Sluggish German economy forces EU carbon to record low
17 Jan 2013 17:26 Last updated: 17 Jan 2013 21:32
LONDON, Jan 17 (Reuters Point Carbon) – EU carbon prices hit a fresh record low on Thursday as poor economic data from Germany and relatively healthy supply of coal continued to force European power and coal prices lower.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2142679
In related news, California says they aren’t going to get involved in Australia’s carbon Market via any price linkages:
California downplays possibility of Australia CO2 market link
17 Jan 2013 00:33 Last updated: 17 Jan 2013 00:33
DAVIS, CALIFORNIA, Jan 16 (Reuters Point Carbon) – California officials said they have no plans to sign any agreement with Australia linking their carbon markets down the road, despite interest on the part of Australian officials to expand its coming emissions trading system.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2141217
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It looks like the EU Carbon price is following the trend of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) before it flatlined and folded.
Since the EU carbon price has been in free fall for awhile now, it is just a matter of time.
Related articles
- EU Carbon May Decline to Record as Glut Expands: Energy Markets – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
- EU Carbon Market Disclosure Draws Fire as Permit Prices Slump – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
Family Figueres, of UNFCCC and Costa Rica traditions, push Carbon Trading, even now.
The flatline is an indication of how corrupt the whole process is.
Carbon markets are the only markets I know of where fraud benefits all participants:-
The suppliers of fraudulent carbon credits get to make money with minimal effort.
The buyers of fraudulent carbon credits get to keep their costs down.
Since it doesn’t cost the criminals anything to issue fraudulent carbon credits, and companies welcome the opportunity to keep their costs down, carbon markets always rapidly evolve into an arms race to zero.
Boo hoo so sad to see this tragedy – my heart just flat-lines for the poor Co2 hucksters!
Fake problem. Fake solution. Fake money. = Fraud
This seems like the Church’s indulgences and forgiveness of sins. Say 5 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers and go in Peace.
How does one know if that works?
How much will a carbon credit lower the temp in 2100?
“The relative price of coal and gas is crucial to the health of European utilities. At the beginning of November 2012, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research firm, power utilities in Germany were set, on average, to lose €11.70 when they burned gas to make a megawatt of electricity, but to earn €14.22 per MW when they burned coal.”
Hmm. I wonder which route they will take?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/1/17/bp-talking-down-shale.html
Might as well give them away with packets of cornflakes.
I wonder if the numerous scammers and cold-callers (“You can get rich through carbon trading – ride the wave of global warming!”) have stopped ripping off the vulnerable and elderly yet? Everything about AGW is a scam from top to bottom.
Heeheehee. I like this. This is good. 🙂
If Gov Moonbeam isn’t lying, then this is the first example of intelligence WRT CO2 that California has exhibited on the subject.
Whatever will the grandchildren do now ?
They were, after all, the driving force behind the racket.
Weren’t they ?
INVESTOPEDIA Word of the Day . . . . “”””Graveyard Market
The period near the end of a prolonged bear market. In a graveyard market, long-time investors have taken large losses, while new investors prefer to stay liquid by sitting on the sidelines and keeping their money in cash or cash-equivalent securities until market conditions improve.
Investopedia Says:
The term graveyard market is an apt description of this market phenomenon: the investors in a graveyard market can’t get out of it, and the investors who aren’t in it don’t want to be. Therefore, until a positive outlook becomes more conclusive, the overall market conditions will be slow to improve.””””
Coincidentally???? Only I don’t think there are any long-time investors. Besides BP Capital . . . and that would be Boone Pickens.
http://www.ttnews.com/articles/natgasshowtemplate2.aspx?storyid=30706
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8825701/the-pacific-president/
both short reads . . .
This is the best news we could have. This has always been about money, and the ultimate closing of the European carbon market might just end it. Climate realists still may be losing the PR battle with MSM, but the money market remains supreme. When no profits are expected the “real” players will fall away and we will have to compete only with the “religion”, meaning we can fight only with the science. The remaining problem is Obama in the States. The major cabinet changes will signal where he is heading. Battle on Americans- we Canadians are with you.
One can easily understand why Thomson Reuters political friends are doing all they can to disrupt Canada’s energy industry ( http://ezralevant.com/2013/01/natives-as-frontmen-unscrupulo.html ), and propose to inflict punitive carbon tax policies to a captive populace ( http://www.straight.com/news/343006/marc-lee-progressive-carbon-tax-reform-win-win-opportunity-bc ) in order to save some of big green’s investors’ bacon.
