In recent news there has been a lot of discussion of various announcements coming out of the World Future Energy Summit being held in Abu Dhabi this week. The primary sponsor of this event happens to be Masdar which is owned by Mubadala Investments. Mubadala also happens to be a prime investor in several other “companies” that have dubious ties in the world of global finance and power. The very interesting thing about these announcements is not the number of projects that are being planned but the shear size of the budgets that are being forecast.

There is talk of plans for 48 sq km facilities in Dubai by 2030 generating 1GW of electricity, plans are underway to do similar large scale projects in Oman and Saudi and of course the same companies want to go all the way and install large Photo Voltaic and Concentrated Solar Power installations across the entire MENA (Middle East North Africa) region. These plans are fantastic and forward thinking except for one small problem. The costs for these projects are phenomenally out of bounds. The timescale of the projects (upto 20 years) are way over what is considered necessary to setup and install a large facility. After all The tallest building in the world was built in only 5 years and a Concentrated Solar Thermal Tower doesn’t even go up to 10 stories high with the entire solar array on ground level. Considering what has already been spent by these same companies on very mediocre attempts at Solar energy supply there is a serious disconnect between what is required in terms of resources and effort to build an industrial scale Solar energy facility and what is currently required in terms of budget to pay for the opportunity of bringing a facility online.

The answer to this mystery appears to be related to the financial crisis and the worlds Fossil Fuel addiction. If Solar energy is priced at the real market value. The true cost of building industrial scale facilities and connecting them to the grid and not the price that is current being forced on the market by the entrenched Oil industry we would see that Solar power is phenomenally cheaper than any of the competing energy sources. In other words the only reason the Solar has not already reached price parity is because the Elite are holding the industry to ransom to prop up the price of the other fuel sources for as long as possible.

The real reason for companies like Solyndra to be going bankrupt is because they were never intended to actually succeed. The entire industry knows full well this dirty little secret. The price of Solar when done correctly and at utility scale is ridiculously low compared to any of the other energy sources. Concentrated Solar power has the potential when combined with Solar Thermal to provide all the energy required for any of the cities that have a regular supply of sunlight. Therefore the entrenched players in the energy industry are quietly but assuredly doing their best to disrupt and stall the transition to the Solar economy for as long as possible.

By keeping the “true cost” of utility scale Solar energy artificially high through the use of excessive budgets on projects where they are essentially paying themselves excessively large sums of money to build pitifully low yield Solar installations Companies like Masdar are manipulating the cost of Solar energy on the world market thereby pushing up the price of oil as the markets continue to bid up the price of the dwindling reserves and keeping the other players like coal and gas satisfied with the status quo while they continue to rake in the profits received from sales of their product to the global market.

In other words, Utility scale solar is massively over priced. The big players know this full well and are controlling the market to keep things that way. In much the same way that they control the production of electric cars to ensure we all rely on petrol they are also drip feeding the world Solar energy to keep their profit margins high. The end result is wasted time, opportunity and resources.

The sad truth is that the word could already have an abundant supply of fresh drinking water and electricity simply by using relatively modest resources to build Concentrated Solar Thermal Desalinisation and Electricity production plants for every major city in the sunny parts of the world. This would free up remaining resources for the countries which are not as sundrenched and lower the price of energy and the global carbon footprint. Now that would just be rational and logical which as we already know is not possible while the Elite of the world remain in charge.

Either that or they really are just idiots over there at Mubadala and have no idea how bad they are getting ripped off.

Just flip a coin to decide…

Tags: banksters, construction, cover up, electricity, Elite, Fuel, oil, solar, supply, Sustainable by Sparky
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Tags: banksters, corporations, cover up, disaster, e=mc2, environment, Fuel, oil, social by Sparky
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Recent news has made it to Al Jazeera that people in the gulf area are suffering from unprecedented internal levels of hazardous toxins like cancer causing Xylene resulting in many deaths and severe health effects such as cancer, blood in the urine, constant vomiting and other horrible affects. We were quick to point this out when the oil was flowing that the only rational solution was to nuke the breach and fuse the earth’s crust to prevent this tragedy from getting worse.

Instead they decided to let BP try and fix the problem. The problem that was caused by complete ineptitude and corruption at all levels. Then when they couldn’t manage to do it they had to get the Navy to manage the process but were not prepared to give them the resources they required to do the job correctly.

