Limits on the Grid

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS Guest Mackay Miller, Senior Research Analyst at NREL. @mackaymiller Links NREL: Renewable Electricity Futures Study (RE Futures) (2012) NREL: Power Systems of the Future (May 2015) Nelder: Designing the grid for renewables (2012) Nelder: Wind to Double and Solar to Triple in […]

BP Smacks Down ‘Peak Oil’ Fears

Fear over the environmental impact of using oil, gas and coal reserves means we may never run out of untapped energy stores, according to a leading petroleum industry economist. “Concerns about carbon emissions and climate change mean that it is increasingly unlikely that the world’s reserves of oil will ever be exhausted,” BP Chief Economist Spencer […]

Oil supply shock, food shortages, and potential starvation in Sweden?

In 2013 the Swedish Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering (JTI) released a report about potential impacts on the country’s food supply from sudden oil import shocks. JTI looked at three different scenarios, where oil imports would be redistricted (-25%, -50%, -75%) for a period of 3-5 years. Not enough time to make a transition […]

China Continues to Eat More and More Meat—and That Matters for Everyone

As the world’s most populous country, China consumes a lot of food. As an emerging economic powerhouse, even despite recent financial woes, China consumes a lot of food in greater quantities than it did three or four decade ago—meat, in particular. And with a growing population and a growing middle class, the demand for meat […]

Oil: $20 Or $70

Summary Goldman Sachs says that $20 oil is coming and to sell the current rally. A UBS analyst said on Oct. 12 that $70 is around the corner. The fundamentals remain bearish. The Russian presence in the Middle East is very destabilizing. The Shale Factory will cap rallies, but the bottom is in. Goldman Sachs […]

IEA: Oil Glut To Persist As Global Demand Growth Slows

A global oil supply glut will persist through 2016 as demand growth slows from a five-year high and key OPEC members maintain near-record output, the International Energy Agency said, even as low prices curb supply outside the producer group. The IEA, which advises industrialised countries on energy policy, said in a monthly report on Tuesday […]

Busting the myth called development

Mansoor Khan wears many hats. An alumnus of IIT Mumbai, Cornell University, New York and MIT, Boston, he chose instead to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious filmmaker father Nasir Hussain and directed some blockbusters like ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’ (QSQT) and ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar’ (JJWS). Then he left the glamour industry to […]

Russia sending gas to Ukraine

Natural gas deliveries to Ukraine resumed at the maximum capacity after the payment of outstanding arrears, Russian energy company Gazprom said. Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz said last week it sent half of its outstanding payments to Gazprom, securing an agreement for the delivery of natural gas from Russia. As of Monday morning local time, Gazprom […]

Peak Oil Ass-Backwards (part 3): Forget Austerity and Grexit – it’s Time for a Gretaway!

So here we are on this precipice of sorts, staring upon the twilight of the industrial economy due to peaking energy supplies and thus peaking credit supplies (as explained in part 2 of this 3-part series). Simply put, being on the peak oil plateau, and with fossil fuel supplies in general reaching their limits (and […]

Oil and the Global Economy

How important is oil to the future of the global economy?  The remarkable economic expansion of in the United States and other industrial nations over the past century or more has been fueled by a steadily growing supply of low-cost energy—mostly from fossil fuels—oil in particular which accounts for more global energy consumption than any […]

Bubbles and Backlashes

Financial markets have been turbulent as of late with no end in sight. A sagging global economy could overwhelm America’s recovery efforts with toxic effects on key climate change and clean energy initiatives now underway. The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to postpone an interest rate hike is but one reflection of their deep global concern. […]

The Problem of Agriculture

I was born and raised in North Dakota, a rural state with an economy that historically has been dependent on agriculture, but I knew virtually nothing about the hard work of farming—nor did I understand the way farming creates ecological crises—until I met Jim Koplin. At that time, like most people who labeled themselves as […]

Richard Heinberg: After the Burn

After a two-century-long burning bender, the globe is in for a heck of a hangover. Our guest this week on Sea Change Radio is Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute, and author of a dozen books about growth, peak oil, and energy issues. His latest book is called Afterburn, a collection of essays that center on […]

US EIA Sees Tighter 2016 Oil Market As Demand Accelerates

Global oil demand will grow by the most in six years in 2016 while non-OPEC supply stalls, according to a monthly U.S. energy report that suggests a surplus of crude is easing more quickly than expected. Total world supply is expected to rise to 95.98 million barrels a day in 2016, 0.1 percent less than […]

Supply, Demand, and the Price of Oil

Could the price of oil be a value such that the current quantity produced exceeds the current quantity consumed? The answer is yes, and indeed that has been the case for much of the past year. Suppose for illustration that even at a price of $40, there would be enough producers with sunk costs on […]

