Energy - Sustainable Energy

The Net Energy Trap in Brief

  • For each unit of energy invested in extracting energy out of the earth we get only two units back
    and this ratio is collapsing further

  • We waste over 80% of the energy we use

  • Our entire golbalised energy system depends on oil availability

  • Oil availability is in the process of crashing down to 1/10 of present levels over the next 20 years
    and we are desperate for alternative energy systems

  • We have not invest energy to build the alternative systems required this should have do so 30 years ago.

  • It takes over 40 years to develop and deploy alternative systems globally

  • We no longer have enough net energy to both keep 6.7G people alive and invest in alternative systems - humankind is plunging into a trap it created for itself

  • This is an emergency of a kind humankind has never encountered before!

  • There are solutions but even in the best case scenarios it is becoming clear that not all of humankind will make it through

  • The solutions require a entrepreneurial approach to maxamise speed

  • Only this who take initiative now can hope to make it                 See also

 

Energy transition – end of the Fossil Fuel Era and beginning of the Solar Era

Over abundant power The solar power reaching the top of the Earth’s atmosphere is about 1.366kW/m2.58 In other words this is tantamount to having a 1.3 GW power station above our heads for every square kilometre of Earth’s surface. Or to put it in another way the solar power at the top of the atmosphere is more than one million times the installed power capacity used by humankind in its power stations, factories and vehicles. Or yet expressed in another way, the solar energy reaching the atmosphere each year is well over 100 million times the energy used by humankind yearly.  From Page 53 Dr Louis Arnoux e-book  "Peak Oil, Climate Change & All That Jazz"

Peak Oil Will Dwarf Financial Crunch Soon
Peak Oil occurred in 2005 and is now in decline at rate of 9% per year
This is frightening, there is real urgency to find alternatives and time is short!  Read More

NET ENERGY - What is it?  

See also

At zero net energy from oil and gas well things simply STOP:

Imagine life without cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships or planes. The world is largely unaware of just how dangerously close we are to such a situation. The energy crisis is immediate, a matter of a few years, not decades.

Currently the world is on track to reach close to nil net energy

  • from fossil hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) well before 2020 (i.e. before the recession clicked was around 2015, now it could be a bit later).

  • all fossil fuels, i.e. including coal, humankind is on track to get to nil net energy before 2040 and probably before 2030.

Few people comprehend why and what this means.

We do not live on crude oil. We live on Joules of net energy produced and distributed to end users using raw materials like crude oil, raw natural gas and coal.

It costs energy to get energy.

As the easier sources of fossil fuels get used up, it costs more and more energy to get energy to a point when we reach nil net energy. That is the point when the amount of energy produced is the same as the amount invested to get it: there is zero net energy left to do anything else.

 

To calculate net energy it is necessary to take into consideration the indirect energy in the equipment and people involved in getting energy, i.e.

  • to mine the ore and coal,

  • to make the steel,

  • to make the machines,

  • to make the oil platforms,

  • the tankers,

  • the pipelines,

  • the refineries,

  • the finished products distribution networks,

  • the houses and equipment used by the people in the fossil fuel industries, etc., etc.

EROI
Energy Return On
Investment


 1990's 40:1

2000's 10:1


2018   1:1
Energy Return On the energy Investment for oil and gas (EROI)

  • In the 1960’s the energy return was about 60:1

  • In the 1990’s the energy return went down to around 40:1;

  • In the 2000’s the energy return is now close to 10:1

  • By around 2015- 2018 the energy return is on track to 1:1 i.e. zero net energy.

Peak Oil doesn't mean 'running out of oil', but rather 'running out of cheap and plentiful oil'. Inexpensive oil supports our very way of life, as we know it. It is crucial for our transportation, food production, economy and basically everything that we use on a daily basis.

So whether people are aware of it, understand it, like it or not makes very little difference - humankind is on track to nil net energy within next 10 years!    Unless…… Read More
 

Today's ENERGY demands are changing .......

Oil peaking, the International Energy Agency coming out of denial and acknowledging that supplies will fail meeting demand within 3 years, 5 at most (IEA, Medium Term Oil Market Report, July 2007).
Net energy from oil and natural gas declining fast expected to be close to zero within 10 years, 15 at most.
Climate Change accelerating with prospects of substantial increases in extreme weather - 10 years only to act to avoid the worse.
100-year plus drought and acute water shortages . heavy-handed restrictions and severe costs of new water sources (e.g. sea water desalination).
Power supply brownouts and blackouts increasing in frequency throughout the country.
Still no decent broadband communications in spite of much political debate and massive tax paid subsidies.
Threat of endless political debates and inaction leading to massive Government intervention with drastic and rather narrow-minded .cold baths by candlelight. conservation policies, including high carbon taxes, restrictions on car use, taking off the road cars that fail energy efficiency standards, substantial increases in fuel, electricity and communications prices, and the illusory trading of improvable carbon credits.
Threat of potentially wrecking economic growth.

The above threats are daunting. They have begun to bite severely. There is a sense of powerlessness at business and individual levels.

The End Of The World As You Know It - by Michael T. Klare - 16 April, 2008

IT'S A WHOLE NEW WAY OF THINKING ABOUT ENERGY!
Sudden Disruption   Amazing New Air Car - It's NOT About the Air!
                                       And it's not even about the car!
                                       It's a whole new way of thinking about energy!  Read More

MISCONCEPTIONS
Dr Louis Arnoux wishes to clarify comments posted on The Oil Drum-Australia/New Zealand (Part 1 at tail end of blog)

IT MDI – Energy – What’s it about?
It’s great to feel the excitement, interest and intrigue about the MDI “air car” as posted on The Oil Drum – Australia and New Zealand. However, a large number of those comments are in my view mistaken and made without the required knowledge and expertise. In this posting I wish to clarify a few matters.  
 Read More

THE AIR CAR PART 2
Q & A With Louis Arnoux of IT MDI-Energy as posted on The Oil Drum-Australia/New Zealand
 I asked Louis if he would like to do an interview to answer some of the questions we had about the IT MDI-Energy Technology. Read More

ENERGY WASTE currently more than 80%

The bitter irony of the emerging situation is that, due to extremely high inefficiencies, directly or indirectly, we are currently forced to literally throw our hard won money out of the windows or up chimneys - roughly speaking some 80% and sometimes more of what we pay for energy, cars, transport fuels, and communications is effectively wasted.

