Archive for the ‘Peak Oil’ Category
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
I was fortunate enough to test-drive the Nissan Leaf this week, and thought I would post some first impressions.
The car itself is very comfortable, and for anyone used to a Prius (or any automatic), it drives exactly like a normal car. The car is comfortable, acceleration is quite quick, and overall the car performs perfectly for city driving – my test drive was relatively short and was city based, but I am sure it would perform perfectly for mid-range journeys as well.
The range is stated to be 160km – certainly more than enough for the daily commute in a city. The car comes with Sat-Nav built in, and the available range is highlighted on the map. Obviously depending on how the car is driven, this range can change, but this is all reflected on the map in real time so you can see clearly what affect different driving styles have on your range. The car also has an eco-drive mode which reduces the rate of acceleration and hence increases the range.
The manufacturers claim that the battery will be able to maintain an 80% charge after 5 years of usage, and 70% after 10 years. This would reduce the range to 128km and 112km respectively.
The car has several nice power management features – it can be set to only charge between certain hours, so you can arrive home, plug it in and it will only start charging during the hours that you choose. You can also set it to switch on the air conditioning at a set time as well, so the car can be heated up in the morning before you reach it – as this is done from the mains it will not reduce your range for the day. The car can also communicate via a smart phone app so all these features can be controlled remotely, allowing you to check if the car is charged from anywhere you have an internet connection.
The charge time is about 8 hours from a domestic charge point, and 25 minutes from a fast charge point. There are plans for 30 of these fast charge points around the country – for details of their locations, see the ESB’s PDF here.
Overall, first impressions were very good, and I can see electric cars becoming mainstream over the next decade.
I would have some reservations about having one as my primary car, due mainly to thinking if it would be possible drive from my home in Dublin to the family farm in Wexford after owning the car for 7-10 years without having to stop and recharge.
However, for any households who based in or near a city, and who currently have two cars, I can not think of any reason not to get one if you were replacing one of the gas-guzzlers anyway. The last census in 2006 indicated that of the 1,462,296 households in the state 1,173,519 (80.25% of total households) had at least one car, and 609,270 had 2 or more cars (that’s 41.67% of total households, or 51.9% of households with a car) , so there is a large potential market for electric vehicles.
The Leaf will be available in Ireland from February 2011, and will cost €29,995 after a government grant of €5,000. With running costs of approximately 1c/kilometre, anyone doing a significant amount of urban driving should seriously consider one, particularly if it was to replace a second car that was being upgraded anyway.
Tags: carbon, CO2, Electric Cars, electricity, Peak Oil
Posted in Energy, Peak Oil, Sustainability | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
Lloyd’s of London recently published a white paper called “Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business (PDF)“.
It would appear business as usual is no longer an option. The paper is available for free online and is essential reading.
The executive summary is worth quoting verbatim:
1. BUSINESSES WHICH PREPARE FOR AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE NEW ENERGY REALITY WILL PROSPER – FAILURE TO DO SO COULD BE CATASTROPHIC
Energy security and climate change concerns are unleashing a wave of policy initiatives and investments around the world that will fundamentally alter the way that we manage and use energy. Companies which are able to plan for and take advantage of this new energy reality will increase both their resilience and competitiveness. Failure to do so could lead to expensive and potentially catastrophic consequences. (more…)
Posted in Global Warming, Peak Oil | 2 Comments »
Friday, May 28th, 2010
Wednesday night last saw an interesting session to kick off several days of the 15th Convergence Sustainable Living Festival, organised by Cultivate.
The two-hour session was entitled: ‘Planning our retreat from fossil fuels: exploring the ramifications of Peak Oil’ and featured a panel of three speakers, David Korowicz of Feasta (and author earlier this year of the jaw-dropping report, ‘Tipping Point‘), Richard O’Rourke, director of the Irish branch of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) and Green Minister of State, Ciaran Cuffe. (more…)
Tags: Ciaran Cuffe, Cultivate, Davie Philip, Energy, Feasta, Korowicz, Peak Oil
Posted in Global Warming, Peak Oil, Sustainability | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Even when you don’t agree with him, Monbiot remains essential reading. Whether you regard the Dark Mountain Project as a bunch of dystopian doomers, or simply realists probably depends on how you feel about peak oil (in the shorter term) and (in the medium term) just exactly what might happen when we do indeed succeed in doubling concentrations of atmospheric CO2 from their pre-industrial levels and usher in, as predicted, a brave new climatic order for the next few millennia… (more…)
Tags: Energy, Monbiot, Oil, palm oil, Peak Oil, Sustainability
Posted in Global Warming, Peak Oil, Sustainability, biodiversity | No Comments »
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
The debate on climate change faces a number of inherent handicaps. Human nature is perhaps the most important. At our best, we deal reasonably well with the present and the immediate future. If next Christmas seems remote, our abilities to grasp what the environment might look like ten or fifty years hence are severely limited. A limitation that is reinforced by our relative powerlessness – the “I’m happy to recycle but what about the Chinese coal-fired power stations?” argument.
