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174 comments on Andris Piebalgs : getting a sense of proportion
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Magnus, I think what bugs most critics of biofuels is the a priori assumption that they are a 'good thing', regardless of the empirical data relating to relative market prices, EROEI, and environmental externalities. That's all. Critics belong to the a posteriori community -- people who are at least willing to change their minds when the data doesn't fit in with the theory.
Luis has come up with hard facts. Piebalgs has come with such near-meaningless statements as " Our crops are more than capable of producing food and fuel".
I think Piebalgs just doesn't get it. He is a consummate politician. He got his job by politicking, not by reading Geoergescu-Roegen or agonising about entropy. The EU boat has been sailing towards biofuels for the past decade and there is no way Piebalgs is going to rock it. The downside of biofuels is of no more interest to him than the downside of chain-smoking is to the tobacco industry. But as I said already, Piebalgs's blog is open and uncensored, so make the most of it!
I work inside the Swedish political system and have talked with more then a dozen of the companies, organizations and authorities that are involved in biofuels. They are not dumb, all has been aware of the limitations with different biofuels and markets. Its known that it is a question about finding efficient ways of turning different raw materials into fuel and other products with the maximum sale value and the value varies between customers. The people who actually do things then start with the raw materials, knowledge, infrastructure and customers they already have. Thus we got RME, biogas and ethanol from wheat and distillation with forest biomass.
The production volumes and mix of technologies will be another one in 10 and 20 years. There is technology development of making high value chemicals and fuel from celulose and ligning with multiple companies pursuing different solutions. The refineries are working with adding biomass to different stages of their process. There is a push for recultivating all of the fallow fields and intensifie forestry. And there are enourmous investments in new electricity production and lots of plug-in hybrid initatives.
I would expect EU politicians and transnational companies in EU to be as smart as the local ones. The problem is the PR, that it is very hard to sell something that is more complex then a single method solution. This is true for all kinds of sale efforts including getting voters. I think I can be lucky that most of our politicians within the field talk about multiple solutions.
Magnus, the population of Sweden (~9 million) is similar to that of a large city in other European countries - try and see the bigger picture.
To give you an idea, Sweden has a population density of ~20 per km2 the European average is ~112 per km2. Sweden comes #195 out of 241 independent territories recognised by the UN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
I know we have a lot of natural resources per capita. But I do not get why having a larger populations would lead to dumber entreprenuers and politicians.
Some facts about the UK where I live:
we don't have any wood - all the forests were chopped down so we could conquer the world centuries ago - so we will have to rely on net exports of others
we don't have any excess agricultural land, fish stocks are falling - we already import 40% of our food - so we will have to rely on net exports of others
we don't have adequate amounts of inorganic N, P & K - so we will have to rely on net exports of others
in 10 years or so we won't have any oil - so we will have to rely on net exports of others
in 10 years or so we won't have any natural gas - so we will have to rely on net exports of others
we have a small amount of coal - we don't produce all we use, our production is back to levels last seen ~1820 - so we will have to rely on net exports of others
we don't have any uranium - so we will have to rely on net exports of others
we are at a high latitude so solar doesn't work in the winter when we need the power
our population density is high at ~380 per km2 and is growing about 0.6% a year
we already run a current account deficit of ~£58 billion, around 4.2% of GDP - so we will have to rely on net credit of others
gold is currently near it's all time peak price - our government sold all our gold at the bottom of the market costing us £2 billion - (are your politicians as dumb as that) so do we rely on the politicians of others?
What is good for others isn't necessarily good for us.
xeroid,well put, but I'm afraid you've come to grips with reality.
REALITY Definition: facts of existence .... and then of course there is REALITYs ANTONYMS like : belief, fantasy, hypothesis, imagination, theory
Ok some realy dumb decisions have been made in Sweden, like toying with socialism and a large number of realy awfull school refors and emptying or cold war era stock of refined fuels. (Tripple dumb, abandoning having a year or more of spare fuel, selling it cheap and abandoning the hardened storage facilities. )
We will be able to export a lot of wood products to you and Sweden and probably also the nordic electricity trading area is likely to have spare electricity. You could move energy intensive production over here and/or build a cable to Norway.
You could pay for it by exporting culture, labour intensive goods and specialist services and hight tech products from niche industries.
Norway is already maxed-out on hydro-electricity, if that is what you have in mind. We’ve built our first nat.gas-station and there is a lot of handwringing over where to install wind farms.
