Worldwide slump apparently reducing demand for the fossil fuel.
An official with Qinhuangdao harbor in China said Friday that the northern China harbor (the largest in the country) has a coal pileup that is increasing by 100,000 tons a day, according to China Daily.
By mid-September, Qinhuangdao's coal stockpile stood at more than 8 million tons: 3 million tons more than regular levels. In the past two weeks, the surplus has started to build daily.
Coal storage levels at Qinhuangdao, the largest in the country, act as a barometer of the coal market across China, rising with reduced demand, shrinking when demand is greater than supply.
The anonymous official warned that the maximum pileup the harbor could accommodate was 10 million tons.
The surplus is caused by a drop in demand for exports and for local use. According to the China Electricity Council, major consumption regions where coal is used in electric-power generation are also reporting increasing surpluses.
One such harbor, the Guangzhou harbor in southern China had more than 2 million excess tons of coal, as of September 17. Coal trading has dropped 25 percent, according to the Guangzhou Port Group. Trading volume has decreased since July, with a monthly turnover of only 3 million tons. The group was turning over 4 million tons as recently as May and June.
Coal is also piling up at major coal power stations.
The China Electricity Council reports that its coal pileup was about 19 million tons in July, enough to meet a 10-day demand. But by the beginning of September, the excess increased to more than 29 million tons.
Restricted production during the Olympics and a cooler, rainy summer reduced Chinese demand for power said Wang Ling, a coal analyst with the United Metal Web. In addition, abundant rainfall meant more was electricity generated by hydro-power plants.
But the mounting coal pileup was primarily seen as caused by lower demand, with most of the drop-off caused by global economic conditions, according to industry observers.
In Wall Street woes, a ray of hope for renewable energy
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, offered new hope this morning that House Democrats might now be more open to compromise in the wake of the defeat of a $700 billion Wall Street bailout package, which sent the stock market plummeting more than 700 points.
Economic experts warn that millions of Americans could lose their jobs if a rescue plan doesn’t pass.
Clean energy "green-collar" employment studies have shown that somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 U.S. jobs are at stake at a time when the economy is in a meltdown.
SolarCity's CEO Lyndon Rive said today “This is something that could create tens of thousands of jobs. The financial industry has collapsed, the construction industry has collapsed. The housing industry has collapsed. And solar is still growing. This will cause it to collapse … And if political leaders can’t see this, I can’t understand what they’re thinking.”
Most painfully for Democratic leaders, they hoped to count the renewable-energy tax breaks as a significant achievement of the 110th Congress, one that had passed the House in the "the first hundred hours" in January of 2007.
The four national renewable energy trade associations representing the geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind industries weighed in yesterday with a joint statement to Congress saying, "with hundreds of thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars in clean energy investment at risk, we urge Congressional Leaders not to leave for the election recess until a House-Senate agreement is reached on the pending tax extender package."
Leading Senate tax writer Baucus (D-Mont.) predicted that House Democrats might now be more amenable to compromise with Senate Republicans on funding, faced with the prospect of letting renewable energy tax breaks expire while the nation’s economy teeters on the brink of recession. There is no possible Senate Republican compromise, so it is entirely up to House Leader Steny Hoyer to move House Democrats in the direction of the successful Senate version passed last week with a 93-2 veto-proof majority.
“There are more dynamics in play now,” he said, speaking of how the bailout would affect negotiations on tax cuts. “Things are related.”
Indeed, by days end Tuesday the Wall Street Journal reported that on Wednesday night the new Wall Street omnibus bailout vote will include the Senate version of the renewable energy and other business tax credits extension.
International oil companies' share has dropped from over half of all world resources, to just 7 percent.
Most people are familiar with the figures on US share of world oil consumption versus world oil production: that we produce a mere 3 percent, but consume 25 percent of world oil supplies.
However, there is an even more startling figure, in light of this. Since 2005, the share of world oil resources owned by the various national oil companies has grown by a healthy 15 percent, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund.
