[OPINION by Charlie Hall About His: Charlie Hall's Balloon Graph -
19 December 19, 2007.

Energy researcher Charlie Hall's balloon graph challenges the notion that alternative energy sources will provide a smooth transition to a post-fossil fuel society. Scale and energy return remain huge obstacles.

Charlie Hall is one the best-known energy researchers you've never heard of. That's because he puts his effort into understanding whole energy systems such as human civilization rather than perfecting headline-grabbing energy panaceas such as corn ethanol. From the early 1980s onward Hall and his colleagues--some of them former students--have been warning that a society hooked on fossil fuels would find itself up against limits not easily breached--probably sooner rather than later.

With the current boom in biofuels, wind, and solar, and even a revival in nuclear power, many people believe that a smooth transition to a post-fossil fuel economy is already a foregone conclusion. But a careful look at Charlie Hall's balloon graph tells a different and much more disconcerting story (1). (To view a larger version of the graph, click here.)

First, let's look at the components of the chart. On the vertical axis we have energy return on investment (EROI) expressed as the ratio of energy output versus energy input for each energy source. (Hall, an ecologist by training, appears to have coined the term by adapting "yield per effort" concepts from fisheries.) It is not always obvious to modern industrial people that it takes energy to get energy. The more energy we spend on finding, extracting, refining, and transporting energy resources, the less we have for all the other activities of society. The horizontal axis of the graph represents quads or more precisely, quadrillion BTUs (British Thermal Units). The graph depicts energy use in the United States. But the principles it demonstrates apply to the world as a whole.

The various colors put focus on the annual production totals and energy return of oil at different times. The sizes for all the balloons represent a very rough guide to the uncertainties in calculating EROI ranges. (As we shall see, even with these uncertainties there is a very large discernible gap between what we currently get from fossil fuels and what we can expect to get from alternatives.)

Oil, which makes up the largest percentage of U.S. energy consumption today (40%), has shown a substantial increase in its total output even as its EROI has fallen. To see this on the graph look at the blue balloon labeled "Domestic Oil 1930," the purple balloons labeled "Imported Oil 1970" and "Domestic Oil 1970" and the red balloons labeled "Domestic Oil Today" and "Imported Oil Today." That same move to a lower EROI is also being seen for natural gas and coal though the balloon graph does not depict these trends.

Everyone knows that at some point fossil fuel supplies, which are finite, will begin to decline. To replace them we currently have biofuels such as biodiesel; other renewables such as wind, photovoltaic, and hydroelectric; and nuclear power. Oil from tar sands is also shown in the lower left-hand corner, but you have to look hard. And, that's just the point. You have to look pretty hard to see these alternatives on the graph. There are two reasons for this. First, some of these new sources are not very far along in their deployment. As they are more widely deployed, they will supply more total power and move to the right on the graph. Second, the EROI for biofuels such as biodiesel and for unconventional oil such as that extracted from tar sands is extremely low. Given current technology, these alternatives are not likely to move upward very much on the graph anytime soon.

Hall believes we have two problems illustrated by his balloon chart. First, in order for these alternative sources to move rightward on the graph--that is, produce much larger quantities of energy for society--they will have to be deployed on a vast scale which few people contemplate or understand. Two examples come to mind. The worldwide installed capacity of solar photovoltaic cells is 10.9 gigawatts. With the total worldwide installed electrical generating base at 3,872 gigawatts, it would take more than 2,000 years at the current rate of installation (1.74 gigawatts/year) to reach today's capacity. And that's without even considering future growth in electricity demand. If we include the installed base of wind (74.3 gigawatts) and the current rate of wind installations (14.9 gigawatts/year), we can bring the figure all the way down to about 230 years, again without considering growth in demand. Of course, the rates of installation will grow, and there are other renewable and nonrenewable energy sources available. But the challenge of scale remains huge.

When it comes to biofuels, the scale problem gets no better. Biofuels researcher Tad Patzek uses corn ethanol as an example. To fuel the American vehicle fleet using corn ethanol:
[o]ne would have to grow corn on 1.8 billion acres, year-after-year, for decades. There are about 400 million acres of arable land now in cultivation in the U.S. Therefore, one would have to use the land area equal to 4.5 times the current arable land area….
If we want to continue living in the kind of energy-drenched civilization we now enjoy, we will have to move simultaneously rightward and upward on the balloon graph. Hall estimates that if society were to average less than a 5 to 1 ratio of EROI, anything resembling our modern civilization would probably not function. The balloon graph suggests a minimum EROI for the United States of around 40 to 1 for 100 quads of energy generated. Therefore, without major breakthroughs in the efficiency of alternative energy sources, no combination of those sources has the prospect of giving us both the high energy returns and the large total production we are accustomed to from our current energy sources.

