"Peak Oil: The End Of the Oil Age is Near, Deutsche Bank Says"

From WSJ blogs:

By Keith Johnson

Here’s an intriguing thought: Global oil supplies are indeed set to peak within a few years, and no, that is not bullish for oil. Quite the contrary—it will spell the end of the “oil age.”

That’s the take from Deutsche Bank’s new report, “The Peak Oil Market.” In a nutshell: The oil industry chronically under invests in finding new supplies, exemplified both by Big Oil’s recent love of share buybacks and under-investment by big oil-producing nations. That spells a looming supply crunch.

That will send oil to $175 a barrel by 2016—and will simultaneously put the final nail in oil’s coffin and send prices plummeting back to $70 by 2030. That’s because there’s an even more important “peak” moment on the horizon: A global peak in oil demand. That has already begun in the world’s biggest oil-consuming nation, Deutsche Bank notes:

US demand is the key. It is the last market-priced, oil inefficient, major oil consumer. We believe Obama’s environmental agenda, the bankruptcy of the US auto industry, the war in Iraq, and global oil supply challenges have dovetailed to spell the end of the oil era.

The big driver? The coming-of-age of electric and hybrid vehicles, which promise massive fuel-economy gains for short-hop commuting but which so far have not been economic.

Deutsche Bank expects the electric car to become a truly “disruptive technology” which takes off around the world, sending demand for gasoline into an “inexorable and accelerating decline.”

In 2020, the bank expects electric and hybrid vehicles to account for 25% of new car sales—in both the U.S. and China. “We expect [electric propulsion] will reverse the dynamics of world oil demand, and spell the end of the oil age,” the bank writes.

But won’t cheaper oil in the future just lead to a revival in oil demand? That’s what’s happened in every other cycle. Au contraire, says the bank: Just as the explosion of digital cameras made the cost of film irrelevant, the growth of electric cars will make the price of oil (and gasoline) all but irrelevant for transportation.

Purdue LED Breakthrough

by Michael Graham Richard

Five Times As Efficient, Way Cheaper

Better, Cheaper LEDs
The incandescent lightbulb that wastes 90% of the electricity as heat is dying, we all know that. But a new breakthrough in solid state lighting might also kill compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) faster than some expected. Scientists at Purdue University have figured out how to manufacture LED solid-state lights on regular metal-coated silicon wafers (more details below). What this means is: much lower costs.

10% Reduction in Total Electricity Use
And since about 1/3 of U.S. electricity is used to produce light, this is major. "If you replaced existing lighting with solid-state lighting, following some reasonable estimates for the penetration of that technology based on economics and other factors, it could reduce the amount of energy we consume for lighting by about one-third. That represents a 10 percent reduction of electricity consumption and a comparable reduction of related carbon emissions," said Timothy D. Sands, professor of Materials Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering states at Purdue.

Old LEDs vs. New LEDs
What makes traditional LEDs so expensive is that the light-emitting layer of an LED light is a gallium nitride crystal and it needs to be treated in various ways with expensive materials.

Dailytech:

In sapphire based LEDs, used for green or blue lighting, mirror-like reflectors are need to reflect and resend emitted light, increasing the efficiency. Typically, this layer is extremely expensive to produce, part of the reason the current generation of LED lighting costs so much, costing at least 20 times more than conventional incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Also, the LEDs are built on sapphire crystals, which provide the color, but are extremely expensive.
But the new LEDs can be made using standard silicon wafers and already existing, less expensive, processes. This would make them competitive with incandescent and CFLs.

The new techniques yield a crystalline structure aligned to the crystalline silicon. This means that the LEDs are less prone to defects and will perform more efficiently [...] silicon dissipates heat more effectively than sapphires. This will reduce damage during operation and lead to longer lifetimes and more reliability..
We might soon have to get used to changing lightbulbs every other decade.

LEDs that are currently available convert electricity to light with an efficiency of 47 to 64%. It is predicted that LED produced with Purdue's process would have an efficiency in the high-end of that range, compared to about 10% for incandescent.

Juneau Forced To Cut Energy Use

(Reuters) Residents of Juneau, Alaska's capital city, have been forced to cut energy use since a series of avalanches wiped out transmission towers and electrical lines, cutting off all power from the area's hydroelectric system.

The extensive damage has forced Juneau to rely on costly electricity from backup generators fueled by diesel, which is at all-time high prices. Electricity from the generators cost nearly five times as much as power from the hydroelectric dam.

Avalanches rumbled down the mountainsides two weeks ago at the Snettisham hydroelectric dam about 25 miles (40 kilometres) southeast of Juneau, a city of about 30,000.

Alaska Electric Light and Power Co, the local utility, said the area is expected to rely on the backup diesel generators for three months because it is not safe for workers to go fix the damage.

Unlike other parts of the energy-rich state, Juneau has no source of natural gas and relies almost exclusively on the area's hydroelectric system for most of its power.

