[ROCKMAN]

Best spot I could find for this post. But it does answer the question in a way. The battles in the ME over the control over energy are obvious. But here’s a bit of the flavor of potential battles between different regions of the US:

Another case of classic NIMBYism. I have no doubt the folks making the complaints understand that they are very dependent upon pipelines running thru other states and the properties of other land owners for their energy. Which is why I doubt any would volunteer to join into an open debate of eminent domain since they are beneficiaries of the process. Even Sen. Graham doesn’t avoid the appearance of preferential treatment for the political class: “…we'd rather it would go elsewhere.” IOW we don’t have a problem with the pipeline going across our neighbor’s property…just don’t ask to help. The reality is folks in Georgia don’t want Florida to compete with them for NG being shipped by pipelines across other states and dug on other peoples’ property. As energy becomes more expensive and less accessible such battles will only escalate.

AP — A proposal to build a $3.7 billion pipeline system carrying natural gas into Florida is raising complaints from Georgia residents — including media mogul Ted Turner — who say they'd face environmental costs while others get the benefits. Spectra Energy Partners LP and NextEra Energy Inc. are seeking federal permission to build the Sabal Trail and the Florida Southeast Connection, about 600 miles of pipeline bringing natural gas from a hub in Alabama, across southwest Georgia and to power plants in Florida. The growing reliance on gas also means customers need a steady supply of the fuel. Developers say the two existing pipes serving peninsular Florida are running at nearly full capacity.

Project opponents say the pipeline will decrease property values, cause pollution and put their communities at risk of accidents while the big benefits go to the Florida market. If federal regulators approve, developers would have the right to force landowners to let the gas pipeline pass under their property. While landowners would be paid, they couldn't build anything on top of the pipe.

{Which are the exact conditions that pipelines supply Georgia with energy have been built}

A new pipeline would make Florida less dependent on gas from the Gulf of Mexico region, allowing it to draw more heavily from production basins in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and markets in the Northeast, developers say. That means Florida would be less likely to run short of gas if a hurricane damaged Gulf production facilities.
The plan faces some corporate opposition. A compressor station forcing gas through the pipe near Albany would sit about a quarter mile from Ted Turner's Nonami Plantation, where he's hunted quail for decades. Turner's company has asked that Georgia authorities withhold a necessary permit because the facility would emit air pollutants and disturb people and wildlife. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham told federal regulators in a September letter that his family's Angus beef farm in Georgia "in no way" supports the proposed route across its 8,000-acre property outside Albany. "Their routing comes through our farm up there and we'd rather it would go elsewhere," said Stuart Wyllie, CEO of Graham Companies in an interview. "This is land that while we don't have immediate development plans, we may want to develop it in the future."

{It would appear the energy dynamics are creating a less than united United States.}

[GHung]

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/11/18/ei ... more-39396

Eight Pitfalls in Evaluating Green Energy Solutions

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Gail Tverberg

Does the recent climate accord between US and China mean that many countries will now forge ahead with renewables and other green solutions? I think that there are more pitfalls than many realize.

Pitfall 1. Green solutions tend to push us from one set of resources that are a problem today (fossil fuels) to other resources that are likely to be problems in the longer term. ................

....... Pitfall 8. A person needs to be very careful in looking at studies that claim to show favorable performance for intermittent renewables.

Analysts often overestimate the benefits of wind and solar. Just this week a new report was published saying that the largest solar plant in the world is so far producing only half of the electricity originally anticipated since it opened in February 2014.

In my view, “standard” Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) calculations tend to overstate the benefits of intermittent renewables, because they do not include a “time variable,” and because they do not consider the effect of intermittency. More specialized studies that do include these variables show very concerning results. For example, Graham Palmer looks at the dynamic EROEI of solar PV, using batteries (replaced at eight year intervals) to mitigate intermittency.2 He did not include inverters–something that would be needed and would reduce the return further......

Like Rockman says, EROEI be damned. Off-grid people aren't trying to save the world. Firstly, I'm not going to pay $30 to study the voracity of Graham Palmer's case study. Secondly, in my view, it's the expectations of renewables that need to be re-considered, not apples/oranges comparisons of the lifetime benefits/detriments of different energy sources - all of them.

