[Roryrules]

So are they giving away free candles? Made from recycled orgainic beeswax?

Of course not, what's nothing wrong with a bit of darkness? After all, that's completely carbon-neutral...

[dorlomin]

So are they giving away free candles? Made from recycled orgainic beeswax?

It takes between 1/5th and 1/10th of the energy to keep a room lit that it did 10 years ago.



I am pretty pro nuclear but will not fully support it until I am convinced the disposal has been properly costed and honestly included in the figures shown to the public for debate. That and an honest look at how big the reserves are.

Shale? Hearing a lot of stories about the amount of energy required to get it out and the amount of methane leaking when its being extracted. These are not good from an enviromental perspective. Conventional gas is the best fossil fuel we have and a legitimate 'bridging' technology. Shale.... very doubtful.

[KingM]

If the Sierra Club were at all serious about protecting the American environment, they would be advocates of immigration curbs in order to stabilize the American population at current levels.

That issue was fought out within the Sierra Club in the 80s. The Sierra Club used to be for zero population growth and in favor of limiting immigration to the US in order to protect the environment, but when they aligned themselves with the Democratic Party in the 80s, they also dropped the ZPG and immigration limits viewpoints, since those positions conflicted with the pro-immigration views of the democratic party in California.

Exactly. It's now a political organization, rather than an environmental organization. To the extent that it can pursue environmental issues and still be aligned with the generally accepted left-wing platform, it will, but if there is a contradiction it will come down on the side of ideology.

[dohboi]

"It's now a political organization"

????

Ummm, it's always been a political organization in the sense that it has endorsed candidates.

Perhaps you mean that it is now partisan?

It probably will end up looking that way as the Repugs go further and further toward utter insanity--hard to support totally insane candidates.

But all these decisions are made by an essentially democratic process within the organization. If you don't like their stance, join and advocate for a different one.

[Plantagenet]

"It's now a political organization"

????

Ummm, it's always been a political organization in the sense that it has endorsed candidates.

Ummm, you don't know the facts. Why waste people's time by posting BS?

The Sierra Club did not endorse candidates until 1984.

[Outcast_Searcher]

So what do they propose instead? Unicorns?

Meanwhile, I guess they'll "contribute" to the solution by flying around in planes (A.K.A. the Al Gore "environmentalist" model) having "wilderness conferences" and the like to magically make everything better.

Consuming less crap and having few or no kids (and encouraging the high reproduction rate countries to go that route) would actually DO something about the issue. But no, we can't have any of THAT, only position statements, and requests for funds.

[Lore]

So what do they propose instead? Unicorns?

Meanwhile, I guess they'll "contribute" to the solution by flying around in planes (A.K.A. the Al Gore "environmentalist" model) having "wilderness conferences" and the like to magically make everything better.

Consuming less crap and having few or no kids (and encouraging the high reproduction rate countries to go that route) would actually DO something about the issue. But no, we can't have any of THAT, only position statements, and requests for funds.

You're rant doesn't change the fact that NG production and use contributes about the same amount of GHGs to the atmosphere as oil.

[dohboi]

Hey, now, I have as much right to BS here as anyone

You're right that the first presidential candidate they endorsed was Mondale, but they were 'political' from the beginning--influencing politicians by lobbying...

A lot of utilities are very happy right now that the Sierra Club pressured them into building gas rather than coal plants, as gas is so cheap.

The same companies will eventually be happy that they were pressured by SC to move toward conservation and renewables, as the gas boom goes bust.

[Serial_Worrier]

Drill, frack, whatever it takes. We must suck every last hydrocarbon on this planet dry!

[Graeme]

Natural Gas Economics: A Look Under the Hood

Christmas comes in June for energy geeks and graph junkies. Every year, the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy releases its Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), a compendium of 30-tear forecasts and analyses of energy sources and uses. The 212 page .pdf file contains tables, bar charts and area graphs galore, enough to provide blog fodder at least until Christmas (the December one).

