The cost of idling the car

From
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/idling/wastes.cfm?attr=8

"... In fact, one of the most powerful arguments in favour of reduced idling is an economic one.
For the average vehicle with a 3-litre engine, every 10 minutes of idling costs 300 millilitres
(over 1 cup) in wasted fuel – and one half of a litre (over 2 cups) if your vehicle has a 5-litre
engine. Unnecessary idling wastes fuel – and wasted fuel is wasted money...."

My Mitsubishi Outlander has a 3l V6 engine which requires high-octane fuel. So at 1.60/litre (more or less), 10 minutes of idling costs about 50 cents, or approximately a nickel a minute.

Or $3.00 per hour.

H'mm.

Footnote: On hot days, at our local mall parking lot, I often see people sitting in their cars with the windows rolled up, the engine and air-conditioing running. Even on days when a nice breeze blowing through open windows would keep the car cool. I think this indicates that fuel s too cheap.

Richard Stein, architect: Energy Conservation n the Building Trades.

Richard Stein was Ethel Stein husband. His obituary includes some interesting calculations about the efficiency of buildings.

Pipelines and the Alberta economy

 

Update 2020-20-13: installation of renewable energy has been accelerating. There are many websites tracking the data, here's one. Alberta ranks near the top in installed wind energy per capita in Canada.

Pipelines are losing propositions. Oil is a dying industry. It’s only a matter of time. I object to the approval of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline expansion on both environmental and financial grounds.

In 2015, half of all new energy projects worldwide were renewables (non-fossil). 30% of new energy projects in the US were renewables. And this despite low oil prices, and coal that is dirt cheap.

Fact: Peabody, one of the largest coal producers in the world, filed for bankruptcy in April 2016. It now hopes to repay $500 million as coal prices have risen a bit. But in 2015 those prices dropped enormously. Northern Appalachian coal (usually the most expensive) dropped from about $68/ton to under $40/ton by early 2016. It’s now at around $42/ton. See Alberta Energy's website.

You’d think at these prices, energy companies would be building or expanding coal-fired power plants. In fact, many are phasing out coal. China, which has enormous coal reserves, has stopped building them, and is phasing out the ones it has.

Fact: Although oil prices hovered around $40 to $45 a barrel for Texas sweet crude (oil from other sources is cheaper), per capita oil consumption has fallen, despite increasing numbers of private cars, which are the largest single consumers of oil. (Total oil consumption continues to rise. Last week, the oil cartel announced production cuts in an attempt to prompt a rise in prices. That is, they hope that oil consumers will bid up the prices as supplies dwindle. That will happen in the short run (they are up to around $48 a barrel), but in the long run, oil consumers will continue to reduce or eliminate consumption.

So why has Trudeau approved the expansion of Kinder-Morgan? And why does Rachel Notley support it? Purely political. Both want to attract more votes in Alberta, especially in the rural ridings, which have more political clout than the urban ones, and where the direct income from oil is proportionately higher than in the cities. In the short run, that might improve their political fortunes in Alberta, but it merely delays the day of reckoning. Alberta has to disentangle itself from oil. It’s been a drug: Albertans are addicted to the easy money of oil royalties. They consistently undertax themselves, relying on other people (the consumers of oil) to pay their bills.

It’s time for Albertans to shift their wealth-creation to other products. That’s not going to be easy. It requires not only a shift in attitudes, but also a willingness to plan for the long haul. Food production has always been a major source of wealth in Alberta. Agriculture, energy production, services, and other raw materials make up a much larger proportion of Alberta’s economy than oil does: See Energy Alberta and Wikipedia's article.
   
Bottom line: the assumption that oil drives the economy of Alberta turns out to be mistaken. Oil is an important but diminishing part of the mix. I think it’s the psychology of oil that is important, not its actual value. Albertans have made economic choices assuming that oil will pay the bills, and haven’t noticed how much of their economy has diversified. A change in this psychology is difficult, but it’s necessary. The sooner it happens, the better for Alberta.

Solar Power and subsidies

An article in today's New York times reports on thermal solar power plants being built in the SW states. Costs are high, compared to coal fired plants, and a subsidy is provided:

"The solar plants receive a federal tax subsidy, like other types of renewable energy, which makes the economics work for builders but also feeds skepticism about the technology’s long-term potential. “Unless there’s a subsidy involved, it doesn’t seem like a very attractive technology,” said Revis James, a renewables expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility industry consortium."

I don't know what else Mr James said, but his comment is disingenuous. Coal and other fossil fuels receive subsidies of all kinds. The oil and coal companies receive tax rebates to compensate them for the diminishing supplies of coal and oil. The power companies receive rebates for building the plants in the first place, and more rebates for installing pollution control equipment. And everyone involved externalises the costs of whatever pollution remains after scrubbing, and of course the cost of CO2. Externalised costs are indirect subsidies. We all pay for them one way or another.

No one knows exactly what these subsidies amount to in cents/kWh, but there's no question that it's high. One thing is for sure, though: power generated from fossil fuel is not priced to reflect its actual costs. If it did, solar power would look a lot more attractive, and there would be a lot more effort to conserve power. There's not much point in increasing electricity supply if there isn't also an effort to cut electricity use.

The illustration used to help the reader understand the potential of solar thermal power is also interesting: "A megawatt is enough electricity to run 1,000 room air-conditioners at once." One of the things that struck me when I visited south Texas some years ago was the lack of insulation in most of the homes. Proper insulation would cut power consumption for air-conditioning by a third or more. The use of ground effect heat pumps would cut the remaining power demand by 75%. These two modes of conservation should be heavily subsidised. The payback in dollars for each installation would be ten years or less. The payback in energy savings would be substantially less.

Update 2020-03-03: The efficiency  of solar power cells has increased  substantially, They now convert a higher percentage of solar energy into human-usable energy than plants do. Dow has developed a method of painting solar cells onto any surface, which could make just about any surface available for generating power. The other problem of solar (and wind) is storage of surplus power. Betteries, heat sinks, and pumping water back into reservoirs are all feasible, Denmark has become the first country in the world to eliminate all fossil fuel power plants. Oil prices remain low, while extraction costs continue to trend up. Without subsidies the oil business would have folded long ago.