Apple now uses renewable energy for 75% of its needs

TreeHugger has a post on Apple's green power initiatives - Apple now uses renewable energy for 75% of its needs.

Apple has released its environmental report and, among other interesting things, it now states that is uses 100% renewable energy for its data centers and 75% for its needs overall, up from 35% in 2010. The end goal is 100% renewable energy use for all of the company's energy needs. Its likely that not all that clean energy will not be produced on site, Apple won't turn into a energy utility company, but the equivalent amount would be purchased from other sources and used on the grid, so the end result would be the same (energy is fungible, after all).

Of particular interest is the Maiden, North Carolina, data center (which mostly hosts iCloud stuff). It was designed from the ground up to be very energy efficiency and has earned LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Apple writes:

In 2012, we completed construction on the nation’s largest end user–owned, onsite solar photovoltaic array on land surrounding the data center. This 100-acre, 20-megawatt (MW) facility has an annual production capacity of 42 million kWh of clean, low-carbon, renewable energy. And we’re currently building a second 20-MW solar photovoltaic facility on nearby land that should be operational in late 2013. In addition, we’ve built an onsite 10-MW fuel cell installation that uses directed biogas and provides more than 83 million kWh of 24/7 baseload renewable energy annually — it’s the largest non-utility fuel cell installation operating anywhere in the country. All told, Apple will be producing enough onsite renewable energy — 167 million kWh — to power the equivalent of 17,600 homes for one year.* These power sources are connected to the local energy grid and not only displace other dirtier forms of electricity that otherwise would have been used, but their environmental benefits are used only by Apple and are in addition to any locally mandated renewable energy requirements.

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US shale boom starts to fade

The SMH has an article opining that prospects for US shale oil production are fading - US shale boom starts to fade.

For the past three years, the boom in the US shale oil industry has outstripped all expectations. Production surged far faster than any forecasts; drillers raced to secure space in new pipelines to get their crude to market. Now, at the periphery, that may be changing - at least for a while.

News from two of the country's less developed shale plays in Colorado and Ohio last week offer a reality check for the wave of euphoria that has washed across the industry. The stumbles mark a break from the past few years, when nearly every new project was an overnight success and output grew and grew.

On Thursday, Ohio, home to the Utica shale, finally released annual data on 2012 production that showed the state pumped less than 700,000 barrels of oil from its shale wells -- barely enough to fill a small oil tanker. North Dakota's Bakken shale pumps more than that every day. Even state officials said it the result was "lower than initially estimated."

The day before, NuStar Energy LP had said it would shelve a plan to reverse a pair of underused refined products pipelines to ship crude from Colorado's Niobrara shale oil play to Texas. It failed, twice, to garner enough commitments from potential customers to justify investing in the conversion. Neither development was a surprise to industry experts, and both were likely affected by extenuating circumstances.

A growing preference for rail shipments likely dimmed interest in long-term commitments to use NuStar's pipeline. Ohio's shale may yet offer up large volumes of liquid gas and condensate, if drillers can find new ways to coax it out.

Yet taken together they offered a sign that the flush of enthusiasm and rush of investment that piled into shale fields from one coast to the other has hit a curve. While the basic technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling was enough to coax an unexpected gusher of oil from shale rock in many regions, these more challenging seams may require incremental innovation to unlock.

Platts has an article boosting the prospects for the shale industry finding more plays like the Eagle Ford in Texas - Did the shale revolution already find its biggest oil field at the Eagle Ford?.

In case you didn’t catch it, investment house Credit Suisse had a wonderfully informative conference call for their clients last week on how they see the future of the shale revolution that has engulfed the oil patch in the last decade and become hyper-active especially in the last several years.

Among the bank’s conclusions: shale is a vital component of current US production which is growing at a huge clip — CS sees as much as 10 million b/d of US oil production in the next several years, up from 6.5 million b/d last year. CS also noted consistently improving well results from big plays such as the Permian Basin in West Texas and Bakken Shale in North Dakota.

Moreover, it’s not only the upstream that is exploding, but also companies that supply the technologies to eke out more oil in less time. Even ancillary services are exploding, such as technologies that can treat and dispose of water — a crucial component of well fracturing. And all this will require many billions of investment dollars into a shale economy still years away from the mature development stage.

But one other thing Credit Suisse said, which echoes the sentiments of many in the industry, was that it was “skeptical” a new large field on the order of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas would happen. The Eagle Ford is one of the most prolific shale fields which boasts an estimated 943,000 b/d of liquids production and is forecast to produce 1.6 million b/d by late 2018. Instead, Credit Suisse said existing areas with “stacked” pay targets — i.e., layered formations –are better bets right now. When you consider how far industry has come in the last five years alone, it seems almost reactionary to make such a statement. And Credit Suisse is far from alone in that view: many executives share it — even from top shale producers.

