Electric Cars

Update June 15: Readers tell us that the price of the BMW i3 starts at €40,000 (~$53,000). I’m also told that the “reservations” are actually just reservations to test drive the vehicle, which makes more sense but wasn’t clear from our source.

Original Article: Last month, we featured an infographic showing that the Tesla Model S was outselling non-electric luxury brand competitors by BMW, Mercedes, and Audi. Notably, none of these companies have an electric car on the market yet. While Mercedes is working on an electric vehicle option (the Mercedes B-Class Electric Drive), Audi has scrapped its plans for developing an electric Audi R8 e-tron. BMW will be the first to bring one to mass market, the BMW i3 (followed by the BMW i8). If BMW’s numbers are correct, it looks like the BMW i3 will come off the tracks strong. Here’s more info from EV Obsession:

BMW has been slow to the electric vehicle game. Or maybe it has just been timing itself carefully. The BMW i3, which I featured back in March and which is scheduled to hit European markets at the end of the year, already has over 100,000 reservations, according to BMW’s Ian Robertson.

Notably, those include reservations with and without deposits. But nonetheless…. And Robertson says a “significant number” of them have actually made deposits.

As I wrote back in March, the i3 is a beauty. And, clearly, coming from a trusted, high-quality brand doesn’t hurt.

My estimate of CO2 generation by fossil fuels in the 21st century is only about one-quarter of the amount assumed in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report.

Even if the climate model is perfect apart from its estimate of future CO2 fossil fuel use, and even if anthropogenic issues are implicated as a cause of recent climate changes, the model with its incorrect estimate of future fossil fuel energy consumption can still be unhelpful for determining needed future action.

Even renewables will become a problem, because we need fossil fuels to create new renewable energy generation.

Oil consumption by importers starts to decline if price is high–something that happens long before world oil supply actually starts to decline.

At the same time, oil exporters need high prices, and have financial problems if price or production declines too much.

The Climate High and Climate Low estimates are based on carbon amounts shown in Figure 1 of this 2008 Oil Drum post http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4807 by De Sousa and Mearns .

In converting these carbon estimates to energy consumption estimates, I implicitly assumed that the carbon intensity of energy use would remain unchanged–that is, improvements resulting from more use of natural gas and renewables use would be offset by increases in coal consumption. This assumption is probably not what the IPCC would make.

Their “Low Estimate” would probably assume greater use of renewables and natural gas than their High Estimate, so that the actual energy available in their Low Estimate would be closer to the energy available in their High Estimate than what my graph would suggest.

No consideration is given of diminishing returns, and the resulting likely run-up in both needed investment funds and price to the user.

Because the IPCC report misses the issue of diminishing returns and resulting higher price, it assumes that demand can keep on ramping up pretty much indefinitely.

A letter published in Nature Geoscience on May 19, 2013, titled Energy Budget Constraints on Climate Response indicates that the climate effects of a given set of forcings seems to be lower than the 2007 IPCC report suggested.

My Collapse Scenario estimates are considerably below De Sousa and Mearn’s Peak Oil estimates, so would in theory produce lower yet CO2 impacts. 

A researcher might assume that substitution of higher-priced renewable energy for lower-priced fossil fuel energy would reduce world carbon emissions, but this is true only if second and third order effects don’t undo the supposed benefit.

Thus, the real issue is a likely near-term financial problem. This financial problem can be expected to lead to economic shrinkage which will by itself help mitigate several of the problems, including climate change.

We might want to make such a change in an attempt to sustain production for longer, whether or not this has an adverse CO2 effect, viewed from today’s peculiar perspective:

 Only manufacturing which results in local CO2 production seems to be viewed as “bad;” exporting coal to China, or importing goods manufactured using coal from China/ India is not viewed as a problem.

However, according to Food and Water Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe, a closer look at the US boom reveals an economic system based on shaky foundations, that side-lines health and the environment, and is reliant on unsustainably low prices driven by speculation and industry overestimates.

Experts invited to speak today at “Behind the hype: the economics of shale gas in Europe” questioned the longer-term contribution of shale gas to America’s energy mix and warned against the dangers of replicating the U.S. example in Europe.

The Canadian geoscientist David Hughes, following the analysis of historical production from 65,000 oil and gas wells, concluded that the average production figures for shale gas wells are already falling, as “sweets spots” in mature shale basins have been drilled off.

Given the steep decline curves of shale gas wells, a “drilling treadmill”, requiring an annual investment of U.S. $42 billion per year, will be needed just to keep shale gas production flat [1] . “A hard look at the historical production from American shale gas wells shows that unconventional gas cannot provide a long-lasting – never mind environmentally sustainable – answer to European low-carbon energy needs”, said Food & Water Europe Policy Officer Geert De Cock. “Europe cannot drill its way to decarbonisation by 2050”.

The Energy Watch Group expert Werner Zittel demonstrated that the contribution of shale gas to reduce gas imports and improve the European Union’s overall energy mix will be negligible, particularly when viewed against steep declines in European conventional gas production.

Population density, shortage of drilling equipment, acute shortage of qualified personnel, stronger environmental rules and lack of public acceptability cause structural barriers for the large-scale development of shale gas in Europe [2] .

Antoine Simon, shale gas campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: “The US shale gas boom is based on unsustainably low prices and wishful thinking.

If repeated in Europe, shale gas development will be hindered by significantly higher costs, at a pace unlikely to impact upon gas prices.

Food & Water Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe maintain that until the social, environmental, social and health impacts are adequately addressed, all Member States should suspend ongoing activities, abrogate permits, and place bans on new projects, whether exploration or exploitation.

Europe must not be swept up in wishful thinking and replace genuine solutions like renewable energy and energy savings with the shale gas myth.

Friends of the Earth Europe is the largest grassroots environmental network in Europe, uniting more than 30 national organisations with thousands of local groups.

