Wind Energy

Here is a very good URL for a summation of the wind energy in the world.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/energy_in_brief/wind_power.cfm?src=email

Price and Costs for Natural Gas

Supply and demand sets somewhat the price of gas although this commodity and energy source is very regulated. A good discussion of this is in an article by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Board as presented here from 2006:

http://www.research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/06/11/Kliesen.pdf

For a complete analysis of these prices to January, 2010 see this:

http://www.ieca-us.com/runningout.html

It appears from the new discovery of shale gas that reserves have doubled but costs to get the gas has also increased. We should then see an increasing price trend in the future for Natural Gas.

The price today as stated in the WSJ is approximately $4 per MM BTU

Price of Oil as compared to Costs

One source of energy of course is oil. Some say we have 50 to 100 years of reserve of this energy source. Here is what the pricing has done in the past almost 60 years. Price is not determined on cost - http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/appl5en/oildisruptions.html

Checking out this web page shows that pricing depends on what happens in the OPEC countries and what they do.

The costs vary by regions of the world - the least expensive in the countries that have huge reservoirs. Costs can range from a few dollars to ten dollars per barrel in these countries. This would include exploration, drilling and processing costs. In other countries especially in the United States this cost is much higher - sometimes exceeding $50 per barrel.

The overall trend is for oil to become higher in price. As the price increases per barrel of oil more exploration and more reserves will become economically viable.

Summary of the 2010 Energy Conference

Summary of the 2010 Energy Conference
EIA and Johns Hopkins
April 6 & 7, 2010, Washington, DC

The annual Energy Conference is usually just sponsored by EIA a branch of the Department of Energy. This year John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) jointly sponsored this conference along with the support of Exxon/Mobil.

The conference was well attended with over 800 participants. The conference was aptly named Short-Term Stresses, Long-Term Change.

There were many speakers addressing the many forms of energy production. It appeared to the writer that everyone was surprised by the recent technological development of shale containing natural gas and that new ways of fractionating this shale with water probably led to over a doubling of reserves in the United States. Because of this new fractionation technology many papers forecasted that natural gas would be utilized primarily for electricity production more and displacing coal and other forms of energy used for electricity production.

There was one whole session devoted to water, indicating that water is required to produce energy and that energy was needed to clean up the water. Some papers indicated that the water is used in the production of energy. This is not true. What happens is that the amount of water remains the same, it only changes form in temperature, contamination or state.

Although there is a perceived short term stress because of reliance on unstable countries for over 1/3 of our energy production along with the pollution that this energy production generates all the papers did not indicate that there would be much of a change in the next 10 to 15 years of our energy production mix. However many talks and papers indicated that there was a lot of government investment in new technology that may change this landscape. One speaker from an oil company stated that their planning horizon was not 20 years but 40 to 45 years. This is how long investment decisions done now will take to pay off in the future.

In future blogs several papers will be discussed and links to these papers will be available

Energy Storage - Batteries

For different sources of energy some storage might be needed. One of our advisors - Dr. Gareth Hatch is well versed in this area.

You can also get more information by clicking here - www.newsletters@infowebcom.com

U.S. Energy Information Administration Conference

I will be attending the U.S. EIA conference in Washington, DC on April 6 & 7th, 2010. Both the head of the EIA and also the Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu will be speakers.

There will be several sessions on Climate Change, Biofuels, Energy Outlook and Energy prices. Also there will be sessions on Natural Gas, Smart Grid, Energy Efficiencies along with Energy and Water Implications.

VOCs analysis for Mexico City Metropolitan Area

Dr. Eric Apel who is with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado published a paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Dr. Apel is also an advisor to Energy Scienomic, Inc. This paper is attached and can be downloaded using the following - link

This paper deals with the Volatile Organic Compounds, (Air Pollution) which are produced mainly by cooking gas, automobiles and somewhat by industrial chemicals in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. These produced VOCs are changed in time in the atmosphere by the sun through photochemistry to produce different air pollutants.

The prevalent wind is to the northeast and can reach the United States. The amount and concentration of the air pollutants were analyzed by flying planes with measuring instruments into this plume as it flows to the northeast. This paper reports the data from these flights.

The United States has done a good job with technology of reducing these emissions from vehicles. However in the east and southeast of the United States, there are still large power plants that, although they don’t emit VOCs, they do emit other pollutants which results in air quality that does not meet EPA Standards in the summer.

More papers will be published on the results from other industrial cities such as Shanghai and Mumbai, along with results from analyzing the atmosphere over the North Pole.

It appears that by purchasing goods from these countries that do not have the same air pollution controls or requirements as the United States, we are obtaining lower cost goods by exporting air pollution that will return on the wind.

Energy Storage Papers Added

We've added a page on Energy Sources to the site and a number of interesting and valuable papers on Energy Storage by one of our Advisors, Gareth P. Hatch, Ph.D., Director of Technology at Dexter Magnetic Technologies.

Non Profit Status Approved

In January 2010, the Internal Revenue Service approved our application for a Non-Profit 501(c)(3) Corporation — Energy Scienomic, Inc.

Kicking off a New Year!

Happy New Year to all and we wish you a very prosperous one. To ring in the New Year we have reached out to many energy-related companies in asking for support in supplying unbiased information and scholarships in the energy and pollution fields. To date more than 500 potential supporters have been contacted.

If you are interested in supporting Enegery Scienomic in its efforts, see our Sponsorship page.