(It’s important to note that nearly all the good sites for hydro power in the world have already been taken. And, turning to firewood for fuel would simply result in the leveling of the world’s remaining forests, leaving us with nothing for the future and destroying the habitability of the planet in the bargain. The upshot: Neither of these alternatives is going to move much to the right on the graph.)

Many are saying peak world oil production will soon be upon us with peak natural gas and coal following close behind. To live anything like we now live, we are going to have to see some astounding technical breakthroughs in alternative energy sources soon. And those breakthroughs will have to be followed by dramatic and costly efforts to deploy alternatives rapidly and ubiquitously. For now we appear to be on a course that will require drastic changes in the way we live.

Perhaps we will somehow muddle through. But when you look at Charlie Hall’s balloon graph, it’s easy to conclude that even muddling through might end up being a very unpleasant affair.

Notes:

(1) Hall, C.A.S., R. Powers and W. Schoenberg. (in press). Peak oil, EROI, investments and the economy in an uncertain future. Pp. xxx-xxx in Pimentel, David. (ed). Renewable Energy Systems: Environmental and Energetic Issues.

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We Posted the above without being in full agreement with what it says – not because what it says – but rather because what it does not say.

What it does not say is the fact that nobody in his right state of mind will imply that one switches from oil into a different source of energy without first reducing needs for energy inputs to more manageable needs. First deal with conservation and avoid waste – that is the rule of the thumb!

After you do this – only then – you figure what energy source is best suited to a particular need – and you go for it. What this will do – is simple – it will eliminate the anti biofuels arguments that were put forward by Professor David Pimentel already over 30 years ago. The world has changed since, but not Professor Pimentel’s ideas. In those days he went all out to lead the US Department of Energy away from the logical solution of using ethanol for the purpose of increasing octane value of gasoline when switching to unleaded gasoline. Those days Professor Pimentel was plainly trying to prop up the Mobil Oil Company’s opposition to a mandatory use of ethanol – a product that they were not in the business of making it available to the US economy. It was then Senator McGovern who got the scoop on Professor Pimentel – it is all in Congressional records. Pity that Charlie Hall is relying on the Pimentel input to something that otherwise could be viewed as a tool for policy analysis. His blog - http://scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/vie… has in it, at this time, also 15 reactions/comments to his posting. We hope that someday he might indeed converge his analysis with material available from other general policy analysts. We also would like to hope that Tad Patzek mentioned by Charlie can also enlarge the scope of his analysis.

THE OIL POSTER: A Brilliant Tool for Examining the Geologic Realities and Social Ramifications of the Modern World’s Most Prized Resource.

“If a picture is worth one thousand words, then The Oil Age Poster is worth one million words because people can not only see the oil production Hubbert’s peaks in many countries and regions, but also read the facts proving that global peak oil is both inevitable and quite probably imminent.”

- U.S. Congressman R. Bartlett
Maryland (Republican)

Colorful and authoritative, this poster traces the history of the Oil Age from its beginnings in the hills of western Pennsylvania in 1859 to its rise as the engine of global industrial economies. The poster’s main chart features a year-by-year rendering of worldwide oil production from 1859 to 2050 with projections of future production based on Colin Campbell’s Oil Depletion Model. Historical annotations as well as detailed data on production, trade and reserves make this poster a versatile tool for presenting the realities and implications of global oil production and its impending peak. (Size: 36″ wide by 24″ tall; Retail Price: $12.50)   Buy a Poster   from   http://www.oilposter.org

Sponsor Your City or State

Make a sponsorship donation and we’ll send posters to schools, libraries, and policy makers in your city, region, or state. You can specify the type of recipients and even send to specific people.

A donation of…
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(Available only in U.S.)

Increasing Awareness - The primary goal of The Oil Age poster is to increase awareness of the critical role of oil in modern industrial society and to call attention to the impending worldwide peak in oil production.

