A Green Degree Blog: New Angles On Sustainability

September 28th 2012

Total Sees Some Sense In The Arctic Whilst Shell Plans World’s Largest Offshore Refinery

In a turn of events unrivaled in recent fossil fuel developments, one of the major world players in oil exploration and refining, has recently stated what many of us rational thinkers had thought would never be uttered; drilling in the Arctic is a bad idea. Joy! Finally someone a the top of the very issues that got us into this climate mess in the first place has perhaps seen some sense.

The CEO of Total, the world’s fourth largest oil conglomerate and not a company known for it’s environmental conscience has turned the table on its head, directly attacking and condemning the efforts of Shell and Gazprom in exploring the melting Arctic for new hydrocarbon reserves. CEO Christophe de Margerie openly admitted the high risks and potential dangers associated with offshore drilling in the Arctic, or anywhere for that matter, but it’s how he phrased the next part that slightly lessens the impact of this revelation.

According to de Margerie, Total will not be carrying out any exploration in the polar region, as a spillage “would do too much damage to the image of the company” and thus is not worth the risk.

So it seems that Total is scared of drilling the Arctic because of something not really connected to environmental or green issues whatsoever; it just doesn’t want to tarnish the record of its oh-so untarnished reputation as an oil demon. What’s instantly and obviously worrying is that there is absolutely no mention of the risks such a spill would have on the ecology, species, humans and general environment of the Arctic region, a highly sensitive and fragile part of the planet, and one which is already taking a considerable beating from a warming climate. It just shows that even when these behemoths of the fossil fuel world seem to be doing something right for once, there’s generally not a pure and environmentally-friendly motive behind it, but just a way of saving their own skins, not those of the ones at risk.

However, if the threat of ruining their rep in the same way that BP has blackened its name with the Deepwater Horizon disaster is strong enough to stop them from drilling up north, then I can somewhat condone it. Hell, it may even be useful to use this idea as a force to turn other companies such as Shell against the idea of drilling, but this is a whole new mission impossible of itself.

Posted at 9:46am and tagged with: oil, drilling, offshore, carbon, emissions, Environment, energy, shell, gazprom, total, acrtic, save, greenpeace, melt, ice, sense, business, money, refinery, natural gas, ship, world, largest, ecology, species, BP, disaster, spill, fossil fuel, grist,.

September 13th 2012

Japan Nuclear-Free By 2030s, But How Will They Fill The Gap?

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It would seem a decision on the fate of nuclear power in Japan has potentially been decided this week, with the announcement by the prime minister’s leading democratic party that policy will be settled soon which intends to ‘realise a situation where the number of nuclear plants operated be zero in the 2030s’, effectively hammering home the final nail in the industry’s coffin.

It has long been thought by followers of the nuclear market that Japan would eventually cut all ties and close down their operations post-Fukushima, but for a long time the prime minister was caught in two minds; on the one hand, he had an angry Japanese public to answer to for the Fukushima disaster, whilst he and the business sector believed Japan would need to nuclear to progress without blackouts and that the benefits outweighed the possible risks. Now it seems that the public may have won, with this statement no doubt gratifying many concerned citizens, although it may not seem to be coming quick enough for some.

Since the Tohoku earthquake, all of Japans fifty reactors have been offline, bar two in the same plot restarted earlier this year, for regulation and safety checks, leaving the country with a gaping energy deficit of 30%, the amount fission provided up until the fateful tsunami. With the closure in full effect and possible edgings towards restarting the nuclear fleet being banded around, a country normally peaceful and well conformed to government life was up in arms, with protests in the thousands rattling the streets of Tokyo, demanding an end to nuclear and it’s inherent dangers. This was certainly a Japan not often seen by the global public, not least the media.

Unfortunately, Japan has had to heavily rely on oil imports since the shutdowns across the country, ramping up their consumption of Middle Eastern black gold considerably, whilst at the same time employing strict and tough efficiency rulings and energy-saving requirements back home, just to stop the nation from all out blackouts during the summer months. In effect, this increased oil consumption not only stalled what looked to be a peaking industry, but also contributed greatly to the carbon being dumped into the atmosphere, carbon which otherwise would have been left in the ground had the nuclear plants been left on or restarted.

