“The most striking finding is that world electricity energy efficiency (measured as overall primary-to-useful exergy efficiency) has stalled, rising dramatically from 2% in 1900 to 15% in 1960, and remaining nearly stable for the last 50 years, only reaching 17% by 2017.”
Why? Power generation got very efficient from 1900 to 1960 but we started to use the electricity in uses that aren’t efficient (mainly switching use to heat and cool buildings).
Flaring natural gas is a hot topic right now, and not just because Russia is using it as a political weapon.
Interestingly Chevron has decided to link some incentive pay to a target to reduce flaring by 25-30% vs. 2016 levels.
Flaring is really bad – not only because it creates CO2 but because it often doesn’t do a good job leading to methane escape (a greenhosue gas that is 80x worse than CO2). Though this appears to be getting better.
In some ways gas is flared because it is a “trapped asset” and this latest piece from Byrne talks a lot about innovative solution for non-tradeable assets. In the case of gas building data centres next to them.
“Oversimplifying monstrously, clean energy technology requires big CapEx outlays today for low or next-to-no OpEx for decades.“
“This is why finance is so important to clean energy—it’s the way we teleport those future OpEx savings through time and space to cover those higher upfront costs.“
So argues this interesting article, exploring clean energy.
This chart summarises the idea nicely (excludes things like biomass which are an exception).
“Permanent refinery closures since the start of 2019 reduced global capacity by around 4.7mn barrels per day, Barclays estimates, and new refinery capacity such as at Kuwait’s Al Zour can’t be brought quick enough. As a result, US and European refinery gross margins are least four times the long-run average“
Before shale took off oil to gas prices averaged 8 to 1 – close to their energy equivalence ratio.
Since 2013 this ratio has averaged 20 to 1.
Outside of North America the ratio is 3 to 1.
“In other words, US gas is priced at an energy-equivalent discount of 56% to world oil and a 77% discount to world gas. In our 35 years investing in global energy markets, we have never seen such a wide disparity.“
Source (including arguments on why it might revert).
“Over the last 20 years, across four Presidents (two Republicans and two Democrats) we have had exactly one energy secretary with any real-world energy experience before they were brought into the President’s cabinet.“
“85% of energy usage comes from burning things” and “human civilisation is powered by combustion“
So starts this excellent post on the current state of affairs and how they are described by politicians and the media.
The first big point is electricity does not equal energy. Electricity is only roughly 20% of world energy use.
Therefore, renewables, a minor part of electricity generation, are only a slither of the much bigger energy pie.
This chart “hammers” the point home.
As does this – from individuals in the know – “a net-zero policy, actually implemented “would certainly be the most significant act of mass murder since the killings of one hundred million people by communist regimes in the twentieth century—and it would likely be far greater.”“
Once adjusted for both inflation and the big increase in fuel economy, the real price of gasoline per mile driven in the US is far from the all time records seen by the nominal price.
Interesting article about a company you probably haven’t heard of, but one that owns far more onshore oil and gas wells than Exxon.
The strategy is one of buying old “dying” wells to squeeze more life out of them.
The company isn’t short on controversy – the environmental cost of such wells is high (they leak gas) and once done they need to be plugged, which the company seems to do at a fraction of the cost of others.
Interesting contrast in a world of rising energy costs.