We are the European arm of Friends of the Earth International which unites 76 national member organisations, some 5,000 local activist groups, and over two million supporters around the world. [1] See more in Hughes’ 2013 report “Drill Baby Drill” [2] Read more in the 2013 Energy Watch Group report “Fossil and Nuclear Fuel – the Supply Outlook”

Food & Water Europe is the European program of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer organization based in the United States that works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable.

Bloomberg Energy Finance forecasts 22 percent compound annual growth in all solar PV, which means that by 2020 distributed solar (which will account for about 15 percent of total PV) could reach up to 10 percent of load in certain areas. If that happens, well:

Assuming a decline in load, and possibly customers served, of 10 percent due to Distributed Energy Resources DER (meaning Solar) with full subsidization of DER participants, the average impact on base electricity prices for non-DER participants will be a 20 percent or more increase in rates, and the ongoing rate of growth in electricity prices will double for non-DER participants (before accounting for the impact of the increased cost of serving distributed resources).

So rates would rise by 20 percent for those without solar panels. Can you imagine the political shitstorm that would create? (There are reasons to think EEI is exaggerating this effect, but we’ll get into that in the next post.)

If nothing is done to check these trends, the U.S. electric utility as we know it could be utterly upended.

The report compares utilities’ possible future to the experience of the airlines during deregulation or to the big monopoly phone companies when faced with upstart cellular technologies. In case the point wasn’t made, the report also analogizes utilities to the U.S. Postal Service, Kodak, and RIM, the maker of Blackberry devices. These are not meant to be flattering comparisons.

Remember, too, that these utilities are not Google or Facebook. They are not accustomed to a state of constant market turmoil and reinvention. This is a venerable old boys network, working very comfortably within a business model that has been around, virtually unchanged, for a century. A friggin’ century, more or less without innovation, and now they’re supposed to scramble and be all hip and new-age? Unlikely.

So what’s to be done? You won’t be surprised to hear that EEI’s prescription is mainly focused on preserving utilities and their familiar business model.

But is that the best thing for electricity consumers?

Is that the best thing for the climate?

Yesterday, BuzzFlash wrote about how the de facto decision to let Alberta tar sands oil flow into the US -- and particularly Texas refineries and ports -- has already been made, beginning with the third segment of the Keystone Pipeline that is almost completed.

It's a symbolic victory -- and an assertion of big oil power -- because Alberta Tar Sands oil is already flowing into the US as revealed by two prominent branch line leaks in Arkansas and Michigan.

Governmental units allowed ExxonMobil, as the feds allowed BP after the Gulf oil leak, to keep the press away from the Pegasus pipeline leak of tar sands oil in Arkansas as best they could. Although ExxonMobil has not disclosed the full extent of the leak, some estimates are as high as 300,000 gallons, according to Treehugger.

Tar sands oil is 16 times more likely to breach a pipeline than regular crude oil, according to a February 2011 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation, Pipeline Safety Trust, and the Sierra Club. Yet Enbridge is determined to expand its capacity and its chances of risking more oil spills.

Indeed, InsideClimateNews won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on "' The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of ,' a project that began with a seven-month investigation into the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. It broadened into an examination of national pipeline safety issue s, and how unprepared the nation is for the impending flood of imports of a more corrosive and more dangerous form of oil."

BuzzFlash received a response challenging yesterday's commentary about how the completion of the southern leg of the Keystone Pipeline will start the Alberta tar sands spigots flowing into Texas, where most of the carbon time bomb, toxic viscous oil will likely be shipped overseas.

The contention of the reader with a knowledge of the oil industry is that TransCanada has said it will not transport Alberta tar sands oil unless the new larger capacity northern pipeline is built. But why then is there a widespread belief that tar sands oil is already being stored up in Cushing, Oklahoma, the Keystone Pipeline hub, pending the opening of the southern leg?

Achieving substantial reductions in temperatures relative to the coal-based system will take the better part of a century, and will depend on rapid and massive deployment of some mix of conservation, wind, solar, and nuclear, and possibly carbon capture and storage. … technologies that offer only modest reductions in greenhouse gases, such as the use of natural gas and perhaps carbon capture and storage, cannot substantially reduce climate risk in the next 100 years.

Delaying the rollout of the technologies is not an option however; the risks of environmental harm will be much greater in the second half of the century and beyond if we continue to rely on coal-based technologies. But what’s new is the first peer-reviewed analysis that “has predicted the climate effects of energy system transitions” with “a quantitative model … that includes life-cycle emissions and the central physics of greenhouse warming.”

For example, Christopher Monckton cited a climate economics review by Richard Tol in claiming: “…the overwhelming majority of economic studies on the subject find the cost of climate action greatly exceeds the cost of inaction…”

New York University survey results of economists with climate expertise when asked under what circumstances the USA should reduce its emissions Similarly, a recent letter published by the Wall Street Journal, signed by 16 climate “skeptics” misrepresented Nordhaus’ research as supporting climate inaction from an economic standpoint.

They focused on the cost-to-benefit ratio of various climate mitigation options, whereas it is the difference which tells us how much money is saved, and thus is the most important factor in determining which option is most economically beneficial. “The authors cite the “benefit-to-cost ratio” to support their argument.

This example shows why we should, in designing the most effective policies, look at benefits minus costs, not benefits divided by costs.”

Current economic studies also suggest that the most efficient policy is to raise the cost of CO 2 emissions substantially, either through cap-and-trade or carbon taxes, to provide appropriate incentives for businesses and households to move to low-carbon activities.” “The claim that cap-and-trade legislation or carbon taxes would be ruinous or disastrous to our societies does not stand up to serious economic analysis.

Despite the economic reality that CO2 limits will save money, the myth that they will harm the economy is a pervasive one. However, this myth is based on nothing more than a misunderstanding of climate science and economics, and misrepresentation of the climate science and economics body of research.

The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists. "The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed," said Lord Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics.

The Bank of England has also recognised that a collapse in the value of oil, gas and coal assets as nations tackle global warming is a potential systemic risk to the economy, with London being particularly at risk owing to its huge listings of coal.