I wonder if the BBC is feeling a bit pinched. Aren’t their retirements all tucked away in carbon?
Anthony:
I have been saying it for years.
Carbon trading is the only market where both the buyer and the seller are payed to lie so corruption is ‘built in’. Therefore, all carbon markets will fail because responsible traders will withdraw as soon organised crime starts to move in, and organised crime will move in as soon as it can.
Richard
Now that’s a hockey stick graph to be proud of!
I’m a bit confused.
“Australian officials to expand its coming emissions trading system.”
Has Australia started its carbon trading system or is it scheduled for release? I thought it was up and running.
Laurie Bowen @ 2:21
Boone Pickens is losing his shirt right now . While everyone touts the low price of natural gas , few realize that the current price exceeds the production costs . Four dollars per million cubic feet is about the break even point for conventional production – fracking is considerably more expensive . ( The last I heard gas was around three dollars seventy cents per mcf . Ol’ Boone’s company has invested heavily in Gulf Coast shale fields and is locked into ” use it or lose it ” leases . So it’s no wonder he wants the trucking industry to convert to nat gas vehicles . Also look for a decline in gas production over the next few years .
They giving away Carbon Credits with Loft Insulation now .Good way to cut everyones Carbon footprint create Fuel Poverty.Enviromental form of population control Freeze poor people to death.
A link for my comment above :
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/business/energy-environment/in-a-natural-gas-glut-big-winners-and-losers.html?src=me&ref&_r=0
clipe says:
January 17, 2013 at 1:33 pm
“The relative price of coal and gas is crucial to the health of European utilities. At the beginning of November 2012, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research firm, power utilities in Germany were set, on average, to lose €11.70 when they burned gas to make a megawatt of electricity, but to earn €14.22 per MW when they burned coal.”
———————————————
A MW is not a unit of energy. Your comment is meaningless drivel. Study physics enough to have a basic understanding of power and energy. Then you will be able to form a thought on the subject.
Sorry about being so frank, but you need to wake up.
I spent 20 years digging up monuments that mark property corners, but this was a year that stands out in memory.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-02-02/news/9602020132_1_frost-pipes-near-record-low-temperatures
“With little or no protective blanket of snow to cover it from near-record low temperatures, the ground around the Chicago area is fast becoming a dirt Popsicle.”
—
But a whole world of change is also occurring beneath our crunching footsteps, and many people don’t realize the precise march of the elements below until the moment they turn on the faucet and nothing happens.
Scientists, builders and plumbers know it as the frost line: The depth to which the ground is frozen.
As temperatures remain locked in the teens or single digits, the frost is starting to reach down to the vast network of underground pipes that snake and tangle beneath our feet, pipes that were buried to keep them away from the cold.
It is like an annual, subterranean ice age, a glacier that moves downward instead of forward, growing each winter and receding each spring.
Buildings are built and pipes are laid based on the average depth where the frost line stops its annual push.
Some of those pipes are ancient, buried since the 19th Century, which means they haven’t broken yet but are also growing more fragile.
As the frost line pushed down this week, Chicago’s Water Department began getting calls from people who never much thought about the frost line, until it had reached their pipes. On Thursday, some 1,000 people called to report frozen pipes.
To prevent the problem, officials suggested that homeowners keep a slow trickle of cold water running somewhere in the house.
“It’s not going to get better through the week,” said John Kosiba, assistant commissioner in the Chicago Water Department. “We anticipate the frost line is going to go deeper.”
The National Weather Service says that the frost line around Chicago typically doesn’t reach beneath 42 inches. Most municipalities require an 18-inch buffer, putting the underground water works at 5 feet below the surface.
But on Thursday, as city crews spread out to begin thawing homeowners’ pipes, measurements showed that the frost line has reached the 42-inch level in some places and promises to drive deeper in coming days.
===================
I know of one civil engineer (my boss), that was worried that the specs in use when he built, might be exceeded.
( a mere 17 years ago).
This is good news. It was 16 EUA in July, now it’s 5.6. That’s a really good trend for carbon credits. We should all applaud. Cannot wait until it is 0.00. This is the way it should be.
We pay $23 Australian per tonne for our carbon emissions and the gov are to increase it each year by $6. They then want to join the European ETS. Thankfully The current mob will be thrown out later this year unless they bribe enough with borrowed cash. Trading based on a fraud is doomed to fail eventually. Thank God for the financial troubles or we would all be trading carbon and building windmills. As it is only the dumbest are.
