7:15 PM 04/14/2019 | Energy
Chris White | Energy Reporter
U.S. energy is dominating the world, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry noted in a Game of Thrones-themed video the agency published Friday night.
“Innovation has spoken and it has refuted them completely,” Perry said in the video, referring to critics who supposedly say the U.S. is “running out of resources like oil.” He added: “We are not running out of energy.” The former Texas Governor also promoted the use of generation IV nuclear power to help reduce emissions.
“A new American energy era is coming,” Perry noted before listing some of the successes he says the Trump administration has had exporting energy. The U.S. has made big gains exporting coal and liquefied natural gas, he said, noting that coal exports had “their second best year ever.” (RELATED: Rick Perry Draws Ire For $3.7 Billion Nuclear Energy Bailout)
“Energy independence used to be a sound bite. Now it’s a reality,” said Perry, who drew a considerable amount of criticism in March after announcing a $3.7 billion in additional federal loans for the primary owners of a nuclear power project in Georgia that has been beset with delays and cost overruns. The Department of Energy video used a Games of Thrones-themed soundtrack overlaid with visuals of Perry touting U.S. energy achievements.
The video was published on the Friday before the first episode of the final season of Game of Thrones.
WATCH:
The loans are designed to help Vogtle Electric Generating Plant construct two nuclear reactors. Units 3 and 4 were planned to be completed by 2017, but have been plagued with construction delays and high costs. Unit 3 will not be ready to be loaded with fuel until 2020, while Unit 4 won’t go online until 2021. Perry claims regulations and permitting problems are to blame for the starts and stops.
Meanwhile, experts believe coal exports will continue to make gains. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted in 2018 that exports will surge 10 percent above 2017 despite an overall lag in production. Coal exports were up 32 percent in the first half of 2018 compared to the same time the previous year.
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Oil, Coal and natural gas are all limited resources, even nuclear power is limited. What those limits are have no bearing. A statement that we are not running out of them is empirically wrong. They do not replenish, thus any usage indicates we are running out.
We are under no threat of running out of energy resources in the next 300 years could certainly accomplish the same sentiment and maintain impeccable honesty. Do not let the enemy dictate the language of the debate.
Do the Math, by 2050 we need to add 3-5 cubic miles of oil energy equivalents; or 12 to 20 Billion solar rooftops, 9 to 15 million turbines or just 4 container ships of the Seaborg.co 20′ 30-ton shippable MSR:
The Case for the Good Reactor https://spark.adobe.com/page/1nzbgqE9xtUZF/
Thanks Walter Horsting, many fine comparisons.
hmmmmm…… oil, coal, and natural gas are/were all created from natural processes so actually will replenish naturally… though the timeline may be much longer than is useful for current human use.
Cheers!
Joe
Not likely, their natural processes were before bacteria evolved to decay the source materials. Now the bacteria eat it long before it becomes sufficiently buried to produce oil.
Note even close.
Fossil fuels form when plant matter is deposited in anaerobic environment and so it cannot be easily decomposed (called a bog). It gets buried deeply over time (millions of years), where a lot of heat and pressure are applied, and gas, oil, and eventually coal are the result.
The fossil fuel era (Pennsylvanian and Mississippian primarily) happened to have a lot of shallow water areas where plant matter could build up to form very thick deposits. The was because of the higher sea levels, warmer climate, and massive swamps.
So, if there were currently giant swamps filling up with massive amounts of organic materials and these areas eventually were buried, then in a few million years you would begin to see new fossil fuel deposits forming.
Meanwhile we are extracting only 50% or so of whats in the known fields, and there are still more undiscovered fields of gas and oil out there. We haven’t even begun to touch the most massive deposits of oil found in the Green Shale deposits (and likely they will never be worth mining).
We just have to have about 40 to 60 years of oil left for us to reach economically feasible replacements for many uses of the oil. Electricity can be generated by using Nuclear Fuels with breeding capabilities, and we can burn most nuclear waste, plutonium, and thorium – so there are thousands of years left of fuel for generating electricity.
And it is reasonable to assume that in thousands of years, assuming we do not kill each other, someone may FINALLY have Fusion Power working. I’d say 50/50 per thousand or so years… (yeah, that last part is sarcasm about Fusion Power).
History teaches that we should be skeptical of any claim to know when we will run out of any particular resource. Any prediction needs the caveat, a big caveat, “Based on what we know now…”
I get your point, but for practical purposes the statement is empirically correct. And besides, methane is being being produced continually biologically.
Remember, methane burns rather nicely so, lets all take a long breath and calm down. No, the sky is not falling!