Benefiting Schools - Sales will help fund the no-cost distribution of The Oil Age poster to high schools, colleges and non-profit institutions. Proceeds will also support the development of teaching guides and other educational tools to be used in conjunction with the poster in classrooms. (View the list of teachers and schools who have been sent posters.)

Benefiting Global Public Media - A portion of each sale will be donated to the non-profit Meta Foundation for the support of its projects and subsidiary non-profit organizations, including Global Public Media and the Post Carbon Institute.

What the Experts Are Saying:

“As this poster makes abundantly clear, we’ve already consumed about half of the world’s total endowment of regular conventional oil,” said Dr. Campbell. “This has provided most supply to-date and will dominate all supply far into the future. Now entering the second half of the Oil Age, we face the relentless decline of production, imposed by nature.”

- Dr. Colin Campbell
Leading authority on oil depletion issues
and co-founder of the Association for the
Study of Peak Oil (ASPO)

“This poster conveys a wealth of carefully researched information about oil depletion in a graphic format that anyone can quickly grasp. It is a map of our recent petroleum past and a glimpse into our post-peak future. No library, office or home should be without it!”

- Richard Heinberg
Energy expert and author of
Powerdown: Options and Actions
for a Post-Carbon World

“The primary goal of The Oil Age poster is to increase awareness of the critical role of oil in modern industrial society, and to call attention to the impending worldwide peak in oil production.”
- Julian Darley
Author of “High Noon for Natural Gas” and
Director of Global Public Media

China’s Fuel Efficiency Kicks America’s Butt - writes Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, March 25, 2008.

The Toronto Star reported an alarming factoid earlier this month: No gasoline-powered car assembled in North America would meet China’s current fuel-efficiency standard.

That’s mainly because:

Oh, and by 2010, China will be the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing and solar photovoltaics manufacturing.

No worries, though, our TV and movie sales overseas still kick butt. For now.

Tagged as: fuel efficiency, cafe, global warming, china, climate change

In Green – sugar-cane growing areas of Brazil – 2008
In Blue       – further potential areas for fuel ethanol purpose

Click to view the article that takes you to the interactive interactive display

Courtesy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur…

Click to enlarge

The following was presented at the COP 10 of the UNFCCC in Buenos Aires in December 2004.

It was prepared by a group of Japanese scientists from the Kyoto University, based on proposals that were put forward earlier by the Brazilian delegation to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This proposal is also the base for the UK NGOs proposals that come under the name of “Contraction and Conversion Proposals.”

The Japanese calculation uses a formula based on “regional Temperature Change Contributions (TCC)” that are the basis for climate change. The allowances per region, for future emissions, take into consideration the historical TCCs for the various regions.

We believe that the attached graph will be part of the Japanese propsal for the G8 this coming May, so this is why we post it at this time. It is still possible to activate this sort of program starting 2013 for limits to CO2 emissions, in order to stabilize eventually the emissions at 450ppm, as it is suggested in the IPCC studies.
Click to view full size

This almost explains all of the mysteries in life:
>
>
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5
> inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.
>
>     Why was that gauge used?   Because that’s the way they built them in England,
> and English expatriates built the US railroads.
>
>     Why did the English build them like that?   Because the first rail lines were
> built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the
> gauge they used.
>
>     Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then?   Because the people who built the tramways
> used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that
> wheel spacing.
>
>     Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?   Well, if they
> tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old,
> long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.
>
>     So who built those old rutted roads?   Imperial Rome built the first long
> distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been
> used ever since.
>
>     And the ruts in the roads?   Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which
> everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.   Since the
> chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel
> spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5
> inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war
> chariot.   Bureaucracies live forever.
>
>     So the next time you are handed a Specification/Procedure/ Process and wonder
> ‘What horse’s ass came up with that?’ . . . you may be exactly right.   Imperial
> Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of
> two war horses.   (Two horses’ asses.)   Now, the twist to the story:
>
>     When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
> booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
> rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah.
> The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit
> fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch
> site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the
> mountains.   And the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly
> wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about
> as wide as two horses’ behinds.
>
>     So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most
> advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the
> width of a horse’s ass.
>
>     And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important?   Ancient horses’ asses
> control almost everything . . . and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling
> everything else!!

