Don't count on us for more supply says OPEC

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8729

Lundin petroleum discover huge oil field

Lundin petroleum have apparently discovered one of the largest oil fields in the North Sea

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8746

Feldheim's renewable future

Feldheim, a village of just 145 people, is already putting into practice Germany’s vision of a future powered entirely by renewable energy.

http://paper.li/PowerSwitch_UK/1289840046

FELDHEIM, Germany (AP) — This tiny village of 37 gray homes and farm buildings clustered along the main road in a wind-swept corner of rural eastern Germany seems an unlikely place for a revolution.

Yet environmentalists, experts and politicians from El Salvador to Japan to South Africa have flocked here in the past year to learn how Feldheim, a village of just 145 people, is already putting into practice Germany’s vision of a future powered entirely by renewable energy.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government passed legislation in June setting the country on course to generate a third of its power through renewable sources — such as wind, solar, geothermal and bioenergy — within a decade, reaching 80 percent by 2050, while creating jobs, increasing energy security and reducing harmful emissions.

The goals are among the world’s most ambitious, and expensive, and other industrialized nations from the U.S. to Japan are watching to see whether transforming into a nation powered by renewable energy sources can really work.

“Germany can’t afford to fail, because the whole world is looking at the German model and asking, can Germany move us to new business models, new infrastructure?,” said Jeremy Rifkin, a U.S. economist who has advised the European Union and Merkel.

In June, the nation passed the 20 percent mark for drawing electric power from a mix of wind, solar and other renewables. That compares with about 9 percent in the United States or Japan — both of which rely heavily on hydroelectric power, an energy source that has long been used.

Expanding renewables depends on the right mix of resources, as well as government subsidies and investment incentive — and a willingness by taxpayers to shoulder their share of the burden. Germans currently pay a 3.5 euro cent per kilowatt-hour tax, roughly euro157 ($205) per year for a typical family of four, to support research and investment in and subsidize the production and consumption of energy from renewable sources.

That allows for homeowners who install solar panels on their rooftops, or communities like Feldheim that build their own biogas plants, to be paid above-market prices for selling back to the grid, to ensure that their investment at least breaks even.

Critics, like the Institute for Energy Research, based in Washington, D.C., maintain such tariffs put an unfair burden of expanding renewables squarely on the taxpayer. At the same time, to make renewable energy work on the larger scale, Germany will have to pour billions into infrastructure, including updating its grid.

Key to success of the transformation will be getting the nation’s powerful industries on board, to drive innovation in technology and create jobs. According to the Environment Ministry, overall investment in renewable energy production equipment more than doubled to euro29.4 billion ($38.44 billion) in 2011. Solid growth in the sector is projected through the next decade.

Some 370,000 people in Germany now have jobs in the renewable sector, more than double the number in 2004, a point used as proof that tax payers’ investment is paying off.

Feldheim has zero unemployment — despite its tiny size — compared with roughly 30 percent in other villages in the economically depressed state of Brandenburg, which views investments in renewables as a ticket for a brighter future. Most residents work in the plant that produces biogas — fuel made by the breakdown of organic material such as plants or food waste — or maintain the wind and solar parks that provide the village’s electricity.

“The energy revolution is already taking place right here,” says Werner Frohwitter, spokesman for the Energiequelle company that helped set up and run Feldheim’s energy concept.

But it’s not only in the country. Earlier this month in Berlin, officials unveiled a prototype of a self-sustaining, energy-efficient home, built from recycled materials and complete with electric vehicles that can be charged in its garage.

The aim of the prototype home is to produce twice as much energy as is used by a family of four — chosen from a willing pool of volunteers who will be selected to live in the home for 15 months — through a combination of solar photovoltaics and energy management technology, in order to show the technology already exists to allow people to be energy self-sufficient.

“We want to show people that already today it is possible to live completely from renewable energy,” said German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer as the project, dubbed “Efficiency House Plus,” was unveiled. The house is part of a wider euro1.2 million ($1.57 million) project investing in energy-efficient buildings.