The sky is not…but apparently old rocket parts are!
astonerii, linear thinking has been confounding Malthusians since M himself made his predictions at the end of the 18th Century. The linear logic of zero sum arithmetic idea is so compelling in its simplest form, but one should know that the overwhelming, number one principle component in such considerations is human ingenuity. There never has been and there never will be a shortage of anything.
This, my friend is an axiom that Malthus can be excused for not knowing. But for Jevons (Indusrtial Rev will end for lack of coal) in the 19th C, The Club of Rome, Population Bomb Ehrlich, and today’s M clones, there is no excuse, having seen the total failure of all dire cataclysmic predictions at the hands of human ingenuity.
To those who ask “What must we do”, the answer is …nothing, it will be done for you.
In about 5 billion years the Sun will become a red giant. So we are running out of solar and wind as well.
More relevant is the old saying “the stone age did not end because we ran out of stone.”
That’s the typical play on resource illiterates along the lines of they aren’t making more farmland. The educated approach to the problem considers technology adaptation in both the supply side and demand side. More rapid adjustment in energy policy driven by advocacy lobbying alone is called a recession or depression.
Actually we are making more farm land through land use changes. It was that same innovative thinking which created farm land by terracing mountain sides…centuries ago.
Doomsayers only demonstrate their lack of ingenuity and poor reasoning.
While it is technically true that oil/gas/coal will run out some day, that is no reason to beggar ourselves now because of it.
It takes wealth to support the scientists who will find the solution to this problem.
So the best long term solution is to continue to use fossil fuels, and use the resulting wealth to invent the next great thing.
Astonerii,
While you are essentially correct in your assertion that Oil, Coal, Gas, and Nuclear fissile materials are limited to what the Earth currently holds, the same is also true for the materials needed to manufacture both Solar PV Cells AND Wind Turbines. (And Battery Materials) The only Truly Sustainable form of existance requires taking Nothing from the Earth as it gets used and not returned.
Bryan A
Not true. Today’s nuclear (fission only) processes do allow the creation of more fuel after fission than existed before fission. With the proper reactors burning the proper mix of Uranium, Thorium, and Plutonium alloys and isotopes, you get more fuel out of the reactor than you started with.
That’s not more fuel – just more thorough use of everything that goes in to the mix.
Phil’s Dad
No, that is not true.
There is more usable fuel (more fissile material present in the fuel) AFTER generating many hundreds of hours of power than you started with.
Now, to do that, you must begin with the proper fuel mix of isotopes and poisons and control rods, and you must plan the fuel reloading sequence – this does not happen without planning and design preparations! – but the method has been known for dozens of years. But Jimmy Carter feared a terrorist nation might learn how to get nuclear fuel and create a bomb, so he destroyed those plans and those projects.
Then Obola gave Iran 1.5 billion in cash so they could get the money to do get material and make bombs faster.
I’ll have to lock into that. Sounds a little fissy though
If that were truly the case then there would be no spent fuel rod nuclear waste
A fast breeder reactor based on 235U will breed more fuel as 239Pu, but that process is limited. Further, power reactors are slow, not fast, which are inefficient at breeding.
Reactors using, say 235U, to breed 233U from 232Th, can, in principle, breed much more, because 232Th is much more abundant than 235U. (No such power reactors currently exist.) But it is the engineering limits and waste build-up that will limit amount of new fuel bred, so the multiplication factor is not necessarily large.
Um. Careful. You need certain types of elements to “breed” new nuclear fuel, and those elements are finite. For example, U238 is “spent Uranium” but can be turned into fuel given the right process.
I get your point, but someday we will run out of the necessary elements within the Earth to breed new nuclear fuel. Its a LONG WAY off – but its there.
That’s why Fusion Power is actually important to some future “us”. There is a LOT MORE hydrogen out there then Uranium and Thorium, and we can mine it in the comets -assuming technology keeps advancing. If we ever figure out Fusion Power, then we have enough power to last us essentially forever (or at least billions of years).
The average civilization lasts 400 years. The US is 200 years old. It is not my long term concern about the US running out of coal in 400 years or methane cathrates yet untapped, or oil shale yet untapped and then running out in 1000 years. My concern is how does civilization be resilient enough to last past 400 years.
“Oil, Coal and natural gas are all limited resources”
Then we shouldn’t be wasting them by manufacturing waste products like solar panels and wind turbines
That illiteracy can be unpacked to also say that the resource was limited the day the first commercial oil well was completed by Edwin Drake in 1859, and the day Spindletop was completed in 1901, and ……
Everything is limited on this planet, some are just more limited than others. It’s a fact that sun and wind can’t completely power the future of the world. We will meet a point of no return where we can no longer manufacture devices to capture and store energy and then what happens?