A second handicap comes from the not insignificant resources some invest in promoting climate change denial. The most understandable of these come from businesses with a clear commercial interest in delaying, diluting, or derailing regulatory attempts.
Then come the (usually wealthy) benefactors who are ideologically opposed to any form of market regulation. This groups funds many of the more strident US think tanks and a range of other lobby groups whose job it is to rubbish climate change claims and scientific arguments. (more…)
Tags: Climategate, CRU, denial, Energy, Peak Oil
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Peak Oil, Sustainability, climate sceptics | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
HERE’S A conundrum: restarting global economic growth will, by definition, push up energy costs. Rising energy costs will in turn choke off that economic recovery, leading to a fall in energy prices. Try to restart growth again, and the brick wall of energy costs magically reappears. Repeat ad infinitum.
It is hard to overstate the extent to which our daily lives are subsidised by cheap, plentiful oil. Every 24 hours, Ireland burns around 200,000 barrels. That’s the daily equivalent of the muscle power of 2.4 million men, each working for a full year.
Our entire way of life depends on abundant, inexpensive oil. This era is now drawing to a close. Five years ago, the Hirsch report published by the US department of energy concluded that the world has “never faced a problem” as difficult as peak oil, adding that: “without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary”. Oil peaking will be, it warned, “abrupt and revolutionary”. (more…)
Tags: Energy, Feasta, Forfas, Hirsch, Korowicz, Peak Oil
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Ireland focus, Peak Oil, Sustainability | No Comments »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Currently, hydropower provides 6% of the USA’s electrical power, and solar, biomass, wind and geothermal combined provide 3%.
Dismantled nuclear weapons provide 10%.
The ‘Megatons to Megawatts’ programme was instituted in the 1990s as a means to secure the weapons that both the US and Russsia had agreed to dismantle as a result of arms reduction treaties. What was initially seen as a massive security issue has been transformed into a cheap and plentiful supply of fissile material, and also led to huge financial savings from not having to secure and maintain the warheads themselves, along with their associated delivery systems. The scheme has been very successful – material from Russia’s ex-weapons currently provides 45% of the fuel in US reactors, with former American weapons providing a further 5%. (more…)
Tags: electricity, Energy, nuclear, Peak Oil
Posted in Nuclear Power, Peak Oil | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Take a minute or two to study the chart below. It is just issued by the International Energy Agency, an industry-centric organisation not prone to engaging in eco-alarmism. But this is alarming, truly shocking in fact.
The dark blue chart area is the one to watch. This is the real, live oil, the stuff civilisation runs on. Today, it provides around 70 of the 82 million or so of oil-equivalent barrels we burn each day. (more…)
Tags: carbon, climate change, emissions, Energy, global warming, nuclear, Peak Oil
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Ireland focus, Nuclear Power, Peak Oil, Sustainability | 31 Comments »
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
Prices in Ireland have, mercifully, started to ease back from the highs of a year or two ago, yet some things remain extraordinarily cheap. The two things that contribute probably more than anything else to our overall well-being, comfort, security and physical health are electricity and safe drinking water on tap. Yet, the former is dirt cheap and the latter, for most people, doesn’t cost a red cent, no matter how much you use, or whether you leave the taps on 24 hours a day. (more…)
Tags: carbon, climate change, electricity, emissions, extinction, famine, global warming, John Gibbons, MacKay, nuclear, Sustainability
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Nuclear Power, Peak Oil, Sustainability | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
Nothing says vulgarity or hubris quite like a Hummer. Clocking in at an average of 13 miles per gallon (21.7 litres per 100km), they are no longer the biggest monstrosity on the roads these days, if you really want to give the planet the finger, you can’t top the élan of a Hummer
Shock then to learn that General Motors in the US has announced it is planning to offload its Hummer business. Petrol prices approaching $4 a barrel have seen sales of the tank-like range of SUVs take a nosedive. GM is scaling back production of SUVs by canning four of its big vehicle plants. (more…)
Tags: CO2, Hummer, Peak Oil, petrol, SUV
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Peak Oil, Sustainability | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
The prolific American author Upton Sinclair died 40 years ago, but his novel Oil, published in 1927, has recently had a second coming, being the book upon which the Oscar-winning film There Will Be Blood is based.
Another of Sinclair’s pearls was also recently made famous, this time by Al Gore, when he recalled one of the author’s quotations in his film, An Inconvenient Truth. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. (more…)
Tags: Al Gore, climate, CO2, Coal, CSS, Lenny Bernstein, Oil, Upton Sinclair
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Habitat/species loss, Ireland focus, Peak Oil, Sustainability | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
The year 1900 is little more than two generations ago. It’s the year before my maternal grandmother was born. At that time, she was one of some 1.6 billion people then alive on the earth.
A hundred years, two World Wars and countless other setbacks later, and global population is edging towards seven billion. That’s more than a quadrupling of the planet’s population in a single century. There has never been a (human) population explosion like it in the history of the world, and there never will be again. (more…)
Tags: climate change, collapse, Dr Richard Duncan, Olduvai, Peak Oil
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/species loss, Peak Oil, Sustainability | 6 Comments »
