Energy News
NPR’s Rediscovering Natural Gas By Hitting Rock Bottom
This is a transcript of the NPR piece on shale gas. Please follow the link to the associated audio.
Amid all the talk of alternative energy sources like wind power or solar, there’s an old-fashioned fuel that might be even more important. Natural gas is cleaner than other fossil fuels and it’s produced in the USA. This week, we’re going to take a look at the role of natural gas in our energy future.
NPR’s Tom Gjelten is helping us. He’s in the studios. Tom, good morning.
TOM GJELTEN: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: Okay. Many people already use natural gas to heat our homes. What are the possibilities of doing something else with it?
GJELTEN: Well, for a long time gas was not taken all that seriously. I mean, it was a nice fuel but the view was that there just wasn’t enough of it to really get excited about it, and that’s what changed. It now looks like we have way more natural gas in this country than we’d thought we did. This could change the whole energy picture.
It’s the idea that there is more supply of natural gas than we thought.
INSKEEP: Were there new discoveries?
GJELTEN: No. What we’re talking about is actually gas that we’ve known has been there all along, but it’s embedded in rock, shale rock, a mile below the surface of the earth. And until just a few years ago, it didn’t seem practical to get the gas out of the rock. So, when we tallied gas reserves in the country, we didn’t even bother to count the gas that’s in that shale rock.
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Big Coal’s Campaign of Lies – by Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone
It took Congress more than three decades to consider a major initiative to ward off global warming, but only a few days to kill it. In June, the Senate rejected the Climate Security Act, which would have put America on track to slash greenhouse-gas emissions by 71 percent by 2050. The bill was specifically crafted to soften the blow to the nation’s coal industry — coal generates more than a third of all carbon-dioxide pollution — by providing coal-burning power companies with $300 billion in subsidies and outright giveaways. But the lavish incentives did nothing to prevent Big Coal from going all out to defeat the measure; one industry-funded TV ad implied that if Congress passed the bill, “we may have to say goodbye to the American way of life.” In the end, virtually every senator from a state where coal is mined or burned voted against the measure.
The fight over the climate bill underscores the biggest obstacle to ending America’s self-destructive addiction to fossil fuels. Despite record profits, the oil industry knows the end is near and is madly diversifying into wind, solar and other energy sources. The auto industry, which has long opposed solutions to global warming, is so weakened by sinking profits and its shortsighted bet on SUVs that it’s hardly a factor in the debate anymore. But coal knows that global warming represents the end of an era: There is simply no cost-effective way to burn coal without cooking the planet. The industry is currently blanketing the nation with ads for “clean coal,” hoping to dupe consumers into thinking that coal is a 21st-century fuel, but it’s all PR bullshit. At the moment, there is only one carbon-containment strategy that works for Big Coal: delay, delay, delay.
Read more on Big Coal’s campaign of lies.
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NPR’s Look at Unconventional Shale Gas Plays
Thanks to Mark D. for sending along this story:
NPR has posted an awesome look at drilling areas of natural gas. Linked to this map are some really interesting stories about natural gas and its potential. Note the smaller size of the Haynesville. Due to its organic content, the Haynesville discovery has the most gas of any of the shale finds in the country. Imagine if the Haynesville was the size of the Marcellus.
Check out:
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Natural gas, lignite collide in Northwest Louisiana
A decision expected within days from Louisiana Conservation Commissioner Jim Welsh could impact the future of lignite mining in DeSoto and Red River parishes and the pocketbooks of electricity customers in the region.
Welsh hopes it doesn’t come down to that. He’s encouraging a compromise among the oil and gas operators and lignite miners — both of which have lease agreements for natural resources buried in the Earth in the same location — before he releases a formal order.
While the rules and regulations regarding lignite mining are unchanged since it started in DeSoto Parish in the 1980s, the Haynesville Shale natural gas development that is extended into the permitted and leased mining area brought the potential conflict to the forefront.
“I’m optimistic that there can be a compromise. It’s a problem that we’ve had for a long time, but it’s recently come to a point that something has to be worked out,” Welsh said Friday. “Both have rights to do their business. But the situation is where the answers need to be worked out with the companies.”
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Break the Curse of Oil Addiction – Editorial
When T. Boone Pickens framed U.S. energy dependence on foreign oil as a national security issue, people couldn’t agree fast enough. He launched an aggressive advertising campaign pushing wind and solar power as an alternative to imported oil in 2008.
With gasoline prices hovering at $4 a gallon and driving up the cost of anything that had to be shipped, plus the skyrocketing cost of fuel oil causing utility bill spikes, Pickens’ message resonated.
Since then, gasoline prices have dropped, U.S. consumers aren’t feeling as pinched at the pump, and the health care debate now commands the national attention.
As Pickens reminded American-Statesman editors and reporters this week, the national security threat posed by U.S. dependence on oil produced by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has not waned.
Neither has his interest in lessening that dependence. So Pickens is back on the stump, pushing legislation that would provide tax incentives for freight haulers to replace their diesel-burning 18-wheelers with rigs powered by natural gas.
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Natural Gas Hits a Roadblock in New Energy Bill
HOUSTON — The natural gas industry has enjoyed something of a winning streak in recent years. It found gigantic new reserves, low prices are encouraging utilities to substitute gas for coal, and cities are switching to buses fueled by natural gas.