We could not build Hoover Dam today because of regulations and permitting problems.
It would more likely be used as a keystone in a sales pitch to generate the vote to free up 100x more funds for other pet spending programs. Pelosi is good at that and even Obama count not hold back a chuckle at the podium over that successful ploy.
Read the comment above. The Axiom.
I think in many ways, your statement is very pithy. That is, the argument that “we must abandon fossil fuel” now because (fill in the blank) to move to “green energy” which as you say, cannot adequately replace that energy in any near term time frame, makes no sense what-so-ever.
So yes, let’s use what we have, that’s enabled us to prosper, so the next best thing that creates demand for itself is invented/produced.
The economics and free markets will determine the next great thing if allowed.
Solar last 20 years. Wind lasts less and is usually shut down due to poor economics. The copper, steel, silica sand, rare earths, silver, lithium, lead, and arsenic to make these technologies are all more limited than coal by hundreds of years. We need to go with the longest term resource, not the shortest. For batteries and solar and wind, there isn’t enough known reserves to implement them, so we adjust to long term resources or fantasize reserves exist and crash out of those technologies. Our choice.
Good nuggets of fact Donald Kasper
From one of my all-time faves, liberal though he is, ‘When glaciers grow in Tennessee.’
H/t No PhD, no matter that one,
The one and only Freeman the Dyson.
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Gen 4 seems to be gaining momentum
Celebrate the massive changes made by the Trump administration to support market competition for all forms of energy production! It is truly ‘Making America Great Again!’
Rick Perry unfortunately appears to be a True Believer in manmade climate, and also thinks solar power (and probably wind as well) is just wonderful. So, he’s a moron, but at least he is pro-fossil fuel as well. His support for nuclear seems based more on the concept that it’s “clean” energy, not on what it will (or won’t) do for the energy grid. Back in the moron column.
Well, he did mention batteries for storing power, so maybe he’s just not very good at economics. With enough batteries, you can turn solar and wind into a “more” reliable source (or “less” intermittent), its just a matter of the ridiculous costs involved and having enough backup power when the batteries run out.
Oh, and the wasteful land use…
And killing of birds and bats…
And toxic materials in the solar panels…
And no recycling strategy…
OK. He is a moron.
Yucca Mountain has been built and sits idle to store all US nuclear waste. Next problem. Oh, and mining rare earths is sweet talk for mine nuclear isotopes and separate out the rare earths from the nuclear elements.
… to expand our energy usage. Amen brother.
I am sick to death of being told to conserve, conserve, conserve. I don’t WANT to live like my ancestors, huddled around a fire in a frigid, dank, hovel. I want to enjoy the fruits of our BEST, most EFFICIENT, and CHEAP energy sources. ENOUGH with this stumbling backward to an Iron-Age lifestyle.
Discovery-of, and Use-of vast supplies of cheap, portable (no need to locate your Industry on rivers causing dire pollution) energy has unleashed mankind’s greatest leap forward in the long history of hominids! The eco-leftists want to drag us back into the Iron Age … NO THANKS!
Off thread but the BBC on Thursday at prime time 9.00pm has Climate Change The Facts and to judge by the blurb in the Saturday Times it’s going to be awful . We are all doomed. Worst of all, the Beeb has trashed Attenborough’ s reputation. How can we counter this nonsense
Well, we should all have the heart of a lion and not despair. 😉
The BBC and the MSM everywhere have been riding this one-trick pony for some 20 years and the poor creature is about to collapse. The more they caterwaul the more people begin to notice it’s all just a repeat of what they’ve been saying. And where are the disasters? Every new hurricane and flood gets tagged with climate change, but over time the storms and floods are the same not worse.
So time is on our side. Be of good heart.