This is the crucial point of the entire ‘end to nuclear’ debate currently being hotly contested all over the developed world. If we choose to dump nuclear, an industry which provides a large chunk of global energy supply, we must be prepared to replace it with something else, and that doesn’t mean more oil, coal and natural gas from elsewhere in the world. That is clearly backward thinking and progress.

August 20th 2012

My First Flavour Of The Corporate Energy World - Inspiring

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I have just come back from my very first taste of what the real world is like, the main reason my blog has been pretty devoid of content for a while now, completing a period of work experience within one of the world’s largest companies, and undoubtedly its largest and most successful energy company, GE, specifically their Energy department; it was eye-opening to say the least.

Obtained and organised through a friend of my partners family, I was taken under the wing of a commercial leader forming part of the UK and Northern Europe wind energy team at their HQ in Bracknell, where I was introduced to all aspects of the corporate energy world, from selling to policy, and I was blown away by the some of the things I came away with.

As a commercial leader, my ‘boss’ so to speak, was responsible for the entire bidding process involved with procuring a wind-farm development by beating away the competition and getting the customer the best deal possible, whilst generating some revenue for the company on the side. Therefore, I effectively dived in at the deep end and through myself upon the various projects lined up for me, including getting to grips with how GE Energy functioned on a global and GW scale, researching information for the sales teams on new turbine designs and experiencing precisely how the company deals with customers and developers amidst a rapidly changing energy market; it was fascinating to say the least.

Before going into this, I admittedly had rather little knowledge of GE and its workings worldwide, despite it being responsible for the power plants providing 25% of global needs and being around since the invention of the lightbulb, and in actual fact, being founded by the very inventor himself, Thomas Edison. Therefore I was relatively relieved when my boss told me that GE’s brand presence in Europe is small to say it politely, and in all likelihood, mentioning that you work at ‘General Electric’ in the UK could easily inspire a puzzled and disinterested reaction unless followed up by further information. This is certainly something I found to be true talking to my friends, but did not realise how common this issue was.

Even though GE has been instrumental in powering a large majority of the world’s planes with their jet engines, transporting freight goods via their massive train industry, lighting up millions of American homes with bulbs and generating the technology necessary to power our hungry society (and this isn’t everything either), nobody over here really takes much notice of them. Anyway, I digress.

Posted at 10:00am and tagged with: GE, general electric, carbon, energy, market, business, corporate, money, experience, internship, work, university, student, wind, solar, nuclear, gas, natural gas, oil, coal, advice, policy, turbine, CCGT, electricity, renewable, green, job, future,.

July 15th 2012

It’s Time To Wake Up & Smell The Renewable Revolution, Soon We Won’t Have Any Other Choice

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As a global society, we currently stand on a precipice; the potential catastrophe that awaits us cannot be downplayed in any way. Brought about by fossil fuel greed, mass shortsightedness and a complete and frankly terrifyingly impressive ability to ignore all signs of danger and wrongdoing for decades past, humanity has ravaged the planet to a point where civilisation is at the fork in the road.

Unless we make a change, a global change, we begin the short walk down one road towards an extinction level event, bigger than any nature has wrought upon life before us, that will be impossible to turn back from. Forgive my foreboding and perhaps depressing approach, but I for one see only one route out of this. For centuries before now, humanity has prided itself on its ability to innovate and outsmart our way out of danger, and never more than now is it crucial we do this once again.

It’s with these thoughts ringing heavily in my ears, that I turn to what I feel are some of the most frustrating and dismissive problems large majorities of society have with certain renewable technologies, as well as some of those dirtier fossil fuels such as natural gas, which despite being part of the problem, are rapidly taking precedence as the answer to our carbon woes, a fantastic alternative to that old demon oil and coal.

Unfortunately I do not foster the same feelings towards natural gas, and also do not tend to follow suit in regards to issues with solar panels, wind farms or nuclear plants, all of which are the truly awe-inspiring innovations with which we can slow, stop and eventually reverse the once irreversible damage we have wrought upon this beautiful planet. As you will hopefully see in the following summaries, many of the so-called ‘negatives’ with each of these technologies, is in my eyes, and I’m sure the eyes of many others, both ridiculous and detrimental to society as a whole, a statement I do not wish to undervalue in this post.