But its luck has run out in Washington, where the industry is having trouble making its case to Congress as it writes an energy bill to tackle global warming.
For all its pronouncements that gas could be used to replace aging, inefficient coal-fired power plants — and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process — lawmakers from coal-producing states appear committed to keeping coal as the nation’s primary producer of power.
Those influential lawmakers, from both parties, say that new technologies under development to capture and bury emissions of coal are a better bet than gas for long-term solutions to climate change.
The difference of opinion is about more than what is best for the environment, of course. Industry profits are riding on the outcome of the discussion — a rich mix of politics, environment, science and business.
A climate-change bill that passed the House in June, intended to cap greenhouse gas emissions, delivered benefits to renewable fuels like wind and solar and strengthened building codes to conserve energy.
But the cost of emitting carbon dioxide emissions under the terms of the bill remained at levels that would continue to provide a price advantage for coal in many regions of the country.
The Senate is planning to begin writing its own bill later this month.
“The Senate is more open to natural gas as a transition fuel than the House was,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, “but the senators from the coal states who are crucial votes are going to want first consideration for coal.”
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Alabama dealing with TN coal ash
In an article released today by the New York Times, journalist Shiaila Dewan explores the growing fear that Alabamans are trying to cope with: residue from the Tennessee coal ash spill.
In December of 2008, a coal plant operated by the TVA experienced a catastrophic failure of an ash storage system which allowed over one billion tons of muddy sludge to violently escape from its containing wall and destroy hundreds of acres of property. It would also contaminate a nearby tributary of the Tennessee River. While this event is certainly the largest of its kind, it’s certainly not the only occurrence. Coal ash is regarded by some (including experts interviewed in Haynesville) to be similar to nuclear waste in that it is hazardous to the surrounding population and it must be stored indefinitely. When not disposed of properly, coal ash sludge could endanger the lives and property of nearby citizens. Yet another strike on the long list of negative impacts of coal on our society and one more arguing point in favor of the United States (and the world!) getting off coal as soon as possible.
Now some 9 months into the cleanup of the Tennessee sludge spill, folks in Alabama are being paid to allow the storage of this sludge in their state- and it’s causing an uproar.
-Chris Lyon, Editor of Hayensville
To read the entire NY Times article, click here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/us/30ash.html?_r=1&hp
Photo courtesy of Brian Stansberry.
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Haynesville Shale Documentary’s Bill McKibben on Steven Colbert!
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
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A New Test for Business and Biofuel
IGNACIO, Colo. — An unusual experiment featuring equal parts science, environmental optimism and Native American capitalist ambition is unfolding here on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in southwest Colorado.
With the twin goals of making fuel from algae and reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases, a start-up company co-founded by a Colorado State University professor recently introduced a strain of algae that loves carbon dioxide into a water tank next to a natural gas processing plant. The water is already green-tinged with life.
The Southern Utes, one of the nation’s wealthiest American Indian communities thanks to its energy and real-estate investments, is a major investor in the professor’s company. It hopes to gain a toehold in what tribal leaders believe could be the next billion-dollar energy boom.
But from the tribe’s perspective, the business model here is about more than business. “It’s a marriage of an older way of thinking into a modern time,” said the tribe’s chairman, Matthew J. Box, referring to the interplay of environmental consciousness and investment opportunity around algae.
The tribe, whose reservation sits atop one of the world’s richest fields of natural gas from coal-bed methane, had to surmount many hurdles to find an alternative energy idea it considered suitable.
For example, any project that would displace land used for growing food was tossed out for philosophical reasons: the Southern Utes’ belief that energy and food should not compete in a world where people still starve. That eliminated discussion of corn-based ethanol.
And whatever was chosen had to be at least technically feasible, if not immediately profitable.
The 1,400-member tribe also has a long history of herbal medicine use that made growing algae for fuel appealing, Mr. Box said. “It reminded people of herbs that are helpful here, like bear root, which is harvested in the mountains,” he said.
The Colorado State professor, Bryan Willson, who teaches mechanical engineering and is a co-founder of the three-year-old company Solix Biofuels, said working with the Southern Utes on their land afforded his company advantages that would have been impossible in mainstream corporate America. The tribe contributed almost one-third of the $20 million in capital raised by Solix, free use of land and more than $1 million in equipment.
“If you’re going with strict venture capital, they’re looking for a blistering return on capital in three to five years,” Dr. Willson said. “The Utes have a very long economic view. They’re making decisions now for future generations as opposed to the next quarter, and that is just fundamentally different.”
But the tale of any start-up is written between the margins of inspiration and hard-edged reality.
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EPA economy ratings vs. the GM Volt
What a difference a number makes.
The projected EPA economy rating of the GM Volt has set off a storm of criticism across the Internet. While a number of blogs played the story straight (1, 2), the Good Math Blog attacked it as nonsense, which got picked up by Reddit. Critics say that the actual fuel economy seen by drivers could be as low as 50 MPG (the claimed figure for charge-sustaining mode), or as high as infinity. So who’s right?
Basically, they all are. The EPA city-cycle measures the Volt’s characteristics about as well as a square peg fits a round hole. In this mess, the number you get depends how you trim the test to fit the car.
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