Monthly Archives: September 2015

How to make sense of ‘alarming’ sea level forecasts

September 16, 2015Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

You may have read recent reports about huge changes in sea level, inspired by new research from James Hansen, NASA’s former Chief Climate Scientist, at Columbia University. Sea level rise represents one of the most worrying aspects of global warming, potentially displacing millions of people along coasts, low river valleys, deltas and islands.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s scientific climate body, forecasts rises of approximately 40 to 60 cm by 2100. But other studies have found much greater rises are likely.

Hansen and 16 co-authors found that with warming of 2C sea levels could rise by several metres. Hansen’s study was published in the open-access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, and has not as yet been peer-reviewed. It received much media coverage for its “alarmist” findings.

So how should we make sense of these dire forecasts?

Stop burning fossil fuels now: there is no CO2 ‘technofix’

September 16, 2015Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

Researchers have demonstrated that even if a geoengineering solution to CO2 emissions could be found, it wouldn’t be enough to save the oceans

Severe Flooding, Against a Background of Wind Turbines: November 2012, Tyringham, Bucks. (Image: T. Larkum) — “The chemical echo of this century’s CO2 pollutiuon will reverberate for thousands of years,” said the report’s co-author, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Image: T. Larkum)

German researchers have demonstrated once again that the best way to limit climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels now.

In a “thought experiment” they tried another option: the future dramatic removal of huge volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This would, they concluded, return the atmosphere to the greenhouse gas concentrations that existed for most of human history – but it wouldn’t save the oceans.

That is, the oceans would stay warmer, and more acidic, for thousands of years, and the consequences for marine life could be catastrophic.

The research, published in Nature Climate Change today delivers yet another demonstration that there is so far no feasible “technofix” that would allow humans to go on mining and drilling for coal, oil and gas (known as the “business as usual” scenario), and then geoengineer a solution when climate change becomes calamitous.

VW Golf GTE is perfect for polar bear-loving speed freaks

September 16, 2015Electric Cars, Golf GTE, News, Reviews and Comment, VolkswagenTrevor Larkum

The author doesn’t seem to get the difference between a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid, but otherwise it’s not a bad review

This car uses green technology, not just to reduce emissions, but to go faster

Until recently, hybrid cars were pretty sedate affairs. They were either for celebrities to be seen in, or they were the car your Uber driver arrived in. Now that’s changing, with the latest hybrids ranging from McLaren’s £866,000 P1 supercar to a string of saloons and hatchbacks from a range of mainstream car makers.

Enter Volkswagen and the new Golf GTE. Since the 1970s, the Golf has been the goose that laid the golden egg for VW, and the latest generation, the Mk VII, is an all-round brilliant machine. The GTE is its latest incarnation.

The idea is that if the all-electric VW Golf, which has a range of around 90 miles, leaves you worrying about broken charging stations and range anxiety, this new plug-in hybrid Golf GTE will tempt you. This, then, is a fast hybrid, a kind of Greenpeace-friendly hot hatch for polar bear-loving speed freaks.

The power comes from a combination of a 148bhp turbo-charged petrol engine and a 101bhp electric motor, which when combined can push out a maximum of 201bhp. The electric motor will charge in less than four hours from a domestic socket, or in just over two hours at a rapid-charging station of the type increasingly found at motorway service stations. This combination makes the GTE quicker to 60mph than the diesel-powered Golf GTD, while at the same time offering economy and emission figures to make a Toyota Prius blush, and leaving owners with a zero road-tax bill. If your daily commute is less than 31 miles (the electric-only range) this car offers incredibly low ownership costs and you could (theoretically) never fill up the tank.

However, this will depend on which of the five different drive modes you select, ranging from pure electric “E-mode” to “GTE”, which uses the petrol and electric powers to make this green Golf very quick indeed. If you indulge in this burst of power, though, electric range will drop to nearer 20 miles and the promised economy will be impossible to attain. Critics will say that it doesn’t live-up to the true heritage of the Golf GTI and doesn’t deserve the first two letters of its name. But this car uses green technology, not just to reduce emissions, but to go faster, to make driving fun. And that’s something to be celebrated.

Source: Independent

Lower cost electric vehicle charging in Milton Keynes

September 15, 2015BP Chargemaster, Charging, Electric Cars, Milton Keynes, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

This is hopefully a good sign that drivers’ concerns over high charging costs are being listened to.