The world's governments have agreed to restrict the global temperature rise to 2C, beyond which the impacts become severe and unpredictable. But Stern said the investors clearly did not believe action to curb climate change was going to be taken. "They can't believe that and also believe that the markets are sensibly valued now." "They only believe environmental regulation when they see it," said James Leaton, from Carbon Tracker and a former PwC consultant.

Paul Spedding, an oil and gas analyst at HSBC, said: "The scale of 'listed' unburnable carbon revealed in this report is astonishing. This report makes it clear that 'business as usual' is not a viable option for the fossil fuel industry in the long term. [The market] is assuming it will get early warning, but my worry is that things often happen suddenly in the oil and gas sector."

HSBC warned that 40-60% of the market capitalisation of oil and gas companies was at risk from the carbon bubble, with the top 200 fossil fuel companies alone having a current value of $4tn, along with $1.5tn debt.

Citi bank warned investors in Australia's vast coal industry that little could be done to avoid the future loss of value in the face of action on climate change. "If the unburnable carbon scenario does occur, it is difficult to see how the value of fossil fuel reserves can be maintained, so we see few options for risk mitigation."

Jeremy Grantham, a billionaire fund manager who oversees $106bn of assets, said his company was on the verge of pulling out of all coal and unconventional fossil fuels , such as oil from tar sands. "The probability of them running into trouble is too high for me to take that risk as an investor."

From 1989 to 2002, several large US companies, including the oil companies Exxon and the US subsidiaries of Shell and BP, sponsored a lobbying organisation called the Global Climate Coalition , to counter the strengthening consensus that human carbon dioxide emissions posed a serious threat to the Earth’s climate.

The climate scientist Benjamin Santer accused the GCC of deliberately suppressing scientific information that supported the IPCC consensus. ''Climate change is an issue which raises fundamental questions about the relationship between companies and society as a whole, and between one generation and the next.'' ''Companies composed of highly skilled and trained people can't live in denial of mounting evidence gathered by hundreds of the most reputable scientists in the world.''

From BigOil Websites:

Exxon: "Rising greenhouse gas emissions pose significant risks to society andecosystems."

Shell : "CO2 emissions must be reduced to avoid serious climate change. To manage CO2, governments and industry must work together. Government action is needed and we support an international framework that puts a price on CO2, encouraging the use of all CO2-reducing technologies."

BP : "According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , warming of the climate system is happening and is caused mainly by the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Results from models assessed by the IPCC suggest that to stand a reasonable chance of limiting warming to no more than 2˚C, global emissions should peak before 2020 and be cut by between 50-85% by 2050."

Chevron : "At Chevron, we recognize and share the concerns of governments and the public about climate change. The use of fossil fuels to meet the world's energy needs is a contributor to an increase in greenhouse gases —mainly carbon dioxide and methane—in the Earth's atmosphere. There is a widespread view that this increase is leading to climate change, with adverse effects on the environment."

The denizens of "skeptic" climate blogs and the majority of Republican Party politicians will find little in the way of support for their anti-consensus views on the climate webpages of the big oil companies. Nevertheless, the damage done to the public perception of climate science by the GCC and other oil-company-sponsored organizations lingers on.

Despite this, all of these Really Big Oil governments participate in the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change and none of them publicly dispute the science. However, when it comes to the scale of reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change , the fact is that the oil industry will have to go into a production decline very shortly and fossil fuel production will have to shrink dramatically by mid-century, especially in industrialized countries where the IOCs make most of their sales

.

On the basis of my own involvement in the climate debate, it seems fair to conclude that individuals who reject human-caused climate change tend to be stubborn in their beliefs and it is a rare occurrence when somebody admits that they have changed their minds due to the mounting evidence. In contrast, oil-producing corporations and countries seem to have embraced the scientific consensus quite readily, even though their current business models are incompatible with the emissions cutbacks that will be required for mitigation.

Even though big oil companies are, for the most part, no longer actively questioning the fundamentals of climate science, they are spending millions in the 2012 presidential elections in the USA to support politicians perceived as more inclined to approve projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline and more ready to reduce regulatory burdens and allow more drilling on federal lands.

More details on this can be found in a report by the Sustainable Prosperity think tank. Although some of the oil company climate action statements may appear to the cynical to be mere greenwash , some actions have produced real results, notably efforts to reduce methane leakage.

That’s probably the best that climate activists can hope for from commercial organizations whose business is in extracting hydrocarbons fuels from the Earth so that their customers can burn them and dispose of the waste into the atmosphere.

But there’s also an important lesson here for those individuals who persist in rejecting or downplaying the consensus on climate change: if the big oil companies can suck it up and face scientific reality, why can’t you?

The suits over at Shell (NYSE: RDS-A) have been in the hot seat over the past year or so after burning through more than $5 billion to tap Arctic oil reservoirs in the Chukchi Sea.

As I've discussed in these pages before, the risk-versus-reward scenario for Shell's Chukchi Sea adventure never made much sense. The independent oil producer simply had too little experience in Arctic oil production and too many mishaps last year (including a damaged containment dome that was crushed by the weight of unforgiving Arctic waters) to make it a particularly profitable venture.

Moreover, after two of President Obama's advisors called for a permanent halt to oil exploration in the Arctic, long-time investors got skittish.

Truth is — and I've said this time and time again — Shell would've been better off working with the Russians to tap Arctic oil treasures, as producers have more experience in those climates and the regulatory environment is less stringent.

Certainly this is what Exxon (NYSE: XOM) did a couple of months ago after signing a deal with Russian petroleum giant Rosneft (PINK SHEETS: RNFTF). Back in February, the two companies approved a deal that resulted in some easy money for Russia and an additional 234,000 square miles of oil exploration for Exxon in the Russian Arctic.

It looks like Shell is now heading down the same path...

