Clunkshift
05-01-2010, 08:41 AM
At risk of being either boring or alarmist, any ethically minded person should be aware that we are on the edge of gas shortage.
This link is for the Financial Times but the “news” is common to several agencies:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6990fba0-f999-11de-8085-00144feab49a.html
Basically, we are too dependent on gas for our energy needs and we are net importers (rather than suppliers) of gas.We have closed down Coal and Nuclear power stations and built more gas fired stations which are in direct competition with industrial and home consumers.
Some of our North Sea gas fields have less than 15 years gas in them and already have to have the pressure raised by flooding to extract the remaining gas, which is also more “sour” than in its heyday and it contains much more sulphur and sulphides like H2S, making gas production much more expensive. To make up our deficiency, we buy gas directly from Norway, Nigeria and the Netherlands, and indirectly from Russia.
To consider gas as a more “green” fuel than coal or nuclear is not a simple argument as to obtain natural liquefied gas (NLG) from Nigeria, we pay a corrupt industry/regime for gas which has to be liquefied for transport and storage and the liquefaction puts tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, then we burn oil in huge tankers which bring the NLG to Milford Haven for storage and distribution.
Some of the natural gas that we buy in Europe is actually piped in from Russia, and the only way to push the gas so far along pipelines is to have plenty of gas turbines driving huge compressors at regular intervals, i.e. burning some of the gas to propel it along the thousands of miles of pipelines, and if too many people want gas from the pipelines, you have to turn up the power on the compressors and thus burn even more gas to maintain supply.
I am prepared to acknowledge climate change, but I see the case for blaming everything on burning fossil fuels as an unproven claim. I do however thing that all energy resources are too valuable to waste. Yes I drive a second-hand Jeep 4x4, but its “dust to dust” energy consumption is still better than a hybrid using exotic batteries (google dust to dust for more info).
Winter temperatures in China, Canada, USA, Russia and Scandinavia are much lower than usual at the moment (down to -50 instead of -30 °C) and worldwide energy consumption is very high at present (where is this global warming and how hot does next summer have to be to cancel out these cold figures?).
Many of you know that I dislike Christmas lights on grounds of energy waste and light pollution, but if our cold spell continues and we continue to burn energy “because we can afford to”, we may soon find that we can’t afford it much longer and may also suffer shortages.
I work in an energy industry and am currently working on a “coal to liquids” project. It wouldn’t go down well in Copenhagen or Kyoto as it produces tons of CO2 but it does produce liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon for countries like China that have little oil and virtually no gas – does that sound a familiar situation?
We need to get serious about energy needs versus “conservation” and explore all energy sources – wind, water, geothermal, waste furnaces, nuclear etc. Forget hydrogen, it costs more in energy to produce that you recover in its use if you try to produce it “cleanly”.
Most energy systems that people complain about; nuclear reactors, waste furnaces, coal liquefaction etc are based on technology of between 60 and 100 years ago, all of these processes can be made much more efficient and cleaner now, but only if “green” prejudices are suspended. A good proportion of my packaging has to go to landfill because they can’t recycle PET. If it was burned in a furnaces with a well scrubbed exhaust, it could be generating electricity and the ash residue would take up less landfill.
The only other answer, which has plenty of historic precedence, is to have a good world war, followed by an epidemic or two, to reduce world population to sustainable levels in all climates.
Keep warm
Clunk
This link is for the Financial Times but the “news” is common to several agencies:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6990fba0-f999-11de-8085-00144feab49a.html
Basically, we are too dependent on gas for our energy needs and we are net importers (rather than suppliers) of gas.We have closed down Coal and Nuclear power stations and built more gas fired stations which are in direct competition with industrial and home consumers.
Some of our North Sea gas fields have less than 15 years gas in them and already have to have the pressure raised by flooding to extract the remaining gas, which is also more “sour” than in its heyday and it contains much more sulphur and sulphides like H2S, making gas production much more expensive. To make up our deficiency, we buy gas directly from Norway, Nigeria and the Netherlands, and indirectly from Russia.
To consider gas as a more “green” fuel than coal or nuclear is not a simple argument as to obtain natural liquefied gas (NLG) from Nigeria, we pay a corrupt industry/regime for gas which has to be liquefied for transport and storage and the liquefaction puts tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, then we burn oil in huge tankers which bring the NLG to Milford Haven for storage and distribution.
Some of the natural gas that we buy in Europe is actually piped in from Russia, and the only way to push the gas so far along pipelines is to have plenty of gas turbines driving huge compressors at regular intervals, i.e. burning some of the gas to propel it along the thousands of miles of pipelines, and if too many people want gas from the pipelines, you have to turn up the power on the compressors and thus burn even more gas to maintain supply.
I am prepared to acknowledge climate change, but I see the case for blaming everything on burning fossil fuels as an unproven claim. I do however thing that all energy resources are too valuable to waste. Yes I drive a second-hand Jeep 4x4, but its “dust to dust” energy consumption is still better than a hybrid using exotic batteries (google dust to dust for more info).
Winter temperatures in China, Canada, USA, Russia and Scandinavia are much lower than usual at the moment (down to -50 instead of -30 °C) and worldwide energy consumption is very high at present (where is this global warming and how hot does next summer have to be to cancel out these cold figures?).
Many of you know that I dislike Christmas lights on grounds of energy waste and light pollution, but if our cold spell continues and we continue to burn energy “because we can afford to”, we may soon find that we can’t afford it much longer and may also suffer shortages.
I work in an energy industry and am currently working on a “coal to liquids” project. It wouldn’t go down well in Copenhagen or Kyoto as it produces tons of CO2 but it does produce liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon for countries like China that have little oil and virtually no gas – does that sound a familiar situation?
We need to get serious about energy needs versus “conservation” and explore all energy sources – wind, water, geothermal, waste furnaces, nuclear etc. Forget hydrogen, it costs more in energy to produce that you recover in its use if you try to produce it “cleanly”.
Most energy systems that people complain about; nuclear reactors, waste furnaces, coal liquefaction etc are based on technology of between 60 and 100 years ago, all of these processes can be made much more efficient and cleaner now, but only if “green” prejudices are suspended. A good proportion of my packaging has to go to landfill because they can’t recycle PET. If it was burned in a furnaces with a well scrubbed exhaust, it could be generating electricity and the ash residue would take up less landfill.
The only other answer, which has plenty of historic precedence, is to have a good world war, followed by an epidemic or two, to reduce world population to sustainable levels in all climates.
Keep warm
Clunk