Peak Oil getting airtime on Airways

This July’s issue of Airways featured a lead article on Peak Oil by Alex Kuhlman titled Peak Oil – and the Collapse of Commercial Aviation? – A sound, startling, and sobering analysis of the most pivotal challenge facing our modern industrial society, and the dire prognosis for air transport.

It’s a pity Airways is still traditional magazine with nary a decent website or online comments by readers.

 

Making Singapore ‘Cool’

I was doing my research on solar power installation companies when I chanced upon Yawning Bread’s May 2005 article. In the article, the author compares the state of temperature control in Singapore to “as if we didn’t have a municipal sewerage system, and each family tipped his waste into the street and common areas“. His solution then, is to construct huge, boxy structures cladded in thin-film solar cells which in turn generates the electricity that powers the airconditioning inside. The actual size of such a structure will cover an area of 15-20 hectares, “the size of Suntec City combined with the Conrad Hotel, the Millenia Walk, Millenia Tower.”

 

80% of American New Home Buyers Want Solar

From Treehugger.com:

… more Americans are choosing to buy green power when it’s available comes news that 80% of US residents would also like to see home builders offer solar power as an option for new houses, according to a survey by Japan’s Sharp Electric Company (the world’s largest producer of solar cells).

This trend is totally predictable due to increased awareness by Americans about their over-reliance on foreign oil to generate power and perhaps, even the increased frequency of blackouts all over the country.

My bet is that while the Solar Power option checkbox has yet to be printed in your new homes or HDB upgrade brochures, why don’t you chip in by filling up a similar survey for Singaporeans. If the results reflect the same trends, maybe local property developers might want to consider offering Solar Power options in their new developments.

Take me to the survey »

 

A Numbers’ Game

I’ve been busy with work lately and only had time for this tidbit.

Of late, I’ve been interested in the liberalisation of the energy market in Singapore and came across this:

I think a more important point is that in a liberalised electricity market, households have already benefited, as electricity tariffs have come down by about 9.5% compared to Dec 2001, keeping oil prices constant.

The above was quoted from a speech by our Minister of State for Trade & Industry and National Development, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, during The Committee of Supply Debate on 13 March 2004.

Well, in order to make any sense of the actual benefits to households, let’s look at oil prices on Dec 2001 and Mar 2004. Since this is going to be a relative comparison of prices between 2 points in time, all I have to do is pull both oil spot prices from the same source. Here’s a good one from Financial Forecast Center: $19.33 (Dec’01) and $36.76 (Mar’04), which works out to a 90.17% increase in oil prices. So, by Dr Balakrishna’s statement, the reduction of 9.5% of tarrifs on the same oil price would translate to 80.67% real $ increase in electricity tarrifs to households.

While Dr Balakrishna is right to give due credit to market competition, and that the only way to give credit is through positive reinforcements, I would personally view the subject matter with more criticality – for instance, as pointed out in EMA’s 2004/2005 Annual Report pages 12/13:

From a situation where more than 77% of Singapore’s total generation output was oil-fired in year 2000 at the start of the market reform, almost 70% of our total generation output is gas fired today.

A quick reference to the Financial Forecast Center’s gas prices table shows that gas prices for the same period ($2.42, $5.38) has in fact increased by 122%, more than the 90% increase in oil prices. This tells me that the real increase of 80% to households could potentially be lesser if not for this conversion to gas. But I jest, since it is really impossible for anyone to predict oil/gas price trends.

However, if you are a PeakOiler like me and believe that oil/gas prices will be going up some more in the future, I hope you can see (from the fact that oil is above $70 and gas, $6.21 in June 2006) that Singapore’s 95% dependence on fossil fuels for power generation is really not the way forward.

 

Weekend Homework for SG Peakoilers

It has finally come to this, fellow peakoilers, a weekend assignment. I came across this interesting students’ project from PBS’ Nightly Business Report. Here’s an excerpt from the background information provided:

The persistence of high energy prices has helped many companies involved in exploration for new oil and natural gas supplies … Among these are two Singapore corporations: Keppel and Sembcorp Marine Ltd. Both have long been two of the best known names in global oil rig production, accounting for roughly 80% of the global market for offshore oil rigs. Both of those companies started out as shipyards. After switching to building oil rigs, they suffered when energy prices collapsed during the 1980s. But they managed to survive even after their American and European competitors went out of business. Realizing that the market for oil rig building and repairs would eventually rebound, the Singapore government (which owns a stake in both companies) continued to fund the two firms’ activities—and the bet paid off. Their orders went through the roof over the past few years, totaling over $7.6 billion (US) in 2005.