Milton Keynes Council and Chargemaster have announced an improved vehicle charging network, offering upgraded charging points and reduced costs for electric vehicle owners in the borough.

Low cost electric vehicle charging brought to over 200 charging points in Milton Keynes

Chargemaster, as Milton Keynes’ electric vehicle charging partner, has significantly reduced costs of charging private and company electric cars in the city, with prices now lower than the typical cost of charging at home.

The new POLAR Plus subscription scheme has a usage rate of just 9p per kWh with effect from August 10th, 2015 and applies to over 200 charging points in Milton Keynes including 50 rapid chargers recently installed under a government-funded scheme.

This compares with a typical home electricity rate of approximately 11p per kWh.

Membership of POLAR Plus costs £7.85 per month – similar to popular streaming services Netflix or Amazon Instant – and the first six months’ subscription is free.

Membership gives EV drivers unlimited access to over 4000 POLAR charging points across the country.

In addition, members can accrue usage points, enabling them to borrow, for one week, a range of electric cars through POLAR EXPERIENCE. This fleet includes the BMW i8 and Tesla Model S, as well as Nissan LEAF, Renault ZOE and the fun Renault Twizy.

In future, new EVs launching, including the Tesla Model X SUV and vehicles from Audi and Mercedes, will be available for members to sample shortly after their introduction.

Milton Keynes has already established itself as an extremely convenient location to own an electric car with more rapid chargers than any other city in Europe.

…

Milton Keynes Mayor Keith McLean, who test drove the BMW i8 this week, said:

“Electric cars are truly here to stay now with virtually every car manufacturer bringing out new plug-in models. I am proud that Milton Keynes now has such great facilities to encourage low emission vehicles.”

Record sales of BMW i3 and i8

September 14, 2015BMW, Electric Cars, i3, i8, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

BMW has seen sales of its electric division exceed 30,000 units by the end of the first half of 2015.

The i brand was launched in November 2013, when the i3 went on sale. More than 26,000 of the five-door family cars have been sold since then.

The i range was doubled when the i8 was launched last year. So far almost 4,500 units of the striking-looking plug-in hybrid sportscar have been sold.

In June 2015, total i range sales were 2,017, a rise of 65 per cent compared to the same month in 2014.

There has been a surge in the uptake of electric vehicles across the board. Vehicles such as the i3, the Nissan LEAF and the Mitsubishi have all played an important role in advocating a switch to electric transport.

With the UK government grant cap of 50,000 registered plug-in vehicles looming ever closer (now over 40k overall), the question is whether this uptake will continue to grow without the funding?

Source: Next Green Car

Oil Industry Frets About Another Lost Decade

September 14, 2015Energy and Climate Change, Oil, OpinionTrevor Larkum

Oil is an inherently cyclical business. The point is remarkably simple but it is amazing how often it gets forgotten by forecasters and investors.

In the century and a half since the modern oil industry was founded with the drilling of Edwin Drake’s well in 1859, real prices have doubled in the space of three years on no fewer than six separate occasions, and halved on four.

If prices remain around $50 for the rest of the year, 2015 will be the fifth time real prices have fallen more than 50 percent in the space of less than three years.

Sharp price changes over short periods have therefore been the norm and the long period of relative stability between 1931 and 1969 was the exception.

It follows that any attempt to predict where prices will go in the medium term (two to five years) or long term (beyond five years) based on current prices or recent changes is bound to fail.

The cyclical, unpredictable nature of prices has not stopped an army of prognosticators from trying to guess where they will go, but most forecasts have an endearing backward-looking quality.

When prices are high and have been rising, most forecasts predict they will rise even further on increasing scarcity. When they are low and have been falling, most forecasts predict a further slide on continued oversupply.

In 2008, and again in 2011/12, as prices were peaking at more than $140 and $120 per barrel respectively, most forecasters were predicting prices would remain high more or less forever.

Not one major forecaster saw prices sinking back to less than $60 per barrel but on both occasions it happened in less than three years.

Now prices have fallen, it seems no major forecaster is predicting they will rise sharply again within the foreseeable future.

But the current bearishness about the medium-term outlook is no more likely to be accurate than the former bullishness was between 2008 and 2011.

