The shale gas revolution is creating a new kind of 'peak oil'

The brand new Viking Line cruise ferry Viking Grace is fuelled by liquefied natural gas, meaning that sulphur oxide emissions will be almost zero, and nitrogen oxide emissions will be at least 80 per cent below the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) current stipulated level. Furthermore, there is a reduction of particulate emissions of more than 90 per cent compared to the emissions from conventional diesel engines, while carbon dioxide emissions are also 20-30 per cent lower

“LNG can provide great advantages for our commercial customers as a future energy solution in transportation”
Marvin Odum,  President of Shell Oil Company 



The fast growing supply of inexpensive and environment-friendly natural gas (including shale gas and LNG) is rapidly creating a new kind of "peak oil". Energy giant BP is predicting that the demand for oil will slow down to just 0,8% a year up to 2030, only half the projected total worldwide energy demand growth rate. And there are experts who think that the switch to plentiful natural gas will cut crude oil's supremacy even more. 

Oil is already being priced out of power generation and industry, and the same is expected to happen in the transport sector: 

Trains, ships, and even aircraft are all potential targets, too. Buses powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) – LNG’s less potent older brother – already ply the streets of Dallas and other cities. Rotterdam and Singapore have both outlined plans to become a hub for LNG-powered shipping.

There’s plenty to aim at here. International shipping and aviation fuel plus road freight will account for about 15 million barrels a day of oil demand by 2035, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That is a quarter of the projected 60-million-barrel daily oil-for-transport pot.

LNG-powered ships are already a reality, even though the fleet is modest for now. A report by ship classifiers Det Norske Veritas last year predicted that 30 per cent of new vessels will be LNG-powered by 2020. Tankers that carry LNG are an obvious early target. Another classifier, Lloyd’s Register, said the use of LNG as a fuel will pick up from 2019 and could be as much as 8 per cent of global bunker fuel demand before 2025.

Airlines have yet to crack the LNG nut, but the first commercial gas-powered civil aircraft flight left Doha for London on Jan. 9 this year, fuelled by another potential gas-to-transport game-changer – jet fuel made from gas.

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Another of the EU's pet climate change projects goes down the drain

image by wikipedia

For a change, there is some great news from the European Union: Another of the EU's flagship climate change/global warming projects - biodiesels - is going down the drain:

The continuity of the European biodiesel industry appears threatened as this summer's food vs. fuel debate has injected fresh life into long-pending EU proposals on how to prevent the indirect displacement of forest by crops grown for fuel ('indirect land-use change' or ILUC). Studies have shown that production of biofuels can lead to a net rise in CO2 emissions if ILUC effects are taken into account. Debate has raged in Brussels over whether and how these effects should be handled in new biofuels legislation. In October, proposals originally due in early 2010 are finally likely to see the light of day. A leaked draft suggests they are full of surprises - but one thing is evident: they spell big trouble for the European biodiesel sector.

Like almost everything else done by the EU, also the new biodiesel regulations will be complicated and require a host of bureacrats to administer them, although in this case the outcome - the end of the useless European biodiesel industry - will be a positive one:

Conventional biofuel production would be capped through a second mechanism as well: ILUC factors, or emission penalties to account for ILUC. The Commission proposes them not per feedstock, as NGOs wanted, but per crop category: 55grams of CO2-equivalent per megajoule (gCO2/MJ) for oil crops, 13gCO2/MJ for sugars and 12gCO2/MJ for cereals and other starch rich crops. These figures would be added on to the emissions balance sheet of biofuels and result in a new weighting of their climate friendliness – and thereby their usefulness to fuel suppliers who face a 6% emission reduction target under the fuel quality directive. Basically, the proposed penalties would be catastrophic for the biodiesel industry, which relies on oil-based crops. Fuel suppliers looking to meet their 6% target will not buy biodiesel when ILUC is taken into account. 

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But there is one thing they agree on: the proposals as they stand spell the end of the European biodiesel industry as we know it. The lethal blow comes from the ILUC factors – they make it impossible for fuel suppliers to use conventional biodiesel and comply with the 6% target in the fuel quality directive. The European Biodiesel Board (EBB), which represents producers who make about three-quarters of all EU biofuels today, says the proposals, if implemented, would “definitively cause the death of the whole EU biodiesel industrial sector.” 

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A return to stage choaches?

 (image antiqueprints.com)

                                       
The stage coach - twice faster than the electric car between London and Edinburgh


Richard North at the EU Referendum blog makes a good observation:

Then came the electric car. Said the BBC, there are hopes that the electric car will capture the imagination of British motorists this year. Thus did the BBC's Brian Milligan take up a challenge to drive from London to Edinburgh in an electric car. It might sound easy, we were told, but under the rules, he was only allowed to charge the car's battery at public points.

In between driving he read a lot of books because charging took 10 hours. In all, from London to Edinburgh, it took four days it took to complete the journey – twice as long as it had taken in the 1830s, with the stage coach. That is progress, greenie-style.