Five years ago, the Eagle Ford Shale hadn’t even been discovered, at least not officially. Although a few companies were out there quietly working the field, it was Petrohawk Energy that announced a gas find there in October, 2008. By that time, other shale fields had already been discovered — the Haynesville in Louisiana, a gas field; the Bakken oil field in North Dakota; and of course, the granddaddy of them all, the Barnett in North Texas which sparked the widespread move by operators to shale exploitation in the early 2000s, although the field’s first wells were drilled in the early 1980s.

The Oil Drum has a skeptical look at the endless treadmill of drilling that shale oil / gas extraction requires- Is the Typical NDIC Bakken Tight Oil Well a Sales Pitch?.

In this post I present the results from dynamic simulations using the typical tight oil well for the Bakken as recently presented by the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC), together with the “2011 average” well as defined from actual production data from around 240 wells that were reported to have started producing from June through December 2011.

The use of the phrase “Typical Bakken Well” by NDIC as shown in Figure 01 is here believed to depict what is to be expected from the average tight oil well.

The results from the dynamic simulations show:

If the “Typical Bakken Well” is what NDIC recently has presented, total production from Bakken (the portion that lies in North Dakota) should have been around 1.1 Mb/d in February 2013.
Reported production from Bakken by NDIC as of February 2013 was 0.7 Mb/d.
Actual production data shows that the first year’s production for the average well in Bakken (North Dakota) presently is around 55% of the “Typical Bakken Well” presented by NDIC.
The results from the simulations anticipate a slowdown for the annual growth in oil production from Bakken (ND) through 2013 and 2014.

...

The production developments in Bakken and other tight oil plays are very much a function of monthly additions of producing wells, developments in well productivity, decline rates (for the growing population of “older” producing wells), development in costs, strategies deployed by the companies for development of their acreage, adequate infrastructure and not least the developments/expectations for the oil price.

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The rise to power of the new sun kings

The SMH has a look at a couple of the key figures in the solar industry - The rise to power of the new sun kings.

As proponents of green energy go, Samuel Yang and Ben Waters could hardly be less alike. Samuel Yang, dubbed by the Chinese media the ''godfather of solar energy'', is a Buddhist vegan who befriended solar scientists while studying economics at Macquarie University in Sydney. He returned to China to found four of the largest solar photovoltaic companies in the world.

Ben Waters, director of Australia's sustainable business strategy for General Electric, sings in church choirs and, as a Hobart schoolboy, brooked bullying by opposing the Franklin River dam. He arrived at the giant corporation after years maintaining F/A-18 fighter jets.

GE's Ben Waters believes the Coalition might not scrap carbon tax. Photo: James Alcock Both Yang and Waters, though, share similar visions for the future of energy: the shift from large-scale, fossil-fuel power plants has to happen if we are to limit global warming, and the pace of the transition will surprise even supporters.

Of the two, Yang is arguably more of a revolutionary. As chief executive of Shanghai-listed Hareon Solar Technology, Yang is in the midst of a battle for survival in an industry that has soared about 50 per cent annually since 2002. Two of Yang's start-ups, JA Solar and Suntech, are among Chinese companies flooding global markets with low-cost solar PV. Suntech is also fending off creditors. ''This overcapacity is normal for any new industrial technology,'' Yang says on a visit to Melbourne this week. ''Solar technology is always advancing fast … and some companies will drop out.''

PV prices in Australia are now below 90¢ per watt, down as much as two-thirds in a couple of years. About one in eight Australian homes now have solar panels, and Yang says penetration rates could rise to 80 per cent in coming years given Australia's high electricity prices, ''such wonderful sun'', and the likely arrival of even cheaper solar PV and later low-cost batteries.

Yang won't say how much further prices will fall but any pause in the decline is likely to be temporary. Even the threat of European tariffs for alleged dumping is dismissed. ''It's a silly childish game,'' Yang says. ''I believe it won't last long.'' Yang bets European leaders will be wary of sparking a trade war with the growing Chinese market and losing jobs linked to the spread of cheap Chinese products. Yang's focus, though, is to expand his company into energy production itself. ''We have to invest in solar farms,'' he says. ''We should become energy suppliers.''

US industrial conglomerate GE, about 125 years old and worth about $250 billion, has investments in many industries but becoming a big power generator is not yet a priority. A major equipment supplier to fossil fuel industries such as coal and coal seam gas, GE also rivals Denmark's Vestas as the world's biggest producer of wind turbines. ''We're energy agnostic,'' Waters says. ''We want to be involved in the energy sector of the future and we're transitioning our business accordingly into distributed power, into renewables, into smart grids and energy storage.''