The following is the most recent UN chart – August 2006. It shows the complexity of the system with links that in places are incomprehensible.
It shows fossilized bodies, the likes of the Trusteeship Council. On the other hand, important bodies like the Secretariats for particular conventions, the likes of UNFCCC do not appear on this chart.

Click to enlarge

Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) announces that the IGES CDM Project Database has been updated as of 13 Aug. 2007.

Now it contains 757 CDM registered project activities. Also the following data
have been added: total issued CERs, number of the request for review of CER
issuance, amount of issued CERs per year, and the bundling method.

To download the IGES CDM Project Database:
In English: http://www.iges.or.jp/en/cdm/report.html
In Japanese: http://www.iges.or.jp/jp/cdm/report.html

IGES CDM Project Database is the database on CDM projects registered
by the CDM Executive Board under the UNFCCC. It aimed at providing
comprehensive, organised information on the CDM projects in an
easy-to-understand way. The database helps users search for specific
information on each registered project more easily and it also enables them
to use relevant information for their own analytical purposes.

All information is extracted from the publicly available sources on the
UNFCCC web-site and this database will be updated regularly.

Your comments and feedbacks are always appreciated.
Please send us e-mail to:  cdm-info at iges.or.jp

For more information on IGES CDM Programme, please visit
 http://www.iges.or.jp/en/cdm/

*****************************************
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Climate Policy Project
CDM Programme
 cdm-info at iges.or.jp
2108-11, Kamiyamaguchi, Hayama,
Kanagawa 240-0115
Phone:+81-46-855-3820 Fax:+81-46-855-3809
 http://www.iges.or.jp/en/

*****************************************

 Also GHG data by country:

IGES GHG Emissions Data
In English: http://www.iges.or.jp/en/cdm/report.html
In Japanese: http://www.iges.or.jp/jp/cdm/report.html

Your comments and feedbacks are always appreciated.
Please send us e-mail to:  cdm-info at iges.or.jp
Attn. Mr. Yuji MIZUNO

                Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
announces that the IGES GHG Emissions Data is now available online.

The IGES GHG Emissions Data aimed at providing comprehensive,
organised information on the GHG emissions from Annex I countries
to the UNFCCC in an easy-to-understand way. This spreadsheet enables
users to use relevant information for their own analytical purposes.

All information is extracted from the publicly available sources on the
UNFCCC web-site and this data will be updated regularly.

IGES GHG Emissions Data
In English: http://www.iges.or.jp/en/cdm/report.html
In Japanese: http://www.iges.or.jp/jp/cdm/report.html

For more information on IGES CDM Programme, please visit our website.
 http://www.iges.or.jp/en/cdm/

*****************************************
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Climate Policy Project
CDM Programme
 cdm-info at iges.or.jp
2108-11, Kamiyamaguchi, Hayama,
Kanagawa 240-0115
Phone:+81-46-855-3820 Fax:+81-46-855-3809
 http://www.iges.or.jp/en/

To commemorate the World Environment Day on June 5, 2007: and LAUNCHES OF GLOBAL OUTLOOK FOR ICE AND SNOW report, UNEP/GRID Sioux Falls, has released a set of PowerPoint presentations entitled Melting Glaciers.   Since 1960, glaciers around the world have lost an estimated 8 000 cubic kilometres of ice. There is now a consensus among many scientists that climate change is the “biggest crisis in today’s world” with the potential to cause catastrophic damage. This collection of visually compelling slides of melting ice, showing changes measured using satellite observations, is startling evidence of impact of rapidly changing climate.

To download the presentation go to: http://www.na.unep.net/   and click on “Recent Releases”

The presentation slides can also be downloaded from: ftp://na.unep.net/UNEP/TGiri/

——————————————————————————–
Tejaswi Giri (Ms.)
UNEP/GRID
USGS/EROS Data Center
47914 252nd Street
Sioux Falls, SD, 57198, USA
Tel: 1 (605) 594-2782
Fax: 1 (605) 594-6119
Email:  tgiri at usgs.gov

LINKS:
- US Government Climate Change Policy – Thomas L. Brewer, Georgetown Univ., Washington D.C. ( www.usclimatechange.com )
Published in the New York Times (October 16, 2005)

1. The Tuvalu islands location.

2. Arctic Circumpolar Geography.

Arctic ice cap in 1979	3. The Arctic melt-down (ref. NASA).
Arctic ice cap in 2003