Articles in Politics and Economics
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In July, former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore issued a challenge to Repower America with 100% clean electricity within ten years. Building on that challenge, the “We” Campaign is launching a major advertising …
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A $150bn “Apollo project” to bring jobs and energy security to the US through a new alternative energy economy is the vision of Barack Obama. If his final push for votes brings victory in the …
A total of $3.2 billion has been invested in cleantech so far in 2008. This far surpasses last year’s $2.7 billion and this is despite the economic slow down being experienced by the wider economy.
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The Climate Group has announced three Chinese members, including the majority state-owned China Mobile, which has 420 million customers and is one of the country’s 10 biggest companies. It is the world’s biggest mobile phone …
When Congress passed the financial bailout bill, it included a range of federal tax credits for a suite of new and renewed tax credits for individuals who want to make energy efficiency and renewable energy …
There’s good news and bad news contained in Martin Ferguson’s keynote address at the “Energy State of the Nation 2008″ conference held in Sydney on 18th March, organised by the Australia Energy Alliance.
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The good news is that HON Martin Ferguson (Federal Minister for Resources, Energy and Tourism) has committed the Australian Government to undertake a National Liquid Fuels Vulnerability Assessment this year. It remains to be seen what answer the Government hopes to get from this inquiry, but it can’t hurt to have another one can it?
The other good news is that Martin Ferguson is also well aware of our reliance on imported petroleum:
Without new oil discoveries Australia could face a trade deficit in petroleum products of more than $25 billion by 2015 and domestic oil production could be as little as 20 per cent of our needs compared with 80 per cent in the 1990s.
He even has a plan to deal with this oil import vulnerability. The bad news is that it looks like this (hat tip to Matt in Sydney and Stuart in Brisbane):
Plan A: “Our future depends on finding Australia’s next Bass Strait”.
Plan B: See Plan A.
You can read his full speech here, but this is the key section relating to exploration:
Australia is gas and coal rich, but oil poor with one to two decades of known oil and condensate resources.
- By contrast, we have hundreds of years’ worth of remaining gas and coal resources.
- Therefore, the need for policy settings that promote exploration is most apparent in the oil sector where our future depends on finding Australia’s next Bass Strait.
- My Department is currently developing policy options to intensify mineral and petroleum exploration.
- In the latter part of 2008, I will be bringing forward for Government consideration a package of proposals to significantly enhance Australia’s exploration efforts.
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- The vast majority of Australia’s more than 50 sedimentary basins are largely unexplored.
- Australia’s easy oil has already been won and the simple fact is our frontier basins are higher risk and higher cost locations for exploration than other options around the globe.
- One of the important jobs a national government can do is the preliminary scientific work to try to reduce risk and increase the relative prospectivity of new frontiers by providing a better information base for the industry.
- I am pleased that Geoscience Australia is doing a very good job on this front.
So rest assured everybody - the Government has a plan to deal with this challenge.
Last week’s log entry by Andris Piebalgs starts this way:
Which is the best energy source? This is not an easy question. If we are to apply the European Energy policy, it has to be a source of energy that contributes to our security of supply, that is low carbon and that increases the competitively our economy. Several energy sources answer this question. Renewables, for sure. Some people argue that nuclear is the right choice. Others that we have affordable fossil fuels for many years, and with a bit of carbon capture and storage we can continue our hydrocarbonated lives, like we have done for the last 80 years. All these solutions have its defenders and its opponents. But none of them is my favourite.
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Crossposted at The European Tribune.
After an awkward start with bio-fuels, Andris Piebalgs is finally addressing EU’s energy future objectively. In a nutshell:
For me the best energy is the energy that we don’t use. In other words, energy efficiency. There is no cleaner kilowatt/hour than the one we don’t consume. Every cubic meter of gas we don’t burn makes us a cubic meter less dependent on foreign supplies. Every barrel of petrol that we don’t need makes our economy a barrel less vulnerable to volatile oil prices.
These few sentences address many of the issues raised by the commentators at Andris’ blog during the past weeks. But there is more to it than simply facing the coming energy decline, an Energy Efficiency policy can have economic upturns:
To make things more interesting, when we make an investment in energy efficiency we create jobs and growth in Europe. Let’s put the case of better insulation for your house. Putting double glazed windows certainly is an investment that has a cost. So has your gas bill. The difference is that the cost of the windows will go to a European window company, and will be installed by European workers. Your double-glazed window will not only help to reduce your gas bill and your greenhouse gas emissions, increase the comfort of your house, but will also help to create new window companies and installer jobs. The alternative consists of taking your hard earned euros and sending them to rich oil and gas producing countries.
This all sounds better than the hollow bio-fuel talk. As we’ve seen previously at TOD:E some states in the EU have poor records on GDP unit generated per Fossil Fuel unit consumed. This could be a good measure of how this policy gets under way. As discussed, the 2000$ / boe could be a tentative target for every state of the EU (accounting for currency oscillations).
Some commentators were fast in reminding that Jevons’ Paradox may indeed imply a different outcome than what would otherwise be expected from energy efficiency improvements. But for energy consumption to increase in face of a technological development, there has to be surplus supply, which at least for Oil and Natural Gas today is not the case.
There are two extra advantages for a Energy Efficiency lead policy in today’s energy landscape:
- Alternative energy sources have their own timings entering the market. Even if there’s a political shift towards some alternative(s), technological development might constrain its growth (e.g. Photo-voltaics) hence Efficiency might be the best short-term policy against energy constraints;
- Energy Efficiency is popular. It is hard for anyone to be against it, the dependence on foreign sources diminishes as so the bills by the end of the month.
Finally the announcement of how this policy is taking shape:
Certainly, there are many things that the Commission can do at political level, and I’m proud to announce that 2008 will be the European year of energy efficiency. During these 12 months I plan to come up with a number of energy efficiency legislative proposals, including a stronger energy efficiency in buildings directive; a new energy efficiency labelling directive; new standards for energy efficiency in various groups of products; a Covenant of Mayors for energy efficiency and last but not least, an international agreement on energy efficiency that I hope to sign in Japan next June. In my next entry I will explain all these proposals in detail.
The Commission’s website on Energy Efficiency can be found here. Also in the Commision’s website you can download a copy of the Energy Green Paper (available in 19 different languages), where the 20% savings figure was divised. The english version can be downloaded directly from here [pdf!].
This political path for Energy security can only be well received. Let’s hope that the European year of energy efficiency initiative can be a fruitful one.
Previous coverage of Andris Piebalgs blog:
Andris Piebalgs : getting a sense of proportion
Piebalgs on European Energy Security
LuÃs de Sousa
TheOilDrum:Europe