Apart from being a government tax scam in its own right, carbon trading has provided organised criminals in the European Union with a bonanza.
Carbon credits are subject to Value Added Tax in each member state of the European Union. EU Allowances were first issued in 2008 resulting in a huge increase in trading. Criminals immediately targeted the carbon markets to commit VAT fraud. The cost of this fraud to the UK economy alone was £5 billion of lost tax revenue.
The European Union had stupidly compelled the national registries which hold carbon credits on behalf of account holders, to publish the full personal details of the account holders on their web sites. This resulted in phishing and millions of euros worth of carbon credit certificates were stolen.
In 2010 a building in the Czech Republic which held the national registry of carbon credits received a bomb threat. The building was evacuated and whilst empty hackers gained access to the registry and transferred certificates to other national registries. The certificates were then sold. The Greek, Dutch and Italian registries were hacked at the same time in a co-ordinated attack.
Security at some national registries had been so poor that only an email address was needed to open an account. The national registries were therefore forced to close until they established independently audited security measures set by the EU. Now if someone opens an account at the UK national registry it is examined by both the Revenue and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
As a result thousands of bogus registry accounts have closed. For example in Norway the registry had 3000 accounts, but only 150 of them were legally involved in the scheme.
A trial in Frankfurt of criminals involved in carbon trading carousel fraud is just one example. The “individuals in question acquired permits free from VAT under European Union rules and resold the permits, reportedly to Deutsche Bank, with VAT applied, only to disappear without remitting the tax – said to amount to EUR300m – to German authorities.”
http://www.tax-news.com/news/Six_Jailed_In_EU_Carbon_Trading_Carousel_Fraud_Probe____53133.html
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Why is the price of carbon declining? Is the global warming movement slowing down?
Which one will hit the wall first, the Euro Carbon market or Obama’s deficit funding?
But how can this be?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443779404577643592149738280.html
“Carbon Trading Heating Up
With California on Track to Implement Cap-Trade Laws, the Market Gets Active
By KATY BURNE and CASSANDRA SWEET
After a series of false starts, the market for trading carbon-emission credits is showing new signs of life in California.”
in Australia our carbon price is controled by our left wing Gov,t at $23 a ton the water melon heads (greens) would like to see it at $50 a ton god bless them the CSIRO and ABC are still continuing with the FRAUD http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-16/humans-to-feel-heat-of-warmer-future/4466276
Richard, some of us are of the opinion that carbon trading was designed, organised and implemented by criminals. The criminally stupid cheered them on.
I wish I could be overjoyed about this but I’ve been reading more and more that one of Obama’s agendas for his second term is to tackle, yep, ‘climate change’.
The thought just struck me that, had the CAGW meme fully taken hold with the public, that carbon taxes would have been the first taxes in history to enjoy popular support. No small wonder then that the politicians remain loath to simply call off the charade. The prospect of a popular tax is simply not something they can bring themselves to walk away from.
Again, I will note: think about it; it doesn’t matter whether global warming is true or not.
If enough countries commit to the idea, the carbon trade market will be off and running.
This is the motivation behind the united nations effort for “principles of responsible investing.”
http://www.unpri.org/
Go to that web page. See that they have “signatories.” Those are the various countries who have committed to steer toward green investment in various fashions. Espeically public employee retirement funds.
Yes, the same racket as organized crime has exploited.
Why would a country commit to green investing?
First because they desperately need invetment fund growth to fulfill retirement obligations.
Second: the deal is this: sign on even if you don’t believe, and help us get the rest of the fools to sign on – because then , either way, there will be money in it all – and the sooner you get in the better.
If your country goes solar, then invests in solar, it is less money than if you invest in solar then go solar. Get in on the ground floor.
So, it has been in each countries’ best interest to fake belief in the global warming and sign the statutes that look like momentum is building – so the next country down the continent will sign on – knowing all the time that this is a con game.
This con has not yet hit critical mass. Once it does, the global warming cultists will be home-free. Temps will not rise. So, continued green investments will be required to carry the illusion that the interventions are working so that the return on pension investments is stable and growing.
These types of incentives are why you have seen the various small nations become advocates. Do you think anyone in the govt of these countries can read MBH98 and figure out whether the principal components analysis was done decently or not? Do you think they saw the waters rise to their homes? No. And No.