Control by Western oil companies such as ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, or Royal Dutch/Shell of the world's oil has plummeted from well over 50 percent 30 years ago down to a mere 7 percent of the world's oil resource base. National oil companies (fully or in the majority owned by a national government) now control the lions share of world oil supplies, and they are also increasingly investing outside their national borders.
Due to this increasing dominance over global reserves, the importance of nationally owned companies relative to international oil companies such as ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, or Royal Dutch/Shell, has risen dramatically in recent years.
Proven reserves are the main asset of an oil company, and to be counted in asset valuation, they only need leases: oil companies don't have to actually drill on them to boost their bottom line on paper.
Perhaps opening up new oil leases is more about being able to increase profits to compete with much larger entities in the new world oil market than about creating a vast new gushing hose of oil to supply the American consumer!
The friendly skies of yesteryear are just not so friendly anymore. Worldwide, airlines are in serious trouble due to fuel costs.
Jet fuel now accounts for 36 percent of the industry's costs, up from 13 percent just six years ago, and could account for 40 percent of the airlines' costs next year. No one is suggesting that the industry is about to go bust - yet - but there is a feeling that things could get much worse before they get better.
While European airlines project seven-fold profit declines to just $300 million, they get off relatively easily, since the Euro is strong and they have a strong presence in emerging markets like China and India. US airlines however, are projecting $5 billion in losses, and the IATA predicts the industry will lose more than $4 billion next year. "The negative impact of the industry crisis is universal," says Giovanni Bisignani, head of the IATA, representing 94 percent of the world's airlines.
But Boeing CEO Jim McNerney believes that the occasional bout of bloodletting accelerates the introduction of new technology: "There are two cross-currents," he says.
"There are the economic difficulties presented by high fuel prices. But the current cutting the other way is: you really do need new technology to lower your fuel consumption by between 20 per cent and 30 per cent."
Funny that he should mention that figure... 20 percent. I seem to remember that Boeing's new low carbon 787 Dreamliner was designed to cut fuel use by just that amount. Image from Plan59 From Wired Autopia
Detroit comes up with an easy solution:"We should suspend U.S crash-testing requirements in order to allow Detroit to speed our fuel-efficient European models to the U.S. market"
A virtual "iron curtain" of NHTSA regulations prevent GM from being allowed to selling GM's high-mileage European cars in America. GM chairman Bob Lutz says:
“In Europe, the crash-test procedures are different than in the U.S., so the tests are different. If our government says cars that meet crash tests in other countries are good enough to be sold here, we would have more high-mileage, small-car flexibility.”
True. But why are US crash-test procedures different here than in Europe?
Because, after the oil shocks of the 70's, GM, Chrysler and Ford lobbied for a NHTSA import "wall" to prevent those gas sipping Japanese and European cars from interfering with the American consumers' unfettered patriotic right to buy gas-guzzlers.
You might say that Americans have been kept behind a wall, an iron curtain that keeps our vehicle choices very limited.
NHTSA regulations were deliberately created to differ from ECE regulations that govern cars in the rest of the world in order to protect the fortunes of GM, Chrysler and Ford.
Meanwhile, in Europe, under Kyoto, Ford and GM had to learn how to produce low carbon driving options that met Kyoto standards. (Typically low carbon vehicles will also use less fuel.)
As a result, European Ford and GM now make some of the finest gas sippers there are over there, and there are lots. As detailed in Number of Gas-Sipping Cars Unavailable in US Rises To Well Over 100, by 2007 Europeans had a choice of over 100 cars that get over 45 mpg, while we were stuck with fewer and fewer models capable of 35 mpg or more till Smarts and Minicoopers hurdled the wall this Spring.
“We also would like a 3-year moratorium on certain U.S. front- and side-impact crash test regulations,” Lutz says, but don't be alarmed by that. Europe has a lower deathrate than the US, under the EU rules, and these will be safer than what you are driving now.
