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Two years on and Japan returns to nuclear power

March 11, 2013

It is two years today since the Great 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami and the meltdown at 3 reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

It was the most powerful known earthquake ever to have hit Japan, and one of the five most powerful earthquakes in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900. The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres in Miyako in Tōhoku’s Iwate Prefecture and which, in the Sendai area, travelled up to 10 km inland. The earthquake moved Honshu (the main island of Japan) 2.4 m  east and shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm  and 25 cm.

On 12 September 2012, a Japanese National Police Agency report confirmed 15,881 deaths, 6,142 injured and 2,668 people missing across twenty prefectures, as well as 129,225 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 254,204 buildings ‘half collapsed’, and another 691,766 buildings partially damaged. … 

The tsunami caused nuclear accidents, primarily the level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex, and the associated evacuation zones affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.

In the knee-jerk reaction to the Fukushima accident all Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors in operation were shut down. Ongoing nuclear power plant projects were suspended. The global debate was more an emotional wave rather than rational discussion. The fear was real of course but what was generally ignored was that while the earthquake and tsunami killed some 18,000 the Fukushima accident did not cause any direct radiation related fatalities. The reality is that the Fukushima reactors were designed in the 1960’s and yet managed to survive the magnitude 9.1 earthquake but they could not cope with and succumbed to the massive tsunami. After the earthquake the reactors were actually shut down – automatically and in good order – but the emergency power to the cooling systems were knocked out by the subsequent tsunami. The failure was a failure of anticipating and designing for a tsunami that was as large and as powerful as it was. Tsunami’s as large as the 2011 event have occurred in Japan roughly every 1000 years. The Fukushima failure was not so much a fault of the nuclear plant as the failure of the designers in anticipating a sufficiently large tsunami within the lifetime of the plant.

But two years on, some rationality is returning to the debate. Two reactors have been turned back on and construction has gingerly been restarted on the new 1383 MW advanced boiling-water reactor at Oma.

Map credit Washington Post

Washington Post: 

In the aftermath of March 2011 meltdowns in Fukushima that contaminated 700 square miles with radiation and forced 150,000 to flee their homes, most never to return, Japan’s utility companies paused nearly all nuclear-related projects. The accident sparked a global debate about nuclear power, but it was especially fierce in Japan, where all 50 operable reactors were taken offline and work was halted on three new plants where building had been underway.

But two of the existing reactors are back in action, and the resumption of construction at the Oma Nuclear Power Plant here — a project that broke ground in 2008 and was halted by the operator, J-Power, after the accident — marks the clearest sign yet that the stalemate is breaking. ….. 

At the national level, Japan has cycled through three prime ministers since Fukushima — the first fiercely anti-nuclear, the next moderately anti-nuclear, the current one cautiously pro-nuclear. The previous ruling party tried last fall to plot a nuclear phaseout by the 2030s, but anti-nuclear advocates say the pledge was watered down to the point of being meaningless. The new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, plans this month to convene the latest in a series of expert panels to help overwrite the phaseout plan, and its makeup suggests that he prefers a role for nuclear power.

Japan’s anti-nuclear movement, which swelled after the Fukushima accident, could still play a role, but it is politically disorganized and has grown quieter in recent months. Individual activists cite the resumption at Oma as controversial but note that the move did not prompt mass-scale protests. ….. 

 

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UK has enough shale gas for a millenium

February 9, 2013

Shale gas reserve estimates keep on increasing. We have the peculiar situation where Russia and some of the large oil companies attack shale gas only because some of their existing business may be threatened. But they all also have strong positions with shale gas. But what is clear is that “peak gas” has been postponed by several hundred years and there is no energy crisis in sight.

Peak Gas will never come

The Times has seen advance copies of the British Geological Survey’s new estimates of shale gas reserves in the UK:

Britain could have enough shale gas to heat every home for 1,500 years, according to new estimates that suggest reserves are 200 times greater than experts previously believed. The British Geological Survey is understood to have increased dramatically its official estimate of the amount of shale gas to between 1,300 trillion and 1,700 trillion cubic feet, dwarfing its previous estimate of 5.3 trillion cubic feet.

According to GWPF:

According to industry sources, the revised estimates will be published by the Government next month, fuelling hopes that new “fracking” techniques to capture trapped resources will result in cheaper energy bills.

