US Solar Energy Market Dynamics

This report out of Pike research has interesting conclusions. That likely now apply to the other renewables of wind and geothermal. We are a couple of short strokes from making the industries build out completely and easily financeable. Developers are always looking for an extra hand out, so that has not changed. Most critical is a system of underwriting that the banks can utilize and this has fallen into place.

So with or without the infinite wisdom and proactive support of the administration, it appears we are about to get a massive energy build out that will only end when everyone is driving an electric car. For investors, that means concentrate on alternate utilities since they will be attracting the big money.

The size and scope of this build out will quickly compare to the Tarsands in Alberta and surpass anything ever imagined before in the USA. Because of the present recession, it can not develop too soon and it will lead every other industry in terms of job creation. What is more exciting, the jobs will be everywhere.


U.S. Solar Energy Demand Dynamics

Financing Structures, Government Incentives, and Market Drivers for Solar Photovoltaics Projects: 2009-2015

http://us.mg4.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=0&.rand=3kibu7cek8r4t

The United States has become one of the more aggressive nations in promoting alternative energy technologies, but at the federal level tax credits and depreciation incentives are not currently enough to encourage sustainable demand growth. Instead, some states and municipalities have taken the lead in providing incentives through a variety of mechanisms ranging from upfront rebates and property tax credits to renewable energy credits and even European-style feed-in tariffs. Pike Research’s extensive interviews with both end-users and manufacturers conclude that for sustained growth in the U.S., incentives must be increased at the federal level. Due largely to the credit crisis, funding for solar projects has been tight. In the U.S., this has particularly been the case, because banks are unwilling to lend to projects that have undetermined cash flows.

Our five-year outlook is that the combination of federal and state incentives and falling module prices will work together to dramatically increase demand in the U.S. As more banks become comfortable with funding these projects, and find ways to securitize the cash flows, we believe it will become an attractive revenue stream for commercial lending divisions. Utilities, which are just now getting serious about meeting RPS goals, will likely take the lead in developing new solar projects. Until now, they have been unsuccessful in getting support from their ratepayers who would see up to a 10% increase in their utility bills. However, we believe that the emphasis that the Obama administration is placing on climate change will eventually filter into the fabric of American society, propelling the U.S. into a global leadership position in solar PV market share by 2014, according to our most recent forecast.

Petrobank Charging

For those who do not know why this is important, Petrobank is the company that is launching THAI/CAPRI technology in the Alberta Tarsands and in heavy oil resources worldwide. The technology has been completely successful to date and we now have an economic method of production that will ultimately be able to supply at least a third of global oil demand without the massive problems associated with mining and other present methods.

Think US demand at 15,000,000 barrels per day and then consider that this technology can replace all that demand out of Alberta just as quickly as we can drill 1000 barrel per day shallow horizontal production wells. That is exactly 15,000 wells in the Tarsands. It can also include a few hundred wells in some of the heavy oil reserves in the US, although simple economics are likely to favor the Tarsands for decades.

Whatever happens to the oil industry and whatever happens to all other energy solutions, we can be certain that this company will be a major player in the oil industry for decades to come.

We have burned a trillion barrels, and we have a trillion barrels of the easy stuff left, and these guys are on the way to be the key player in the recovery of the three trillion plus worth of heavy oil. If it takes a century or a millennium, this is the technology that enables it.

Petrobank boasts record year

By Shaun Polczer, Calgary HeraldMarch 13, 2009

Despite a 30 per cent drop in fourth-quarter profits, Calgary-based Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. had its best full-year result ever on the strength of higher production from its unconventional oil and gas plays.

The Calgary-based company said net income tripled in 2008 to $244.5 million, or$2.76 per share, even as fourth-quarter profits fell to $28.08 million, or 34 cents a share, from $40.15 million, or 45 cents a share, a year earlier.

Cash flow jumped 281 per cent in 2008 to $665.9 million, or $7.28 per diluted common share, as production soared 181 per cent to 28,742 barrels per day (bpd) from 10,243 bpd in 2007. Petrobank said higher production enabled it to offset the effects of lower commodity prices in the second half.

"Petrobank's production growth coupled with high world oil prices during the first three quarters of the year combined to generate record levels of cash flow and net income," the company said in a statement.

Petrobank said its Canadian results were underpinned by the performance of the Bakken unconventional oil play in southeast Saskatchewan where it produced almost 20,000 barrels a day. In addition, the company has interests in the Montney and Horn River natural gas plays.

The company said it continues to progress with its toe-to-heel air injection, or THAI, fire flood technology that employs in-situ combustion to loosen thick heavy oil deposits and upgrade it underground. Work on a variation of the THAI technique using chemical catalysts--dubbed CAPRI--also continues.