This week’s installment is a look at production decline curves from selected shale gas plays. The extreme rates of decline experienced in these wells has interesting and far-reaching policy implications, although this angle is rarely described in the mainstream press. For the energy operator, the performance of his wells in aggregate determine the success or failure of his enterprise. For the nation, shale well performance has become a key factor in energy policy and planning.

The curves in Figure 54 at left represent averages for five different shale plays; each well is an individual. But what this curve fails to make explicit is the fact that there are very few wells in these shale gas plays with more than four years of history; the rest is projection.

Engineers commonly use decline curves (pdf) as a primary tool for analyzing historical performance of producing wells and forecasting their future performance. The total accumulated past and future production of a well is termed its Estimated (or Economic) Ultimate Recovery (EUR). The EUR of gas wells is measured in billions of cubic feet (BCF). The estimate of future production is termed “remaining reserves”.

Since a resource company’s primary asset is its reserves, these squiggly lines have a lot to do with a company’s financial performance. Truth be told, decline curve analysis can be subjective instead of scientific, particularly early on in a well’s life. Tight rocks like shales typically exhibit this characteristic “hyperbolic” shape, declining precipitously in the early years; EUR depends on how quickly the rate “breaks over” to a lower, more sustainable rate.

redstate

[Tanada]

For the last decade more or less the bounty of cheap Natural Gas has lead to many coal power stations that were old and grandfathered in the Clean Air Act closing up and being torn down in favor of new peaking power gas turbine plants that can switch on and off within just a few minutes.

This abundance has led to an unthinking free market building one after another after another Natural Gas power plant and this has been a major impact on coal burning in the USA where the formerly cheapest fuel, coal, was displaced by the new cheapest fuel. Now after over a decade of rampant growth in domestic use on the one hand and the added drain of LNG exports to Europe and Asia where prices were substantially higher than in the USA the wheel is starting to turn back the other way.

IOW for many power stations Natural Gas is no longer the lowest cost fuel option and Coal has once again become the cheaper alternative. In a fair number of more modern coal fired power stations there was a concerted effort during the administration of President Obama to place Natural Gas burning equipment in the fire boxes of newer coal power stations without removing the coal burning capability. This has made a number of the Natural Gas users actually flexible fuel capable. With Natural Gas prices soaring to new heights these flexible plants are switching back to burning in part or in whole coal as their cheaper fuel of choice. On top of that some newer Coal power stations were neither converted nor scrapped entirely but were instead just put in mothball storage mode in case their capacity was needed. With the shifting fuel price balance now taking place some of those plants are being reactivated to lower the Natural Gas demand of the utility companies which own them.

Peabody Energy Earnings Triple As Biden "Makes Coal Great Again"

This year's global demand for coal has been nothing but stunning and is a warning to proponents of the green energy transition. The modern world is dealing with a shortage of fossil fuel supplies and their increasingly soaring prices as renewable generation becomes unreliable ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter. Despite President Biden's push for climate change policies that could transition the power grid to 100% renewables by 2035, he has done something former President Trump could only dream about: "Make Coal Great Again."

The latest signs coal is roaring back like never before despite Biden and the assault by the green lobby spearheaded by hapless puppet Greta Thunberg to kill fossil fuels is the Monday announcement by Peabody Energy Corp., the largest private-sector coal company in the world, expects increased demand for coal that will triple earnings for first seven months compared with the same period last year.

"The preliminary financial results we reported today continue to demonstrate the disciplined approach we are taking to control costs, expand margins and reduce debt. Coal sales to customers were in excess of $900 million, the highest level in seven quarters. We remain optimistic about the future given strong coal pricing and global demand fundamentals," said Peabody President and CEO Jim Grech.

Peabody Energy's shares jumped 16.5% to $18.55, reaching highs not seen since September. Around $18.73, a 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level sits. A break above that level could ignite more upside momentum.

