• US Nat Gas wells depleting at 32% and rising.
• Number of rigs needed for stable production rises each year.
• Utilization of rigs approaching capacity.

.
What comes next? Rig count must increase forever to keep the gas flowing. This will drive the cost of drilling, and cost of natural gas. The end result will be, that wind and solar will become cost competitive on some magical day in the future, and utilities will trip over eachother to install systems on rooftops, just like DirectTV and Cable.

Mark B asked,
"Do you expect electricity produced from CIS is capable of climbing a cliff?"
(and attached a very interesting chart, thanks...:-)

I don't know. But frankly, the LNG option is falling apart fast. North American nat gas production could perhaps be pushed up slightly, but as we have seen other posters mention, the return per well is declining, so it would be at great expense, and the math shows that we would be unlikely to increase production enough, fast enough. It can be expected that the tar sand effort in Canada, and the increased consumption of both fertilizer and heat for distilling in the ethanol industry will also drive natural gas consumption higher.

We are now running low on options. A massive return to coal is of course a horrendous choice for obvious reasons. So the two remaining choices that can make a difference big enough and fast enough are:
(a) Widespread conservation
(b) Alternatives (wind, solar thermal and PV Solar as the most promising choices)

The conservation route will work, but it will require will. Insulation, movable insulation (insulating shutters) more efficient heating and air conditioning (ground source heat pumps as an example), improvement in appliances and lighting, daylighting, etc. (Does anyone ever go to the energystar site?
http://www.energystar.gov/
Also, re-evaluation of natural gas use in every business and industrial practice it is used in. Reduction of Diesel fuel consumption
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/12/walmart_seeks_t.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Increased-Fuel-Efficiency-For-Volvo-Trucks&id=...

The reason this is important is that unknown to most consumers, Diesel fuel now requires an increased amount of natural gas to produce, as it is used as desulfuring agent to produce Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel fuel.

But, at the end of the day, there is no avoiding the fact that electric consumption in the U.S. is only going to grow, even with conservation measures. Thus, we have to turn seriously to the alternatives, Wind and Solar.

We have long discussed the wind option, and it has grown as an energy provider, but it must be admitted that it is limited by wind availability and the variability problem.

Solar PV suffers the variability problem, but if cells and panels can be made that are cheaper and more efficient, they can be used almost anywhere. The issue is price per kilowatt. The trend seems to be moving very fast in favor of PV electric, and a fair number of firms are now preparing for mass production. We are at the turning point.

There has been some concern about the supply of Indium. I once did a long post on TOD exposing research I had done into that metal, in which I found that the supply was not nearly as limited as it is sometimes made out, but of course, it was read by virtually no one, being somewhat dry and "boring" to most. For most of it's history, Indium has been considered virtually useless and had no real market, thus no effort has been made many years to even extract it. Likewise, no real effort has been made at improving methods of extraction. I would recomment that anyone interested go to the largest supplier of the metal, and check it out, it is actually very interesting:
http://www.indium.com/

The industry is claiming no real problem on Indium supply for many years, and the thin film solar industry is investing in production capacitiy as though they have no fear of not having raw material. However, the points about supply are well taken, and we should not go into the game wasting the raw material needed to sustain the industry. Indium can be recycled (although for many years, it was so cheap and lacked a market that no one really tried), and all efforts should be made to use the material wisely.

So, can CIS thin film solar climb a cliff? All indications are that it is at the very front of the development curve, and can grow very, very fast. But can it outrun our coming natural gas crisis?

By itself, probably not. But it can be a major part of a overall solution involving electric power consumption conservation efforts, Diesel conservation, and heating/cooling efficiency improvements. In the longer term, it holds revolutionary promise, as the methods of production and the use of raw materials improve. But right now, we must concern ourselves with the near term (3 to 5 years).

We are now at the point that "analysis paralysis" cannot be allowed to slow our efforts. The storm is on the horizon, so close we can start to feel the winds from the storm front. We are running out of time.

Thank you.
Roger Conner Jr.

Remember we are only one cubic mile from freedom

NeverLNG,

I am not in the camp who would pick on those locals in various communities who oppose LNG terminals. It is their community, and they have the right to attempt to decide the type of community they want.

To your remark, "No doubt you would welcome such a thing in your own back yard -- but maybe that isn't even necessary." First, I won't make a statement on that, because I am an inlander, in Central Kentucky, so we are not confronted with the choice. It would be cheap of me to say, "yes, we would love to have an LNG Terminal!", knowing that there is no possibility of one being put here. As for "maybe that isn't even necessary.", I have seen no study that shows that the needed volume of LNG can be handled by the 4 existing plants no matter how much they are expanded, unless one assumes expansions of gigantic scale, and likewise, massive expansions in the pipelines to those plants. And imagine the LNG tanker traffic at only 4 terminals! The four we have are simply not enough if all indications are correct.

The critical issue is time. We are simply running out of it. We have been blessed with extremely mild weather, and have already "outsourced" many natural gas critical industries. (fertilizer being the most critical). How much more we can outsource before we really start to damage the U.S. economy we don't know.

What we do know is this: The coming natural gas crisis is about the only issue that such diverse pundits and experts as Matthew Simmons, CERA's Danial Yergin, T. Boone Pickens, the EIA, Roscoe Bartlett, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and current President G.W. Bush can agree on.
Should that not inform us and cause us to take action?

The LNG option was the preferred course of action of the powers that be.
For a variety of reasons, that option is collapsing. 5 years past where the nation was assured by it's leadership that this path was absolutely essential to have any hope of nat gas supply meeting demand, LNG is virtually stillborn, if not aborted in the womb.

This is why I say again, massive conservation efforts, solar and wind are now becoming our only way to avoid a national emergency, and we probably have 3 to 5 years at most. If we get unlucky on weather, it could be much shorter.

One more thing: In the discussions surrounding the TXU buyout, there is discussion of aborting a good number of planned coal fired plants. This would be a major victory, and should be encouraged, but it only increases the pressure to find some other way to make electric power. Going to natural gas in our current situation would only be another nail in the coffin. This is the time for the alternatives to begin to make their market move. The market pressure for the incorporation of thin film solar, solar hot water, and windmills is increasing daily. Can they deliver? We have to hope so.
Our options are running out.

Thank you for your attention, Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom

I'm all ears. What is the source and market for indium? According to Wikipedia, it is about as abundant as silver in the Earth's crust, and the major current source is Canada.

Is that another reason to pre-emptively invade? Blood for indium??

Uni-Solar is producing some of the best thin-film PV in the world, and it requires no indium. They are using amorphous silicon, which is much cheaper to produce than solar cells made of crystalline silicon, and is not in short supply.

Sun Edison is using their cells in many large scale projects.