COMPRESSED AIR ENERGY with Thermodynamic cycle

  • Compressed Air Engine
  • Based on the new  thermodynamic cycle
  • External heat source combined with compressed air as the energy carrier and storage medium.
  • Air storage pressure 300 bar, engine operating pressure 30 bar.
  • Efficient, clean and clean external combustion, "multi-fuel" capable, enables competitive use of biomass fuels and "direct thermal solar".
  • Surplus power used to recharge the compressed air storage.
  • Overall energy efficiency more than twice that of internal combustion engines and capable of reaching over 70%.
  • Enables impressive cost reductions for manufacture, operation and maintenance of low cost, zero emission vehicles and environmentally sound distributed power generation.

NEW SOLAR ENERGY

It is not that energy is scarce. Yearly the earth receives many orders of magnitude more energy from the sun than humankind could ever require. Humans create scarcity not nature and they do so because of how they have been thinking so far.  Instead of looking down to find more scarce, very expensive and polluting fossil fuels we must now look up and harvest vastly abundant, cheap and clean solar energy. Solar energy is inherently distributed and is available to all.

Keys to harvesting and supplying it cost-effectively lie in fractal mesh networking as developed by
IndraNet Technologies (IT) and in high efficiency distributed energy conversion technology as developed by Moteur Development International s.a. (MDI).

RENEWABLE ENERGY

see also

Oil and the other fossil fuels are finite resources that that millions of years to produce, whereas air and solar surround us in abundance, we just need to find better ways to harness them.

NET ENERGY

Net Energy is the energy available for any kind of economic activity after one has deducted the energy that has been used to obtain it, that is, the energy used in exploration, mining, well drilling, building and operating pipelines, tankers, refineries, power stations, etc., and also in making the steel, the concrete, the machinery involved in making all of these, and in distributing and selling that energy.

Few people would confuse the cost of raw material inputs to a process with annual sales of the end products and net profits after depreciation. And yet this is what most people do with energy.  What matters is net energy available for all forms of economic activity, that is to say, the net energy available when one has deducted all the costs and depreciated all of the energy capital involved in getting energy supplies to market.

EROI (Energy Return On Energy Investment) and Net Energy from oil, natural gas and other fossil fuels are fast declining. EROI for oil and gas is projected to reach 1 ( it will cost $1 to get oil worth $1) and Net Energy near zero around 2017. EROI for all fossil fuels is expected to have reached zero well before 2030.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY


see also

.

  

 What does it mean?

The paradigm shift needed is a shift from thinking in terms of
Million barrels of oil per day and very low net energy technologies
to
Megawatts per square kilometre of solar energy and high net energy technologies.

The latter means point-of-use energy harvesting, matching the grades of energy sources and energy use (e.g. use low grade energy sources for low grade heating requirements), storing small amounts of energy in highly distributed fashion and non-hierarchical, networks of networks, mesh communication and energy networking.

Is it energy efficient to pump oil in Middle East, transport it, refine it, distribute it  - I don't think so. To harness solar energy in the area you use it would be much more cost effective. This can only happen went we begin to change from the current hierarchical to non-hierarchical, in other words make cars where they will be used not ship them half way around the world.  Use new sophisticated networks and generate power at point of use and sell excess back to grid instead of.

ENERGY DISTRIBUTION

Power generated at point of use (home or business) using compressed air engine, solar technology and meshed network grid will give about 80% efficiency compared with today's power generation at about 20% efficiency.
ENERGY CONSERVATION

Energy conservation is the practice of decreasing the quantity of energy used while achieving a similar outcome. By reducing emissions, energy conservation is an important part of lessening climate change. Energy conservation facilitates the replacement of non-renewable resources with renewable energy.

PEAK OIL

If this is the first time you are hearing about Peak Oil, you are among the majority of the population. Peak Oil doesn't mean 'running out of oil', but rather 'running out of cheap and plentiful oil'. Inexpensive oil supports our very way of life, as we know it. It is crucial for our transportation, food production, economy and basically everything that we use on a daily basis.  Read more at http://www.crudeawakening.org/

Dr Arnoux and Mr Nègre both pointed out that while the challenges of Climate Change are real and pressing, the challenges of Peak Oil and of the peaking of other fossil fuels are much more immediate and potential dire. Source

CLIMATE CHANGE & GLOBAL WARMING

The effect of greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions are major factors but by addressing Peak Oil and other fossil fuels can be found a major way reversing these processes and giving us a cleaner planet to live on.

Technology which uses compressed air and solar, greatly reduces carbon emissions, and leaves a tiny carbon footprint, it is  cheap, renewable resource must surely be good for the planet.

NEW TECHNOLOGY EXPANDING WORLDWIDE

Plan B

A range of revolutionary energy and transport products and services at extremely competitive prices and with zero pollution!   This will remove the present dependence on oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear.
The ICET Package of Information, Communication, Energy and Transport solutions is being rolled out by IT Mondial in Australia & New Zealand more info.....

_

 
From Peak Oil To Solar & Compressed Air Technology
Associated Links

Amsterdam shows us the way! - New Energy TV - waste fuelling transportation - 3 February 2009

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