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[Few people know that I truly began my career as an investigative reporter with the 4-1-1 Blackout (it occurred at precisely 4:11pm) of August 14, 2003.
Jack Casazza, lifetime member of the IEEE, told me in a phone interview in 2003 that the commission that investigated the blackout was effectively involved in a cover up. Casazza has been on six such panels investigating blackouts in his career. Not once was he asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. In stark contrast, every member of the panel investigating the 4-1-1 Blackout was sworn to secrecy.
What was the big secret?
It is possible (and I believe highly likely) that the 4-1-1 Blackout was a test for the inevitable – cascading blackouts across the country: The Olduvai Gorge. No one is investing into energy infrastructure because there is not going to be enough energy to make such investments profitable. I will be commenting more on this soon. – MK]
Dark Days Ahead
By Jason Leopold
Tuesday 17 October 2006
t r u t h o u t | Report
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101706J.shtml
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
One of the biggest failures of George W. Bush's presidency has been his administration's total disregard of the nation's power infrastructure - an issue that is a larger threat to homeland security than the impending attack on US soil by al Qaeda-type terrorists for which we've been issued murky warnings over the years.
On Monday, the North American Electric Reliability Council, an organization funded by the power industry, and that was named by federal regulators in July as the new watchdog group in charge of overseeing the rules for operating the nation's power grid, issued a grim report that confirmed an investigative story first reported by Truthout in August: three years after a devastating blackout left 50 million people in the dark in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada for nearly three days, and forced the closure of the New York Stock Exchange, nothing substantial has been done to overhaul the country's dilapidated power grid.
"The adequacy of North America's electricity system will decline unless changes are made soon," said Rick Sergel, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Council. "Our economy and quality of life are more reliant on electricity every day, yet the operation and planning for a reliable and adequate electricity system is becoming increasingly difficult. The transmission system requires additional investment to address reliability issues and economic impacts. Expansion and strengthening of the transmission system continues to lag demand growth and expansion of generating resources in most areas."
Today, the US power grid - three interconnected grids made up of 3,500 utilities serving 283 million people - still hangs together by a thread. The slightest glitch on the transmission superhighway could upset the smooth distribution of electricity over thousands of miles of transmission lines and darken states from Ohio to New York in a matter of seconds, bringing hospitals and airports to a standstill and putting an untold number of lives at risk.
Immediately following the blackout on August 14, 2003, President Bush said publicly that he would see to it that the nation's aging power grid was quicklyupdated in order to avoid future blackouts and to handle the increase in demand. Congress called for spending of up to $100 billion to reduce severe transmission bottlenecks and increase capacity so the transmission lines could carry additional electricity from power plants to homes and businesses. But the money that would have funded a reliable power grid was spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since the 2003 blackout, neither the Bush administration nor federal energy regulators appointed by the president have developed a comprehensive plan to handle, at the very least, the annual increase in demand. As a result, blackouts will likely become more frequent in areas like New York and New England, NERC said in its report.
"The August 2003 blackout was a wake-up call for the country to upgrade its transmission grid system," said George Gross, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor of electrical and computer engineering who specializes in utility policy, in an interview in August. Gross added that a serious lack of investment in the power grid is the "Achilles heel" of the country's electric system. "But the truth is that very few major transmission projects have been constructed and, as a result, transmission capacity has failed to keep pace with the expansion of power demand. The need to strengthen the existing transmission infrastructure, to expand it, and to effectively harness advances in technology constitutes the single most pressing challenge for the country's electricity system," he said.
For the most part, power companies maintain grid reliability by following voluntary guidelines designed by the power industry, just like the voluntary emissions limits that the fossil-fuel industry says it upholds. Last year, Congress passed an energy bill that required mandatory standards that included monetary penalties, but the rules are still months away from being finalized.
The US-Canadian task force that investigated the August 2003 blackout found numerous violations of the voluntary standards, and concluded that utilities botched routine monitoring of transmission lines and failed to trim trees along transmission passageways.
The neglect of the nation's transmission grid will likely have long-term repercussions, as demonstrated by the dozens of scattered blackouts in the month of July throughout the nation this summer - one of the hottest on record. Since July, all seven of the country's regional grid operators that monitor power flow throughout the nation reported record electricity consumption as temperatures increased. Blackouts struck many parts of the country during the month of July, not because of a shortage of supply, but because the dilapidated power grid could not handle the amount of electricity that was sent back and forth across the transmission lines.