All of this optimism about coal is happening under a Biden administration that is supposedly trying to kill the dirtiest fossil fuel. However, U.S. power plants are on course to burn 23% more coal this year, the first increase since 2013. The reason is that high natural gas prices make it uneconomic to produce electricity, and coal will help boost margins. Currently, 25% of all U.S. electricity produced is derived from coal-fired plants, up ten percentage points since the beginning of COVID.



The markets have spoken," Rich Nolan, the National Mining Association chief executive officer, recently told Bloomberg. "We're seeing the essential nature of coal come roaring back." The Energy Information Administration forecasts U.S. utilities are estimated to burn 536.9 million short tons of thermal coal, up from 436.5 million in 2020.



Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources, the largest U.S. exporter of fuel, said demand for coal will remain robust well into 2022. Weeks ago, he warned about domestic supply constraints and power companies already "discussing possible grid blackouts this winter."

The rebound of coal under a Biden administration must be puzzling for many, but it has shown the green transition will take decades, not years. In the meantime, the world returns to coal.

LINK

[AdamB]

Outstanding articles and post Tanada.

Gee...it is almost as though there is this thing....we could call it a market....that responds to price signals? Someone needs to create a social science designed around predicting these kinds of things...

I hadn't paid any attention to this change whatsoever, I just don't watch coal. As long as consumption of NG kept going up, then okey dokey who cares. Let's hear it for fuel switching!

The NG producers can sell their "not as economical in the US natural gas" into the "please make me rich with international spot prices" market. They'll probably cry all the way to the bank.

[Pops]

Even with increasing exports



the glut of gas drove the price down



and of course rigs fall along with price,



but then eventually exports and less new production comes home to roost.



But really the amount in storage is not that small, not even out of the 5 year range. But if you look back at the first chart, exports are way out of the 5 year range. The US price is now the global price minus transport, just like oil.

This is exactly what I said would happen way back when everyone was frothing over Saudi America. Except back when we really were the King (until ~1970) we had enough sense to have limits on exports. Now the US is a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil exporters.

My first post on this site wondered how long we would have to prepare before the cost would be too high. Turns out no one cares, export baby, export is the name of the game and government is in the pocket of the ownership
.

[kublikhan]

All of this optimism about coal is happening under a Biden administration that is supposedly trying to kill the dirtiest fossil fuel. However, U.S. power plants are on course to burn 23% more coal this year, the first increase since 2013. The reason is that high natural gas prices make it uneconomic to produce electricity, and coal will help boost margins. Currently, 25% of all U.S. electricity produced is derived from coal-fired plants, up ten percentage points since the beginning of COVID.

Right. I'm sure that had nothing to due with the shut downs that happened in 2020 that reduced demand for US electricity. No sir, it was all Biden's incompetent energy policies. Completely ignore the fact that us coal consumption first half of 2021 is 9% lower than first half of 2019. Gotta love the partisan bullshit from zerohedge. Next time maybe not get your energy news from zerohedge?

[kublikhan]

The overall decline in U.S. electricity demand in 2020 and record-low natural gas prices led coal plants to significantly reduce the percentage of time that they generated power. In 2020, the utilization rate (known as the capacity factor) of U.S. coal-fired generators averaged 40%. Before 2010, coal capacity factors routinely averaged 70% or more. This year’s higher natural gas prices have increased the average coal capacity factor to about 51%, which is almost the 2018 average.

Although rising natural gas prices have resulted in more U.S. coal-fired generation than last year, this increase in coal generation will most likely not continue. The electric power sector has retired about 30% of its generating capacity at coal plants since 2010, and no new coal-fired capacity has come online in the United States since 2013. In addition, coal stocks at U.S. power plants are relatively low, and production at operating coal mines has not been increasing as rapidly as the recent increase in coal demand. For 2022, we forecast that U.S. coal-fired generation will decline about 5% in response to continuing retirements of generating capacity at coal power plants and slightly lower natural gas prices.

Annual U.S. coal-fired electricity generation will increase for the first time since 2014

[Plantagenet]

Annual U.S. coal-fired electricity generation will increase for the first time since 2014[/url]

Another amazing failure by the Biden administration.