Last week we learned Shell inked a deal with Russia's Gazprom Neft (PINK SHEETS: GZPFY) to jointly drill in the frigid waters of the Russian Arctic.

Finally, Shell strikes Arctic oil!

This was the best decision Shell could've made in regards to its quest for Arctic oil.

After all, Russia is the gatekeeper to about 70% of all Arctic oil. And the truth is it's really up to Mother Russia as to who gets what and how much.

Now, while Exxon and Shell are actively holding hands with Russian roughnecks, Mao's descendants are also siphoning off the Russian teat.

Last month Vladimir Putin handed over a share of its Arctic exploration licenses to China — a near perfect deal for the world's largest oil and gas producer and the world's biggest energy consumer.

Under a new agreement that was signed on March 22, China will now have the opportunity to double its oil imports from Rosneft as well as begin construction on a pipeline that'll run Russian gas to the Middle Kingdom.

But for the big score, China's foaming at the mouth over its chance to explore three new offshore Arctic regions with Rosneft...

This, by the way, is all part of deal that involves Exxon, EniSpA (NYSE: E), and Statoil ASA (NYSE: STO) ponying up to help finance the drilling.

The IMF report lists several of these reasons, including the fact that it's simply impossible to obtain data for all fossil fuel subsidies in all countries.  However, the biggest contributor to the conservative dollar figure is related to the social cost of carbon.

The social cost of carbon is an estimate of the direct effects of carbon emissions on the economy, and takes into consideration such factors as net agricultural productivity loss, human health effects, property damages from sea level rise, and changes in ecosystemservices.  It's the economic damage caused by CO2 via climate change. 

The IMF report uses an average US government agency value of $25 per tonne of CO2 emissions; however, there is substantial evidence and research suggesting the value should be much higher. 

Dave Roberts provides some references in his post on the report, and we go into detail on the subject here.

The true cost of carbon emissions could easily be four times higher, at $100 per tonne. Chris Hope, climate policy researcher at Cambridge University, has argued that an estimate around $150 per tonne may be more accurate.  

Thus the true cost of our fossil fuel subsidies could be over $4 trillion per year, or over 6% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

 Compare that to the estimated cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels, which are generally on the order of 1% of GDP, and it becomes clear that our current priorities are completely backwards, pumping trillions of dollars into our fossil fuel addiction when we should be trying as hard as we can to break the habit

THERE ARE SIGNS THE CLIMATE movement could be on the verge of a remarkable and surprising victory. 

If we read the current context correctly, and if the movement can adjust its strategy to capture the opportunity presented, it could usher in the fastest and most dramatic economic transformation in history.

This would include the removal of the oil, coal and gas industries from the economy in just a few decades and their replacement with new industries and, for the most part, entirely new companies. 

It would be the greatest transfer of wealth and power between industries and countries the world has ever seen.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that this kind of economic transition is OK.

That's how markets work and while it will be challenging and require huge effort, it will work out. Yes, huge amounts of wealth will be lost and gained in the process, industries, countries and cities will face massive economic and practical restructuring challenges and many people will suffer in the process.

But that's how market shifts happen.

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase "creative destruction" to describe this process and to explain why it's the underpinning strength of capitalism, calling it: "A process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."

But while we can be comfortable that this process will deliver the required outcome, it's not going to be smooth or pleasant for many participants. It will rather be messy, highly controversial and see huge amounts of value and employment both destroyed and created as the economy restructures around the necessary reality of a post fossil fuel economy. 

I'm neither relaxed about this nor naïve about the scale of the challenge. I just accept that it's now inevitable. I also know we can do it and that we simply have no choice.

Of course, the losers will fight all the way to the end, using every argument, manoeuvre and delay they can think of. We should expect nothing else of them and, realistically, most of us would do likewise faced with similar circumstances. But they will still lose.

I do not however think we should demonise the fossil fuel industry or the people involved in it. The job to remove this industry has to be done - the future of civilisation literally depends on it - but we can do this firmly and clearly without making it personal. As I've said in recent speeches on this topic - with some humour but a serious message - "we have to remove the coal, oil and gas industries from the economy with love and compassion."

This is the tough love of responsible parenting - the kids don't like it but it's still the right thing to do.

So with some surprise, this is where we find ourselves. It still won't happen without focused and determined effort, but for the first time, we can envisage victory in the decades long fight on climate change. The science is clear, the technology is ready, significant sections of the elite are on side and the financial momentum is with us.

And this time, the economics is playing on the same side as the environment.

Just in time.

It’s been a bad week for the thermal coal industry.

The commodity’s biggest consumer, China, appears serious about curbing its demand, thermal coal mines are losing money; coal generators are closing down, Queensland has had to introduce a captive buying arrangement to protect its state-owned generation assets, WA’s expensive revamp of an ageing and dirty Muja power station is proving to be a disaster, and the head of Australia’s coal industry has had a scripted meltdown, blaming the industry’s woes almost entirely on “environmental extremists”.

Last Wednesday, at the right-leaning Sydney Institute, the CEO of the Australian Coal Association, Dr Nikki Williams, gave an extraordinary speech in which she accused activists of being purely “anti-development”, claimed the coal industry was more sinned against than sinner, and laid the case for “burnable coal”.

It’s a position that is tied in with the assumption that there is no credible alternative to coal-based technology, and a casual dismissal of the need for urgency on climate change action. “I don’t know about you, but the last time I flew to Europe it was pretty apparent that the Arctic was still there,” Williams told the audience.

Pick up a recent report from any mainstream energy analyst – local and international – and it’s pretty clear what’s going on here: thermal coal prices have slumped because demand is falling. This, in turn, is causing coal mines to lose money, and the economic case for massive new investments in new coal mines and infrastructure – largely based on a widely discredited “business as usual” scenario – is disappearing rapidly.

Deutsche Bank analysts said this suggested that taxes and levies directly on coal, and on other pollutants generated by coal burning , will rise substantially.