Dancing with Doom

“The Shakers believed they were living in the last millennium, the final page of humanity, and since all people shared a brother/sister relationship, they should not marry as there was no longer a need to procreate.“   What do you do if you think the world as we know it is about to end and […]

Lifting Iran sanctions could flood worldwide oil market

Iran has faced sanctions for decades, but those implemented in 2012 have taken a severe toll on the Iranian economy. Even if sanctions are lifted, it’s likely the global oil market will remain flooded late into next year, keeping prices low and employees out of work. In November 2013, Iran signed an interim agreement with […]

We’re a Long Way From ‘Peak Car’

Many environmentalists hope, and oil producers worry, that we’re entering a post-car era spearheaded by tech-savvy, bike-path-loving, urban-dwelling, Uber-using millennials—leaving behind generations of automobile owners whose thirst for gasoline seemed limitless. “Millennials have been reluctant to buy items such as cars,” a Goldman Sachs analysis concludes, turning to “what’s being called a ‘sharing economy.’ ” […]

The Exxons of Agriculture

It goes without saying that oil and coal companies should not have a seat at the policy table for decisions on climate change. Their profits depend on business-as-usual and they’ll do everything in their power to undermine meaningful action. But what about fertiliser companies? They are essentially the oil companies of the food world: the […]

$4 Gasoline By May 2016

Summary Expect higher gasoline and oil prices in 200 days. US Peak Oil from Fracking was in July 2015. US Oil Production down 474,000 barrels per day since July 2015. Watch EIA TWIP Report to understand oil inventories. “Glut” of oil to deplete in 200 days. Two forces, acting in opposite directions, will soon align […]

Global oil demand growing at fastest pace for five years

World oil demand surged in the first six months of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014, according to national estimates submitted to the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI). Petroleum demand is responding in the expected manner to a halving in the price of crude and significant declines in the price of most fuels […]

Bottom of the barrel

Sometimes when you are in the process of setting a long-term bottom in crude oil it gets ugly before you hit the bottom of the barrel. Yesterday oil prices suffered as global growth fears and a falling U.S. stock-market overshadowed signs of more U.S. oil production destruction. Commodity giant Glencore’s stock fell 29%, and when a stock […]

The Peak Oil Story We Have Been Told Is Wrong

Most people believe that low oil prices are good for the United States, since the discretionary income of consumers will rise. There is the added benefit that Peak Oil must be far off in the distance, since “Peak Oilers” talked about high oil prices. Thus, low oil prices are viewed as an all around benefit. […]

Peak Oil Will Cause Transition Into a Slow Growth Economy.

Why do we measure our success with those little bits of paper money? For that matter, how does one measure wealth? Do you measure them in investments? Tangible assets or resources? I ask these questions because it seems the people who run the central banks and our government seems to think otherwise. They run the […]

Janaia interviewed on Nature Bats Last

Last week I was interviewed by Guy McPherson and Mike Sliwa on their Nature Bats Last podcast. It’s fun to turn the tables: I’ve interviewed Guy twice: Climate Change and Human Extinction – A Personal Perspective (2014) and Living Each Moment in the Face of Abrupt Climate Change (2015). I started with my perspective on abrupt climate […]

A Beacon in the Sand

We might begin with the image of American history as a great tidal wave of progress. A wave launched with the appearance of the colonists; a wave rolling with greater and greater momentum westward across the continent. It brushed aside everything that resisted it. It used covered wagons and steamships, homesteads and railroads, guns and […]

Britain must prepare for life without oil

The man tasked with saving the UK’s North Sea oil industry says it will take two years or more to recover from its problems and that Britain should start preparing for life without oil. Last year Sir Ian Wood wrote a report, commissioned by the government, into how to maximise the North Sea’s oil and […]

If you measure in barrels, we’re doing OK

The good ship USA, as measured by the Barrel Standard, is doing nicely, thank you very much. You may not feel that way if you have any money invested in the stock market, but it is. Apple shares have been knocked back to their level of about a year ago. So has the S&P 500. […]

Michael Lynch: Goldman Sachs Vs. OPEC

Interestingly, two contradictory oil price forecasts have appeared in the past few days, Goldman Sachs predicting that prices would remain “low” for fifteen years, while OPEC has argued that the price should recover to $80 a barrel by 2020. This is interesting because a few years ago, Goldman was considered the greatest price bull (among […]

In barrels of oil, America doing just fine

The good ship USA, as measured by the Barrel Standard, is doing nicely, thank you very much. You may not feel that way if you have any money invested in the stock market, but it’s true. Apple shares have been knocked back to their level of about a year ago. So has the S&P 500. […]

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