“The Efficiency House Plus will set standards that can be adopted by the majority in the short term,” Ramsauer told The Associated Press. “The basic principle is that the house produces more energy than needed to live. The extra energy is then used to charge electric-powered cars and bicycles or sold back to the public grid.”

Germany’s four leading car makers are also participating in the project with BMW AG, Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG and Opel, which is part of Buick’s parent company, General Motors Co., each making an E-car for use by in the home.

Such strong cooperation between Germany’s industrial sector coupled with a political landscape that emphasizes stability and a heightened public ecological sensibility makes Germany fertile ground to lead the way in the transformation from a post-carbon economy to one run on renewable energy.

“Germany has the most robust industrial economy per capita. When you talk about industrial revolution, that’s Germany. It’s German technology, it’s German IT, it’s German commutation,” said Rifkin, who outlines what he calls the “The Third Industrial Revolution,” in a newly released book of the same title that explains how the economies in the future could swap fossil fuels for renewable energies and still maintain growth.

Robert Pottmann, an asset manager with Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest reinsurers, says the company seeks to invest about euro2.5 billion ($3.27 billion) in the next few years in renewable energy assets such as “wind farms, solar projects or maybe new electricity grids.”

Alan Simpson, an independent energy and climate adviser from Britain who visited Feldheim as part of a wider tour of Germany last month to see what the renewable revolution looks like up close said it was inspiring to view what is being accomplished on the ground.

“It’s great to think about Germany delivering on everything that we are being told in Great Britain is impossible,” Simpson said.

Amid the excitement, there is also an awareness of the real need for the German experiment to succeed.

“If Germany can’t pull this off,” said Rifkin. “We don’t have a plan B.”

SF Gate

Biofuels the biggest driver of land grabbing

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1169447/biofuels_not_food_the_biggest_driver_of_land_grabbing_deals_says_report.html

Satellite studies reveal groundwater depletion around the world

http://peakoil.com/enviroment/satellite-studies-reveal-groundwater-depletion-around-the-world/

Olivier Rech predicts oil decline shortly after 2015

Original source: Le Monde http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/12/30/oi-will-decline-2015-according-to-a-former-expert-of-the-international-energy-agency/

Olivier Rech is a top Energy Fund Advisor and oil and gas analyst at the International Energy Advisor. In a recent interview he predicted a sharp decline in oil production somewhere between now and 2015. He is just one of numerous oil industry experts who have forecast an imminent decline in the global extraction of crude oil. He says that outside of OPEC we face an annual decline of 1 to 2 million barrels per day (bpd). This is close to the 5% annual decline predicted by Royal Dutch Shell.

The situation with OPEC is less easy to discern, but both Barclays and Goldmann Sachs believe that OPEC's figures for spare production capacity are a lot lower than they claim.

Since 2005 oil production has been on a plateau of 82m bpd. Rech believes that an increase in this figure will be next to impossible and as a result the first real oil tensions will begin to appear somewhere between 2013 and 2015. After that, there will be a decline in all forms of liquid fuel between 2015 and 2020.

German solar power surges by 60% in 2011

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/12/30/german-solar-power-production-surges-60-renewables-20-of-total-electricity-supply/

Biomass attracts increasing interest from investors

http://www.findenergysavings.co.uk/blog/biomass-as-promising-as-wind-and-solar-as-banks-begin-to-invest.html

The government launches the Renewable Heat Incentive

http://www.findenergysavings.co.uk/blog/government-opens-its-renewable-heat-incentive.html

Farmers are unaware of the Renewable Heat Incentive it seems

http://www.findenergysavings.co.uk/blog/many-farmers-unaware-of-renewable-heat-incentive.html

Why buy a wood burner?

http://www.findenergysavings.co.uk/article/the-advantages-of-installing-a-wood-burner.html

Heat pumps are the next big thing

http://www.findenergysavings.co.uk/article/heat-pumps-are-the-next-big-thing.html