For Bernie Madoff, money was made by making wealthy people think he was “the man” and to invest with him before the rest of the wealthy invested with him. That is why he was rubbing elbows, etc. Get in on the ground floor beflore the envetual herd comes trampling.
Rhoda R said:
January 17, 2013 at 2:04 pm
If Gov Moonbeam isn’t lying…
——————————————
That is a very, very, very big IF…
very
Carbon trading is organised crime IMNHO.
Even the UK’s ultra die-in-the-wool green & warmist supporting broadsheet has reported the collapse in the Global carbon trading system.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/10/global-carbon-trading-system
but, don’t hold your breath because in the UK the Climate Change Act 2008 ensures that the UK it is full steam ahead (No pun intended) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 34% by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050. Both these targets are set against a 1990 baseline.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/legislation/cc_act_08/cc_act_08.aspx
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/emissions/carbon_budgets/carbon_budgets.aspx
so our knucklehead Government(s) (started by Labour and supported by the Coalition) has set the UK on the path of economic and industrial ruination.
Billy says:
January 17, 2013 at 4:00 pm
“clipe says:
January 17, 2013 at 1:33 pm
“The relative price of coal and gas is crucial to the health of European utilities. At the beginning of November 2012, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research firm, power utilities in Germany were set, on average, to lose €11.70 when they burned gas to make a megawatt of electricity, but to earn €14.22 per MW when they burned coal.”
———————————————
A MW is not a unit of energy. Your comment is meaningless drivel. Study physics enough to have a basic understanding of power and energy. Then you will be able to form a thought on the subject.
Sorry about being so frank, but you need to wake up.”
Billy, why so angry? Are you a Carbon credit trader?
A little googling could have told you that the confusion of the units already happened at a journalists desk and is now spreading via copy & paste across the economics newspapers.
Example.
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21569039-europes-energy-policy-delivers-worst-all-possible-worlds-unwelcome-renaissance
And clipe was just citing them.
A simple mistake by a journalist in a hurry. Read MWh for MW and it makes perfect sense.
I would laugh but it would be an dark and sarcastic humour, because we all know who actually pays the ‘ferryman’ – you and me.
davidmhoffer:
At January 17, 2013 at 7:51 pm you say
Oh! That thought “struck me” decades ago.
There are three basic reasons why politicians have pushed AGW.
Firstly, governments need to raise taxes and people don’t like to pay taxes. So, governments seek a tax which people want to pay, and in the UK there is one (i.e. the National Lottery). Failing finding a tax that people want to pay, then governments seek a tax people will not object to paying. And who could object to paying a tax to save the planet for our children and grandchildren?
Secondly, almost all national economies gain economic competitiveness if all countries are economically constrained in proportion to their economic activity. Constraint of GHG emissions – notably CO2 – provides such constraint. The net result is that
(a) total economic activity reduces
but
(b) all except the richest countries gain economic activity and, thus, wealth.
Hence, such constraint (e.g. Kyoto Protocol) acts like handicapping in a horserace: everyone slows down but most competitors gain relative to the most powerful. This transfer of economic activity has happened to some degree with resulting acceleration to economic development in e.g. China.
Thirdly, the poorest countries want aid and technology transfer to reduce their poverty. So-called ‘climate reparations’ demand that the richest countries ‘compensate’ the poorest countries for the emissions from (i.e. the success of) the richest countries.
Richard
THE fundamental problem with these artificial markets is that the folks who buy the ‘product’ are largely one of two camps.
1) Folks who must have them, so once bought, are done. An electric utility, for example.
2) Folks who need one now (having a going concern) but able to leave. Those folks have a large incentive to buy now (think ‘car maker’) so they can operate while relocating. Once production is moved to, for example, China or Brazil, they then sell their useless ‘credits’.
Basically, after the initial sales, there are few ongoing buyers, and excess sellers as folks pack up and leave. Inevitably, prices will crash. The only way to hold prices up is to have growing demand (that doesn’t happen in high cost areas…)
At most, ‘carbon credits’ can hold the status quo of immobile industries and drive out mobile ones. At worst, it pays them to leave via granting ‘credits’ that are best unloaded fast to fund the relocation.
As per “Governor Moonbeam Brown” and lying. No, sadly, he is not lying. He really believes the stuff he says.
