[Graeme]

U.S. Energy Choices and Global Climate Plans

There’s plenty to ponder in the newly released summary of the Annual Energy Outlook 2011 by the Department of Energy. While all such forecasts are implicitly uncertain, this one helps clarify where to focus efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions; reinforces the importance of resolving questions about how to safely expand, while not stopping, extraction of vast domestic reserves of natural gas; and powerfully challenges proponents of accelerated deployment of today’s menu of renewable energy technologies or nuclear power plants to lay out a credible strategy for supplanting coal.

Natural gas, as some analysts have long predicted, is destined to play a growing role in helping supply reliable energy while allowing a shift toward lower-carbon fuels. The vast deposits in shale identified around the lower 48 states have substantially shifted Energy Information Administration projections of the fuel mix in this country:

nytimes

[Graeme]

US doubles estimates for gas reserves

US recoverable reserves of natural gas are much larger than previously estimated, the government’s Energy Information Administration has said, suggesting higher production can be sustained at lower prices than it expected a year ago.

In the first release from its Annual Energy Outlook for 2011, the EIA more than doubled its central estimate of the country’s technically recoverable reserves of shale gas, from 353,000bn cubic feet to 827,000bn cubic feet.

The estimate would be enough to cover the entire gas consumption of the US for 36 years.

Shale gas is trapped in rocks that were previously uneconomical to tap, but the source has been opened up by falling production costs, using techniques of long-distance horizontal drilling of wells and “hydraulic fracturing”: pumping water mixed with additives at high pressure into the rock to crack it so gas can flow out.

FT

[vtsnowedin]

Their chart of projected electrical generation doesn't seem to allow for any growth needed to charge all those EVs we are supposed to buy.