It is thought that it will be technically possible to recover up to a fifth of this gas, making Britain’s shale rocks potentially as bountiful as those in the US. Experts stressed that it was still much too early to say how much of the gas it would be economic to get out of the ground to heat homes and help to generate electricity. 

In an interview with The Times today, Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, tries to downplay hopes of a shale gas glut in the UK pushing down household heating bills, which are at record highs. “It is not the golden goose. The experts are clear that they do not expect this to have a major impact on the gas price.”

The UK Onshore Operators Group (UKOOG), which also represents other onshore oil and gas producers, is aiming to win over public opinion about the shale gas industry, in particular by countering claims that the process of fracking poses an environmental menace.

The shale gas industry is gearing up for a year of intense activity after the Government lifted an 18-month moratorium on fracking in December. The ban was imposed in May 2011 after Cuadrilla Resources, the explorer backed by Lord Browne of Madingley, the former chief executive of BP, set off dozens of earth tremors when it began fracking on sites near Blackpool. The company intends to resume fracking this summer to find out more about the size and commercial potential of its reserves.

Other explorers sitting on vast shale gas deposits will also apply for fracking licences soon. Government officials are preparing to hold an onshore oil and gas licensing round this year which could result in more parts of the UK being opened up for shale exploration.

 

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Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Gas, UK | 1 Comment »

US approves sale of taxpayer subsidised battery maker to China

January 30, 2013
Image representing A123 Systems as depicted in...

Image via CrunchBase

Not just irony but also further evidence that subsidies are fundamentally unsound.

Back in October last year the US lithium-ion battery maker, A123 Systems, filed for bankruptcy.

10/15/2012: A123 Systems, which had received a $249 million grant from the U.S. government, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, giving Republicans fresh ammunition to attack the Obama administration’s subsidies for green energy.

The filing came after the lithium-ion battery maker’s $465 million rescue deal with Chinese auto parts supplier Wanxiang Group collapsed, hobbled by “unanticipated and significant challenges,” A123 said on its website. A123 has agreed to sell its automotive operations, including two factories in Michigan, for $125 million to Johnson Controls Inc, a leading battery supplier and another recipient of federal green subsidies.

….. The U.S. Department of Energy allotted about $90 billion for various clean-energy programs through the administration’s stimulus package. Of that, at least $813 million went to energy companies that eventually filed for bankruptcy, including A123, Solyndra, Beacon, Abound Solar and EnerDel.

But Wanxiang Group persevered and the US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) has granted its approval for a revised deal to go ahead. In addition to the automotive business divested to Johnson Controls, all government related business was also divested by the bankrupt A123 Systems to Navita Systems (at a fire-sale price of $2.25 million).

Bloomberg: Wanxiang Group Co., China’s biggest auto-parts maker, won approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to buy most of the assets of A123 Systems Inc. (AONEQ), the bankrupt electric-car battery maker backed with U.S. government funds.

Approval from CFIUS, as it is known, was the final hurdle that Wanxiang needed to overcome to complete the deal. The federal interagency group led by the Treasury Department was reviewing the sale after members of Congress expressed national- security concerns over allowing a foreign competitor to obtain the technology developed with government backing. 

…… “Nothing provided by CFIUS has changed my opinion that the core technology developed by A123,” and the related intellectual property, “can be separated along A123’s business lines,” said Representative Bill Huizenga, a Republican representing Michigan’s 2nd Congressional District, in an e- mailed statement. “American taxpayers should not be funding technology that will in turn be used in competition against American companies,” he said, adding that he will look into legislation to prevent sales of taxpayer-funded “sensitive technologies” to foreign companies in the future.

….. “The Energy Department’s Recovery Act grant to A123 was used for the construction of brick and mortar advanced battery manufacturing facilities at two Michigan locations,” Bill Gibbons, a department spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement. The funds weren’t used for the company’s research and development of battery technology, he said.

“The purchase of these assets includes the Energy Department’s requirement that the plants and equipment partially paid for by the Recovery Act stay in Michigan and continue to operate, generating job opportunities for American workers,” Gibbons said.