How is it that they can drop uranium cluster bombs on innocent Iraqis, drive nuclear submarines all over the world, have an arsenal of nuclear weapons that can destroy humanity 10 times over but they were too scared to use a nuke in their own back yard to stop the complete destruction caused by the greedy Elites thirst for oil profits.

They are also still using the highly toxic dispersant Corexit to attack oil plumes that keep rising out of the sea. Effectively causing the oil to stay drifting in the Gulf of Mexico permanently killing everything and anything in it’s path. As the toxic cloud swirls around in the ocean depths it causes death and destruction. Combined with Corexit it is turning the entire gulf into a deadzone.

The questions still remain.

Why aren’t the people who created the mess being held accountable?
Why did the Navy not chose to forcefully require the use of the nuclear option?
Why is the US Govt so addicted to oil as the solution to it’s energy needs when there are so many other options?

They have just last week allowed the first drilling platform to go back online in the Gulf. Do they even care that they are destroying their own backyard for the potential to extract enough oil to provide fuel for less than a day of consumption in the US?

Tags: environment, Fuel, nuclear, oil by Sparky
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OurFuturePlanet.org has an interesting writeup on the issues Japan face in the coming decade relating to the oil crunch. They make the following point which is the first I have seen in any “mainstream” media source.

The greatest concern is that this time bomb could explode as early as 2015, and with a high probability before 2020 when a global oil crunch has been predicted by Chatham House – Peak Oil report (the UK’s Royal Institute of International Affairs), by the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security – peak oil report (a group of businesses, including Virgin Airlines, Ove Arup and Partners, etc.) and by the Energy Research Centre – peak oil report, amongst others.

To date I have not seen any mainstream media articles or even commentary on these reports linked above. The silence is conspicuous to say the least.

The problem with the Ourfutureplanet.org article is the author talks about Peak oil as though it hasn’t been reached yet. That is a severe misunderstanding of the issue. Peak oil was anywhere between 2000 and 2006 which means that with exponential increasing consumption the following 10 years will require consumption of as much oil as the entire previous history of oil consumption. That’s how exponential consumption works. The doubling period is the time it takes to double the rate of growth in this case consumption. With a consistent doubling rate of 10 years since the start of oil consumption that means that at the oil peak we only have 10 years of consumable oil left.

Of course the oil won’t all be completely consumed as the laws of demand and supply will kick in before then making oil inaccessible to anyone but the super wealthy Elite, Governments and Mega Corporations. In addition by far the majority of remaining oil is termed Energy Negative which means it takes more energy to extract it, process it and distribute it than it will provide once it has gone through that process effectively relegating that oil to use by organisations/people that can afford to waste energy.

The information is not new or hidden but it is just not being reported properly in the mainstream media if at all. Serious questions abound for why we educated westerners are allowing our media organisations to get away with such complacency if not downright neglect. Is it because we really don’t want to know the truth and are happy to let them continue white washing the issue or is it because of a greater conspiracy against us to Dis-educate and keep us in the dark?

Tags: Fuel, nuclear, oil by Sparky
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A very proper report from the UK Committee on Climate Change looks at the future of fuel and electricity supply in Britain. Apart from the obvious statements that meat will be more expensive and there will be an increase in fuel poor people they also provide this rather nice graph of their projected timeline for carbon intensity of supply.

For those of you wondering wtf is carbon intensity of supply here’s an explanation. Basically this is how much fossil fuel contributes to the overall supply of electricity to the grid.

If we use this graph as an overview of the general trend in fossil fuel supplies we can see the UK govt is projecting that within the next 10 years they will have approximately half the energy that they currently get from fossil fuel. We can go a step further to say this looks at though they are projecting that by the end of the decade the whole world will have to accept that we have half as much energy from fossil fuels as we do today. This graph is one of the few projections that is officially sanctioned by a major western power. Along with recent admissions from Russia that they have enough fossil fuel in reserve to meet the needs of todays rate of consumption (RoC) for the next 30 years or approximately 10 years at exponentially increasing RoC.

Interestingly the UK report says they will be controlling the grid and personalised power cuts will become the norm. People will have to eat less red meat, install ground source heat pumps and most cars will have to be electric by 2030.