Coal use in the USA has been going down for many years.....it even went down steadily under the Trump administration.

Who would ever have dreamed that after all the rhetoric from Biden and the Ds about climate change and the need to get off coal,
that their policies would actually result in an INCREASE in coal use in the USA.

Its a very clear example of the need to ignore what politicians say, and focus in like a laser on what their policies actually do.

Its hard to tell if Biden and the Ds were lying the whole time about climate change, or if they are just so incompetent that their policies inadvertainly produced this increase in coal use.

But either way, the increase in coal consumption on Biden's watch is yet another massive blot of failure and disgrace on the escutcheon of Biden and the Ds.

Cheers!

[kublikhan]

Another amazing failure by the Biden administration.

Who would ever have dreamed that after all the rhetoric from Biden and the Ds about climate change and the need to get off coal,
that their policies would actually result in an INCREASE in coal use in the USA.

Its a very clear example of the need to ignore what politicians say, and focus in like a laser on what their policies actually do.

Its hard to tell if Biden and the Ds were lying the whole time about climate change, or if they are just so incompetent that their policies inadvertainly produced this increase in coal use.

But either way, the increase in coal consumption on Biden's watch is yet another massive blot of failure and disgrace on the escutcheon of Biden and the Ds.

Cheers!

Ah yes. Our resident troll who got butthurt by democrats and now trolls every thread with anti-democrat partisan crap. Completely ignore the fact that shutdowns in 2020 reduced electricity demand. Keep focusing on your trolling instead.

[yellowcanoe]

Ah yes. Our resident troll who got butthurt by democrats and now trolls every thread with anti-democrat partisan crap. Completely ignore the fact that shutdowns in 2020 reduced electricity demand. Keep focusing on your trolling instead.

In this case there is some truth to what Plantagenet says. For example construction of the Chenier LNG export facility at Sabine Pass started before Trump was elected. That means that the Obama Democratic administration approved of exporting natural gas. The growing export of natural gas has certainly contributed to the rising price of natural gas which has now reached the point that for some utilities it is cheaper to burn coal than natural gas to generate electricity. We don't know yet know how high natural gas prices will go but rest assured that if people find they are paying considerably more for home heating and electricity they will take out their anger on the Biden administration.

[Pops]

We don't know yet know how high natural gas prices will go but rest assured that if people find they are paying considerably more for home heating and electricity they will take out their anger on the Biden administration.

Which is why you have Biden begging OPEC for its nonexistent spare capacity at the same time he's begging Mansion to please subsidize offshore wind.

It should be starting to dawn on people that Murphy's Law, i.e.The Energy Trap is a real thing. This has been my biggest worry all along, will we have enough time and money to transition before we run out our string? We need to invest large amounts of fossil energy into deploying renewables, which of course will make fossils more expensive—even before fossils begin their decline. But here at peak oil .com we are worried about the cost of our airline ticket and getting in a hit on the libtards.

Pointless trolling aside, or maybe to the point, humans have a short horizon. Doesn't matter that we're condemning our kids and grandkids to GW & PO without coming together, out past a generation—25 years or so— we just don't care. Kind of why the threads here nowadays are carping about Democrats, investing, stock markets, etc; for the old men here that is all that matters. After all, fracking made us Saudi America, right?

Fossil companies own enough of congress to impede progress on their own. They've been fighting global warming science for decades already, they have been fighting any talk of limits even longer. It is tobacco all over again except now it isn't just smokers and nearby breathers who will die.

What is worse, I'm going to say existentially worse, is the political reality of "stacking"— in which people increasingly accept party orthodoxy whole cloth, lest they be thought of as RINOs. And, since there have to be sides, the right is on the side of fossils. Of course whatever the right is for the left is against, so they undermine fossils at every juncture even though a renewables build out depends on fossil energy.

I've always been kind of an optimist, I figured we'd figure out a way to get by, some of us anyway. I'm not so sure anymore.