the UAE refuse to increase petroleum output.

• 
  June.
• The Supreme Court ruled that Congress does not have the authority for the EPA to regulate emissions.
• Utility-scale wind and solar farms set all-time generation records that will be probably be annually broken for many years to come.
• The CO2 atmospheric concentration reaches 421 PPM, the highest in the last million years.

• 
  July.
• Like oil, global natural gas prices are twice as high as this time last year.
• The EU Parliament classifies natural gas and nuclear as GREEN.

• 
  August.
• Inflation Reduction Act passes.
• Annual coal-fired power generation sets all-time record, with China and India accounting for 70% of growth.

• 
  September.
• Germany reverses decision and will allow the continued operation of nuclear.
• 90% of U.S. households have air conditioning.
• For the first time in recorded history, China's carbon emissions will be lower this year than the previous year.  (I thought they broke their all-time high use of coal?)

• 
  October.
• U.S. natural gas production set another record.
• There is 1 terawatt (this is one million Megawatts--a typical nuclear powerplant is about 1000 MW) of utility-scale renewable energy waiting for permitting approval to the U.S. grid.

• 
  November.
• The most significant contribution of COP27 in Egypt?  A massive footprint of traveling delegates.
• Diesel at historical low levels in Eastern Europe and U.S. Northeast.

• 
  December.
• Nuclear had a good year.
• Domestic terrorists shooting transformers occurred in Washington, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas, exposing the vulnerability of our national grid.
• Fusion ignition achieved at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

One word to describe 2022?  Ostrich.

The lighter side of energy:

The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement establishes 2025 as the year the world must reach net-zero carbon emissions, and 2030 as the back-up year in case the initial target year is missed. However, it appears that the public has its own opinions about what year the world must reach net-zero carbon emissions. Below is a list of the most cited years to reach zero- emissions in popular media, along with one exceptional outlier:

1. 2035 (the most cited target year in 2019)

2. 2050 (the most cited target year in 2020)

3. 2065 (a new and suddenly popular target year)

4. 2070 (occasionally cited)

5. 2100 (surprisingly popular) 

Would be funny, except that this is all too real.  Ostrich?

What is the future of the electric vehicle market? I.D.K.

• "Electric car sales hit the brakes." - WSJ

• "Electric cars outsold manual transmissions." – Autoblog

  Or,

• "Investment in EV and autonomy is down 30%." -

  Pitchbook

• "Mobility tech is coming back - companies raised a total of $10.8 billion in Q2, a 7%

  increase year-over-year." – Pitchbook 

• 

  Worst acroymn of any year.   1st place award goes to US President Jimmy Carter's inspired call for public mobilization in pursuit of energy independence: Moral Equivalent Of War ... aka "MEOW.") 

• 
  Worst energy policy of the year (a tie):

• Alabama state legislature passed a law banning protests against pipelines. But ... Alabama has no pipelines.  (But his graphic says they do.)

• Nevada voters approved Question 6 on the November ballot, which amends the state constitution to mandate that Nevada’s electricity providers shift to at least 50% renewable energy by 2030. Nevadans passed the exact same initiative in 2018. It just so happens that, to amend the state constitution, voters must pass an initiative twice. 

The Elon Musk Award

Each year, The Lighter Side of Energy awards "The Elon Musk Award" to ... Elon Musk.

• 
  March 16: The CEO of Tesla sent an email to all employees asking them to defy "shelter-in-place" orders because "Teslas are critical to transportation and energy systems."

• April 30: Musk doubles down by calling stay-at-home orders "fascist." He says, "Give people back their goddamn freedom."

• May 1: "We're letting Mr. Musk know that [Tesla] is not an essential business." - Alameda County Sheriff's Office 

• 
  Streaming a one-hour video generates about 2.15 kg of carbon dioxide emissions, which is the equivalent of driving about five miles. 
• From March through June, ‘Despacito’ music video had five billion views on YouTube. The amount of energy used to download Despacito's total views is enough power for 40,000 average US homes for one year. 

• 
  Why is global demand for air conditioning increasing while demand for space heaters is declining? 
• April 20, 2020

0. You may never see another day like this again. Oil prices went negative on this date in history. In other words, on that day, an oil barrel ... as in, the physical container ... was more valuable than the oil it held. (Note: the previous record-low price was $0.10/bbl ... in 1931.) 

• 
  In 2020, electric vehicles were purchased by an overwhelmingly narrow demographic profile. A vast majority were male, white or Asian American, and between 30 to 49 years old. Almost all of them earn more than $100,000 a year and live in expensive coastal cities. This was the same demographic that purchased EVs in 2019. And every year before that.  China was all Asian.

• 
  In 2020, energy production in the US increased and energy consumption decreased. It also happened in 2019. The last time it happened before that ... 1957. 
• In 2020, China consumed as much coal as the rest of the world combined. It did the same in 2019. 

• 
  Earth set a temperature record in 2020 that broke the previous record set in 2019. 
• In 2020, the wealthiest 10% of people in the world consumed about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom 10%. The same disparity happened in 2019. And in 2018. And so on. (In all cases the difference is greatest in transportation, where the top tenth consumes almost 200 times more fuel than the poorest tenth.) 

• 
  Before the COVID-19 pandemic, emissions of carbon dioxide were rising by about 1% per year over the previous decade. While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, in 2020 there has been an unprecedented decline in CO2 emissions. Specifically, transport CO2 emissions have decreased about 40% worldwide; the power sector is down 22%; industry is negative 17%; even the residential sector saw a small emissions drop of 3%.  But CO2 rose in 2021.

I'll end science day with a Michio Kaku look into our future.

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