Given that even the industrial might of the US of A is going to struggle to get just 1 million electric cars on the road within the next 4 years the likelihood of converting the entire world fleet to electric in the next 10 years is almost impossible. By that point any cars being made will be ludicrously expensive to manufacture so very few people will be able to afford them. We can already see that trend with companies like Tesla motors who are positioning themselves at the top end of the current market.

It seems that we as a global community have really missed our chance to make the coming transition away from fossil fuels a smooth process. What is it about forward planning and preparation that is so difficult for multinational corporations to achieve? Isn’t that what people are paid for?

Tags: Energy Storage, Fuel, Fundamentals, oil by Sparky
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With the orchestrated violence and intimidation against the overwhelmingly peaceful people protesting for regime change in Egypt we can see similarities to the methods used by Thaksin Shiniwatra to increase discord and promote his agenda in Thailand.

First gangs of uneducated youths are paid to converge on mass and attack the peaceful protestors with rudimentary weapons i.e. sticks and stones or in the case of Egypt camels and horses. Forcing the protestors to send their own armies of disgruntled citizens to arms as defense against the violent youths. Add in gun battles in the middle of the night, exploding grenades and Molotov’s and you have the ingredients for widespread discord.

What does this process achieve?

Firstly it makes the protestors scared, stressed and agressive which tends to cause mistakes in judgement. This is important as a way of manipulating the negotiation process enabling the more sinister elements to get away with things that would not be possible in calmer situations. Otherwise known as the “Fog of War”. Extreme decisions and options become possible in these situations. The Cuban missile crisis is an example of the Fog of war in action. Kennedy was seriously considering the use of Nuclear weapons to wipe out Cuba and Castro actually encouraged the Russians to ramp up to that level even though he knew it meant instant annihilation.

It is also very useful for scaring investors on the global market. Hence the price of oil going up to $103 today and no doubt it will be at $200 by the end of the month if this mess continues as expected in Egypt. A lot of money can be made by betting against the market in situations like this and there are forces that will happily pay for more violence in order to realise their bets.

The question is who would be so well connected as to be able to put into play all of the required elements to achieve such goals?

Well if we look at the similarities between Egypt and Thailand the answer doesn’t take much effort to realise. A quick search online for companies that have vested interests in both situations at the top most level will reveal all that is needed to see who is most directly responsible for driving the violence (i.e. paying the agitators) in both situations.

The answer shall be left as an exercise for the reader. Suffice to say Mubarak and Thaksin both work for or with this organisation and count among their colleagues some of the nastiest people on the planet. Some might even be tempted to call this organisation “Evil Incorporated”.

Tags: Fundamentals, oil, unrest by Sparky
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A company in Japan going by the name of Blest has a unique method for recycling plastic back into oil fuel. And guess what one of the key components is? Yes, it’s water!!!

They machine uses a heater to melt the plastics and combines the resulting gas with water to create an oil fuel which can be further refined into diesel and gasoline. The plastics that can be recycled include most of the household plastics that we trash on a daily basis. The machines are capable of recycling polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene of numbers 2 to 4. PET bottles that fall under number 1 polypropylene, however, cannot be processed.

The current tabletop model can convert one kilo of plastic into one liter of oil, and sells from Blest for $9,500. It uses around 20 cents of electricity for the conversion process. Conveniently, it is claimed that one kilogram of plastic using one kilowatt of electricity can produce one litre of fuel. They claim it takes around 3 hours to recycle 80% of the plastic into fuel oil with the smallest machine. The bigger machines have kg/h ratings.

The quality of the fuel is not apparent. However it would be possible to run a small machine from a rooftop solar+battery system and convert your fuel needs for your car/bike at home. All you would need then is a regular supply of water and waste plastic which is easy for most people to attain without having to make any drastic changes to the way you consume or live.

The marketing Flyer has a nice concise overview with most of the important details outlined Front Back

Tags: Circuits, Components, Energy Storage, Fuel, oil by Sparky
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- Latest news in this new year we see data coming out of Russia that they have enough oil reserves to last for 40 years at current rate of consumption (RoC). Although they admit that 30% of the reserves are not worth extracting due to the cost of extraction. In other words it costs more energy to get the oil out of the ground than it will provide once extracted, processed, transported, taxed, etc… Simple back of the envelope math tells us that given the exponential increase in the RoC with a doubling rate of about every 10 years as proven every decade since 1910 and minus the 30% already acknowledged as out of reach they actually have approximately 10 – 14 years of oil reserves left.