It, and other analysts, have predicted that China will cease to be an importer of coal within a few years. “Clean energies, as a result, should replace coal at an accelerated pace,” it said.

For the Australian thermal coal industry – which has based tens of billions of dollars in new mines and associated infrastructure on Williams’ tenet of “burnable” carbon – the loss of its biggest customer is, of course, a devastating blow.

But in the realities of the global energy market, theirs is rapidly becoming a marginal view – the actions of China and other countries simply makes those assumptions uneconomic.

Still, Williams rails at the likes of Greenpeace, Get Up and 350.org’s founder Bill McKibben, along with activists like Jonathan Moylan, accusing the anti-coal movement of being anti-development; wanting to dramatically cut the use of energy and to keep billions of people in poverty – not to mention reducing population numbers.

It’s all part of an anti-capitalist plot, Williams says, and cites numerous agencies such as the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, and even Australia’s own energy market operator as defending the primacy of coal, and the lack of any credible alternatives.

The IEA observes, with great regret, that coal-fired generation has continued to dominate the world’s electricity generation but, like many activists, says that this must stop if climate change goals are to be reached.

It laments the lack of effort, urgency and progress in the coal industry’s attempts at making carbon capture and storage technology a viable or even an affordable option. But it says there are alternatives – and most of these centre around renewables. And over the long term, the IEA insists, this would be cheaper than business as usual.

Perhaps she should be reminded of the words of the International Monetary Fund’s chief Christine Lagarde, who said without urgent climate action we’d all be “roasted, toasted and fried .” And the AEMO, did not suggest, as Williams claims, that a 100 per cent renewable energy grid in Australia would need like-for-like back-up by coal and gas – otherwise it wouldn’t be 100 per cent renewable, would it?

Of course, the coal industry is not particularly worried about 100 per cent renewables, because its market will be gone long before then.

Williams played the anti-development line to the limit. “Many anti-coal activists are deluding the public about their real agenda,” she said. “For them, development is the problem.

The EU, frustrated at its low carbon price, which is unable to provide the incentive to take coal-fired power stations off-line, is now looking at a revised energy efficiency target that it says would take the equivalent of 1,000 coal-fired powered stations off-line.

It is not the eco-warriors, which Williams seeks to conflate with “terrorists” and “sociopaths”, that are the real danger to the thermal coal industry – it’s a simple matter of science and economics.

Williams may well have been enraged by a recent anti-coal strategy meeting held by NGOs in the heart of the Hunter Valley, and the upcoming visit of McKibben. But the coal industry is in need of leadership and a little dose of reality, rather than a chief who simply screams from the parapet.

The good news is that the leadership and reality check it needs will come from outside.

It’s called the financial markets.

The pricing of risk already means that new fossil fuel generation is substantially more expensive than renewable alternatives. Soon enough, that assessment of risk and reward will extend to the new mining developments. There is no defence, and no economic or financial justification, for business as usual.

In the end it will not be McKibben or Greenpeace who make that call – although they will lobby for it – it will be the bankers.

But if you want to buy, say, a new $14,000 Ford Fiesta, your options are limited.

Tesla's Musk is fighting on a second front as well, this one more plebeian: He wants to change the way we buy cars.

Every state requires auto sales be handled by independently owned auto dealers.

That alone means that auto prices are about 6 to 9 percent higher than need be, according to a 2009 report by the Department of Justice. Moreover, the lack of competition makes things miserable for car buyers.

Yes, auto dealers, we really don’t like the way you operate. And online sales? Also prohibited.

There are a number of websites that make it seem as if you can buy online, such as Cars.com, AutoTrader.com, and CarMax.com. But those really are just clever ways of helping you conduct research into makes and pricing — and at the end of the process, sending you to an auto dealer.

So why is it so important that cars be sold through a dealer?

The National Automobile Dealers Association would tell you that it’s the high price or the complexity of the machine or that dealers protect consumers.

It fears, rightly I think, that existing auto dealers would care less about Tesla’s unusual cars and more about sales of more traditional models. But NADA and its state chapters are mounting a fierce counterattack.

In Massachusetts, the state dealers’ association sued to shut down Tesla’s Natick showroom.

Last month, a judge in New York similarly ruled against that state’s dealers. This may be a fight that NADA wishes it didn’t pick.

Tesla is small, and the challenge it offers is quite trivial.

But the thinking of many is that, if the court battles go onward and upward, the US Supreme Court will likely rule the entire auto franchise system unconstitutional; under the Interstate Commerce Clause, it would be seen as a restraint on trade.

Imagine how great it would be to buy your next car on Amazon — and even better, never have to deal with a car salesman again.

No, just a lot of changes will happen, that will range from annoying to catastrophic.

Global warming has been found to be a direct result of the increase in CO2 levels, which is mostly from human activities.

 The link has been proven and accepted by over 97% of the worlds scientist. The funny thing about the scientists that disagree is that there is a proven money link between them and groups that exploit natural resources, primarily oil, coal, and natural gas.

A temperature increase of just 1 degree doesn’t read like much until you remember this is worldwide, so that’s a lot of heat being added into the atmosphere and aquasphere. This heat translates into extra energy available for weather events.

A weather event is the atmosphere trying to equalize energy between 2 levels, such as a storm, tornado, hurricane, etc.

As more energy is absorbed into the atmosphere weather events will become larger, and much more dangerous. But the extra heat will cause something else much worse to happen.

As the tundras start heating up the gas is released compounding the greenhouse effect, trapping more heat, which melts more of the tundra, releasing more methane in a vicous cycle.

The extra heat will eventually cause the the melting of methane clathrates, large underwater frozen deposits of methane and natural gas.

These deposits are huge, estimated to be up to 1.2 million cubic miles. This estimate does not include estimates for deposits trapped in deep freshwater lakes and Antartica.

The effect that this has on you is loss of some mollusc species since their shells can’t form properly, loss of reefs, since the reefs are actually made of the exoskeletons of small sea creatures and their shells are dissolved by the sea water now that its more acid, and loss of many other species as their eggs are vulnerable to the change in ph.