Wow, an impressive bet by our government that paid off well to Singapore! And the assignment gets interesting …

Although Singapore lacks large amounts of oil and gas resources, the two firms have begun to find and create their own petroleum sources in nearby countries such as Brazil, West Africa, Vietnam and Cambodia. Sembcorp is Singapore’s first importer and retailer of natural gas. It also owns and operates various steam and electric power plants across Asia and in Perth, Australia.

The site then provides a list of resources that will help students (the project is targeted at students in the 10-12 grades) work starting from this bit of information with the eventual aim to expand their knowledge of Asia and what drives it’s economy.

For me, the juxtaposition of several keywords – oil and gas, oil rigs, owns and operates power plants – seem to tell me that perhaps both our GLCs (government-link companies) are not purely reacting to market demands but somehow or rather working on some well-thought-out strategy to address the energy security issues for our small country.

So, guys, let’s pick off from where PBS left off and try and understand this, … well, unless of course some Keppel or Sembcorp employee could come right upfront and tell us that they are in fact purely reacting to market demands and we can just stop right now and enjoy our weekends some other way.

 

A New Power Plant For Singapore

I’ve been prompted lately by Simon’s recollecion of the last major power outage to take a hard look at the power supply in Singapore. We have 5 power generating companies in Singapore. Over the last 5-10 years, they have been re-tooling to move from using oil to natural gas. What I hear (need more research to confirm this) is that 70-80% of our electricity comes from gas today.

What I’ll like to propose is a 6th power generating ‘company’ in Singapore – one that harnesses the power of its people. Don’t be alarm, I am not proposing the Matrix-style human power plant per se. Here I am talking about opening up the energy market in a way that the people can choose to become their own electricity producer.

Yes, I am talking about opening up PUB, HDB and URA (do they have jurisdiction over private apartments and landed properties?) regulations to allow pro-green pro-sustainability Singaporeans to take action on their own to procure and setup a solar electric system right at their homes.

The key idea is not with the generation of solar power at the homes. It’s with opening up regulations to allow something called “Net Metering“. With Net Metering, household producers can redirect excess power back to the power grid, literally reversing the spinning disc in your power meter. That way, households can opt not to install a battery pool (which might be considered ‘unsafe’ for residential zones). This also lowers the upfront setup costs by quite a big chunk. Net metering is only one regulation change away. It’s not a technical issue because our world class power grid is already equipped to support that.

Next, you need to understand that the costs, even though it has dropped trememdously in the past years, still works out in excess of S$15,000-S$20,000 per household. This sum is mentally prohibitive because people tend to think about “how much can I save from my S$120-a-month electricity bill”. The government, with better foresight and thinking, will understand that the issue of limited and fluctuating supply of fossil fuels (and hence the availability of electricity) far outweighs that of economic-breakeven on the investment. As we liberalise our energy markets here to trade power in 30-minute-kW chunks, a power outage can easily trigger a price run to push your $120 bill up substantially. Hence, the government will want to encourage the people to invest. How? Well, for starters, consider a substantial percentage (50% and up) tax rebate on such investments. Furthermore, it can also give the banks a nudge to support loans and hire purchase towards the home-power-systems. I believe the ‘deadly’ combination of a tax rebate (read: 50% sale to the public) and low-interest financing will work very well in getting more households to install these power-systems, lower their consumption of non-renewable energy and subsequently cut down their CO2 emissions.

Will there be any impact on our privatised energy companies? Hardly. According to the IEA, in 2003, residential electricity usage comes up to about 4.9% of total electricity generated. Given the average net profit growths of 10-15% by our power companies, even a 10% conversion rate would hardly cause a dent in their corporate performance.

Who will pay for it? Well, tax rebates means lesser income to the government, which means something else will have to fund it. My argument is this: folks who make this investment are in fact ‘paying’ for an alternative that, should a shortage occur and a power outage ensues, they will not live in the dark; for most of us now, the only real alternatives are batteries and candles, so by putting our money into the solar-system, we are indirectly subsidising what the government would otherwise have to do – i.e. fund and build a multi-million dollar solar or wind farm, which sells ‘more expensive’ electricity that not enough might want to buy at the end of the day. My proposal is an arrangement that creates a win-win for both government and people (at least those who believe and is willing to pay for a more energy-secure future): to the earlier, the people are subsidising my renewable power plant, to the people, the government is subsidising my eletricity bills.