40 – 12 = 28 years at current RoC
28 / 2 (exponential increase in RoC over 10 years) = 14

That’s assuming they are telling the truth about the proven reserves. Even if they are not, whats the bet they won’t be sharing what’s left with the rest of the world?

- We also hear that bio diesel made from waste animal fat is being promoted in the USA as an alternate fuel to meet the demand of the decrease in fuel resources over in that part of the world. They expect to be able to produce upto 75million gallons per year at a single factory. Simple math tells us that is equivalent to 10% of ones days total consumption in the USA.

USA daily consumption in 2008 = 18mil bbl/day
1 barrel of oil = 42 gallons
75million gallons / 42 = 1,790,000 bbl
18mil / 1.79 = 10%

And that was at 2008 RoC. They would need to have 3650 factories to meet the 2008 RoC. That’s a lot of meat that has to be produced using fossil fuels in order to meet demand. I guess we can’t count on that being very productive for very long if it even gets off the ground at all.

- Next up we have news from Australia that after extrapolating the road toll statistics on how many cars/payments are made on Australian toll roads to get a recent official statistic for how much fuel is being consumed by cars driving on toll roads in Australia it is found that if Australians only drive on toll roads there is enough fossil fuel reserve here in Australia to last for almost 2 years. So either they are fudging their numbers for the toll statistics or Australia is going to run out of local fuel reserves within a year.

Tags: Energy Storage, Fuel, oil by Sparky
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It’s no secret that Iraqis have big problems with energy. In a country that is supposedly awash with oil and patrolled by competent soldiers with big guns and itchy trigger fingers you would think that it would be fairly straight forward to capitalize on some of those massive reserves of oil they have just sitting there in the desert regions. Surely by now one would expect to find some hardy folks have managed to get a profitable little operation up and running in a well fortified area with assistance from understanding locals who want to ensure their own energy needs are meet by helping the aforementioned rough necks run an efficient operation.

Maybe it’s just that there are no such people willing to do that kind of work in Iraq?

I don’t think so!

Maybe it’s because the locals are just plain incompetent?

Not likely. Iraq is one of the oldest civilizations in the modern world. A proud, highly educated and very capable group of people.

Maybe it’s because “they” don’t want Iraqi’s to spend enormous sums of money on oil like the rest of us do?

Mmmmm, No! Any money “they” can get us to spend is money “they” want so that idea just doesn’t wash.

Well then perhaps it’s because there is no way to get the oil out of the ground in an energy positive way that ensures such an operation would be able to sell the oil it extracts at a reasonable profit?

Hmm, You would think by now that someone would have figured out how to do that right? I mean if we can fly to the moon and plan to send manned missions to mars then we should be able to get some oil out of the ground as efficiently as possible right?

I guess that leaves us with the distinct possibility that the majority of the oil in Iraq can’t actually be extracted in an energy positive way. Could this be due to the location of the oil in carbonated rock that gives it the consistency of heavy grit and sludge making it physically impossible with current and all known technology to extract it from the ground without using more energy than the oil actually provides to get it out?

It could be that is the case. It really could be… So, somebody remind me, what were “they” fighting for again?

Tags: e=mc2, Energy Storage, Fuel, oil by Sparky
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Judge for yourself. Is Qtip talking about the oil disaster, the financial crisis, the Aliens in the sky?

Are these artists telling us to revolt against the system and the hereditary elite, chop off their heads just like the French did?

Cruel world is sitting they got us all hitting
with late night divisions and lab aquisitions
with basement decisions defy our frequency
and you clearly decided on how to handle me

Imbecile, Imbecile
is it fake
is it real

Are we dying on our feet
Are we trying in our sleep

There’s a rumour going round that the suits are running town

if you look into the sky there are birds flying high, high, high

We’re never gonna believe in the stories that you’re weaving
We believing in the proof
We believing in the truth
We believing in each other not you, you, you

Stories, So many stories
Too many tall tales
So many tall tales

We climb the structure
You scale the ladder
You build it higher
You make us madder

So now the paradox
We bust you in the chops
You crazy ballhead

Make it dead
Do the web
Pictures on the web

Un Deux Trois
No one ever does it like that anymore
Bang Bang Bang
The feathers, why you deny everything

Tags: Aliens, Lex Scripta, media, Music, oil, social by Sparky
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