Petrobank's wholly owned subsidiary, Archon Technologies Ltd.,was granted two new U.S. patents for improvements that add features to the existing THAI and CAPRI technologies and extend the life of the existing intellectual property to 2026.

Three other patent applications are pending, Petrobank said, covering a "heel-to-toe" combustion design, catalyst placement for CAPRI and downhole solvent injection.

Petrobank is continuing to license the technology to third-party opera-tors and late in the fourth quarter entered into royalty, technology licence and a joint venture agreements with True Energy Trust to apply the technology on portions of its Kerrobert heavy oil property in west central Saskatchewan.

Despite the downturn, Petrobank said it continues to negotiate joint ventures around the globe and expects to announce another joint project in the near future.

"We continue to receive worldwide interest in our technology."

Andrew Potter, an analyst with UBS in Calgary, said Petrobank finished the fourth quarter "on a strong note" despite softer commodity prices and maintained a "buy" rating with a 12-month target of $42 on the stock.

Petrobank shares surged more than eight per cent on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday, up $1.61 to $21.67.

SPOLCZER@THEHERALD.CANWEST.COM

Chris Nelder on IEA report

This is a report on the IEA report by Chris Nelder.

http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/iea-oil-report/782

Read and weep. These folks over at IEA backpedalled this pending disaster for the past several years. Now they are backpedalling their way out of the corner.

George Bush’s greatest historical failure will be his inertness in face of this. It was no secret. I personally figured that markets and oil were heading for a crisis toward the middle to late 2008 as much as four years ago. The only question was whether he could wiggle out of office soon enough.

Had he followed Arnie’s lead and pushed hard to commence the national shift over to LNG, we would be in position to handle the pending oil supply crisis. I suspect Arnie tried to get his attention.

We are now going to have a crash program not unlike the transition to a wartime economy. It feels like it already.

A global oil rationing authority is coming with a price lock around $70 to $100 dollars per barrel. That is high enough to maximize investment effort and encourage replacement with alternatives.

It will also bring THAI/CAPRI oil production expansion as fast as possible since their cost structure will drop toward thirty dollars per barrel.

We cannot transfer energy at a higher level without destroying the customers as the Saudi’s learned in the seventies.

No one has calculated in the impact of THAI/CAPRI as yet. A production well pair can be put on line and producing a thousand BPD in perhaps twelve months. It will at least be building up to that level by then. That means a thousand drill rigs can likely build out thousands of such pairs inside of a year. It is within our capacity to expand heavy oil production by several millions of barrels over the next several years just in Alberta.

In crisis, the same technology will add millions more around the globe.

The fixes are there and are known. We just need recognition and support to see it through as quickly as can be.

IEA admits Developing Oil Collapse

This has just been released a few hours ago and has been expected. This is the IEA’s biennial report and it is now acknowledging that production declines are been felt everywhere and it will take an incredible investment to just maintain current production. My readers already know that.

The hope that massive investment will solve this looming shortfall is whistling in the dark. Outside of the coming THAI /CAPRI revolution, only now slowly developing, there are no alternatives.

The industry is spending full out but they simply have run out of targets and options sufficient to make up the looming production decline (collapse?). After all, you drill in the seas off Kamchatka because you cannot drill one thousand new wells in much better places.

My readers know that Alberta’s tar sands are positioned to fill the demand gap. In fact I saw a newsletter quote a real reserve figure of 2.7 trillion barrels. Half or more of that will be recoverable with THAI/CAPRI. That gives us ample supplies for at least a century.

The point is though that a major industry authority has finally admitted what they knew all along, that replacing cheap oil with expensive oil is incredibly expensive and this makes expensive alternative fuel sources competitive now.

And since alternative energy sources are at least carbon neutral, they will quickly replace the entire oil industry over the next twenty years and leave most of that expensive oil in the ground.

The report continues to use weasel words but they are clearly now into covering their backsides since the supply failure is becoming visible. Their reference to forty years of supply almost lets you believe it is sitting in a tank somewhere. They fail to mention it will take eighty years to extract it all at increasingly higher cost. And it is forty years since all that oil was found and put on stream.

I think my headline makes it a little clearer.

Whenever I get access to this report in whole or in part, I will post useful data.

Energy body warns on oil prices

By Sarah Mukherjee

BBC News

One of the world's leading authorities on energy supply says the era of cheap oil is over and prices could soon be back up to $100 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook for 2008, says prices could soar as high as $200 a barrel by 2030.

The immediate risk to supply, it says, is not one of a lack of global resources.