Let’s get straight to the major players, solar and wind. The one complaint about these two absolutely wonderful technologies is one that angers me greatly - “they’re too ugly, don’t go putting them on my roof/in my garden/anywhere within a 50 miles radius or my house”. Apologies if you’re someone who shares these feelings, but I simply cannot agree with such a weak and destructive view when you consider the grand scheme. As job creators, solar and wind each produce at least 6x the number of jobs that coal and oil do, with a much larger percentage in long term maintenance, a highly secure career. Not only this, but subsidies, feed-in-tariffs and government funding has aided these industries in literally exploding in value and popularity, and lest not forget, solar and wind are entirely clean, completely renewable and have the potential to provide huge proportions of the world’s energy.

May 13th 2012

Hypersolar Believes It Can Make Natural Gas Practically Green

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Hypersolar is an interesting and thought-provoking solar company, whose main goal is to bring clean energy to the masses through the clever and sometimes ingenious use of science and technology. Though a relatively small name in the big world of solar energy (I hadn’t heard of them until now), they harbour some big ideas and have introduced some powerful technology into the mix.

They initially hit the industry running with their creation of a Hypersolar ‘layer’ for solar panels, which could halve the amount of individual solar cells needed, whilst upping their output by an impressive 400%. This layer would replace the traditional glass screen atop the cells, and would focus solar radiation onto rows of cells, therefore intensifying the light and producing extra juice. A neat invention to say the least, although I haven’t heard much else about the product.

This time round, they’ve decided to combine their solar expertise with an area of energy production which I, and no doubt many others, did really not expect. They hope that, with their new solar cell systems, they can imitate nature and the beautiful complexity of photosynthesis in order to create ‘clean’ and ‘renewable’ natural gas. Clean I hear you say, that ain’t right.

By mimicing plants, the team plans to split water into its component parts, hydrogen and oxygen. This hydrogen is then combined with carbon dioxide, presumably they hope from the atmosphere itself, to create methane, a prime constituent of natural gas. As this carbon is from the air around us, not only does it suck CO2 from our dirty atmosphere, it then uses this to produce more fuel for us to burn. As it only requires water alongside this, it can be labelled renewable by the company.

The team also highlight that they believe the natural gas future is a very real one, but that the environmental faults of extracting and creating it is both dirty and expensive. Therefore this technology kills two birds with one stone, making the environment happier whilst still allowing a less radical switch to a NG dominated economy.

Posted at 10:01am and tagged with: natural gas, Hypersolar, solar, energy, carbon, dioxide, methane, photosynthesis, nature, beautiful, apes, smart, technology, science, power, global warming,.

May 9th 2012

Carbon PPM Hits A New High, & Natural Gas Is Replacing Coal - This Seems Strange?

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Coal has always been the number one fossil fuel in our society’s list of burnable sunlight, which of course it simply is, which also begs the question why is solar taking so long to kick off? Sorry, going off on a tangent here, I think I’ll reserve that for another post. Back to the main subject.

Coal is by far the most worrisome and dirty of the fossil fuels, although its brother oil is not to be easily beaten in that respect, and has been utilised for centuries to provide electricity to our lights and heat our homes. Throughout this time, a frankly astounding amount of CO2 has been emitted into the surrounding environment and atmosphere, warming our planet and screwing with multiple climatic, biological and ocean-atmosphere interactions and feedbacks which we’re only just beginning to experience.

Only recently, the Mauna Loa carbon-detection research station in Hawaii, sitting high atop the largest volcano in the world, measured an atmospheric ppm value just shy of 400; that’s a massive figure. In fact this is the highest recorded atmospheric carbon content in the history of measurements, indicating that despite our best, and sometimes admirably successful attempts at culling emissions, it’s still doing its own thing.

This of course can be explained by a few important factors, most predominantly the rise of the BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China, who are pumping out carbon at a rate equivalent to the peak of our Western expansions, with many more countries joining them. Alongside this, the simple physical fact that carbon sticks around in the atmosphere for at least half a century, means that a good portion of the continued increase we are seeing is due to pollution spewed out within the past several years - even if we cut carbon emission to zero as of this moment globally, it would still keep going for up until past 2020.