Among the species that will disappear, crabs, clams, sea snails, lobsters, are just a few of the species directly affected by the change.

The loss of the reefs, which serve as nursery, home, and hunting range for many species, also act to protect the shores from the full force of storm surges and waves.

But the biggest losses will occur to the varied species that will lose their prey species.

These changes will only happen if we make them happen.

Governments make mandates when its politically correct to do so, but by and large have really failed to provide the solutions we need. Big businesses are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo and will continue to avoid significant investment and involvement in solutions until the projected profits can exceed the necessry costs to commit to that kind of change.

That leaves us, we the people of the world, to do this.

Since this is a company blog, let me point out that my company, WaveGo, has designed a commuter vehicle that not only gets over 60 miles per gallon with super low emissions but are also the perfect bridge vehicles as they run equally well on gasoline, diesel, kerosene, biodiesel, ethanol and methanol.

Please support us in our fund raising campaign on Indiegogo.com by visiting http://igg.me/p/336924 and making a donation.

Whether you donate or not please pass the link on to others as crowdfunding doesn’t work unless a lot of people visit the link.

We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night.

In the case of the terrarists -- and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on the planet , giant energy companies like ExxonMobil , Chevron , ConocoPhillips , BP , and Shell -- you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren.

Since then, the big energy companies have invested a remarkable amount of time, money, and energy in the development of techniques that would allow them to recover previously unrecoverable reserves : fracking , deep-water drilling , and tar-sands production , among others.

They also began to go after huge deposits of what energy expert Michael Klare calls “ extreme ” or “tough” energy -- oil and natural gas that can only be acquired through the application of extreme force or that requires extensive chemical treatment to be usable as a fuel.

The lead industry , the asbestos industry , and the tobacco companies all knew the dangers of their products, made efforts to suppress the information or instill doubt about it even as they promoted the glories of what they made, and went right on producing and selling while others suffered and died. And here’s another similarity: with all three industries, the negative results conveniently arrived years, sometimes decades, after exposure and so were hard to connect to it.

If Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 plane hijackings or the Tsarnaev brothers’ homemade bombs constitute terror attacks, why shouldn’t what the energy companies are doing fall into a similar category ? And if so, then where is the national security state when we really need it?

On July 15, 1979, at a time when gas lines, sometimes blocks long, were a disturbing fixture of American life, President Jimmy Carter spoke directly to the American people on television for 32 minutes, calling for a concerted effort to end the country’s oil dependence on the Middle East. “To give us energy security,” he announced, “I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun...

Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20% of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

It’s true that, at a time when the science of climate change was in its infancy, Carter wouldn’t have known about the possibility of an overheating world, and his vision of “alternative energy” wasn’t exactly a fossil-fuel-free one.

Six months later, on January 23, 1980, in his last State of the Union Address , he would proclaim what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine: “Let our position be absolutely clear,” he said. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Instead, the Pentagon would fatefully begin organizing itself to protect U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf.

 More than three decades later, ironies abound: thanks in part to those oil wars, whole swaths of the energy-rich Middle East are in crisis, if not chaos, while the big energy companies have put time and money into a staggeringly fossil-fuel version of Carter’s “alternative” North America.  They’ve focused on shale oil, and on shale gas as well, and with new production methods, they are reputedly on the brink of turning the United States into a “new Saudi Arabia.”

If true, this would be the worst, not the best, of news.  In a world where what used to pass for good news increasingly guarantees a nightmarish future, energy “independence” of this sort means the extraction of ever more extreme energy, ever more carbon dioxide heading skyward, and ever more planetary damage in our collective future.  This was not the only path available to us, or even to Big Oil.

With their staggering profits, they could have decided anywhere along the line that the future they were ensuring was beyond dangerous.  They could themselves have led the way with massive investments in genuine alternative energies (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, algal, and who knows what else), instead of the exceedingly small-scale ones they made, often for publicity purposes.  

They could have backed a widespread effort to search for other ways that might, in the decades to come, have offered something close to the energy levels fossil fuels now give us.  They could have worked to keep the extreme-energy reserves that turn out to be surprisingly commonplace deep in the Earth.

And we might have had a different world (from which, by the way, they would undoubtedly have profited handsomely).  Instead, what we’ve got is the equivalent of a tobacco company situation, but on a planetary scale. 

To complete the analogy, imagine for a moment that they were planning to produce even more prodigious quantities not of fossil fuels but of cigarettes, knowing what damage they would do to our health.  Then imagine that, without exception, everyone on Earth was forced to smoke several packs of them a day.

If that isn’t a terrorist -- or terrarist -- attack of an almost unimaginable sort, what is?  If the oil execs aren’t terrarists, then who is?  And if that doesn’t make the big energy companies criminal enterprises, then how would you define that term?

To destroy our planet with malice aforethought, with only the most immediate profits on the brain, with only your own comfort and wellbeing (and those of your shareholders) in mind: Isn’t that the ultimate crime? Isn’t that terracide?

Tesla Motors announced that it has paid off the entire loan awarded to the company by the Department of Energy in 2010. In addition to payments made in 2012 and Q1 2013, today’s wire of almost half a billion dollars repays the full loan facility with interest.

Tesla brought its Roadster sports car to market with a 30% gross margin, designed electric powertrains for Daimler and had done preliminary design of the Model S all before receiving a government loan.

In 2010, Tesla was awarded a milestone-based loan, requiring matching private capital obtained via public offering, by the DOE as part of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program. This program was signed into law by President Bush in 2008 and then awarded under the Obama administration in the years that followed.

This program is often confused with the financial bailouts provided to the then bankrupt GM and Chrysler, who were ineligible for the ATVM program, because a requirement of that program was good financial health.

