Referring to high oil prices, the billionaire airline magnate Richard Branson recently declared, "Thank God it's happened ... A high oil price is what we needed to actually wake up the world" to the reality of climate change. (This from a man who openly pines for a techno fix that will allow us to burn through all the fossil fuel we want, and enjoy our climate, too.)
David and others have made the point before, but it bears repeating: High oil prices do not by any stretch translate to lower carbon emissions. In fact, as an excellent essay by Drake Bennett in today's Boston Globe shows, just the opposite is happening.
Here's the nut:
[A]s oil prices stay high, the real beneficiary often turns out to be a very different alternative-energy industry, one focused on dirty fuel sources such as oil sands, oil shale, and coal. Environmentally speaking, the oil-sand plants of Alberta are no better than petroleum drilling, and in some ways decidedly worse. In North America, in terms of energy output, this so-called "unconventional oil" sector already dwarfs clean and renewable-energy technologies, and is poised to grow even faster in the next decade. "To assume that high energy prices mean we'll switch to wind or solar or other renewables is simply unrealistic," says Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. "It only means that if we make that a concerted policy."
I only wish Bennett had devoted space to debunking another fantasy of Branson's: the idea that biofuels represent some sort of climate-change panacea.
Not all green jobs are created equal
Comments
View as Flat
WWAGD?! Posted 5:17 am
21 Aug 2007
On Grid; Off Grid
Renewables/alteratives will never make it "on the grid". The way to get off coal, oil is to decrease demand.
Off-grid usage holds promise, as this Fortune article describes:
Stunning Solar-Powered Homes
http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/16/solar-energy-homes-forbe ...
John Bailo
Sutext:
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:04 am
21 Aug 2007
Why
"Renewables/alteratives will never make it on the grid."
Why?
SolarThermal, GeoThermal, and Wind are already very cost competitive.
_
Building new coal plants is 120% more expensive than old coal plants, and new nuclear much more than that. Fossil Fuels are already priced out of the market.
That said, this article does make a good point that of one source of liquid hydrocarbon fuel is too expensive, they will merely switch to a harder to acquire dirtier liquid hydrocarbon fuel.
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Biodiversivist Posted 6:24 am
21 Aug 2007
The article ended with a call
to put a price on carbon. Doing that would turn the free market monster loose on carbon. We would also need to put a price on biodiversity.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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NonprofitWatch Posted 10:55 am
21 Aug 2007
Example of Failure of the Market ?
Here's another nut from that essay. Thanks for bringing our attention to it. (Also, there's an extensive piece about offsets in the Washington Post. I think it deserves to be highlighted.)
bernardo issel - http://www.NonprofitWatch.org - bernardo (at) NonprofitWatch.org
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Sean Casten Posted 11:44 pm
21 Aug 2007
OpEx vs. CapEx
Interesting article, but I think it misses a important subtlety. Certainly higher energy costs facilitate the deployment of technologies with higher production costs - and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it wasn't that long ago that oil was at $9/bbl and people were talking about shutting down North Sea oil rigs because the revenue couldn't justify the production costs. What goes up in the oil business will come down. And vice versa.
But it's worth parsing between those whose high costs are dominated by capital investment vs. those whose high costs are dominated by greater operating costs. If a commodity can earn $100/unit in the marketplace, then technologies to produce that commodity with $90/unit production costs all look good. But there is a natural dichotomy about how we get there. In the long run, I'd like to own the technology that is dominated by capital costs (since volatility on the Opex side might move my profit up and down, but are unlikely to make me unprofitable). But in the short run, it is much easier to build technologies that are dominated by high operating expense, since they are proportionally easier to raise capital for. Albertan tar sands are in the latter camp, while traditional renewables and energy efficiency are in the latter. And when your dominant operating costs are fuel, the high capex/low opex technologies are generally going to be more ecologically desirable. (I say generally because fuel switching - such as in the electric industry - can lead to lower opex with a poorer environmental signature. But even in this case, efficiency and renewables trump all in terms of minimizing opex.)
I mention this not to be overly financial, but because the economic conditions that are currently encouraging fuel-intensive oil extraction technologies like Albertan oil sands are also those which are also encouraging less fossil fuel intensive pathways like biofuels, HEVs, etc. And when the inevitable economic shakeout happens, the lower opex stuff is going to be much more competitive.
This is a point that the coal industry has long understood - coal is cheaper than gas on an opex basis, but much more expensive on a capex basis. Thus, even while coal plants may not earn great returns for their investors, they at least earn returns, since they rarely have an economic incentive to shut off. It is a point that will soon be understood by the ethanol industry, which is building lots of low capex, but comparitively inefficient corn dry mills, and when the margins in that business cyclically come down, I'd much rather be an investor in a more efficient (but also more capital intensive) wet mill. (e.g., I'd rather be ADM than VeraSun).
What's interesting in these cycles though is that you always see people flood into both classes of investments (low capex and low opex). The former get praised for their ability to respond quickly to markets, while the latter ultimately get rewarded for their long term vision. (Calpine's experience here is instructive: their bankruptcy was driven in no small part by their rush into relatively cheap gas-fired generation stations, which penciled beautifully until the power margins collapsed and the capacity factor on their fleet fell off. And when you're not running your gas turbine, the investment starts to look rather expensive no matter what you paid for each installed kW.) From a purely financial perspective, one ought to anticipate similar results in Albertan tar sands.
Anyway, I don't want to appear overly optimistic, or suggest that I can predict the future - but the history of economic cycles suggests that the dirty investments now being made could well prove to be a temporary blip on a path to a cleaner future.
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jonbsolar Posted 10:21 am
28 Aug 2007
on/'off grid
to john bailo
i think your fortune story is referring to on-grid homes. if they have an electric meter and energy bill, they're on the grid. pv off grid is a different animal, more $$$ because you're buying battery storage and maybe generator backup in addition to panels to produce electricity. on grid pv is booming in many places where legislation mandating renewables provides financial incentives to help defray the significant front end costs of pv.
jon becker
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