The spread of tri-generation, with plants generating heat, cooling and power to local precincts, is among GE's target businesses. The company is in talks with Queensland universities for campus-wide energy supplies and for Springfield, southeast of Brisbane, which will see its population surge five-fold to 100,000 over the next two decades.

The shift to locally supplied energy, potentially much more efficient to operate and with lower carbon emissions, means less future demand for power from the National Electricity Market. Power consumption from the NEM has been in decline for four years, and the loss of demand from aluminium smelters and other manufacturers - including Ford factories in Victoria from 2016 - is likely to see that trend continue.

GE, CSIRO and some 40 key power industry players are thrashing out future scenarios for the electricity sector. The Future Grid Forum, which includes an assessment of how the network can accommodate a much higher share of renewables over the next decade, will release its report in October - after the federal election.

Waters directs GE's ecomagination division in Australia, and chairs Sustainable Business Australia - which puts him at odds with firms opposed to a carbon price. GE imposed internal controls on carbon since 2005 and cut its footprint by 30 per cent since.

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How Much Is Enough ?

One of the things I've been doing over the past 6 months (while I've left this blog to fend for itself) is watching a couple of TV series (I hardly ever watch TV but I've found lately that good quality TV seems to have eclipsed movies in some ways and being able to download them makes watching them much more convenient) - namely Game of Thrones (like everyone else) and Breaking Bad.

It was good to see the concept of "how much is enough ?" getting some time in series 5 of Breaking Bad - I'm going to miss Walt when the series concludes later this year.

George Monbiot (flaky as he is) also has some ruminations on whether there ever is "enough" when it comes to money - Enough Already.

“I never did anything for money. I never set money as a goal. It was a result.”(1) So says Bob Diamond, formerly the chief executive of Barclays. In doing so he lays waste to the justification his bank and others (and their innumerable apologists in government and the media) have advanced for surreal levels of remuneration: to incentivise hard work and talent. Prestige, power, a sense of purpose: these are incentives enough.

Others of his class – Bernie Ecclestone and Jeroen van der Veer (the former chief executive of Shell) for example – say the same(2,3). The capture of so much wealth by the executive class performs no useful function. What the very rich appear to value is relative income. If executives were all paid 5% of current levels, competition between them (a questionable virtue anyway) would be no less fierce. As the immensely rich HL Hunt commented several decades ago, “money is just a way of keeping score.”

The desire for advancement along this scale appears to be insatiable. In March Forbes magazine published an article about Prince Alwaleed, who, like other Saudi princes, doubtless owes his fortune to nothing but hard work and enterprise. According to one of the prince’s former employees, the Forbes global rich list “is how he wants the world to judge his success or his stature.”(4) The result is “a quarter-century of intermittent lobbying, cajoling and threatening when it comes to his net worth listing.” In 2006, the researcher responsible for calculating his wealth writes, “when Forbes estimated that the prince was actually worth $7 billion less than he said he was, he called me at home the day after the list was released, sounding nearly in tears. ‘What do you want?’ he pleaded, offering up his private banker in Switzerland. ‘Tell me what you need.’”

Never mind that he has his own 747, in which he sits on a throne during flights. Never mind that his “main palace” has 420 rooms. Never mind that he possesses his own private amusement park and zoo and, he claims, $700 million worth of jewels. Never mind that he’s the richest man in the Arab world, valued by Forbes at $20bn, and has watched his wealth increase by $2bn in the past year(5). None of this is enough. There is no place of arrival, no happy landing, even in a private jumbo jet. The politics of envy are never keener than among the very rich.

This pursuit can suck the life out of its adherents. In Lauren Greenfield’s magnificent documentary The Queen of Versailles, David Siegel, “America’s timeshare king”, appears to abandon all interest in life as he faces the loss of his crown(6). He is still worth hundreds of millions. He still has an adoring wife and children, he is still building the biggest private home in America. But as the sale of the skyscraper that bears his name and symbolises his pre-eminence begins to look inevitable, he sinks into an impenetrable depression. Dead-eyed, he sits alone in his private cinema, obsessively rummaging through the same pieces of paper, as if somewhere among them he can find the key to his restoration, refusing to engage with his family, apparently prepared to ruin himself rather than lose the stupid tower.

To grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. The welfare state is dismantled. Essential public services are cut, so that the rich may pay less tax. The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra-wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, Edwardian levels of inequality are almost festishised. Politicians justify these changes, when not reciting bogus arguments about the deficit(7,8), with the incentives for enterprise they create. Behind that lies the promise or the hint that we will all be happier and more satisfied as a result. But this mindless, meaningless accumulation cannot satisfy even its beneficiaries, except perhaps, and temporarily, the man wobbling on the very top of the pile.