In fact, severe power shortages and rolling blackouts will now become a daily occurrence around the country over the next few years, according to NERC, because the antiquated power grid will be continuously stretched beyond its means - mainly a result of electricity deregulation, whereby power is sent hundreds of miles across the grid to consumers by out-of-state power companies instead of being sent directly to consumers by their local utilities, which is what the grid was designed for. Separately, a report by the Edison Electric Institute, the association for the country's investor-owned utilities that account for roughly 60 percent of the nation's power, says that a decade after the nation's electricity sector was opened to competition it has failed to produce the guaranteed savings consumers were promised when the idea was first proposed to federal and state lawmakers by, ironically, Enron's Jeffrey Skilling and the late Ken Lay.
While deregulation has proven to be a disastrous experiment, on the power supply front, the situation is even worse, particularly for the Northeast, Midwest, and Western United States, according to the NERC report,.
"Demand for electricity is expected to increase over the next ten years by 19 percent in the U.S., but confirmed power capacity will increase by only 6 percent," the agency stated in its report. "Capacity margins are projected to drop below minimum target levels in Texas, New England, the Mid-Atlantic area, the Midwest, and the Rocky Mountain area, in the next two to three years, with other portions of the Northeastern U.S., Southwest, and Western U.S. falling below minimum target levels later in the period. In Canada, projected margins are adequate except in Western Canada, where additional resources will be needed as soon as 2008."
Jone-Lin Wang, a senior director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a power industry think-tank, said in August that New England will likely experience a period of extended blackouts and power emergencies over the next few years because the increase in demand is not being addressed.
"We are concerned about New England because there is nothing in the pipeline but some small renewable projects and wind," Wang said in an interview with Reuters in August. "New England is in trouble."
"In some cases, demand has reached levels that were not expected for another three or four years," she said. "Very hot weather tends to cause more incidents of equipment failure in the distribution systems. Although the bulk power system provided adequate supply, extreme heat and surging demand put the distribution systems through extreme stress, leading to some equipment failures and localized power outages." Wang said.
Craig Baker, senior vice president of American Electric Power Co., the Columbus, Ohio, utility that operates the nation's largest private transmission system, told the Wall Street Journal last month that federal intervention may help, but there's still the question of who will pay for the billions of dollars needed to build transmission lines.
"We're all looking at massive transmission expenses," he said.
Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
[In the documentary "End Of Suburbia", James Howard Kunstler forecasts that Peak Oil and economic meltdown will cause suburbia to become the slums of the future and worse, create ghost towns of abandoned structures that working people can no longer afford to maintain. That is already happening as foreclosures in the US are on the rise. – CB]
HOUSING SLUMP PRODUCING GHOST TOWNS
Fed president says some effects of rate hikes still in the pipeline
By Alistair Barr
October 16, 2006
Market Watch
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=
%7B8A9B3C68%2DF82C%2D497D%2D951C%2D6E2
D831096F4%7D&source=blq%2Fyhoo&dist=yhoo&siteid=yhoo
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The housing slowdown has turned some parts of the Phoenix and Las Vegas metropolitan areas into "ghost towns," where many unsold homes stand empty, Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, said Monday.
Yellen said that she heard the ominous description from a "major home builder," who told her that the share of unsold homes in some subdivisions around the two Southwestern cities has topped 80%.
"Though the situation isn't that bad everywhere, a significant buildup of home inventory implies that permits and (housing) starts may continue to fall, and the market may not recover for several years," she warned, according to the text of a speech delivered Monday at the Hong Kong Association of Northern California in San Francisco. See speech
The housing slowdown was one of several factors Yellen cited in which she argued that the current level of interest rates is "moderately restrictive," and that it makes sense to keep it that way "for a time."
Nationally, inventories of unsold homes have climbed as housing became less affordable, Yellen said in a meeting with reporters after her speech.
Speculation had been quite high in areas such as Phoenix and Las Vegas and now that prices may not be heading higher anymore, those speculators seem to be dumping inventory on the market, she added.
"The market (in these regions) has seized up to some extent and inventories are building," she said.
Yellen's speech was nearly identical to one she gave a week ago. See full story.
Yellen is a voter this year on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets U.S. monetary policy. The FOMC will meet next Tuesday and Wednesday, with most observers expecting a vote to keep overnight interest rates steady at 5.25%.
"Holding the stance of policy steady for a time makes sense to me," Yellen said Monday. "We have yet to see the full effects of the series of 17 federal funds rate increases -- some are probably still in the pipeline," the Fed president added.
"I believe policy may now be well-positioned," Yellen said.
Inflationary pressures are likely to subside, she said.
"The economy appears to have entered a period of below-trend growth," Yellen said. "If this continues for a time, as I think is likely, the tightness we have seen in labor and product markets would ease somewhat, tending gradually to reverse any underlying inflationary pressures."
She didn't express any desire to cut rates yet. "The inflation outlook remains highly uncertain, and until we actually see inflation begin to slow down, I will be focused on the upside risks in the outlook," she concluded.
Alistair Barr is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.