In the same 10-15-years that UK will run out of oil, Norway will follow suit. By then the whole of Europe will import oil from … ehh ……… ehhh don’t ask me. And in the same very years bio-fuels will eventually have been understood for what it is: NONSENCE
There is only one way out of this mess to come: Conservation! Only conservation!
Magnus : Start to demand from SAAB and Volvo to only manufacture buses and trucks that have small engines and a lot of seats. Private cars must be banned ASAP, but some years of lead time must be allowed to introduce politics that will make the world go round ...... after the ban is to be enforced.
Your government doesn’t get it - in increasing the Swedish speed limits up to 120 km/h… pity
Neither Norway or Sweden is maxed out in hydropower but we would rather build anything else then dam some of the rivers that are left more or less unchanged. Some additions can be made and Norway has a good potential for combined heat and power, and lots of possible wind power, wave power if that works out and the technology level needed to support nuclear powerplants.
The Swedish near term "surplus" is a government prognosis based on already buidling investments that mostly are combined heat and power and nuclear power.
Conversation is extremely important but we also need biofuels, more electricity, etc.
The possibility for most of the population to use a car when needed needs to be preserved for us to keep the old rural part of our culture alive. Loosing it would be a major cultural problem and would also make it harder to use the biomass resources.
Scania, Volvo(trucks), Saab(GM) and Volvo(Ford) are all working on efficiency, hybridization and biofuels for all kinds of wehicels. There is no way the car will be banned and we will end up with a better solution then WW-2 producer gas wehicels.
Norway is virtually maxed out for all practical purposes !!!! There are a few national park rivers , but those are outside the discussion.
This is the sort of charts you simply don't grasp !
Try to see where all sorts of renewable is today. Then try to imagine the OIL PORTION ONLY go to zero ... and then follows ; what substances or fluids in motion (remember we must make energycatching equippments for such) will ever be able to replace that energy. Let alone nat.gas and coal are headed the very same way as oil .... man!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_energy_usage_width_chart.svg
This is not a new issue for me.
The local heating oil use in Sweden is currently going to zero. It is replaced with a combination of nuclear and renewable power. This change started in the 70:s and will be completed within about 10 years. It could probbaly have been done in about 20 years.
Doing the same for wehicle fuels would probably be possible for Sweden with a multiple decade effort working with every partial solution in parallell. A large number of the reasonable efforts are already started and I think that we locally can handle a peak oil downslope where most of the work will be done via market mechanisms.
Handling such a change takes multiple decades and cost a noticable fraction of GNP. It might be so that only they who already have started will handle it gracefully and those who do not do anything for a few years will be "demand destructed" in favor for more efficient economies.
I am not arguing that biofuels etc will save the whole world, it will be enough for manny millions but not all billions. I think there are enough knowledge and resources for everybody but they have not been used in a wise way and its not likely that they will be used wisely. I hope there will be manny and large prosperous areas on the globe and I care about is adding to those areas.
no sure ... Magnus sure it's not an issue for you.
You are a dreaming poet Magnus, that’s what you are.
Take Norway as a Western example, b/c I know our numbers, and done the math’s before.
Norway uses 250 000 b/day /365, converted by volume into rape-fields at running conversion rates, Norwegians need a rape-acreage amounting to 20 km X 20 km every single day . On an annual basis that goes to about half of Norway’s mainland area. Norway is a rugged, mountainous and cold place with a short growth season and God forbid a bad harvest, because that we can’t afford after oil is gone. Norway has 4,7 Mega inhabitants …. This world has 6,7 Giga inhabitants. When oil is gone I don’t think the Brazilians or anyone else is gonna sell us any of their bio-fuel at any cost, as opposed to what is touted in today’s MSM dreams.
Whatever you understood from these NUMBERS Magnus ….. NUMBERS and AREA …. Magnus … use it in your poetry. BUT for God’s sake, make it RHYME.
You could start by ignoring the NIMBY people and build more high tension lines, wind power and hydro power and you have a nearly unlimited potential to build pumped hydro storage. You dont have to ever run out of electricity.
Then I recommend building more electrified railways, when natural gas starts to run out you can make nitrogen fertlizer with the old electric Norsk Hydro methods and you can electrolyze more water into hydrogen and oxygen for gasifieng wood and from the gasified wood and electric hydrogen you can make fuel for the high value uses like powering capilary logistics, tractors and fishing boats.