….. As part of the purchase Wanxiang, based in Hangzhou, China, will get A123’s cathode powder plant in China and its share of a joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., called Shanghai Advanced Traction Battery Systems Co., in addition to the battery technology used in Fisker Automotive Inc.’s Karma sedan. Fisker, A123’s main customer, said it was awaiting the sale of the company’s Michigan plant so it could resume production of the $103,000 plug-in Karma sedan. A123, whose automotive business supplies electric-car batteries to about a dozen customers, has facilities in the Michigan cities of Livonia and Romulus.

The A123 Systems bankruptcy itself raised some questions about who had walked away with all the benefits. In a sense the subsidies have served the purpose of those investors who got away in time! For the US this now appears to be a damage control exercise to stop the bleeding where some local jobs are temporarily “saved” but the long term benefits are all to the account of Wanxiang. If indeed A123 Systems used government funds only for the building of factories and not for R & D, then Wanxiang have – fairly cheaply – bought themselves a foothold into the US market But if the US market develops – which it may not – then some or all of these jobs will eventually move to a low-cost country. Wanxiang has in any case bought themselves a technology cheaply which may address a world-wide market. But the jobs that creates will not be in the US. If the technology fails or the US market does not develop, then Wanxiang can just walk away from the US but they will retain the technology for whatever it is worth.

Paradoxically the only way in which the US taxpayer wins is if the technology is a dud and the deal represents future losses and liabilities being exported to Wanxiang!

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Posted in Automobiles, Business, China, Energy, Engineering, Technology, US | Comments Off on US approves sale of taxpayer subsidised battery maker to China

UK PAC – Wind farm licences are “too generous for the limited risks”

January 14, 2013

The UK PAC calls the over-generous wind farm licences as being shocking. The consumer will just have to pay higher prices.

The problem with subsidies is that it nearly always leads to the subsidies being milked for the benefit of the few and the cost is borne by the many.  The purpose of the subsidy is never usually achieved (unless the benefit is taken to be the windfall that a few enjoy).  Now the UK Public Accounts Committee points out the many blunders in wind farm licencing which will cost the consumer some £17 billion — but the money goes to those investors who got in early!!

There is nothing wrong with wind power per se and it surely has a limited contribution to make. But it is just not commercial or practical for base-load power generation and no amount of subsidy will make it so. I can’t help thinking that the few investors who benefit – directly or indirectly – have close friends among the powers that be that establish the generous subsidy rules. The subsidies are justified on the basis of “reducing carbon footprint” which is meaningless.

The PAC has published its 20th report of this session on offshore electricity transmission (full report pdf here).  The Committee had taken evidence from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority, and industry representatives on the new licensing regime for offshore electricity transmission.

“Not only is it unlikely that this new licensing system for bringing electricity from offshore wind farms onto the national grid will deliver any savings for consumers, it could well lead to higher prices”. ……

….. Margaret Hodge was speaking as the Committee published its 20th Report of this Session. The Department and the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (the Authority) have introduced an elaborate regime that licences operators of offshore electricity transmission assets following competitions. The terms of the transmission licences awarded so far appear heavily skewed towards attracting investors rather than securing a good deal for consumers.

The transmission operators receive their income from the National Grid which recovers its costs from electricity suppliers and generators. Although all concerned state that no public funds are directly involved, the future payments to licensees, which will amount to around £17 billion, will in fact be passed onto consumers through electricity bills.

The investors’ estimated returns of 10-11% on the initial licences look extremely generous given the limited risks the investors bear. Licensees are guaranteed a fully retail price index-linked income for 20 years regardless of the extent to which assets are used. Yet penalties are limited to 10% of expected income in any one year if the operators fail to provide the transmission facilities when required.

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Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Renewable Energy, UK, Wind power | 2 Comments »

Pro-fracking health report suppressed by New York Governor

January 7, 2013

When a report produces a conclusion you don’t like, political correctness has a simple solution. Suppress the report and commission a new report to reach the “correct” conclusions because the original report “is out of date”.

WNYC News: A document from Governor Cuomo’s Administration assessing the health impacts of hydro fracking, written in early 2012, says the gas drilling process is likely safe if proper precautions are taken by the governor’s environmental agency. ….