It seems pointless considering that humans will continue to burn whatever fossil fuels (and food sources, and biomass.....) they can,, until they can't. Why pick on solar panels? At least those folks who used those subsidies to do something different, indeed, are thinking differently rather than wallowing in the hopelessness of it all. It's not about EROEI; it's about expectations.

[Paulo1]

Any and all renewables will help.

What are we supposed to do, Gail? Do nothing and die when FF availability declines? If renewables prove to be limiting, we'll have to adapt. Meanwhile, better than nothing. Most intelligent analysists understand BAU will be affected after decline sets in. We'll just have to live differently to accomodate the limitations.

[ralfy]

The problem involved in this topic is not not surviving, etc., but the end of economic growth. The solution is supposed to be renewable energy. That is not likely given the reasons found in the article.

[Ulenspiegel]

Paulo1, that's not the message I derive from Gail's work, that we should do nothing and die? Did she really say that?

What is her message in your opinion? What is her CONSTRUCTIVE critique?

[chilyb]

She is basically saying that we are going to have to get by with less. Renewable tech won't be able to keep BAU going. And we are all going to die.

[basil_hayden]

Paulo1, that's not the message I derive from Gail's work, that we should do nothing and die? Did she really say that?

What is her message in your opinion? What is her CONSTRUCTIVE critique?

Gail seems to me to connect the "MQ Renewables Haven't Replaced Anything ™" meme with the "it won't scale up for 7 billion of us" meme, then illustrate the pointlessness of it all.

But it's not like fossil fuels even scaled up for all 7 billion people, so why would I expect renewables to perform better than the fossil fuels they're based on?

Things can't scale up to us, we need to scale down to things. Off the grid photovoltaics, geothermal, small scale wind and hydro - this is more an example of us scaling down not trying to scale things up - that's why it will never be a fossil fuel replacement, merely an enhancement for survival. But trying to make economic sense of it is often impossible - you make the changes because you know they need to be made and you have the capability to do so.

[Paulo1]

Pstarr, (my rant )

No she did not. I suppose it is the overwhelming meme of the posters that frequent her site. More than any other PO site it immediately descends into 'there is no hope', 'renewables will never fill the gap', and the imminent economic collapse makes it all moot, anyway.

While her stats and arguments are well constructed and logical, I submit her work has an inherent doom bias at every step of the way. It reminds me of integers. She always multiplies instead of adding once in awhile. 1+-2 = -1 Or, 1X-2....

I am not a corny. I don't believe in the 'someday someone will'. But I never discount the will and ingenuity of mankind, nor do I believe mankind is a total scourage of the earth. Uninformed and uncaring mankind perhaps, but I get sick and tired of 'save the world' by extinguishing man and his/her society so common on these sites. Many forget the the good sides and good stories of people, and yes they exist.

When I first read Kunstler's 'The Long Emergency' I was struck by a ringing chord of truth. In many ways I knew he was right, although NG certainly didn't follow the script, did it? And then I got to his tale/version of southern man; how Kunstler always portrays southerners as dumb NASCAR watching obese WalMart butt crackers munching cheez doodles. And then I thought, "wait a minute you jerk, people come in all modes and sizes beyond your stereotypes". One day posters started calling humanity 'yeast', 'breeders', etc. and I was struck how 'they', (some enlightened granola doomers from northern NY state) were somehow excluded from the list of negativity. I remember waiting 6-8 years ago for the Dow to collapse to 6,000 and never recover, and for news stories to hit about multi-generational McMansion apartments. I never saw that, either. I now read his weekly diatribe for entertainment, for his sarcasm is by far the best and God knows he turns a phrase. Believe and accept what he says? Not so much.

That is how I find Gail's work. Her graphs and data are awesome. Her explanations and arguments very logical. Her conclusions one step over the edge. Her contributing followers are beyond the fringe and 5-6 seem to spend hundreds of hours monopolizing every thread, especially the guy from Bali. I have given up.