Near where I live is a major interstate bypass freeway. About 3 lanes each way. As newly elected governor (the first time in the ’70s) he sold the right of way where the freeway was to be built. Homes were built instead. For about 2 decades I had to deal with “traffic from hell” until a replacement governor bought the right of way back, had the homes destroyed (as folks built on it) and built the freeway. Similarly, a major overpass between two freeways had ‘flying ramps’ about 60 foot in the air built, but the approaches not done yet. That, too, was stopped. For a decade or two that sat. Chunks of freeway high in the air, unable to be reached…
He was sure we didn’t need more freeways and that folks would abandon their cars for mass transit if we just stopped building…
Now, as voters said NO! to a ‘peripheral canal’ to take Sacramento water past the bay-delta to Los Angeles, he is pushing to put it into a tunnel underground (at some ungodly $Billions). What about the salt water intrusion into the Bay delta and damage to fish runs from putting the Sacramento into a pipe to L.A.? Silence….
He is simply clueless and believes that his fantasies have merit. A high speed train to nowhere, a river in a hole in the ground, huge tax-the-rich expecting business to flock here, etc. etc.
IMHO he doesn’t even know there is an Australian carbon market and only some underling was involved in saying “nope”. That most likely reflexive as they think California needs to ‘lead’ with ever more outlandish boondoggles, not get involved with other folks…
So “Tax beatings will continue until business morale improves” and we will be ‘dreaming big’ while not doing anything practical…. Watch for a large hole in the ground to be bought with $Billions of Credit Card starting soon… to swallow a river. EPA assessment? What assessment? We don’t need no steeenking assessment! This is a democrat project, after all…
http://www.kcra.com/news/politics/Calif-federal-officials-reveal-water-tunnel-plan/-/11797268/15697464/-/g5iibh/-/index.html
But hey, what’s $24 Billion for a hole in the ground and destruction of our major river? We’re doing it to save the planet…
Though exactly how putting a natural river into a hole in the ground fixes “climate change” and what it will do to stop earthquakes is beyond me. Of course, he might have meant ‘healthy delta’ and ‘water supply’ as ‘both of them’. Which leaves open the question of how removing a natural river from the delta makes it more healthy…
We really would be much better off if he was just lying…
but he lives in his own ‘special’ world…
In related news:
The head of Germany’s environment agency (a government institution) demands that farmers buy “Climate certificates” to compensate for methane emissions from cows:
http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article112850373/Bauern-sollen-Klimazertifikat-fuer-Kuhstaelle-kaufen.html
Carbon trading can be equated to the world’s oldest profession:
You sell it, but you still have it, so you sell it again, but you still have it, so you sell it again………..
Time passes and it becomes progressively less attractive, so you sell it for less. Eventually, it becomes so unattractive you can’t sell it at all.
The buyer has bought nothing useful, so there is no economic benefit. The seller has produced nothing beneficial, so there is no economic benefit.
Not surprisingly, only organised crime, government and Ecoloons are the major supporters of the lunacy of carbon trading.
The power price isn’t going down for me. I’m buying a couple of stoves with heat exchangers. Reuters smokes funny stuff.
Carbon credit drive down the price of coal as compared to oil and natural gas. This makes coal more attractive for export to countries that are not subject to carbon credits, where the coal will be burned as a substitute for oil and gas.
Carbon credits might affect CO2 is there was no cheating and every country was onboard. However, as we can see in Australia, the effect of the carbon credits is to make power generation more expensive for the Australians and cheaper for the Chinese. This will drive down the price of manufacturing in China and increase the cost of manufacturing in Australia, which will result in a transfer of industry and jobs from Australia to China.
With less money and less industry the Austrians will have less demand for electricity, which will reduce their CO2 production. At the same time the Chinese with more money and more industry will increase their CO2 production with the now lower cost Australian coal. The CO2 from China will then be carried by the wind back to Australia.
Win win for China, lose lose for Australia,
I sometimes wonder how these scam markets ever got going.
ferd berple:
re your post at January 18, 2013 at 4:05 am
Yes, that is one purpose of such schemes. Please see my post at January 18, 2013 at 12:50 am which addresses taxes, but its second point also encompasses carbon trading.
Richard
Lawrie Ayres says: January 17, 2013 at 4:39 pm
We pay $23 Australian per tonne for our carbon emissions and the gov are to increase it each year by $6.
_______________________________
Why not buy Chicago credits a 1 cent each? Or Euro credits at €4 each? Surely if they think Global Warming is a world problem, then it does not matter where you buy the credits from. That would undermine the Aus carbon trading scheme in a trice.