Without drastic reductions in energy use, a typical Juneau family could be facing electric bills of over $1,000 a month for the next three months, said Tim McLeod, president of the Alaska Electric Light and Power Co.

Low-income Juneau residents and several businesses that struggle through the tourism off-season might be crippled by skyrocketing electricity bills, said House Minority Leader Beth Kerttula.

Juneau city leaders and the city's legislators are seeking state and national disaster declarations that would pave the way for assistance to the needy, said Kerttula. (

"New efficient bulb sees the light"

A new type of super-efficient household light bulb is being developed which could spell the end of regular bulbs.
Experts have found a way to make Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) brighter and use less power than energy efficient light bulbs currently on the market.

The technology, used in gadgets such as mobile phones and computers, had previously not been powerful enough to be used for lighting.

But Glasgow University scientists said they had resolved the problem.

The project, being developed along with the Institute of Photonics at the University of Strathclyde, involves making microscopic holes in the surface of LEDs to increase the level of light they give off.

This is a process known as nano-imprint lithography.

Dr Faiz Rahman, who is leading the project, said: "As yet, LEDs have not been introduced as the standard lighting in homes because the process of making the holes is very time consuming and expensive.

"However, we believe we have found a way of imprinting the holes into billions of LEDs at a far greater speed, but at a much lower cost."

He added: "This means the days of the humble light-bulb could soon be over."

List of Dirtiest U.S. Power Plants

Texas has the most entries on a list of the dirtiest U.S. power plants, while New England and the Pacific Coast make less carbon dioxide because they have fewer coal-burning plants, an environmental group said on Thursday.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is the main cause of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Of the 50 "dirtiest" power plants with the highest carbon dioxide emissions in the country, all are coal-fired. Texas accounts for five on the list, and Indiana and Pennsylvania each have four, the Environmental Integrity Project annual study found.

U.S. power plant CO2 emissions actually fell 2 percent in 2006 from 2005, but the report focused on the fact that a new wave of coal-fired plants -- about 150 nationwide -- could increase CO2 pollution by 34 percent by 2030, the study said.

"The power industry is racing to build more coal-fired power plants," said the report's principal author, Ilan Levin, an attorney for EIP.

"Once utility companies secure their air pollution permits, we can expect them to argue that these new plants should be 'grandfathered,' or exempt from any pending limits on greenhouse gases."

Coal-burning power plants make half the electricity used in the United States. And the United States in the latest United Nations report -- for 2003 -- was at 23 percent the top national producer of CO2 emissions, with China second at 16.5 percent...

States with three plants on the list were Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia, while Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico and Wyoming each had two plants on the Top 50 list...

The EIP study said U.S. power plants make 40 percent of CO2 emissions, about two-thirds of sulfur dioxide emissions, 22 percent of nitrogen oxides emissions, and roughly a third of all mercury emissions.

See The Environmental Integrity Project for more info.

"Colombia Drought Suffocates Tons of Fish"

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - An estimated 3 million fish have suffocated in a reservoir in southern Colombia, where a four-month drought has drastically drained water levels, leaving too little oxygen to sustain dozens of hatcheries.

Since Sunday, more than 1,320 tons of tilapia raised inside giant metal cages have gone belly-up and floated to the surface behind the Betania hydroelectric dam, where scorchingly high temperatures have lowered water levels by 82 feet in recent months.

The local fish industry, which exports the tilapia as fillets to the United States and Europe, could lose more than $2 million, said Eliseo Motta, government secretary in Huila state, where the dam is located.

"Every day the reservoir levels just get lower," Motta told The Associated Press by telephone from Betania, where he was supervising work crews burying and incinerating the dead fish.

Colombia's government has temporarily banned the sale of fish produced in Betania's hatcheries to protect consumers from possibly contaminated fillets. Agriculture Minister Andres Felipe Arias also promised $700,000 in federal subsidies and tax credits to help the hatcheries recover.

Colombia also has asked the Spanish power company Endesa SA (ELE) to gradually restore the reservoir's water levels by scaling back production of electricity at the dam.


Meanwhile - Off of the Northeast coast of North America - there has been a collapse of the cod fishing industry:

A rush of cold fresh water from the Arctic contributed to the collapse of the northwest Atlantic cod industry and is fueling a boom of snow crab and shrimp in the waters off New England and eastern Canada, a new study says.

A reversal of wind direction with a record drop in Arctic air pressure pumped the water through the Canadian archipelago in the late 1980s and 1990s, according to a study in today's issue of the journal Science. The cold water helped spoil the cod habitat while improving conditions for snow crab and shrimp....

The cool water comes from a large body called the Beaufort Gyre, which borders the Arctic ice shelf. Clockwise-turning winds build up water from rain and melting ice. About every 10 years, the wind direction reverses, dumping the Beaufort Gyre into the surrounding ocean. Increased rain and melt-off contributed to the record spill.