So I find it strange that, in reading an article recommended via Grist today, and with the knowledge that natural gas, that lesser-of-two-evils fossil fuel (or perhaps not) is taking the energy world by storm, we still haven’t fully grasped this ‘green’ concept.

Natural gas has been becoming increasingly popular in many developed nations who are trying to curb their carbon emissions through the cutting back of coal and oil burning, as it is not only just as readily available, but technically, and I emphasise technically, emits less carbon than coal when burnt. This is the reason that countries are adopting a more natural gas-orientated energy mix in future policy, as they see it as a way of securing stable energy sources at a reduced cost to the environment and wallets.

Posted at 11:02am and tagged with: oil, natural gas, coal, fossil fuel, energy, US, NOAA, EPA, emissions, carbon, methane, science, burning, Environment, global warming, climate change, policy, BRIC, ppm,.

April 19th 2012

Canada et al Plans To Use Natural Gas To Extract Tar-Sand Oil?

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I may be slightly behind on the news of this project, but it wasn’t until a recent lecture at my university on the state of global hydrocarbon reserves and extraction techniques, that I learnt of the proposed, and I believe now accepted Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, a massive 1,200km long natural gas pipeline running from North Canada to Alberta. I just wanted to highlight a few details regarding the project and its goal, even though the expect completion date has been set at 2014 and may very possibly be old news on the green network.

Due to the huge natural gas resources locked up in the Mackenzie Delta region, 6 trillion cubic feet at best estimates, companies such as Shell, Esso and ExxonMobil have been flocking to the area ever since the discovery of such vast reserves in the early 1970s. A volume of gas this large would be able to comfortably heat every gas-heated Canadian household for 6 years, or every equivalent American abode for a year and half. That is a hell of a lot of gas.

This gas will be transported south in various forms, namely liquified for quicker mobilisation, or as a gas for the last section of the pipeline, and carries as estimated CAN$7 billion price-tag, which will inevitably be breached. Not only this, but the first section of the line runs through what is ostensibly First Nation’s land, where many of the original aboriginal peoples inhabit today, and whose land has been ravaged by the white-man fossil fuel industry for decades already.

Because of this, the pipeline was proposed alongside agreement from the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, with the foreign players focusing heavily on the fact that thousands of jobs and a stimulation of the local economy would be priority, of course in return for the ownership and rights to build a whacking great pipeline through (once) pristine Canada and mine the ground to dust. However, considering the pipeline is now going ahead, I would assume the deal was enticing enough for them, but likely just as much a result of bullying into accepting the deal as it was pure acceptance.

What sticks most in the throat for me though, and in fairness, when put in the context of Canada’s recent environmental movements (out of Kyoto, tar sand priority etc) doesn’t actually surprise me, is what all this gas is being used for. The final destination, is that of NE Alberta, and the Athabasca tar sands. Yep, tar sands. The natural gas is being mainly used to extract oil from the tar sands, I am guessing through the burning of the gas to create the heats necessary to loosen up bitumen oils in the ground, allowing them to flow more easily to the surface.

As we all know, or should now be aware of, tar sand oil is 2-4 times more damaging and carbon-emmitting than standard oil extraction, and yet using natural gas reserves this large for the same purpose just seems to be kicking the Earth whilst it’s down, like Canada and the participating companies are sticking a middle finger up to climate change. Where this oil goes I’m unsure of, but we can al make our own firm guesses at that, but natural gas for tar sand oil? Doesn’t sound like a fair trade to me.

That gas should either be left in the ground, along with the tar sand oil, or it should be gradually extracted by the First Nations people as and when they need it, not for Esso or ExxonMobil. Of course, money makes the world go round, and Canada has plenty of scope for that.

http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/minister+asks+Ottawa+Mackenzie+pipeline+support/1719003/story.html

Posted at 12:28pm and tagged with: canada, tar sands, oil, natural gas, athabasca, mackenzie, pipeline, bitumen, esso, shell, exxonmobil, first nations, carbon, climate, change, extraction, hydrocarbons, science, environment,.