While the report says there are potential health risks involved in hydro fracking, it concludes that in each instance, proper mitigation measures that will be required by the state Department of Environmental Conservation will minimize any potential harm and reduce risks. The report, written in February of 2012, says “significant adverse impacts on human health are not expected from routine HVHF (hydro fracking) operations.”

…… The report appears to have been intended for inclusion in the state’s ongoing environmental review of fracking. It also advises against trying to do a site specific quantitative risk assessment of fracking, saying there are too many variables and that too many assumptions would have to be made.

The Administration did not like the conclusion and now a spokeswoman for the DEC says the report is “outdated,” and that no conclusions should be drawn.

“The document is not a health assessment, is nearly a year old, and does not reflect final DEC policy,” said DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis in a statement. “The final SGEIS will reflect the review currently underway by DOH and its outside experts. No conclusions should be drawn from this partial, outdated summary.”

Goodness gracious! A year old!

I suppose the required conclusions have already been written and the review will continue until the desired conclusions are reached.

It’s only politics.

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Low energy prices with shale gas leading to shift of jobs from Europe to US

December 28, 2012

It is inevitable that investment and jobs – and especially in energy intensive industries – will migrate to regions of low energy costs. Over the next few years the lead that the US has developed over the rest of the world in the exploitation of shale gas will cause European companies to shun the high energy costs at home and shift to the US.

Reuters: Austria’s group Voestalpine is considering a plan to build a $1 billion plant in the United States that would convert iron ore into concentrate used in steelmaking, Trend magazine reported. ………. Trend said the plant was envisioned for a coastal city in the southern United States, given cheap and reliable supplies of natural gas, political stability and efficient port infrastructure.

And the problem has been the unnecessary and misguided European obsession with chasing a mirage.  A meaningless and unjustified pursuit of “low carbon” energy; profligate subsidies for ineffective renewable energy; wasteful – and eventually corrupt – attempts to bias the market with carbon credits and the shutting down of perfectly viable coal and nuclear power plants has given the highest energy costs in the world. Gas prices in Europe are 4 or 5 times as high as in the US. Europe has plenty of shale gas potential but development is lagging far behind the US largely because of the political opposition from the “Green” lobbies. As the New York Times reports:

High Energy Costs Plaguing Europe

.. Asked whether he had considered building the plant in Europe, Voestalpine’s chief executive, Wolfgang Eder, said that that “calculation does not make sense from the very beginning.” Gas in Europe is much more expensive, he said.

High energy costs are emerging as an issue in Europe that is prompting debate, including questioning of the Continent’s clean energy initiatives. Over the past few years, Europe has spent tens of billions of euros in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The bulk of the spending has gone into low-carbon energy sources like wind and solar power that have needed special tariffs or other subsidies to be commercially viable.

“We embarked on a big transition to a low-carbon economy without taking into account the cost and without factoring in the competitive impact,” says Fabien Roques, head of European power and carbon at the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in Paris. “I think there will be a critical review of some of these policies in the next few years.” 

Both consumers and the industry are upset about high energy costs. Energy-intensive industries like chemicals and steel are, if not closing European plants outright, looking toward places like the United States that have lower energy costs as they pursue new investments.

BASF, the German chemical giant, has been outspoken about the consequences of energy costs for competitiveness and is building a new plant in Louisiana.

“We Europeans are currently paying up to four or five times more for natural gas than the Americans,” Harald Schwager, a member of the executive board at BASF, said last month. “Energy efficiency alone will not allow us to compensate for this. Of course, that means increased competition for all the European manufacturing sites.”

And it beomes increasingly clear that the chase for politically correct “brownie points” by European  governments as they have demonised carbon dioxide quite needlessly while spending massively on renewable subsidies is not sustainable. Just as Japan must now waste political energy in “reviewing” their hasty decisions about the use of nuclear energy after Fukushima , Europe will have to spend the next decade in “reviewing and reversing” the spate of bad decisions made based on climate alarmism.

The expansion in renewables will probably ensure that Europe will meet its target of reducing greenhouse gases 20 percent from their 1990 levels by 2020. But it has been a disappointment on other levels. For one thing, emissions continue to rise globally. In a sense, Europe is likely to have exported its emissions to places like China, where polluting economic activity continues to increase while the European economy stagnates.