Fossil Fuels are clean renewable energy. When burned completely they release Carbon Dioxide that all Flora require to build their cellular structures. Their respiration provides Oxygen to all the Fauna and adds more Carbon Dioxide into the environment. The Flora provides food for Fauna that they use to build their cellular structures and their waste creates fertilizer for Flora as Carbon Dioxide and as manure. As Flora they sequester Carbon that can be used as fuel and become future Coal as a Fossil Fuel. Oil is a product of microorganisms that once lived from sequestration of Carbon from Carbon Dioxide and Monoxide. Natural gas and methane are all Fossil Fuels sequestered in the ground from past eons. As Fossil Fuels they have a higher energy than anything mankind has created to make energy from the Solar Radiation or Wind. Fossil Fuels are therefore Renewable Energy. New discoveries are found every year and countries that have vast reserves not on the market are available for the future. Vast amounts of Fossil Fuels are used to create Renewable Green Energy Systems (RGES) that have increased the need for Fossil Fuels and has added more Carbon Dioxide into our environment than if those Fossil Fuels were used directly for energy. Hydroelectric and Nuclear – like all other energy systems – use vast amounts of Cement that adds Carbon Dioxide into the environment. There is not a single form of energy that doesn’t add Carbon Dioxide into our environment. All sources are subsidized and unequally taxed by our governments. But the narrative of governments demonizes Fossil Fuels for Global Warming and Climate Change while supporting those energies that are just as relient upon Fossil Fuels. The hypocrisy is ludicrous.
Does anyone know if they are bailing out 4th gen nucs or are they conventional designs?
If conventional then I call boondoggle.
Gen 4 doesn’t exist in commercial form yet.
Great news and great job Secretary Perry and President Trump! Extremely inspiring!
We need more energy all the time as population grows. Proper information would help in the public over the next few years to reach the right conclusion about the necessity for our continual dependence on fossil fuels.
It would be a great service to the country if the Energy department could make a short video like this explaining our ever-increasing demand for energy in this country, and others, plotted out to show how fossil fuels are the only hope we have to maintain a healthy civilization and grow our country, and the world, for at least hundreds of years while we figure out and implement longer term energy sources.
This is what Deep pockets , i.e. the US Government can do. Propaganda yes, just as the Green blob has been using it against us for so many years.
A brief story about energy.
First it was human labour, your own or slaves. Animals were used and even
the early Hydro, the water wheels. We tried wind, OK for ships after we
figured out what shape sails to use, but windmills, better than nothing but
when steam came along they were dropped at once, why ? because the wind
does not always blow that’s why.
The Sun was used to a very limited extent such as shinning off shields to
blind the enemy, but gunpowder was a lot better.
Steam was further developed and was good, coal and later oil were compact
forms of energy and of course oil via petrol gave us mobility.
Finally we came to nuclear, true there were a fee minor hiccups along the
way, but that has been the story of energy too, look at the deaths in the early
days of mining.
Today in a very short period , about 1850, we have transformed society and
now we live to a ripe old age and enjoy life, I certainly do.
So what is going wrong ?
Well we have always had the Doom and Gloom people out there, because
they see only the dark side of life they want to impose their nutty ideas onto
the rest of us, but that is really only the smoke scream, because behind
them is the ago old “Quest for Power””
We tried Communism, it failed, it was the classic “Too many Cooks
spoiled the broth” system. But its popped up again and we are told that
Mark two will solve all our problems.
Good on you the USA, keep up the good fight.
MJE VK5ELL
Towards the end of second world war, about half of the German aviation fuel (think AVGAS, 100LL) was obtained from coal, charcoal and other bio-masses. Yes, back then in 1944 or so.
German synthetic fuels, unfortunately for many allied Airmen, performed rather well even in demanding conditions.
Yeah, and cost a lot more to produce, but they had no choice… And when their main production facility was bombed into the stone-age, they kind of had even more problems.
So yes, it can be done. Let’s not try to do it until absolutely necessary, and not all in one big production facility.
I wonder where all the waste fly ash went to? Building German roads?
Other than Perry stupidly mentioning solar power, it was a good video.
Perry should also have included EPA air-quality data showing US air pollutants have been slashed 60~99% (depending on pollutant) just since 1980:
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/air-quality-national-summary
Probably 80%+ of Americans think US air pollution has gotten worse since 1980 because that’s what they’ve been propagandize by Leftists all their lives.
“Lies travel halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
He also injected Carbon Capture into the mix.
You’d expect it to be all there, even the kitchen sink. To NOT recite the full mantra and tick off every base load irreliable has been seen as political suicide. And yet… No wind shown or even mentioned. I’ll lay down money that there was a conference room shouting match over the omission of wind. In the video you hear the words oil (2), nuclear (2), coal,gas,storage (1 ea). Some extra ‘stealth’ visual props for nuclear too, since goofy greens associate all cooling towers with nuclear. This hypey video screams “nuclear” in brazen Illuminati code!
And of course the US should be manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines and Tesla Powerwall lithium bombs and way-too-small modular reactors… to stock the pantries of billionaire survivalists the world over.
I’ll have to dispense with some of my usual doom a bit, for I think my desperate letters to Trump and Perry may be reaching an audience.