It’s time to call Peak Oil

September 14, 2015Blog, Energy and Climate Change, Oil, Peak OilTrevor Larkum

I’ve been thinking a lot about Peak Oil recently, and am increasingly convinced that we are seeing its effects already starting to play out in world news, in low oil prices, flat economies, etc.

It is widely accepted that Peak Oil occurred for conventional oil in 2005/6 and that led via very high oil prices to the global financial crisis of 2007/8. However, the high oil prices had an important side-effect, and that was to allow oil that was hard to extract to become potentially profitable and so we had the dash for shale and tar sands oil that has been booming since. This growth in unconventional oil increased the total annual oil extraction figures such that ‘Peak Total Oil’ looked to be moved into the future.

The Saudis, however, put a spoke in the wheel in October last year when they decided they were better off with low oil prices – since they can extract oil very cheaply – and so get back their reducing market share. This led to the current price tumble and oil glut.

While the notoriously optimistic U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has been talking up the US shale oil industry for years, recently it has been moderating its view and suggesting that there may be a peak in unconventional oils as soon as 2020. I believe even this to be over-optimistic.

It is in this context that I see the currently unfolding Chinese stock market crash as being the key turning point, and in particular the week beginning 24 August 2015 – Black Monday – when the Chinese stock market lost 16% of its value. Given that China is currently the world’s economic engine this faltering is a major warning sign, and will likely lead to a softening of demand over the next few years (and perhaps indefinitely).

Putting these things together – a reduction in supply from unconventional oil and a reduction in demand from a faltering global economy – means I’m going to call it:

I think the conditions required for Peak Oil occurred together in August 2015.

This doesn’t mean that Peak Oil has itself just occurred since production drops will lag the economic situation – not least because shale oil production is heavily hedged and credit is currently cheap. Rather, that the peak is imminent – it cannot be avoided unless there is a major increase in either supply or demand in the short term, and neither seems likely.

Longer term, if the Saudis hold their nerve, the US shale industry is likely to implode* from insufficient revenue to service its debts – I think this will occur before the end of 2016, and very likely before the end of 2017 – and shale oil production will drop like a stone. Then Peak Unconventional Oil will have occurred, and therefore Peak Oil itself.

In summary:

In the future, we will be able to look back and see that Peak Oil occurred in 2016/17 and followed naturally and inevitably from the collision of supply and demand reductions in the summer of 2015.

*I think if this plays out we will have another Global Financial Crisis within three years from now, but that’s a topic for another day.

Tesla’s Model X available from September

September 13, 2015Electric Cars, Model X, News, Reviews and Comment, TeslaTrevor Larkum

Elon Musk’s third electric car will be delivered to customers in the US after three years of delay, with over 20,000 pre-orders

Tesla’s much delayed electric sports utility vehicle is due to finally reach customers, starting in September, Elon Musk has announced.

The Tesla Model X is the electric car company’s third car, designed to appeal to the SUV-crossover market (Image: Tesla Motors)

The Model X was originally unveiled in 2012 alongside the first deliveries of the Model S sedan and was expected to go into production in 2013. Musk announced two subsequent delays as the company struggled to meet demand for the Model S and the motoring company’s expansion plans.

The Model X has a higher ride height, all-wheel drive and can seat up to seven, making it the largest vehicle available from Tesla Motors. More than 20,000 people have already paid a $5,000 deposit to reserve one of the new models. Pricing is expected to be similar to the Model S, which starts at £50,000 in the UK.

Musk confirmed that the company’s Model X car configurator would be available online in the next three weeks and that customers will start recieving new cars by 30 September.

The Roadster, Tesla’s first car, the Model S, and now the Model X, are being used to pave the way for Tesla’s Model 3, which is Musk’s vision of a mass market electric car.

Oil and Gas Industry to Lose Credit Supply

September 12, 2015Energy and Climate Change, Oil, Opinion, Peak OilTrevor Larkum

The screws are being tightened on the debt-laden US shale industry

More U.S. oil and gas companies could come under financial distress in the coming months as crucial hedging protection begins to expire.

Many companies had locked in high prices for their oil sales last year, allowing them a degree of protection as oil prices collapsed precipitously over the second half of 2014. Few, if any, hedged all of their production though, so revenues declined along with the oil price. Still, with some protection, the vast majority of companies (aside from a tragic handful) have not missed debt payments and have stayed out of bankruptcy.

That could become an increasingly tricky feat to pull off. As time passes, more and more hedges are expiring, leaving oil companies fully exposed to the painfully low oil price environment.

“A lot of these smaller guys who had bad balance sheets have pretty good hedge books through full-year 2015,” Andrew Byrne, an analyst with IHS, told the Houston Chronicle. “You can’t say that about 2016.”

In fact, about one-fifth of North American production is hedged at a median price of $87.51 per barrel. Smaller companies rely much more heavily upon hedging as they are more vulnerable to price swings and are not diversified with downstream assets. Across the industry, IHS estimates that smaller companies had about half of their production hedged at a median oil price of $89.86 per barrel in 2015.

But as those positions expire, any new hedges will be linked to current oil prices, which are now trading around $45 per barrel (although prices are fluctuating with great intensity and ferocity these days).

More worrying for the oil and gas companies that are struggling to keep their lights on is the forthcoming credit redeterminations, which typically take place in April and September. Banks recalculate credit lines for drillers, using oil prices as a key determinant of an individual company’s viability. With oil prices bouncing around near six-year lows, more companies will find themselves on the wrong side of that equation.

Banks were more lenient in April when oil prices were a bit higher and many analysts expected prices to rise. This time around the pain is mounting and there will be a lot less leeway. Somewhere around 10 to 15 percent credit offered to drillers could be cut back on average, a move that could slash $15 billion in credit capacity, according to CreditSights Inc.

With other financial avenues cut off, indebted drillers could be left with no way out.

“Nobody is in good shape with oil at $39,” CreditSights Inc. analyst Brian Gibbons told Bloomberg in an interview. “Most energy companies are shut out of the debt markets. There are few companies that can get a deal done right now.”

Is it time to join the climate change preppers?

September 11, 2015Energy and Climate Change, Opinion, Prepping and CollapseTrevor Larkum

(A tonque-in-cheek article from February 2014)

The floods and storms that have wreaked havoc across Britain this winter could be just the beginning, and now a growing number of people are making preparations for the end of the modern world. Here’s what you’ll need to do to stand a chance.

We are getting close to what might be called The Noah Scenario. Last month was the wettest January in Britain since records began in 1767. So far this month has been no different, and the Met Office expects the wind and rain to continue until March. Climate change may be a gradual process, but people who live on the Somerset Levels or the banks of the Thames are getting a very sudden education in the value of arks.

Be prepared … follow this guide and you could be the last one standing when it all goes really, really wrong (Image: S. Parsons/PA)

It’s unlikely that these floods will be the last such catastrophe, or the worst. Climate scientists expect bigger and more frequent extreme weather events throughout the coming century – not just wind and rain, but droughts as well. Nor is weather the only danger: pandemic flu, nuclear weapons, antibiotic resistance, environmental catastrophe and chronic food shortages could also offer dire threats to civilisation as we know it. You might not want to panic just yet, but you might decide that it is time to join the “preppers” – people who are secretly preparing to abandon modern life when the apocalypse, in whatever form, does arrive.

When do I abandon my home?

When you have no choice. When soldiers are on your street, your neighbours have begun to steal from you and plague-sufferers are camped in your drive – or perhaps slightly before all that. Preppers have a catch-all term for this moment: the SHTF scenario, in reference to the day when the Shit finally does Hit The Fan.

“It would be the last resort for me,” says Steve, a 57-year-old prepper from Essex, who runs ukpreppersguide.co.uk. “Some people seem to think it’s the first thing to do. The moment something happens, they grab their rucksack and off they go and live in the wild – but if you’ve ever tried that, it really isn’t easy. Where I am at the moment, I probably have enough provisions to survive for about nine months. That doesn’t include going out and getting your own food.”

When the moment comes, however, you may not have much warning, so it is important to keep what preppers call a “bug-out bag” ready at all times. Ideally, you’d leave at night, when you won’t be followed.

“The idea behind leaving your home is to get away from danger,” Steve explains, “which means getting away from everybody and going under the radar, off-grid, so you can’t be found – then just survive for however long is needed before you can come back to civilisation.”