A striking indicator that the European effort has not achieved all that it intended to is the continued rise in the burning of coal, by far the biggest polluter among fossil fuels.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based group formed by consumer nations, recently said that coal was likely to catch up with oil as the world’s largest source of energy in a decade.

Much of the increase in coal use can be blamed on China and India, but not all of it. Europe has increased its coal use this year, and that has led to an increase of about 7 percent in carbon dioxide emissions from power generation, according to IHS. Coal use is increasing in all regions except the United States, the I.E.A. said.

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Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Europe, Gas, Politics, Renewable Energy, US | Comments Off on Low energy prices with shale gas leading to shift of jobs from Europe to US

Commonsense returns as Japan “reviews” its 2040 nuclear abandonment plan

December 27, 2012

In spite of the seriousness of the Fukushima nuclear plant accident, it was never sufficient to justify the hysteria which ensued and the knee-jerk anti-nuclear decisions taken not only in Japan but also in Germany and other countries. The alarmist, anti-nuclear hysteria often seems to forget that it was the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which killed around 18,000 people (15,878 dead with 2,713 missing). The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant incident killed no-one directly. There may well be some indirect deaths which can and will eventually be attributed to the nuclear plant accident but there were no deaths caused directly.

Nevertheless Japan and Germany announced hasty, panic-ridden plans to abandon nuclear power. Greens began to rejoice and then started to realise that there is no practical alternative to nuclear power other than large-scale hydro-power and fossil fuels. The pipe-dream of thinking that base-load nuclear power could ever be replaced by unreliable and intermittent wind or solar power began to be seen for the mirage it was.  The high electricity price which has resulted has also seriously disdvantaged industry and hit households hard. Reality has begun to sink in.

Now Japan has a new government and a new Prime Minister. The task of reversing the fear-driven decisions (invariably bad decisions) of the past has begun. A “review” has been ordered and the results are inevitable …..

BBC: The new government in Japan has announced it will review the planned nuclear power phase-out proposed by the previous administration.

Trade and Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said that reactors would be restarted if considered safe by the nuclear authority. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised bold measures to revive the economy. The stoppage of nuclear power use by 2040 was ordered following last year’s Fukushima disaster.

….. Veteran trade minister Toshimitsu Motegi, who is also in charge of energy policy, made it clear that the government would not allow its plans to be hampered by higher energy costs.

“We need to reconsider the previous administration’s policy that aimed to make zero nuclear power operation possible during the 2030s,” he told a news conference. ….. 

…… “A strong economy is the source of energy for Japan. Without regaining a strong economy, there is no future for Japan,” Mr Abe said after taking office.

The prime minister had also said that he would allow nuclear energy a bigger role, despite last year’s disaster. Japan, which relied on nuclear power for almost one-third of its energy supplies before the incident, shut all its 50 nuclear reactors after the leaks, but recently restarted two of them. The move has resulted in higher energy costs, and many big businesses want Japan to return to using nuclear power.

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Wind farm performance declines by a third in just 10 years

December 20, 2012

The intermittent nature of wind and the speed restructions on wind turbines means that the load factor of wind farms is low to begin with (about 20 -25% for on-shore units and about 35-40% for off-shore units). But this is only when they are new. They seem to age very rapidly. This study of UK on-shore plants and Danish on-shore and off-shore plants shows that

  1. Wind farms age rapidly with on-shore plants declining in performance by about one-third in 10 years and off-shore plants declining by over 60% in 10 years, and
  2. The economic life of a wind farm is, at best, around 15 years and not the 25 years considered “normal” for a power plant

REF’s press release:

The Renewable Energy Foundation [1] today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark,[2] showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.  

The work has been conducted by one of the UK’s leading energy & environmental economists, Professor Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh[3], and has been anonymously peer-reviewed.  This groundbreaking study applies rigorous statistical analysis to years of actual wind farm performance data from wind farms in both the UK and in Denmark.

The full report is available here.

The Executive Summary states.

1. Onshore wind turbines represent a relatively mature technology, which ought to have achieved a satisfactory level of reliability in operation as plants age. Unfortunately, detailed analysis of the relationship between age and performance gives a rather different picture for both the United Kingdom and Denmark with a significant decline in the average load factor of onshore wind farms adjusted for wind availability as they get older. An even more dramatic decline is observed for offshore wind farms in Denmark, but this may be a reflection of the immaturity of the technology.