How ironic that now Big Auto is realizing that the climate-virtuous vehicles they make over there are only prevented from being sold here by their own once lobbied-for legislation. I hope he has a good strong lobby for this new and much better idea to standardize their production worldwide, to a better standard.
Part of that money has gone to pay high priced lobbyists to work against your best interests, and advocate for lower gas mileage...
Here's how AAA has been lobbying against your clean green future, according toHarpers:
"A frequent target of the group's Washington office has been federal environmental laws. In 1999, AAA opposed new rules that required cleaner-burning exhaust systems for cars, trucks, and SUVs, and two years prior assailed an EPA proposal requiring states to reduce levels of smog and soot.
In 1990, AAA even fought the strengthening of the Clean Air Act - a measure supported by three fourths of Americans - on the grounds that it would limit the "personal mobility" of motorists."
But you could stop this lobbying that you do for a filthy world. You could instead get your roadside assistance from a green startup that is competing against AAA, and they will spend your dues on all the goodies of AAA like roadside assistance and none of the baddies like opposing the Clean Air Act.
And in fairness to AAA, let's look at this lobbying in a historical perspective.
The American Automobile Association was originally created in 1901 by 1,000 auto enthusiasts demanding a response to the lack of highways suitable for for the marvellous new driving machines of the day.
Now we see some changes are needed to design a sustainable world, but back then, this was progressive thinking. And AAA does do valuable work in providing research and much data related to driving and the automobile.
Furthermore, State AA's can certainly be greener as the California State AA showed in partnering with CalCars in the Greenlight Initiative last year.
Appalachian Coal Prices Hit $140 Per Ton When the farsighted French Wind Financier Jerome Guillet started his predictive series countdown to $100 oil, I found it curious that gas prices at the pump did not initially reflect the rising oil prices. As oil prices kept creeping up, doubling the $30 a barrel prices we had grown used to, to surpass $60 and even $70 a barrel, prices at the pump remained strangely unresponsive.
But there did come a tipping point. Gas prices at the pump finally reflected the ever increasing oil prices, and then interesting things happened: - SUV resale values plummeted $8000 in 6 months, US automakers retooled to build cars instead of trucks, Mini Cooper inventories shrank to one-day supplies on the lot and the US accident rate dropped 9% as Americans sharply curtailed their driving habits.
Now, international pressures have pushed coal prices to a record-breaking $140 a ton.
I wonder... at what point in the next few years will rising electricity costs yield similarly interesting changes in our behavior? Could the other 6 billion electricity consumers competing for our electricity supply change what Al Gore couldn't?
Might it simply become normal behavior to protect our own electricity supply? Just as responsible parents buy insurance to protect our families' futures, might it simply become the normal, responsible thing to do to ensure the family electricity supply by finally putting up that solar roof?
At the Bali Climate talks, the US was literally loudly boohed by virtually every other nation when our Representative refused to agree to binding targets.
A couple of days after this Bali roar of international fury, I happened to watch this video of Venturi's partly solar EV skim gracefully across a desert.
As I was watching, I saw a whole different future. Remember the zerocarbon sailing ships that glid across ice lakes in... was it, Barbarella, with Jane Fonda in the 60's. Instead of this EV looking like a toy to me, this time I saw an elegantly simple way to travel across a desert.
Previously, I had mentally classed this (partly) solar powered EV from the French company Venturi, as a "toy". But this time, watching the video, I suddenly saw this kind of design as appropriate for a plausible future, at least for us in the ever sunny Western US, where our temperatures will be 9 degrees hotter by 2100, and our future depends on whether we can adapt in time to desertification. This EV now looks like the new simple tech appropriate to a new age.
Why did my viewpoint change?
I think, that moment at Bali, when the Representative from Papua, New Guinea spoke up, with a very respectful, yet forceful ultimatum from the entire world. The US, he said, must lead, follow, or, please, get out of the way. This speech has really changed the way I see our place in the future. I now believe that this forceful international rejection of our selfishness was a pivotal moment in history, and similar to another pivotal historic turning point.