The loan payment was made today using a portion of the approximately $1 billion in funds raised in last week’s concurrent offerings of common stock and convertible senior notes.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer and cofounder, purchased $100 million of common equity, the least secure portion of the offering. “I would like to thank the Department of Energy and the members of Congress and their staffs that worked hard to create the ATVM program, and particularly the American taxpayer from whom these funds originate,” said Elon Musk. “I hope we did you proud.”

Tesla Motors' goal is to accelerate the world’s transition to electric mobility with a full range of increasingly affordable electric cars.

For the latest information from Tesla Motors, including press releases and the Tesla blog, please visit: teslamotors.com/press

Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors, two startups founded to make battery-powered cars, are both in the news, but for very different reasons.

Fisker seemed to think if you designed a beautiful car, people would buy it,” says Brett Smith, codirector for manufacturing, engineering, and technology at the Center for Automotive Research. “The Tesla vehicles are good looking, but Tesla focused more on the technology, not the sheet metal.”

A key example is Tesla’s battery technology. “Tesla’s lithium-ion battery pack technology is five to 10 years ahead of competitors when it comes to a passenger electric vehicle application, as measured by performance and cost to manufacture,” says Andrea James, an analyst for Dougherty.

“Tesla’s battery lead allows it to produce a better vehicle at more affordable price.”

When Tesla was founded, it was based on an idea from J.B. Straubel, now Tesla’s chief technology officer, that commodity lithium-ion batteries designed for portable electronics could be used to make relatively low-cost battery packs for electric vehicles.

The advantage of these batteries was supposed to be twofold: the batteries were designed to be safer and, because they were bigger and flat rather than cylindrical, they were simpler to package together into a battery pack.

Tesla not only benefits from lower costs for its own cars, it’s also been able to sell its technology to other automakers, providing a boost of revenue that helped it survive in the time between producing its first car, the Roadster, and the current Model S.

Unlike the Tesla Model S, which runs only on batteries, the Fisker Karma has both batteries and a gas engine for powering long trips.

FORTUNE -- China Light and Power's roots are more than a hundred years deep in Hong Kong.

That makes CLP a player in the greatest challenge of our time: How to balance Asia's soaring energy demands with the planet's urgent need to wean itself from fossil fuels.

Andrew Brandler, CEO of the CLP Group since 2000, has degrees from Cambridge University and Harvard Business School, and he's co-chair of the energy and climate group within the Geneva-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

He'll be leaving CLP's corner office later this year to join Sir Elly Kadoorie & Sons Limited, the private company of the Kadoorie Family, CLP's largest shareholder. This week he sat down with Fortune's David Whitford in Hong Kong.

Across the whole group, it's mostly fossil fuels -- about 60% coal and 15% gas -- plus 20% renewables and 5% nuclear. And you're not building any more coal plants?

The government in 2010 came out with a public consultation about the future energy needs for the whole of Hong Kong that postulated by 2020 nuclear being 50% of the electricity supply, gas 40%, and coal 10%.

We were an investor in China's first commercial nuclear power station at Daya Bay, which supplies about 25% of Hong Kong's electricity.

If Hong Kong needs more nuclear, we're keen to invest in that.

If you're doing a one-off project, like in the United States, with all the regulatory issues and design issues, the costs just balloon.

But if you can spread all those upfront costs over a whole program, it's not so burdensome. And if you can get the supply chain working -- which China is very good at -- you can bring those costs down dramatically.

Without nuclear it's hard to see how the world will continue to meet energy demand growth without catastrophic risk to the climate.

Nuclear is the only technology that exists today that can provide base-load power at a reasonable cost -- if you get the program right -- with zero carbon emissions.

China has by far the most aggressive nuclear buildout underway in the world today, with 28 new plants planned or already under construction.

We're a big company -- $20 billion market cap -- and we are 20,000 megawatts across the region. But every quarter China builds another CLP.

And something like 60,000 megawatts is coming from coal.

It's very hard to say to voters, "Look, I have to make you poorer now because we're going to have to slow down growth or increase costs of energy production which will have the consequence of slowing down growth. But don't worry, it's going to benefit your children or your grandchildren by the year 2050."

What we say essentially is that if everybody followed our strategy -- if the whole industry did it -- then there's some chance by 2050 that the electricity supply industry in this part of the world is largely decarbonized, and on a trajectory to hit what the UNFCC [ United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ] has said is what you need to in order to avoid massive climate change.

Not carbon-free, but what we're saying is we want to get our portfolio to a carbon intensity of 0.2 kilograms per kilowatt hour.

One thing we could say is we're going to stop growing, stop investing, in which case someone in a white suit comes into my office, puts my arms in a straightjacket, marches me out, and someone else takes over.

We can make more investments in nuclear, more investments in renewable energy, more investments in gas-fired generation.

CLP cannot be on a trajectory of continuing to increase its carbon emissions without regard for the consequences and hope to continue to be in business.

That does not mean stopping all investments that have carbon emissions, that's unrealistic. But it's about de-risking the portfolio slowly over time so that we can still grow the business and earn returns for our shareholders, risk-adjusted for carbon, while preserving our broader franchise.

I think there needs to be a technology breakthrough -- a black swan that no one has thought about that comes along and solves the world's energy problems.

We’re being told that – thanks to technological advances like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling – the US is undergoing an energy revolution, leading us in a few short years to become once again the world’s biggest oil producer and an exporter of natural gas.

According to the Oil & Gas Industry and their proponents, “fracking” will provide the US with energy security, low energy prices for the foreseeable future, more than a million jobs, and economic growth. And they tell us that we can frack our way to independence without hurting the environment.

Help us expose these lies and turn the tide in the ultimate fight against greed by pre-ordering and participating in the writing and editing of Richard Heinberg's next book, SNAKE OIL! How Big Energy's Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future.

It focuses, more than any of Richard's previous books, on the culpability of the oil industry for actively discouraging awareness and action on climate change and peak oil .

Richard Heinberg is the author of ten books, including The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, Peak Everything: Waking up to a Century of Declines and The Party's Over: Oil, War & the Fate of Industrial Societies.