Instead, it points to a lack of investment where it is needed.

Rising costs

The world, the report's authors conclude, is not running out of oil just yet - indeed, there is enough of it to supply the world for more than 40 years at current rates of consumption.

But, they point out, field by field, declines in oil production are accelerating and more money will be needed in research and development to extract the oil there is.

While world oil supply will rise, the report's authors predict that massive investments in energy infrastructure will be needed - an eye-watering $26 trillion dollars up to 2030.

A significant amount of this money - $8.4 trillion - will need to be spent on oil and gas exploration and development.

In one scenario considered by the IEA, China and India will account for just over half of the increase in world primary energy demand between 2006 and 2030, and much of the increase in world oil demand.

But despite the agency's assessment of oil and gas reserves, the report contains a stark warning of the consequences of continuing to rely on fossil fuels.

The consequences for the global climate of policy inaction when it comes to decarbonising the world economy are "shocking", according to the report.

"Strong, co-ordinated action is needed urgently to curb the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting rise in global temperatures," it said.

Carbon Dioxide Pollution Increases Sharply

Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions have been pathetic to date, although that should not come as a surprise. We have to replace all our energy protocols while our global economy is growing. That is impossible without suffering an expansion of CO2 for some time yet.

The global economy will double in size over the next twenty years. Read my lips. That means that we will need twice as much fuel as we are using today whatever it looks like. That means that if we wish to take a 600 MW coal powered power plant off line, we have to replace it with two 600 MW power plants.

You would not be too far wrong to suggest that a lot of the ideas out there are simply pissing in the wind. We have major fossil fuel supplies coming on stream, but they are only going to cushion the shock of change. There are after all only two trillion barrel reservoirs of heavy oil in the world. Canada has one and Hugo has the other.

If we produce the tarsands at the rate of 100 million barrels per day, they will last the world a couple of centuries or so.

To replace them we need solar energy to produce electrical power to support a fast shift over to electric transportation.

Even better we produce biological fuels such as ethanol using cattails and algae.

These all call for the mobilization of a large portion of humanity into the business of producing feed stocks for fuel manufacture.

Starting all this now would be a great idea.

Global Warming Pollution On The Increase

WASHINGTON (AP) - The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists’ projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said.

The new numbers, called “scary” by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.

That’s an amount that exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century, scientists said. If those trends continue, it puts the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.

The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which past data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. And while several developed countries slightly cut their CO2 output in 2007, the United States churned out more.

Still, it was large increases in China, India and other developing countries that spurred the growth of carbon dioxide pollution to a record high of 9.34 billion tons of carbon. Figures released by science agencies in the United States, Great Britain and Australia show that China’s added emissions accounted for more than half of the worldwide increase. China passed the United States as the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter in 2006.

Emissions in the United States rose nearly 2 percent in 2007, after declining the previous year. The U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon.

“ Things are happening very, very fast,” said Corinne Le Quere, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey. “It’s scary.

Gregg Marland, a senior staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said he was surprised at the results because he thought world emissions would drop because of the economic downturn. That didn’t happen.

“ If we’re going to do something (about reducing emissions), it’s got to be different than what we’re doing,” he said.

The emissions are based on data from oil giant BP PLC, which show that China has become the major driver of world trends. China emitted 2 billion tons of carbon last year, up 7.5 percent from the previous year.

“ We’re shipping jobs offshore from the U.S., but we’re also shipping carbon dioxide emissions with them,” Marland said. “China is making fertilizer and cement and steel and all of those are heavy energy-intensive industries.”

Developing countries not asked to reduce greenhouse gases by the 1997 Kyoto treaty - and China and India are among them - now account for 53 percent of carbon dioxide pollution. That group of nations surpassed industrialized ones in carbon dioxide emissions in 2005, a new analysis of older figures shows.

India is in position to beat Russia for the No. 3 carbon dioxide polluter behind the United States, Marland said. Indonesia levels are increasing rapidly.

Denmark’s emissions dropped 8 percent. The United Kingdom and Germany reduced carbon dioxide pollution by 3 percent, while France and Australia cut it by 2 percent.

Nature can’t keep up with the carbon dioxide from man, Le Quere said. She said from 1955 to 2000, the forests and oceans absorbed about 57 percent of the excess carbon dioxide, but now it’s 54 percent.

What is “kind of scary” is that the worldwide emissions growth is beyond the highest growth in fossil fuel predicted just two years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Ben Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

Under the panel’s scenario then, temperatures would increase by somewhere between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.

If this trend continues for the century, “you’d have to be luckier than hell for it just to be bad, as opposed to catastrophic,” said Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider.