Technology

About a year ago we presented a medieval building technique that could save large amounts of brick and thus embodied energy in construction: timbrel vaulting. Turns out that there is also a 19th century brick and tile production technique that is surprisingly energy efficient: the Hoffmann kiln, a giant version of the medieval oven stove.

Oil prices vacillated this week, falling back from their recent high on news of unexpectedly large US inventories, later rallying as the US economy officially emerged from recession...

In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the – already very sophisticated – traditional windmill. The results were spectacular, and there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?

At turning points most market observers and participants are of the same mind. That doesn't mean the bear market in natural gas can't continue, perhaps for quite a while yet. But the idea that gas will remain cheap and plentiful for decades because of technological breakthroughs sounds too good to be true, and it probably is.

Oil prices rose this week breaking the $75/barrel mark for the first time this year. The gains were mainly fuelled by rising equity prices and a falling dollar...

Recently, we have had two new articles aiming to put to rest people's fears about peak oil. One is from the New York Times: Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries It talks about the many discoveries this year, and how, if they continue at the pace they have in the first half, they will be the best since 2000. The other is from the October Scientific American, called Squeezing More Oil from the Ground...Its premise seems to be that there are a lot of promising areas that we have not yet explored. When you put this together with advances in drilling and the promises of secondary and tertiary recovery, there is a good chance that oil production will not peak for many years.

The oil sands are an issue of global importance. As conventional sources of crude oil are depleted, unconventional sources of oil, such as the bitumen found in oil sands, play a larger role in offsetting declining conventional production. The Canadian oil sands are the second largest proven oil reserve after Saudi Arabia.

In late August the Vancouver Sun ran an article on the bullish prospects for Canadian shale gas. The piece began this way: “What energy crisis? Despite what you may be hearing about a global peak in oil production, waning reserves, and $100-plus oil prices, North America is suddenly awash in fossil fuel.”...

Steven Kopits, who runs the New York office of Douglas Westwood, was in Denver last week. He talked about his latest paper on peak oil and the economy with Steve Andrews and will share related remarks at the ASPO-USA conference next month. Steve popped a few questions:...

-On burning wood, coppicing and pollarding
-Floating challenge for offshore wind turbine
-Renewable Fuel Pretenders
-Pumping Up the Grid: Key Step to Green Energy
-US and China to unveil joint plan to 'take over' cleantech market

For decades the "Holy Grail" of the New Energy Economy has been to find ways to store wind and solar energy. The answers are here, and they are much more plain and simple than we thought. Like Indiana Jones in his Last Crusade, we need to see the Grail that is right before our eyes. The means to enable solar and wind energy to serve as our primary energy supplies are at hand.

-Michael C. Lynch and “the false threat of disappearing oil.”
-The New York Times on Peak Oil - Don't Worry, Be Happy
-Oil: the Long Goodbye
-150 Years of Plenitude: The Story of Oil

-Peak Oil and Tourism
-Let There Be Light!
-Bolivians look to ancient farming
-Ambitious Solar Project to Use Recycled City Wastewater
-Another bold move in Portland

-A New Test for Business and Biofuel
-Surely Some Flora Out There Can Fuel My Car
-Fuels for thought
-Entrepreneurs Wade Into the 'Dead Zone'

-Farmer saves $200,000 with poo power
-Vancouver firm makes fertilizer out of human sewage
-Wastewater Produces Electricity And Desalinates Water