Energy policy

The net energy of pre-industrial agriculture, taken as a whole energy-gathering system, must have been low, with EROEI probably on the order of 1.1-1.6 depending on place and time.

The "Peak Oil" concept -- that the world’s petroleum-production rate will soon reach its maximum and commence an inevitable decline, with negative economic consequences — has been around in scientifically articulated form at least since 1998; long enough to see it confirmed in significant ways.

OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna this week caused no surprises in deciding to keep production quotas unchanged. Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi described current prices as "beautiful". Indeed as the group met the oil price rose to $82/barrel, close to its 2010 high despite only 53% compliance by OPEC to its quotas and low US demand.

-Money spent on tar sands projects could decarbonise western economies
-China's oil demand increase 'astonishing', says IEA
-OPEC sticks to its guns, demand rising

The United States Joint Forces Command regularly (about every two years) issues its “perspective on future trends, shocks, contexts and implications for… the national security field.”...Amid the multitude of security threats, energy has moved rapidly to the forefront, and it is the oil supply issue which is the focus of this review.

A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-China

Just days before French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged attendees at a Paris energy conference to buy more nuclear power plants, a very different nuclear power conference was held in Potsdam, Germany. The Brookings Institution and the Global Public Policy Institute convened 35 people from governments, academia, think tanks, and industry to consider nuclear power's future. Craig Severance offers his own insights, and his conference presentation on why new nuclear power should undergo a rigorous business oriented "Due Diligence" process.

The difference between diffuse and concentrated energy sources, the theme of last week's Archdruid Report post, means that some of today's highly touted alternative energy schemes may be worth much less than currently claimed, while other technologies that receive much less attention may be the wave of the future. A closer consideration of energy concentration and its effects helps clarify which is which.

David Orr was in the UK recently, and the two of us were part of a panel at an event organised by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. After the event, we retired to the bar of a rather grand London hotel, and chatted for an hour about energy, climate change, the Precautionary Principle, Transition and whether or not we are beyond talk of ’solutions’.

-The Case Against Biofuels: Probing Ethanol’s Hidden Costs
-Big Oil Behind Yet Another Biofuels Research Paper
-Harrabin's Notes: Battle over biofuel strategy

-Detroit Wants To Save Itself - By Shrinking
-Orange officials sue couple who removed their lawn
-Obama’s Nuclear Blind Spot
-Tory budget ‘walks away' from renewable energy, environmentalist says

My busy eating, drinking & breathing schedule prevented me from going down to Houston for CERAWeek this year. It's funny how that works—something seems to come up every year. So I'll have to use news reports to get a feel for how this year's exciting oil & gas Schmooze-Fest went. Tuesday, March 9th was Oil Day.

The subject of taxes certainly isn’t the most riveting topic for cocktail party conversations...But we believe that the time has come to reframe the debate on taxes and build up some popular passion and energy for a few basic adjustments to the tax code. With these simple, easy-to-implement changes, it turns out that we could move the economy in a direction that works much better for people and the planet, including a more stable climate.

David Shields is a journalist and independent oil industry analyst based in Mexico City. Steve Andrews caught up with him yesterday and posed a few questions.