As an undergraduate, I was trained to read between the lines and to interpret the words on the page in context with the author’s background and intent. With that in mind, I see an interesting marketing plan in between the following words from page 31 of ExxonMobil’s 2012 The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040. The heading of this page is “Electricity Generation: Choosing the Right Fuels”.
Imagine you are the CEO of an electric utility that is building a new power plant. What type of fuel would you design the plant to use to generate its electricity? Your choice would depend on a number of factors, with the goal of providing reliable, affordable electricity to your customers over decades of operation. When ExxonMobil prepares The Outlook for Energy, in order to estimate fuel demand, we also must consider these same factors on a country-by-country basis:
Cost, availability and diversity of fuels. Today, in most countries, natural gas and coal are the most economic options for new power plants, followed by nuclear and wind. Economics also are influenced by utilization rates, because while a nuclear plant uses about 90 percent of its capacity to make electricity, utilization rates are much lower for wind and solar because they are intermittent sources. Availability and diversity of supplies also matter, as countries seek to enhance energy security.
Policies to reduce CO2 and other emissions. ExxonMobil expects that by 2040, OECD countries will – directly or indirectly – have a cost of CO2 of $80 a ton. China will introduce more modest measures around 2030, followed by other Non OECD nations. The desire to improve local air quality will also encourage use of natural gas, nuclear and renewables in the Non OECD.
Construction cost and timelines. It costs a billion dollars or more to build a new 1-gigawatt power plant. Coal and nuclear plants can take more than five years for permitting and construction, but in Non OECD nations with low labor costs, these options are very cost-competitive. In contrast, most natural gas and renewable plants can be permitted and erected in less than two years.
Technologies and consumer attitudes. New technologies can lower costs, as unconventional production has done for natural gas in the United States. Public sentiment also matters. For example, Japan’s Fukushima disaster is expected to slow global growth in nuclear capacity.
Taken together, these factors point to a continued shift to lower-carbon fuels, particularly natural gas. Gas emits up to 60 percent less CO2 emissions than coal when used for electricity generation. It is flexible, reliable, affordable and available on a scale large enough to meet the world’s enormous – and growing – need for electricity. Also, unlike some zero-emission options, gas-fired generation plants are based on proven technology, can be built quickly and are cost effective today.
(Emphasis added.)
My suspicious nature classifies the above statements as a subtle call to action to the people who will be the most likely ones to read this report – the people that shape energy policies through either government action or by investing in future systems. ExxonMobil is not talking to people who will merely imagine that they are the CEO of an electric utility company. The expected audience for this detailed energy industry report includes people who are CEOs or people on the board of directors for electric utility companies.
I believe that Exxon Mobil is expecting to influence that important group of people by telling that that they should continue to emphasize an assumption that the aftermath of the natural disaster of the Great North East Japan earthquake and tsunami will be a reduction in demand for nuclear energy development.
After all, didn’t the whole world repeatedly watch the brief hydrogen explosions and see scary photos of the visible damage done to four nuclear power units ravaged by the natural disaster? Didn’t the petroleum industry do such a better job in keeping its own damage from the same events from being repeatedly shown on television?
Just as a reminder to those few people who frequent pro-nuclear blog sites, here is a photo of the uncontrolled fire that raged at Cosmo Oil’s Chiba oil refinery for ten solid days after the earthquake. I am pretty sure that there were numerous other examples of earthquake or tsunami damage to petroleum and natural gas facilities that did not make it into the public’s consciousness because they were kept off of television through editorial deference to important advertisers.
Update: A commenter suggested that the below video better represents my point about the dramatic impact that the earthquake had on an oil refinery. The news was reported, but quickly relegated to the category of “fish wrapping” or yesterday’s news as the entire world’s attention was (purposely?) focused on the slowly developing story at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Remember – the fire in the video below raged – out of control – for ten SOLID days after the earthquake.
Do you remember seeing any commercial media talking heads wringing their hands about the long term health effects on the people who might have been breathing in the toxic substances tossed high into the atmosphere? This video was put on YouTube on March 11, 2011, very soon after the report, viewed by about 8,700 people and commented on by about 19. No comments have been received in the past 9 months.
Rod Adams
Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.
9 Comments
If we are to replace coal rapidly with gas someone has to step on the pedal to manage the global warming effect. Some geo engineering will be needed faster than we think.
Indeed, if we replace coal with gas, the cooling provided by coal’s sulfur shield is lost. Other things being equal, a world that burns more natural gas and less coal will experience more near-term warming for the same amount of carbon dioxide.
There could be a technical fix. Sulphur in the stratosphere, a natural result of volcanic eruptions, provides a lot more cooling per tonne than the coal-emitted sort. Deliberate emissions into the stratosphere (using, it should be stressed, a technology a little less disruptive than a volcano) might provide a cooling like that produced by coal without the ghastly side effects.
But alas the world is neither scientifically nor politically ready to consider such geo-engineering.
Coal is also not a renewable source of energy. They problem will continue unless we invent and increase the usages of renewable energy.
I found an American independent organization who produces atmpospheric simulations that indicate TEPCO vastly under-reported radionuclide emissions from the Fukushima Plant.
I’ve suspected for some time that the publicly released emissions data had been manipulated – If the models are correct I suppose this re enforces my hunch. Is there anyone here that can help us explain the implications of this model?