Speaking very gently about die-off
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
John's ongoing peak oil odyssey
I expect that just about everyone who knows more than a little bit about Global Peak Oil is familiar in one way or another with Richard Heinberg’s book of three years ago, The Party’s Over. And agrees with it. And admires it. I am now, however, and with the greatest respect for Heinberg’s book, going to emphasize that the party’s not over, not quite yet -- that the party is in fact peaking -- that Global Peak Oil is here, and it is the high tide of the ultimate consumerist blow-out. Ultimate does, of course, mean final, and after Peak the days of reckoning do of course ensue -- après ca, le deluge, totally -- but here in the USA things are whizzing along faster than they ever have, and I’m whizzing right along with them.
So naturally enough, I began my Peak Oil Odyssey by driving around the USA, listening to white tribal music and visiting a variety of eco-villages and intentional communities (with an Earth First! Action thrown in for good measure), powered by overpriced vegan food and fossil fuels – all this in a Detroit-made Chevrolet. What better response to the imminent collapse of two and a half centuries of exponential economic growth in the First World than to go on an extended, energy-intensive vacation?
Certainly the story of the summer of 2006 was one of hiatus, of collapse postponed – of the party prolonged. Instead of rising past eighty dollars a barrel, oil almost fell under sixty. The war between Hezbollah and Israel did not spread into Syria or Iran, as many of us had feared back in July. Despite record high water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, no category five hurricanes formed.
Furthermore, and in my own defense, let me point out that, even as I vacationed, I gave my car away to a friend whom I met on The Farm in Tennessee – at the Eco-Village Training Center there -- and am right now, via Amtrak, on the Left Coast of the USA, visiting a variety of places where people seem to be working towards the sustainable and the permanent. These include the Regenerative Design Institute in Marin County, California and the Permaculture Army in Berkeley, where Bill Mollison’s textbook on the topic is read as a sort of bible. Furthermore, as I write this, somewhere in rural Oregon, at the home of the author of the Oilempire.us and Permatopia.com websites, I note that Heinberg is himself on an extended working vacation right now, touring Australia with David Holmgren, the co-founder (with Mollison) of the Permaculture movement. And that Jim Kunstler has just returned from New Zealand, where he was speaking of how to deal with the Long Emergency.
So I can say that, even though I still can whiz around in comfort, I am on message, and the first half of the message is this: as Global Peak Oil and its fraternal twin, Global Climate Change, bear down upon us, austerity – a permanent austerity -- is right around the corner. And the second half of the message therefore revolves around the fateful question of how we prepare ourselves, and it is only too easily answered with the intellect: we must live a hundred times more slowly, a hundred times more gently and simply. In the face of permanent austerity, we must find a graceful way to -- let’s use Heinberg’s word -- powerdown. For our only other option is catastrophe.
We as a society are, of course, not making any such preparations -- just the opposite. And, more to the point, even those of us who hope for the possibility of a non-catastrophic powerdown are, by and large, lethargic. For what is easy for the intellect is not so easy for the person who claims to be its owner. Good, clear logic isn’t really all that persuasive. It takes a harsh and sudden jolt of fear to set the body in motion, to ignite the bio-chemical spark plugs in our souls.
And so we come to the topic of die-off.
For when we study Global Peak Oil, we learn quickly that an unprecedented economic discontinuity – let’s call it PetroCollapse -- seems imminent as supplies of fossil fuels fall forever shorter and shorter of demand. And when we study Global Climate Change, we learn that an unprecedented environmental discontinuity -- something hideously in accord with the vengeful justice of the Gaia Hypothesis -- is now all but unavoidable as more and more ancient carbon is un-earthed, and burned, and re-deposited into the atmosphere. We study these discontinuities and learn of worst-case scenarios. We are confronted with the fact that die-off is a real possibility. We see that there is an abyss beneath our feet, an abyss of our own creation.
"Of all the generations of humans that have walked the surface of the Earth -- for 100,000 years, going back when we first left Africa -- the generation now alive is the most important," as the theoretical physicist Michio Kaku observes. "The generation now alive, the generation that you see, looking around you, for the first time in history, is the generation that controls the destiny of the planet itself."
But are we really the generation of destiny? Can we really control the planet’s future -- or anything much at all? Can our consciousness of our predicament grow and cause us to evolve? Or is our consciousness merely a tantalizing epiphenomenon? Are we, to quote a rhetorical question posed by the world-weary members of a Peak Oil group who meet in the hypertrophied suburbs of Washington, D.C., smarter than yeast?
For like yeast contained in a vat and energized by huge quantities of fermenting sugars, the human population, contained on this one planet and engorged by huge quantities of smoking fossil fuels, has grown exponentially. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of our container and have begun to suffocate ourselves as we wallow in our own waste. We are therefore, like yeast in a vat, about to undergo the very natural process of ecological die-off.