I guess the Norwegian rapeseed crop will be eaten locally and used to lubricate chainsaws.
A lot of the current oil use will simply become impossible. There might not even be any flights or manny freight ships between Norway and continental Europe, it could all go on rail via Sweden, a new Helsingör - Helsingborg tunnel, thru Denmark and the soon to be built Fehmarn belt bride.
How about investing some of the oil money in domestic infrastructure and infrastructure in the neighbouring countries? It could make life easier for manny generations.
I hope this reads like poetry. ;-)
Magnus what you write here make a lot of sense in a future scenario. But IMO it’s completely out of course as compared to what you have been writing earlier… and yes this is a more realistic kind a' poetry.
The intent of Luis' post here is the silliness(impossibility) of EUs goals of 10% bio fuel by 2020, remember? That is what is at focus here. You are shooting in all directions….
Between today and the picturesque (low energy) picture you paint just here, something has to happen : Either planned OR unplanned, b/c the oil will be gone for all practical purposes between 2050 and 2100.
I am for the PLANNED version of the above, you are seemingly against that b/c you cannot see the concept of banning the private car, on-the-other-hand that I can.… and in doing so we have a lot of available “free” oil-energy to do some real planning with (!) That's where Scania/Volvo make my proposed "cheaply-run-engines-with-many-seats-buses"
We are off on a tanget in this part of the thread but Swedens share of the EU targets will probably be met.
I would suggest you start exporting your young ones and only import Birth Control. How the Hell does the UK plan to exist much longer?
Any one over there got an IQ over 50?
Oh, sorry, the Queen will take care of all her subjects....
I guess you Folks in the UK are that stupid.
BZ
I visit the UK Parliament once or twice a month for the Peak Oil discussions - apparently, the Government thinks the "fundamentals are sound".
However, I'm not sure what the 'fundamentals' that they talk about are.
Should I trust that the UK Government, Banking System, MSM etc are all looking out for me and planning for my best interests?
We tried exporting people before (the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are full of them) and still our population grows - it seems the economy is better here than elsewhere in Europe!
lol
maybe it's due time to call them all back home, for a nifty Peak Oil party, and at the same time ask for some advice ?
Xeroid,
Its funny you mentioned Gordon Brown's selling (giving away as it now turns out) of our gold stocks since only yesterday did I have this very converasation. Same applies to North Sea Oil, which was actually how the conversation started, the gold issue was later mentioned as a similar act of stupidity!.
I think we are in general agreement that we are probably stuffed.
There's a huge difference between Uranium and carbon based fuels (wood coal oil etc). A lump of coal for example can be burnt by anybody anywhere to do any pupose viz direct heat source or to generate mechanical power. To extract energy from uranium, things are a little more involved!
"we don't have any wood - all the forests were chopped down"
Kielder Forest
475,000 cubic meters of timber is harvested annually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielder_Forest
Its big. I cycled about in it. And its one of many.
Almost no wood is used as fuel in the UK any more, it is not an alternate for oil.
The area of the UK is 241,590 km2, the area of Kielder is just 500 km2 - I leave you to do the math to see how insignificant a % that is - 'big' is not an apropriate word to describe something so small!
In 2005 the 'net import' of wood into the UK was 45,000,000 m3. Kielder produced just 475,000 m3 - and was it sustainable production?
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/foreststats.nsf/byunique/imports.html
You might think that Kielder is sustainable in the long term and will adequately supply all our energy needs - I sure hope you are correct, but I don't think you have grasped the scale of the problem facing us. Try using Google Earth to see how bad it really is.
We need food more than we do wood.
More than anything we need a surplus of something to trade for the oil, gas , coal, wood, uranium, food etc that we need - instead we have an accelerating deficit.
Xeroid
People seem incapable of grasping the scale of our energy consumption and the problem sustaining the level at what it is, including those promoting biofuels. Recently, Using the very figure you quote for UK land area, i did the sums for rape oil production in the uk using every square mm of the uk land area for that production, at 2.5 tonnes per hectare yield. I'm not going through it again, but it won't work and can't work, even if you assume no energy is used in the process, we can't get the fuel volumes needed.
The uk alone requires about 70 million tonnes of oil each year, the world consumes 31 billion barrels or 1.3 cubic miles of oil every year. Bio fuels, Not a chance!
Appeal to the lowest common denominator ? (The larger the group, the lower the LCD).
Less voter-politician contact and more media directed "contact" ?
Alan