.
Peter Miller says: January 18, 2013 at 2:00 am
Carbon trading can be equated to the world’s oldest profession:
You sell it, but you still have it, so you sell it again, but you still have it, so you sell it again………..
Time passes and it becomes progressively less attractive, so you sell it for less. Eventually, it becomes so unattractive you can’t sell it at all.
_____________________________________
Pfffff. That conjured up a rather undesirable vision, which I cannot now put out of my mind. I swear I will never touch a used Carbon Credit again…….
.
“Green Socialism: Germany May Nationalise Power Grid”
http://www.thegwpf.org/green-socialism-germany-nationalise-power-grid/
So let me get this straight, in the EU carbon is selling for $6 a ton but in Australia they have pegged it at $23?
What is wrong with Australians, why do they put up with this?
Carbon tax trading is just another scam like that big energy trading firm that caused blackouts in CA and went bankrupt years ago. The name is on the tip of my tongue but can not remember it. They wiped out many investors retirement funds.
“A MW is not a unit of energy. Your comment is meaningless drivel. Study physics enough to have a basic understanding of power and energy. Then you will be able to form a thought on the subject.”
ANy fool can see that MWhr was intended. Why not think before spouting off drivel?
For P. Walker, on the cost of nat gas: I believe you are right about Boone Pickens, in that he drilled so many dry gas wells. Still, he has to keep them producing in order to earn what he can from them. Remember that the ongoing cost of production is quite low once a well is drilled; the great majority of the expense of a project is front loaded, and once that money is spent, it’s spent.
There is another factor going on with the shale drillers right now that is driving gas prices lower, and that is that they are now drilling in areas that either have a lot of oil or a lot of “wet” gas, which is nat gas containing a high proportion of long chain hydrocarbons which condense into a very rich petroleum liquid which is more valuable than straight crude. (it’s already partially refined)
If you can produce 100 bbls of condensate a day, which is decent but not phenomenal for a shale well, at today’s prices you will be bringing in nearly $10,000 per day in condensate sales alone. Keep it up for just one year and that’s income of $3.65 million, and it doesn’t matter what price you sell the gas you produce at, since any money you get from the gas is just gravy. Given that the average shale gas well costs $4 – $5 million to drill today, one that produces a lot of condensate and/or oil with the gas can still hit payout in a couple of years, no matter what price you sell your gas at.
Drillers following this model are those who continue to drive the price of nat gas down, and I don’t see anything that will change this situation until demand for nat gas starts to pick up dramatically. That will probably only happen if the US authorizes nat gas exports, which isn’t decided yet.
P Walker says:
January 17, 2013 at 3:58 pm
wws says:
January 18, 2013 at 8:36 pm
————————————————
Great comments guys. I love this site. Reality in action.
I’ll also add that there are some new natural gas to liquid fuels and chemicals technologies coming down the pike that could become game-changers. These include:
– Direct catalytic conversion to ethylene (major companies already have plants to convert ethylene to 1-octene and beyond).
– Bioconversion of natural gas to diesel and other high(er) value products.
Innovation = business as usual for people living in the real world (to pick up on comments from other threads).
T. Boone would do well to get into this, as liquid natural gas is almost certainly a non-starter with U.S. automobile manufacturers.
I used to be in the LNG business as a cryogenic cargo (LNG) engineer on a 125,000 cubic meter LNG tanker. There is much more LNG around than most people realize. It’s used mostly for peak shaving in gas distribution systems. However, there is lots of experience/technology in handling the stuff.
Natural gas is a pretty good fuel for internal combustion engines. It has a really high auto-ignition temperature, so you can use it in very high compression engines, both Otto and Diesel cycle. It’s clean, except for the NOx created in a high compression (more efficient) engine. Of course, the specific gravity is only about 0.48, and the fuel is mostly hydrogen, so the miles-per-gallon would be much lower than diesel or gasoline. And, you have to keep it at -162 C at STP to keep it liquid.
As I recall, it takes some 30% of the energy in the gas to complete the process (liquification/transport/regasification). Still, if the gas field is “stranded” there is no other use for it.
My guess is that for automotive fuel, it will have limited use. Perhaps for urban automotive/truck fleets where CNG is not attractive for some reason. Or remote gas processing plants.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
(Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Carbon trading is an exercise in fraud, misinformation and manipulation. Venture there at your own risk.