2. The study has used data on the monthly output of wind farms in the UK and Denmark reported under regulatory arrangements and schemes for subsidising renewable energy. Normalised age-performance curves have been estimated using standard statistical techniques which allow for differences between sites and over time in wind resources and other factors.

3. The normalised load factor for UK onshore wind farms declines from a peak of about 24% at age 1 to 15% at age 10 and 11% at age 15. The decline in the normalised load factor for Danish onshore wind farms is slower but still significant with a fall from a peak of 22% to 18% at age 15. On the other hand for offshore wind farms in Denmark the normalised load factor falls from 39% at age 0 to 15% at age 10. The reasons for the observed declines in normalised load factors cannot be fully assessed using the data available but outages due to mechanical breakdowns appear to be a contributory factor.

4. Analysis of site-specific performance reveals that the average normalised load factor of new UK onshore wind farms at age 1 (the peak year of operation) declined significantly from 2000 to 2011. In addition, larger wind farms have systematically worse performance than smaller wind farms. Adjusted for age and wind availability the overall performance of wind farms in the UK has deteriorated markedly since the beginning of the century.

5. These findings have important implications for policy towards wind generation in the UK. First, they suggest that the subsidy regime is extremely generous if investment in new wind farms is profitable despite the decline in performance due to age and over time. Second, meeting the UK Government’s targets for wind generation will require a much higher level of wind capacity – and, thus, capital investment – than current projections imply. Third, the structure of contracts offered to wind generators under the proposed reform of the electricity market should be modified since few wind farms will operate for more than 12–15 years.

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Shale gas boosts petrochemical developments as fracking proves as important as catalytic cracking

December 19, 2012

The advent of shale gas (and shale oil) is having more profound effects than just on the production of energy or electric power. The development of “fracking” technology is providing an impetus for developments in the petrochemical industry which can be compared to the “golden years” which followed the introduction of catalytic cracking.  Petrochemical processing costs are now lower in the US than in many other countries and there has been a sharp increase in projects for the “cracking” of ethane to make ethylene as a feedstock.

As put by the Financial Times: “The international chemicals industry is undergoing its most profound upheaval for 75 years, according to Kevin Swift of the American Chemistry Council. Not since the years before the second world war, when there was a flood of discoveries including nylon, synthetic rubber, PVC plastic and polystyrene, has there been technological change with such far-reaching consequences.”

The American Chemistry Council has just published its Year End 2012 Situation and Outlook and issued this press release.

HydrocarbonProcessing writes:

Favorable oil-to-gas price ratios driven by the production of natural gas from shale will drive a renewed US competitiveness that will boost exports and fuel greater domestic investment, economic growth and job creation within the business of chemistry.

(more…)

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Coal consumption growing inexorably — but global temperatures are still declining

December 19, 2012

The International Energy Agency has just released its annual Medium-Term Coal Market Report (MCMR) and reports that “coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to rise, and by 2017 coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world’s top energy source”.

Yet global temperatures have not risen for 16 years and continue to decline. And the demonisation of the use of coal has increased electricity prices quite unnecessarily. The end of the world will not happen either on 21st December 2012 or by the use of fossil fuels.

In a press release the IEA says:

“Thanks to abundant supplies and insatiable demand for power from emerging markets, coal met nearly half of the rise in global energy demand during the first decade of the 21st Century,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. “This report sees that trend continuing. In fact, the world will burn around 1.2 billion more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared to today – equivalent to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined. Coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year, and if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade.” 

China and India lead the growth in coal consumption over the next five years. The report says China will surpass the rest of the world in coal demand during the outlook period, while India will become the largest seaborne coal importer and second-largest consumer, surpassing the United States.

The report notes that in the absence of a high carbon price, only fierce competition from low-priced gas can effectively reduce coal demand. “The US experience suggests that a more efficient gas market, marked by flexible pricing and fueled by indigenous unconventional resources that are produced sustainably, can reduce coal use, CO2 emissions and consumers’ electricity bills, without harming energy security,” said Ms. van der Hoeven. “Europe, China and other regions should take note.”

While coal consumption and carbon dioxide have been rising, global temperatures have not been paying any attention – much to the dismay of alarmist models.

(more…)

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