The purpose of this note is to estimate the likelihood, the timing and the nature of the peak oil scenario on the US oil market. Brief history of peak oil Oil market (=oil consumption, =oil production) has been growing since the first oil well was drilled in the XIX century. In the mid XX century, … Continue reading Peak oil
Tag: Energy
Heat map
Is there economic rationale to move to renewable heat solutions from traditional fossil-fuel based heat? Heat market is a peculiar one. It is large. Average household in the UK, for example, consumes 4x more gas (to generate heat) than electricity (measured in comparable units). Heat is local (cannot be transported far from the origin). Heat is often … Continue reading Heat map
Negative externalities
There is a widespread opinion that renewable energy is only alive because of the subsidies. As if to confirm the point a few days ago US president Barack Obama proposed a new 10$ per barrel tax to be levied on the american producers and importers of oil “to upgrade the nation’s transportation system, improve resilience and … Continue reading Negative externalities
BioFuels
Many things in the renewable energy space have been alive solely because of the government policies and subsidies. Some, like solar power for example, have fully fledged over time, crossed an important “grid parity” threshold on the cost side, and now compete with the traditional energy producers. Others, like traditional biofuels, have stayed uncompetitive on … Continue reading BioFuels
Economics of Smart Homes
Below is an attempt to investigate the developments in the Smart Home space from the economic point of view, not from the IT point of view. Is one possible without the other? I don’t know. Home This is what our homes looked yesterday. A number of home electric appliances are connected to the electrical central … Continue reading Economics of Smart Homes
PHEV: Update
This note is a follow up on the earlier note on the developments in the automotive industry, motivated by the recent scandal with Volkswagen emission violations. Dieselgate What happened (wiki): “On 18 September 2015 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Notice of Violation to German automaker Volkswagen Group, after determining that the company … Continue reading PHEV: Update
PHEV
Oil is not Gas In my previous writings on the developments in the energy industry I didn’t really make much of a difference between oil (used for transportation) and natural gas (used for electricity generation). Yet there is a significant one worth a separate investigation. In electricity generation there is a clear alternative to conventional … Continue reading PHEV
Energy: A graphical account
This note is a graphical account of the developments in the energy industry described in more detail here. Simple charts showing interaction between supply and demand curves on the energy market can convey most of the message. For the purposes of this note, by ‘energy market’ I mean an abstract market corresponding (with different degrees … Continue reading Energy: A graphical account
Distributed Energy
Energy systems of the near future, responding to economic signals, are set to become more local in comparison with today’s paradigm of centralised energy production: Solar, an exception to the trend, will largely migrate from the enthusiasts’ rooftops to centralized industrial locations. Large-scale electricity generation based on gas combustion, now one of the cores of … Continue reading Distributed Energy
Storage Update
Intermittent nature of solar energy has been one of the major areas of criticism of the nascent energy source especially when contrasted with traditional gas-fired electricity generation. Strictly speaking comparing the costs of gas-fired vs. solar electricity is an apple-to-orange comparison, and the right reference points would be the cost of (solar+storage) against the cost … Continue reading Storage Update
Energy, Tech, Macro 