I think this makes for a good case to act on. What do you think?

PS: Well, personally I’m convinced and soon will be calling on the relevant authorities about regulations. For a start I will be commencing on a small project to measure the amount of sunlight we get in regular intervals. This would go some lengths in determining an optimal model and configuration that is suitable for Singapore and Singaporean houses. More on this when I get to it. 

 

Introduction to Peak Oil by Richard Heinberg

The local Peak Oil group in Bloomington, IN has published the quicktime video (150MB) of Richard Heinberg’s presentation at the Buskirk-Chumley theater.

In the presentation, Richard gives a very good overview to we’ve come to the state that we are in today. He also makes a call for the adoption of the “Oil Depletion Protocol“, a proposal originated by Collin Campbell (founder of ASPO), whereby signatory nations would voluntarily reduce their oil consumption based on the world’s rate of depletion. Richard Heinberg sees this as a way in which countries can mitigate the negative impacts of peak oil.

It is also clear from this presentation, that the time frame for the world reaching peak production for oil is well within 10 years, possibly 2007/08. Personally, this gives me very good impetus to want to move the local Peak Oil programs at a much faster rate.

 

Bloomington, Indiana Passes Peak Oil Resolution

On 19 July, the city of Bloomington, Indiana USA, passed a resolution “Recognizing the Peak of World Petroleum Production” (pdf here). Bloomington is a small city of 70,000 residents and 40,000 students (Indiana University). Despite its size, Bloomington has their own local peak oil group (BloomingPeak) which was instrumental in getting city officials to pass the resolution.

The fact that such resolutions are taking place one city at a time even in the US shows how ‘grassroots’ the Peak Oil movement is to date. The first thing we really have to do first is to formalise the ‘entity’ that will own the Peak Oil agenda for Singapore.

 

Initial Ideas for a Post-Carbon Singapore

I have spent so much time contemplating what Singapore would look like without an abundance of cheap oil. While peak oil proponents might sound doomsday-ish to many, they don’t catch the drift that the doomsday only comes if you ignore the problem. Once one recognises the problem and start to plan for it, there is a good chance people will do well in the face of this unprecedented problem

I realised I haven’t mentioned anything about how I think Singapore can address the Peak Oil issue. Here are some of my thoughts, summarised of course:

1. Create awareness (not panic) – the more people get to know about peak oil, the more we’ll have constructive discussions about it. From this, people can decide to take action each in their own ways to contribute, from living a more sustainable lifestyle to championing new programs at the community level. Reaching out to various organs of our nation state is important too.
2. Groom pioneers – there will be people (like me) who will be ready to take on personal ownership of the problem. For starters, I feel that there should be a group of pioneers who would voluntarily move and live in an ecovillage. There, they would acquire skills and knowledge on how to live sustainably. Such knowledge would then permeate to other modes of housing in Singapore, of primary importance would be our HDB (public housing).
3. Renewable sources of energy – our power industry is entirely fed by oil and gas. It is not wise to go down this trend any further without seriously considering the merits of renewable energy product like solar and wind. If not for anything, everyone else is looking into it, there has to be strong reasons why. Don’t jump to conclusions before conducting proper feasibility studies. Without a good 50-60% of our power sources coming from renewable sources, Singapore will be exposed fully to the brunt of world energy chaos.
4. Grow our own food. My recollection of WWII comes from tales told to me by my grandaunt – of how people would starve, eat tapioca and have to struggle to scrap for a handful of rice. A high-tech-manufacturing and services-oriented Singapore might have no need for her own agricultural sector. But, in a world where every country would hold on selfishly (rightly so) onto its own resources, we as a nation have to think about where food is going to come from. Is it time now to encourage people to take up farming?

From here on, I’ll be focusing on each of these topics separately. I’ve spent alot of time reading and researching, it’s time to start pushing my ideas out.

 

Four Corners WebCast: Peak Oil?

Four Corners is an Australian current affairs program that is renowned for its high standards of journalism and a willingness to look at the toughest issues around.

It’s latest webcast special, Peak Oil?, takes an Australian perspective on Peak Oil. Hosted by journalist Jonathan Holmes, the program covers a broad spectrum of issues and interviews experts such as Robert Hirsch, Collin Campbell and Chris Skrebowski at the ‘peak oil’ corner and oil drilling company CEOs, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister and ABARE (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics) at the other corner.

It’s a balanced piece, giving each side equal air time. You probably know where I stand on this, though