I have to admit I’m wary of large scale geo-engineering schemes, given that the current models are still soft. Wholesale attempts to modify climate in this manner could well have unintended consequences far greater than the problems they are attempting to solve.
One person’s fix is another person’s disaster. S02 in the atmosphere is nasty stuff for the Adirondack park in New York state, from the Acid rain. There are dead lakes and dying trees. There is simply no limestone to balance the acidity of the rain. Midwestern coal plants are the major source.
The clear solution is Nuclear, not Geo-engineering. Geo-Engineering would also be based on the pretense that we can ever have climate models that make predictions past complex *chaotic* sets of interrelated variables and form definitive conclusions. Where chaos principles repealed?
Somehow people need to understand that we need to do much more with much less, and to do that, we need to move to higher power and energy densities. The next step past combustion is huge, and scares people, but people need to be convinced that we need to move in that direction. How do we convince folks?
This video of a BLEVE at the Ichihara refinery, with the fireball reaching about a mile high, probably illustrates your point much better than just the picture you chose:
I wonder if Russian spies are as active in Japan as they are in Germany, so that Gazprom can market the gas reserves of Sakhalin?
The implications is the source of information has an anti-nuke agenda. Models of complex systems like the environment are always incorrect.
A simple example would be the mileage sticker on your car when you buy it. I can accurately measure my mileage when I buy gas. This does not suggest that EPA has an agenda other than providing a standard so that consumers can be informed.
I would expect different models to get different results. Does not mean anyone is wrong.
The purpose of models is to help predict exposure. Using a model to calculate how many horses got of the barn in hindsight is just stupid.
You don’t need Russian spies. The fact is the Japanese government itself is using Fukushima Daiichi as a smoke screen to obscure the fact that the general level of preparedness for an event the size of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami was less than what it should have been. Invoking an on-going nuclear disaster keeps everyone’s attention focused on something else. By the time the press wakes up over there, the real disaster that was happening will be old news, and all the usual suspects will have bulletproof butt covers in place.
George,
Give your local Greenpeace representative a call. He will keep you in the loop.
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If we are to replace coal rapidly with gas someone has to step on the pedal to manage the global warming effect. Some geo engineering will be needed faster than we think.
Indeed, if we replace coal with gas, the cooling provided by coal’s sulfur shield is lost. Other things being equal, a world that burns more natural gas and less coal will experience more near-term warming for the same amount of carbon dioxide.
There could be a technical fix. Sulphur in the stratosphere, a natural result of volcanic eruptions, provides a lot more cooling per tonne than the coal-emitted sort. Deliberate emissions into the stratosphere (using, it should be stressed, a technology a little less disruptive than a volcano) might provide a cooling like that produced by coal without the ghastly side effects.
But alas the world is neither scientifically nor politically ready to consider such geo-engineering.
Coal is also not a renewable source of energy. They problem will continue unless we invent and increase the usages of renewable energy.
I found an American independent organization who produces atmpospheric simulations that indicate TEPCO vastly under-reported radionuclide emissions from the Fukushima Plant.
http://www.datapoke.org/blog/8/study-modeling-fukushima-npp-radioactive-contamination-dispersion-utilizing-chino-m-et-al-source-terms/
http://www.datapoke.org/partmom/a=40
I’ve suspected for some time that the publicly released emissions data had been manipulated – If the models are correct I suppose this re enforces my hunch. Is there anyone here that can help us explain the implications of this model?
I have to admit I’m wary of large scale geo-engineering schemes, given that the current models are still soft. Wholesale attempts to modify climate in this manner could well have unintended consequences far greater than the problems they are attempting to solve.
One person’s fix is another person’s disaster. S02 in the atmosphere is nasty stuff for the Adirondack park in New York state, from the Acid rain. There are dead lakes and dying trees. There is simply no limestone to balance the acidity of the rain. Midwestern coal plants are the major source.
The clear solution is Nuclear, not Geo-engineering. Geo-Engineering would also be based on the pretense that we can ever have climate models that make predictions past complex *chaotic* sets of interrelated variables and form definitive conclusions. Where chaos principles repealed?
Somehow people need to understand that we need to do much more with much less, and to do that, we need to move to higher power and energy densities. The next step past combustion is huge, and scares people, but people need to be convinced that we need to move in that direction. How do we convince folks?
This video of a BLEVE at the Ichihara refinery, with the fireball reaching about a mile high, probably illustrates your point much better than just the picture you chose:
http://youtu.be/zSRcaF03GEA
I wonder if Russian spies are as active in Japan as they are in Germany, so that Gazprom can market the gas reserves of Sakhalin?
The implications is the source of information has an anti-nuke agenda. Models of complex systems like the environment are always incorrect.
A simple example would be the mileage sticker on your car when you buy it. I can accurately measure my mileage when I buy gas. This does not suggest that EPA has an agenda other than providing a standard so that consumers can be informed.
I would expect different models to get different results. Does not mean anyone is wrong.
The purpose of models is to help predict exposure. Using a model to calculate how many horses got of the barn in hindsight is just stupid.
You don’t need Russian spies. The fact is the Japanese government itself is using Fukushima Daiichi as a smoke screen to obscure the fact that the general level of preparedness for an event the size of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami was less than what it should have been. Invoking an on-going nuclear disaster keeps everyone’s attention focused on something else. By the time the press wakes up over there, the real disaster that was happening will be old news, and all the usual suspects will have bulletproof butt covers in place.
George,
Give your local Greenpeace representative a call. He will keep you in the loop.