ExxonMobil Releases "Outlook for Energy: A View To 2030"
ExxonMobil is a company that is vilified by many in the environmental community, but it is also a company that is deeply respected by engineers. It is a company that is well known for focusing on its core competencies, and for not following the latest fads. Unlike some other major oil companies that have created “goodwill” by relatively token investments in alternative energy projects where the public relations and advertising spending on the project is often as high as the actual investment, ExxonMobil has remained focused on finding, extracting, transporting and marketing petroleum and petroleum based products. It is making some small investments in algae based biofuels, but event that product is one that can leverage its existing refining expertise and be marketed through the existing outlets.
I was therefore interested in reading through ExxonMobil’s report titled “Outlook for Energy: A View to 2030” to see what this famously numbers based organization had to say about its view of the future of energy.
This might be shocking news to some of you, but my first skim through the report consisted of entering the word “nuclear” into the search function of Preview (an Apple PDF reader program) and reading the context of where the word appeared. There are some excellent comments about nuclear, wind and natural gas, which are all sources that ExxonMobil believes will grow their market share in the next twenty years. Here is a sample quote from page 26:
In 2030, fossil fuels remain the predominant energy sources, accounting for nearly 80 percent of demand. Oil still leads, but natural gas moves into second place on very strong growth of 1.8 percent a year on average, particularly because of its position as a favored fuel for power generation.
Other energy types – particularly nuclear, wind, solar and biofuels – will grow sharply, albeit from a smaller base.
I want some of you to do me a favor. Download a copy of the report from ExxonMobil’s web site. Then do the same thing I did and search for the word “nuclear” in the document. As you click through, please note where the word appears. Tell me, through entering a comment here, if you see the same thing that I found on page 26 in the highlighted quote block in the upper right hand corner of the page. If you cannot comment right away, please note the time when you visited the site and downloaded the document.
I am sorry to be mysterious at this point, and I will reveal what I found this evening. However, I want to find out how long it will take ExxonMobil to find the “secret” and fix the document. Suffice it to say, the person who prepared the PDF version of the report must be a secret ally of the efforts undertaken by some of my friends and colleagues. I hope that he/she does not get in trouble for the joke that they played.
Funny. But could be a coincidence. It says nuclear over a picture of coal as well. Maybe a cover up to make it more likely the first hidden nuclear was also a mistake.
Still there as of Dec 11th 12:30 GMT. But I think it’s a mistake, possibly from place-holder text that didn’t get removed. ‘Hidden’ under the coal picture on p24(printed)/p28 of pdf it says ‘Nuclear Wind Coal + CCS’, and under the efficiency quote on p26/p30 is
‘By Fuel “2005” “2030” Oil 171.1 206.9
Coal 112.3 127
Gas 100.4 156.9
Biomass 45.1 51.2
Nuclear 28.6 50.9
Hydro, Geo 11.8 20.1
Wind, Solar, Biofuels 1.5 15.4
Total Energy Growth 157.6’, which looks like the data underlying the adjacent bar graph. No evidence of closet nukes in Exon yet.
PS if ‘Depleted Cranium’ has now got its data correct, happy birthday for yesterday.
Luke
Pretty funny, the placement of “nuclear” hidden in that sentence.
Here’s what I get when I highlight the whole area, including the hidden text:
Oil and natural gas
remain essential
through 2030,
but the most
important ?fuel?
of all will be
energy saved
through improved
efficiency.
By Fuel “2005” “2030” Oil 171.1 206.9
Coal 112.3 127
Gas 100.4 156.9
Biomass 45.1 51.2
Nuclear 28.6 50.9
Hydro, Geo 11.8 20.1
Wind, Solar, Biofuels 1.5 15.4
Total Energy Growth 157.6
Seems like some tables/graphs ended up being misplaced.
On pg 26 I see your quote, but not in the highlighted section top right, but left middle on the page. The highlited section says this: “Oil and natural gas remain essential through 2030, but the most important of all will be energy saved through improved
efficiency.”
Interestingly while copying this text I found there is a table hidden below the highlighted text:
By Fuel “2005” “2030”
Oil 171.1 206.9
Coal 112.3 127
Gas 100.4 156.9
Biomass 45.1 51.2
Nuclear 28.6 50.9
Hydro, Geo 11.8 20.1
Wind, Solar, Biofuels 1.5 15.4
Total Energy Growth 157.6
@ 4:14 CST the link does not work in both Chrome and MSIE. Did they remove it?
Found a copy searching on the pdf file name in case they removed it permanently.
@2:27 PST the link is no longer working. Obviously someone was embarrassed by whatever Rod discovered.
Page 28 of the PDF (labeled as Page 24):
(…The price of…) “Wind and solar exclude additional costs for intermittency and transmission investments.”
This is the key, isn’t it?
Intermittency has a cost; storage has a cost; transmission has a cost; and unreliability definitely has a cost. Not playing well with others (e.g. bad market behavior) has a cost. Wind can only compete in a grid without direct subsidies if its cost of intermittency and unreliability is externalized on to (subsidized by) other producers and on to consumers. Solar, as the graph shows, cannot compete at all, regardless of the price of carbon, and unreliability charges make it even less economically competitive.
I can think of a great energy economics paper entitled: “Properly Placing The External Cost of Non-Corrected Intermittency & Unreliability (NCI&U Cost)”.
It makes sense that unreliable power sources such as wind must only receive time of use metering, and should be penalized with fines (up to the revenue generated by power sales) by the amount of drift their output has from either a base, intermediate, or peak load generation pattern. Say a wind-mill’s power generation curve does not correlate with base, intermediate, or peak load; it would be fined based on the degree of non-correlation with these generation patterns. If wind and solar want to be treated as serious energy sources, they need to play by the same rules as everyone else, not have the rules changed to subsidize them. They should either pay for the cost of unreliability by storing their energy directly (or contracting with an energy storage firm), or pay for unreliability by being fined for not playing by the rules.
You can call the fines “negadollar profits”. (Kind of like “negawatt power”.)
The link is now working again, to a ‘fixed’ version.
@katana – I like that idea. Carrots and sticks to clear the playing field of the wannabees vs true players. When the wannabees have more fully developed, they can then start substituting into the game.
Do you think Amory Lovins would entertain that?
It was 1048 EST I downloaded. Yes I can’t comment at work on Java stuff unless I jump through hoops of flame first.
Laughed heartily at first, until these other guys pointed out it was just a mistake embedded in Adobe magic.
Or… was it? Look how the word was conveniently placed just so. Dang, conspiracy stuff can be fun. And just because I say “conspiracy” doesn’t mean it’s not one.
@Doc – I think Lovins would start talking about the “baseload fallacy”. People don’t use electricity 24 hours a day, apparently, in Lovins la-la land. What he really means: “I WANT TO CONTROL YOUR ENERGY USE!”
—–
Now, I’m not knocking intermittent energy sources that correlate with demand – those have their place (like gas turbines – like nuclear gas turbines). Intermittent generation sources that don’t correlate with demand, they’re not intermittent – they’re unreliable. Unreliability costs money, and when you’re talking about something as essential as electricity, on a 0
katana,
Sounds like you’d appreciate this. There’s a sign on the wall of my cubicle at work that states “There’s a reason customer loads are called ‘demands’ rather than ‘hopes’.”