Instead, I continue to develop my property and refine how I live. If it happens as per their prognostications, then so be it. But I have my doubts. Renewables are one very big answer to decline and they are possible right now. Conservation is the biggest solution and can be undertaken right now by all of us. Will BAU be possible? probably not, but neither is 'we are all goona die when this happens' is likely to unfold. If I have to run my forge on coal instead of propane, then big deal. I can weld with batteries. I will figure out a way to charge those batteries, somehow if we lose Hydro. There are solutions as long as there is will. Change is also a time for opportunities.

My rant is over...glad to not live in Buffalo NY under 8' of snow.

[GHung]

Gail has posted a couple of short reports from her trip as a lecturer at China University of Petroleum in Beijing. She makes some interesting observations, and I'm sure she'll have much more when she returns: http://ourfiniteworld.com/

I found her comments on diminishing returns interesting, since that's something I kept in mind while designing/building our home.

I commented earlier about the heat being turned off in the buildings on March 15. After being here a few days, I think that the reason for the cut-off has to do with the inflexibility of heat from radiators (probably hot water heat, using coal to heat the hot water). We in the United States in newer housing are used to systems where temperatures are easily regulated. But when the heat is either “off” or ” on” as it seems to be with radiator heat, the problem as the season heats up is that rooms quickly get too warm when the temperature outside rises. This is especially the case when there are a lot of people in a not very large room, with the sun shining in. Even with the heat off, there are times that someone opens a window to try to get the temperature down....

.....I keep talking about diminishing returns in my talks. As I think about the differences between China and the United States, it strikes me that in many cases the difference has to do with diminishing returns. China has chosen the inexpensive way to do things, such as serving fish with lots of bones, not doing much to accommodate the handicapped, and using radiator heat put in buildings long ago. There is a more polished way of handling these issues, but the cost of making an upgrade may not be proportional to the benefit.

...and opening/closing windows?

I posted this in geopolitcs since I see Gail as an ambassador of good will (if not bad news).

[C8]

I see Gail as an ambassador of bad analysis. She is an expert at using "sciency" looking charts to dress up weak thinking.

[sparky]

.
China urban heating is based on the old communist system , there is ( usually ) no furnace for one building instead there is a power factory for a whole group of block , that's also why the pollution is so bad , they burn the cheapest rubbish coal on offer .
as good public administration they work by the calendar ,
if the date say it is spring , that's spring , no more heating , if the late winter was warm , never mind keep heating ,
I'm pretty sure some bright spark is trying to get thermostat fitted and his boss thinks this guy is an ambitious upward crawler whose talent would be better used somewhere in Western Sinkiang counting fleas on government camels

[onlooker]

Yes, it seems China because of it's huge population and until recently poor country status is used to doing things in a cheap manner. However, they are smitten by the greed bug and that includes both upper echelon people and the masses. Look at their rush to buy cars and their immense migration into cities. They are however in terms of environmental policy showing that they really have little feelings for the masses, China is recognized at this point as the most polluted and polluting country on the planet. Not a admirable distinction. I guess their saving money in that way as well. I wish Gail has spoken a little bit about that.

[dolanbaker]

Yes, it seems China because of it's huge population and until recently poor country status is used to doing things in a cheap manner. However, they are smitten by the greed bug and that includes both upper echelon people and the masses. Look at their rush to buy cars and

their immense migration into cities

. They are however in terms of environmental policy showing that they really have little feelings for the masses, China is recognized at this point as the most polluted and polluting country on the planet. Not a admirable distinction. I guess their saving money in that way as well. I wish Gail has spoken a little bit about that.

Part of the reason for this migration is due to the fact that the farmland has been bought up and built on, migrate or be homeless appears to be the incentive. Don't forget that the Chinese are human as well.

[ROCKMAN]

Dolan - I also suspect moving towards more mechanized ag subbing for physical labor. All part of increasing their ff footprint.

[onlooker]

Yes from the literature I have read, China and India have some time ago adopted modern agricultural practices . My point about greed is yes the peasant in China has pretty much had to leave and to go to the cities but once there they become enamored with the temptations of city life. After all are not cities sometimes like playgrounds so much to do, so much to buy. I think I should know I live in one of the most recognizable playgrounds in the world. NYC, the big apple.