The same applies to collective growth. Governments today have no vision but endless economic growth. They are judged not by the number of people in employment, let alone by the number of people in satisfying, pleasurable jobs, not by the happiness of the population or the protection of the natural world. Job-free, world-eating growth is fine, as long as it’s growth. There are no ends any more, just means.

In their interesting but curiously incomplete book, How Much is Enough?, Robert and Edward Skidelsky note that “Capitalism rests precisely on this endless expansion of wants. That is why, for all its success, it remains so unloved. It has given us wealth beyond measure, but has taken away the chief benefit of wealth: the consciousness of having enough. … The vanishing of all intrinsic ends leaves us with only two options: to be ahead or to be behind. Positional struggle is our fate.”

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Banff Mountain Film Festival 2013

One of my yearly traditions is to go and see the Banff Mountain Film Festival. I found this year's set of movies a little repetitive (much as I like Alex Honnold climbing, Russ Sturges paddling and Danny MacAskill doing tricks on his mountain bike I've seen their stuff plenty of times before) - there were a few interesting films though.

The overall winner was a pair of Australian dudes wandering around Antarctica (less successfully than a random norwegian guy it must be said) - Crossing The Ice.

Aussie adventurers James Castrission and Justin Jones embark upon a perilous 2275km journey across Antarctica in a race to become the first people to man-haul their way from the icy continent's rim to the South Pole and back, completely unassisted. In the past, a handful of hopefuls have attempted the feat, but none have succeeded. Dragging their food and supplies across the unforgiving landscape, in temperatures as low as -40°C, the pair experiences the peaks and troughs of being alone and unsupported in one of the harshest environments on Earth. Their journey heats up when they discover their record attempt is in jeopardy; there's a Norwegian on the ice. He's more experienced, he's tackling same route, and he has a head start.

This dog had me (and most of the audience) laughing out loud - Lily Shreds Trailside.

Every serious mountain-bike rider needs a mascot, and Lily the Jack Russell Terrier is on the road to becoming just that. As the star of this film, Lily leaves only dust behind her as she does what she loves best: chasing bikes. Hot on the tail of a rider carving out new lines in Utah, USA, Lily clears a double jump, attempts a wall ride and ultimately, proves that downhill mountain-bike trails were not only made for wheels; paws can do the trick as well.

And lastly, the landscape at the bottom of the Grand Canyon held a lot of novelty value for me - Last of the great unknown.

One of the last places in the American West left to be explored, the Grand Canyon is an immense landscape filled with sweeping vistas. Almost unfathomable in scale, its vast wilderness is home to a labyrinth of concealed tributaries that hide some of the region's most remarkable formations. Led by Richard Rudow, who has clocked up some 70 first descents in the Grand Canyon, a team of seasoned canyoners ventures deep inside these slots to locations where no humans have set foot before.

Last of the Great Unknown - Trailer #1 from Dan Ransom on Vimeo.

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News is bad for you ?

The Guardian has an essay arguing (unusually for something printed in a newspaper) that reading news is bad for you - News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier. Up to a point I'd agree - though I'd say it depends where you get your news from and how your interpret it....

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

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Harnessing the power of our oceans

I'm not entirely sure if the Australian Government's "Clean Energy Future" venture got some inspiration from this blog - nor am I sure if it will last the year out - however it's nice to see a post on ocean energy on their web site - Give us a wave – harnessing the power of our oceans.

As construction begins on a ground-breaking wave energy project in Perth, a report has been released which emphasises the huge untapped energy potential lying off Australia’s coastlines.

According to the Marine Nation 2025 report, released this week, Australia’s oceans could produce billions of dollars’ worth of clean energy in the form of electricity generated by wave power. The report says an initial assessment has identified world-class wave energy resources along the western and southern coastline, and valuable tidal energy resources in the North West of Australia.

Marine Nation 2025 was prepared by the Federal Government’s Oceans Policy Science Advisory Group and highlights the enormous potential of Australia’s oceans, as well as the challenges and opportunities involved with managing our vast maritime resources.

The report comes on the eve of the commencement of the Perth Wave Energy Project, which is due to begin next month. Located at Garden Island, near Perth, the project will start delivering green energy to the grid in 2014. The project will be Australia’s first commercial wave energy project connected to the electricity grid. An associated wave-powered desalination plant will be a world first.

A CSIRO study released last year revealed that ocean waves have the potential to power a city the size of Melbourne by 2050. CSIRO’s Ocean renewable energy: 2015-2050 report said Australia’s ocean waves could supply about 10 per cent of Australia’s electricity by the middle of this century.

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