SNAKE OIL WILL BE FINISHED AND PRINTED BY JULY 1, 2013. $5500: This small amount will cover the book's publishing costs.

SNAKE OIL is a print-on-demand book, meaning it will be shipped to you as soon as it's finished.

Beyond that, as you'll see in the perks, we'll provide to you a special edition of the book, autographed copies, limited edition art prints and all kinds of recognition for recognizing that this is a critical fight at a critical time.

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Goals
The ultimate goal of the primary resistance movement in this scenario is simply a living planet—a planet not just living, but in recovery, growing more alive and more diverse year after year. A planet on which humans live in equitable and sustainable communities without exploiting the planet or each other.

Given our current state of emergency, this translates into a more immediate goal, which is at the heart of this movement’s grand strategy:

Goal 1: To disrupt and dismantle industrial civilization; to thereby remove the ability of the powerful to exploit the marginalized and destroy the planet.

This movement’s second goal both depends on and assists the first:

Goal 2: To defend and rebuild just, sustainable, and autonomous human communities, and, as part of that, to assist in the recovery of the land.
To accomplish these goals requires several broad strategies involving large numbers of people in many different organizations, both aboveground and underground. The primary strategies needed in this theoretical scenario include the following:

Strategy A: Engage in direct militant actions against industrial infrastructure, especially energy infrastructure.

Strategy B: Aid and participate in ongoing social and ecological justice struggles; promote equality and undermine exploitation by those in power.

Strategy C: Defend the land and prevent the expansion of industrial logging, mining, construction, and so on, such that more intact land and species will remain when civilization does collapse.

Strategy D: Build and mobilize resistance organizations that will support the above activities, including decentralized training, recruitment, logistical support, and so on.

Strategy E: Rebuild a sustainable subsistence base for human societies (including perennial polycultures for food) and localized, democratic communities that uphold human rights.

In describing this alternate future scenario, we should be clear about some shorthand phrases like “actions against industrial infrastructure.” Not all infrastructure is created equal, and not all actions against infrastructure are of equal priority, efficacy, or moral acceptability to the resistance movements in this scenario. As Derrick wrote in Endgame, you can’t make a moral argument for blowing up a children’s hospital.

On the other hand, you can’t make a moral argument against taking out cell phone towers. Some infrastructure is easy, some is hard, and some is harder.

There’s something admirable about the concept of protracted popular warfare that was used in China and Vietnam. It’s an elegant idea, if war can ever be described in such terms; the core idea is adaptable and applicable even in the face of major setbacks and twists of fate.

But protracted popular warfare as such doesn’t apply to the particular future we are discussing. The people in that scenario will never have the numbers that protracted popular warfare requires. But they will also face a different kind of adversary, for which different tactics are applicable. So they will take the essential idea of protracted popular warfare and apply it to their own situation—that of needing to save their planet, to bring down industrial civilization and keep it down. And they will devise a new grand strategy based on a simple continuum of steps that flow logically one after the other.

In this alternate future scenario, Decisive Ecological Warfare has four phases that progress from the near future through the fall of industrial civilization. 

The first phase is Networking & Mobilization.

The second phase is Sabotage & Asymmetric Action.

The third phase is Systems Disruption.

And the fourth and final phase is Decisive Dismantling of Infrastructure.

Each phase has its own objectives, operational approaches, and organizational requirements. There’s no distinct dividing line between the phases, and different regions progress through the phases at different times.

These phases emphasize the role of militant resistance networks. The aboveground building of alternatives and revitalization of human communities happen at the same time.

But this does not require the same strategic rigor; rebuilding healthy human communities with a subsistence base must simply happen as fast as possible, everywhere, with timetables and methods suited to the region.

This scenario’s militant resisters, on the other hand, need to share some grand strategy to succeed.

Officially, 21 coal, gas and oil-fired plants have been slated for closure out to 2017 in the central European energy market – which includes Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

This represents about 7GW of capacity, and is over and above the 6GW of anticipated nuclear retirements in Germany and Belgium over the same period.

But according to the European energy team at UBS, this may just scratch the surface of what’s needed – and a further 41GW may have to be closed to restore the industry to profitability and offset the “downside” to centralised generation created by the renewables boom.

That would bring total closures of coal and gas plants over the coming four years to 49GW – which just happens to match the amount of wind and solar capacity that UBS anticipates will be added over the same period.

UBS says the central European market is in rapid decline because of falling demand, the construction of too much conventional generation capacity, and a low Co2 price.

But it says the most important driver has been the “remarkable” increase of renewable capacity, and in particular solar, mainly in Germany.

Solar, as is noted in a previous report about the solar “revolution”, is “cannibalising” the earnings of the centralised generators, which are unable to cut their output to changing demand conditions, and will be increasingly exposed to times when they have to generate power when the fuel cost is higher than the spot price.

The UBS analysis goes through a range of scenarios in its “base case” – including the addition of 49GW of wind and solar in the next five years, the closure of 6GW of nuclear, and 25GW of coal and gas – about three times what has already been announced. And it assumes relatively stable prices for carbon, coal, gas and oil.

This base case scenario shows relatively stable baseload prices, but peak prices plunge because of the increasing “cannibalisation” from solar power. .By 2020, UBS predicts, the gross margin for coal-fired generation is around zero and the capacity factors of the plants – the percentage of time they are used – falls dramatically: brown coal to 66 per cent from 73 per cent, black coal to 37 per cent from 47 per cent, and gas to 18 per cent from 30 per cent.

Even assuming a 5 per cent peak capacity rating for wind, and zero for solar , UBS says that at least 30 per cent of the central European coal fleet and 30 per cent of the gas fleet need to close just to maintain cash flows at the depleted 2012 levels.

Already, the impact of reduced demand, growing renewables, and rooftop solar, is causing a decline in output in coal generation, bringing capacity factors down sharply, particularly for black coal generators.