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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (74655)	2/4/2017 10:51:33 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 86356

V enezuela Is So Broke It Can’t Even Export Oil Another of those real world experiments that prove the free market rules and socialism drools. BY ROBBIE GRAMERJANUARY 26, 2017 - 3:59 PM ROBBIE.GRAMER @ROBBIEGRAMER A fleet of rundown Venezuelan oil tankers carrying some 4 million barrels of oil and other fuels is wallowing in the Caribbean Sea. Not because of bad weather, or mechanical problems, but because Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, doesn’t have the cash to get them to their final destinations. Beyond the obvious environmental risks, it’s doubly bad news for Venezuela, a country in dire economic straits and full-fledged crisis, with a political impasse, looting, dangerous food and health supply shortages, and massive protests. Venezuela is massively reliant on oil exports to bankroll government services. But the cash-strapped country can’t even find the money to service the vessels that carry its exports. And Venezuela needs the exports to get the cash to service the vessels. It’s a vicious circle Before ships can venture into international waters, international maritime law requires safety inspections, hull cleanings, and other services. PdVSA, already mired in debt, can’t foot those bills, leaving crude-stained tankers in the lurch. Further exacerbating the problem is intermittent leaks at Venezuela’s poorly-maintained oil export terminals. The leaks stained incoming and outgoing tankers, creating a backlog of cleaning. Some tankers wait as long as two months for cleaning before being seaworthy, one inspector told Reuters, which first reported the story. Venezuela, once Latin America’s most powerful petrostate, is on the brink of collapse after decades of economic mismanagement and boiling tensions between President Nicolas Maduro and opposition parties. Low global oil prices haven’t helped. The global oil cartel OPEC agreed to slash global production late last year, but the small uptick in oil prices likely won’t provide enough reprieve for PDVSA to weather its debt storm; it projects its oil production will linger near a 23 year-low in 2017. So while Venezuela’s political crisis continues unabated, its sole possible economic lifeline drifts at sea, in aging, dirty tankers. foreignpolicy.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (74655)	2/4/2017 11:48:31 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86356

Study: Batteries for wind and solar do ‘more harm than good’ for environment 'Trying to store green energy in a battery does more harm to the environment than good, according to a new study by the University of Texas Energy Institute. Storing solar energy in batteries for nighttime use actually increases both energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the study found. Researchers concluded that homes which used battery storage ended up consuming between 8 percent and 14 percent more electricity than homes that didn’t.' Share the facts at CFACT.org: cfact.org Law of unintended consequences, will you never relent? “The researchers also found that adding storage indirectly increases overall emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide based on today’s Texas grid mix, which is primarily made up of fossil fuels,” reads a summary of the research. “Because storage affects what time of day a household draws electricity from the grid, it also influences emissions in that way.” Burning natural gas for electricity will generally result in lower pollution and fewer CO2 emissions than trying to store green energy in batteries — largely because batteries waste a lot of power charging themselves. Storing enough electricity in batteries to support wind and solar power also face enormous physical problems, which could make it economically impossible, according to another study published in June by chemists at Texas A&M. It turns out that when electrons combine with the lithium ions in a battery, they distort the electronic structure of the device, essentially trapping unused energy in the battery, causing it to degrade rapidly. This means that it may be inherently impossible to store large amounts of electricity cost effectively in a battery. “Fundamentally, when you have a battery, every time you use it, it starts to die a little bit,” Dr. Sarbajit Banerjee, a chemistry professor at Texas A&M, wrote in a press statement. “The more you use it, the more it dies. Eventually, it becomes unusable. Theoretically speaking, you expect a certain performance from a battery, and you rarely ever get there. People have been at a loss to understand all the factors that contribute to this lack of full capacity.” Without large-scale energy storage, the power grid needs demand for energy to exactly match supply to function properly. Power demand is relatively predictable, and conventional power plants, like nuclear plants and plants using natural gas, can adjust output accordingly. Solar and wind power, however, can’t easily adjust output and provide power unpredictably relative to conventional power sources. The power they do provide generally doesn’t coincide with the times when power is most needed either, which is why storage is required. Peak energy demand also occurs in the evenings, when solar power is going offline. Without about 150 times more capacity to store power for later use, wind and solar simply won’t work. America has less than 1 percent of the energy storage capacity necessary for wind and solar to meet the green goal of “100 percent green energy,” according to an analysis of federal data published last June by The Daily Caller News Foundation.' cfact.org