I remembered that sudden change in clothing fashion at the time of the French Revolution. The incredible opulence and ostentation considered decent behaviour in the Age of The Sun King, which actually had to be legislated against to prevent people dressing like their betters, just like now, when CAFE standards are necessary to stop people buying ever weightier and more ostentatious "status symbols", in our time. Yet, that desire for ostentation suddenly gave way to a radically different simplicity and humility in design of the technology we lived in that spoke of a connection between all people, as demonstrated in this watercolor of Jane Austin. To the still pompous "eye" of the establishment, this adoption of unaffected simplicity appeared to make oneself ridiculously vulnerable. Indeed, this new simplicity in design stripped away all those defenses previously felt to be so neccessary. But, for some reason, the gentry no longer wished to be so differentiated from all the starving wretches at their feet. Why? Who knows how these historic turning points come when they do? Some historian at dailykos will enlighten me, no doubt. But, just as at Bali last month, suddenly, the world had simply had enough of the McMansion and SUV flaunting of their times and put a violent end to the Age of Ostentation. Of course, the rich scurried to imitate the new simple tech to protect themselves with the equivalent of...greenwashing, but it was too late. That world was done, and a new age was born. I believe the roar of disaproval at Bali will mark a similar turning point in technological fashion. After the first couple times this country gets a wakeup call from the international rage finally spilling over, at our excessive greed and ostentatious displays, people will see that simple tech has an elegantly spare minimal quality to it that is more appropriate to a more fairly distributed carbon-constrained future.
We Americans who sneer at the very idea of driving a "go-kart" will gradually come to see design differently. A new simple tech will gradually replace our foolishly wasteful ostentatiously over-elaborate design. Pared down design is already the 3rd world hack, if only for economy:
Simple tech will come to seem more appropriate after the ostentatious energy use of The Oil Age, just as it did then. After they literally lost their heads, a fairer system of sharing the wealth of the world began with the rise of democracy. That privileged group was not given a choice, or no doubt they would have chosen to get out of the way.
We are lucky we've been given a choice. We each average 20 tons of carbon a year. The rest of the world averages 4 tons each. We may lead, follow, or get out of the way.
If a tiny group of cave dwelling zealots could get pissed off enough about mere oil-theft to fly into our World Trade Center, what do you think the entire world: now way beyond infuriated, will eventually do to us to simply shut down our CO2 emissions?
We can lead, follow, or get out of the way. Thank goodness we have been given a choice! We better take it!
After the Ukrainians accidentally nuked themselves in the 80's there was a decadelong drop in their CO2 emissions, as their economic life ground to a halt.
the (Soviet Union) CO2 emissions in million metric tons, gradually increasing till Chernobyl, plunged afterwards, and in the Ukraine they remain low to this day. 1980:- 4011.53 1982:- 4136.42 1984:- 4359.67 year of Chernobyl 1994:- 3296.34
Indeed, militarily speaking, eventually some nation, or group of nations might well conclude that its not that hard to forcibly reduce an uncooperative nation's CO2 emissions for it.
After all the Allied Nations knew that they had a moral imperative to act when 6 million Jews were anihilated on the orders of a madman, and the rest of the world certainly sees their situation to be similar, except unfortunately for us now its we greedy few that threaten the existence of the other 6 billion.
Read more...
An official with Qinhuangdao harbor in China said Friday that the northern China harbor (the largest in the country) has a coal pileup that is increasing by 100,000 tons a day, according to China Daily. 
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, offered new hope this morning that House Democrats might now be more open to compromise in the wake of the defeat of a $700 billion Wall Street bailout package, which sent the stock market plummeting more than 700 points. 
Most people are familiar with the figures on US share of world oil consumption versus world oil production: that we produce a mere 3 percent, but consume 25 percent of world oil supplies.
Posts