But unlike yeast in a vat, some of us can see the abyss of our own creation.
And we who can see it have the moral obligation to warn everyone we meet. Warn them that they are headed for die-off. Frighten them.
But frighten them gently. Even with a bit of humor. For too much fear can bring despair, and with it paralysis. Too much fear can turn activists into victims and idealists into defeatists. Talking about die-off is justifiable only to the extent that it motivates us to undertake the building of more permanent societies.
And so the party’s not over, but it soon will be -- forever. We can start to plan for a different sort of party though -- a party which will not be fueled by a global trade in oil, a party at which you will not be able to eat genetically-modified fast food or even long-distance certified-organic tofu, a party which you won’t be able to drive to. You’ll have to walk. Or ride your bicycle. Or your horse. Because if there’s going to be a party in the future, it will be a sustainable party.
Here’s a haiku for you to share when you go:
Dew sparkles on grass
Morning light brings magic here
Oh shit, there's die-off.
EU plans tough laws on energy efficiency
By George Parker in Brussels
Published: October 16 2006 22:08 | Last updated: October 16 2006 22:08
Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a4020216-5d48-11db-9d15-0000779e2340,_i_rssPage=ff3cbaf6-3024-11da-ba9f-00000e2511c8.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Wasteful television standby settings and the energy efficiency of computers and water heaters are to be targeted in a new legislative drive aimed at slicing €100bn a year from the European Union’s energy bill, in a move that could impose Europe’s green agenda on the world.
Stringent new European Commission energy efficiency targets for items such as electrical appliances and cars could set new global standards, since all imports into the European market would have to comply.
In a move reflecting Europe’s growing fears about its energy dependence on the rest of the world, as well as its preference for high environmental standards, Andris Piebalgs, EU energy commissioner, will announce on Thursday that he wants to put the bloc on course for a 20 per cent energy saving by 2020.
The plans will be backed by a raft of new regulations, including measures aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions that would help Europe meet its obligations under the Kyoto treaty. New energy standards for buildings would also be set.
From next year he wants to implement directives setting down minimum energy performance requirements for 14 priority products, including boilers, computers, washing machines, office lighting and air conditioning. His plan says “special attention will be devoted to standby loss reduction” – a reference to the power-consuming standby modes on televisions and other appliances.
Mr Piebalgs’ paper also proposes tougher rules on energy efficiency labelling. It says the additional investment spent on achieving greater energy efficiency will be “more than compensated” by annual savings of €100bn in the EU’s fuel bill.
The proposed regulations – including extensions of existing rules – would impose European energy efficiency standards on any company worldwide seeking access to the EU’s 480m consumers, including US manufacturers.
European standards and norms in the car sector and mobile telephony have already become accepted in many countries worldwide, to the annoyance of Washington, which believes the EU sets too many rules.
Mr Piebalgs’ paper will be published on the eve of this week’s European summit in Lahti, Finland, where leaders will discuss the EU’s growing dependence on external energy suppliers.
Meli Luigi, director-general of the European “white goods” manufacturers association CECED, said a voluntary approach to raising energy efficiency had already led to a cut of about 40 per cent in the power consumed by fridges in little over a decade. The industry body fears new rules laid down in Brussels could put manufacturers in a “straitjacket”.
Mr Piebalgs’ paper will also propose new minimum energy performances for new and renovated buildings and legislation next year, if necessary, to achieve the desired cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from cars by 2012. His plans need to be approved by member states before becoming law.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
[Russia continues to use environmental problems that it previously cared little about to play hardball in negotiations with western oil conglomerates to gain more control over their own natural resources. – MK]
Sakhalin-2 environmental damage pegged at $10-50 billion
Eric Watkins Senior Correspondent
October 17, 2006
Oil & Gas Journal
http://www.ogj.com/articles/article_display.cfm?article_id=274964
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 17 -– Russia's Federal Service for the Regulation of the Use of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor) estimates the cost of rectifying environmental damage at the Sakhalin-2 project at $10-50 billion.
"This sum is determined by the high cost of land reclamation and the cleaning of the sea bed in the Aniva bay," said Rosprirodnadzor Deputy Head Oleg Mitvol, who led an inspection carried out the agency at the facilities of project operator Sakhalin Energy Co. (SEC).
The final damage figure cannot be calculated until the end of next summer, Mitvol said, adding that the SEC "has not proposed any engineering solutions for eliminating the environmental violations."
Meanwhile, Russian Natural Resources Minister Yuriy Trutnev plans to visit Sakhalin on Oct. 24-26. His aim will be to determine the degree to which environmental protection legislation has been implemented at the two oil and natural gas deposits of the Sakhalin-2 project.
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Dark Days Ahead - By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report