Journal zogger's Journal: It might be gloom, it might be boom 10
The planet runs on still cheap to get in terms of energy in to energy out petroleum. Now..what happens when demand outstrips supply?
There's a good clue in there that has been brought up before, the lack of many new refineries being built. Sure, some are going in, and you can point to a lot of costly regs, etc...but the lack of interest, especially with the US petrogiants is a major clue that they *know* that we already have enough refinery capacity and it won't be cost effective to build more *if there ain't gonna be much crude to run through them*. If they knew or best guessed that a couple new saudi arabias were going to be found anytime in the next few decades, they know enough to start building the refineries now...crickets. There are some niche ones going in to process ultra heavy crude, like for Venezuela's big stash..but besides that, not too many. They *know*, and if they know, you should too, and plan your energy needs for the future *now* unless you want to be wallet raped then.
I told folks this ten years ago, told them we hit peak cheap solar panels (ha, same time I told folks we hit peak bottom gold prices and get some then..I did both in that timeframe, took my own advice, proven correct now). We have very marginal efficiency gains offset by bad inflation and the rising cost of production of said panels...and the fix has been in somewhat, look at the dozens of "breakthroughs" you and I have read about over the years..but no buck a watt retail yet. And it is not likely to happen either with long term patents, and this looming energy crunch. Takes energy to build them things, even the new plastics based panels..petroleum plastics. Plus, a lot of the critical minerals and exotic metals needed hitting peak demand as well.
Anyway, snooze ya lose. Energy production facilities in hand, insuring some reasonable supply for you for the next thirty years, versus
There used to be a spiffy product for firewood that evaporated, but I bet it could make a comeback if some company wanted to take another stab at it, a 12 VDC electric chainsaw. Not expensive and limited teeny onboard batteries, just jumper cables to run it from your big truck battery. They used to make the things with something like a 50 foot set of jumpers so you could drive your truck in, cut a load of wood, and still restart and get back out. They make 110 AC saws obviously, but one with just two electric clamps would be nice, and skip the whole inverter deal. Off the wall products like that *might be* a way to future proof employment, just go with the flow of more and more expensive liquid fuels, and see what sort of electric whatever that people will want and need, could be run from solar panels dealie could replace it. It is obvious they really want to do carbon tax and skim globally, so conventional electricity will be going up in price severely, no way around that. So that means..home solar or something that fits in your area, personal windcharger, small scale hydro, etc.
Opportunity:"KNOCK!" (Score:2)
The person/company that first develops and markets a plug-n-play wind system (place tower(s) upright, connect to batteries-&-inverter set, plug into any outlet to power entire house) will earn a MINT.
I'd buy one.
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They were selling them last year at Canadian Tire. Nobody bought one. Electricity is just too cheap in Quebec to make them economic even over a 20-year period.
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Do you know if they're a) still in business, b)licensed to export to the US, and c) LINK??? Where I am solar wouldn't be economical unless electricity jumped by a factor of 10 - wind, on the other hand, we've got!
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I saw it in-store - they had different sizes and capacities. Here's the online listing [canadiantire.ca]. They're made gby Southwest Wind Power [wikipedia.org], so you can buy them in the US - but even if you couldn't, since NAFTA you could just buy them.
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Thank you!!!
I own one (Score:1)
One of their earlier models, a 300 watt aeromarine. Never use it, just keep it packed away for any potential "dire straits", the wind is real iffy here and solar works much better. It's lightweight, easy to hold it up in one hand, so I imagine the 400 watt versions aren't that much more. IIRC you get any generic two inch diameter iron plumbing pipe to install one, just bolts to it. The higher the altitude the better. The one I have was designed to be put way up on a sailboat mast.
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My friend might be able to set you up with that, with just a little labor on your part. His name is Roy, he knows me well, and I got some stuff from him before, solar, but he is big on wind power as well. http://www.four-winds-energy.com/ [four-winds-energy.com]
Any process that uses crude (Score:2)
Can also run on biodiesel and recycled plastic.
Which leads to my next big idea- an electric trawler that charges at night on wave energy from the anchor lines, which skims the top 2" surface of the great garbage gyres and collects garbage from the ocean. Said garbage is then brought back to land, where, since it's already self-selected into lighter-than-water plastics and organics, is processed into crude oil.
It's not going to be very cheap on a energy in/energy out ratio. But it would make for a good sto
plastics to fuel (Score:1)
In stead of an electric one, why not a factory/tanker ship that collects and refines the plastics into diesel right there, all in one? Then all you need is any large (used/cheap) generic old diesel powered freighter or large fishing boat, convert that over. After the first batch is made, it is perpetually self powered then anyway, and you only need to come in to offload/sell your diesel fuel. Ha! Technically, any small marine organisms you catch with the plastic could be processed right in with the plastic,
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Yeah, thought of that myself last night after I did this post.
If you could get it to the point where the crude produced was more than the crude used (quite possible in some parts of the Pacific Northern Gyre, less so in other gyres I'd suspect), then when the tanks were full, return to port to sell.