The Green Journey Starts at Home ™

From Scientific American …
“Slow Money” is the name for a movement started by socially conscious investing pioneer and author, Woody Tasch, who essentially borrowed the conceptual framework of “Slow Food”—whereby participants eschew convenience-oriented “fast” foods, instead filling up their plates with traditional, unprocessed and, ideally, locally produced foods—and applied it to personal finance and investing. As such, Slow Money is dedicated to connecting investors to their local economies by marshaling financial resources to invest in small food enterprises and local food systems.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=slow-money-small-local-food-enterprises

The BBC writes:

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that in the next five years almost half of global oil demand growth will come from China.

Rising demand for oil and significant cash reserves have led Chinese energy firms to buy into foreign oil reserves.

“We are pleased to expand our presence in the oil sands business,” said CNOOC chief executive, Yang Hua.

In 2005 the firm bought a 17% stake in Canadian oil sands firm MEG Energy. CNOOC has also obtained minority stakes in oil projects in Texas and Colorado.

CNOOC is not the only Chinese state oil firm investing in the region.

In 2009 PetroChina bought a $1.7bn share in Athabasca Oil Sands, and Last year Sinopec paid $4.6bn for a 9% share of Syncrude, Canada’s largest oil sands producer.

The IEA estimates that by the end of 2010 Chinese state energy companies operated in 31 nations and held shares in oil firms in 20 of those countries.

WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices –
US diplomat convinced by Saudi expert that reserves of world’s biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%.

Sadad al-Husseini, a senior geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco believes that Saudi officials overstate capabilities in the interest of spurring foreign investment. He is also critical of international expectations. He stated that the IEA’s (International Energy Agency) expectation that Saudi Arabia and the Middle East will lead the market in reaching global output levels of over 100 million barrels/day is unrealistic. He says that political leaders must begin to understand and prepare for this “inconvenient truth.” Al-Husseini was clear that he considers himself optimistic about the future of energy, but pragmatic with regards to what resources are available and what level of production is possible. While he fundamentally contradicts the Aramco company line, al-Husseini is no doomsday theorist.

This article in the UK Guardian of Aramco overstating their reserves is consistent to the research of Matt Simmons in his book Twilight in the Desert. Since 1982, the Saudis have withheld their well data and any detailed data on their reserves, giving outside experts no way to verify Saudi claims regarding the overall size of their reserves and output. This has caused some to question the current state of their oil fields. Simmons analyzed 200 technical papers on Saudi reserves by the Society of Petroleum Engineers to reach the conclusion that Saudi Arabia’s oil production faces near term decline, and that it will not be able to consistently produce more than 2004 levels. Simmons also argues that the Saudis may have irretrievably damaged their large oil fields by over-pumping salt water into the fields in an effort to maintain the fields’ pressure and boost short term oil extraction amounts.

John Hess the CEO of the Hess Oil Company addressed the Oil and Money Conference in late 2009. In this presentation he identifies our energy and environmental challenges ahead. He anticipates a massive energy shock that he believes will devastate economic recovery. Global demand for energy is growing at a phenomenal rate as the non-developed countries come on-line. While he argues there are plenty of oil reserves there is not the production capacity to meet the huge demand. There is a large lead time to build the capacity.

It is refreshing for an oil company leader to argue for the need for better conservation in our buildings (40% of our energy consumption) and for new mileage standards (50 mpg). He acknowledges the huge impact the United States has on hydrocarbon emissions (4% of population yet 26% of CO2 emissions). He believes we should tax gas heavily, like Europe, to encourage conservation.

It is a short article, worth reading.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50502

David J. O’Reilly
Chairman & CEO
Chevron Corporation

Energy will be one of the defining issues of this century. One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over. What we all do next will determine How well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and beyond.

Demand is soaring like never before. As populations grow and economies take off, millions in the developing world are enjoying the benefits of a lifestyle that requires increasing amounts of energy. In fact, some say that in 20 years the world will consume 40% more oil than it does today. At the same time, many of the world’s oil and gas fields are maturing. And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically and even politically. When growing demand meets tighter supplies, the result is more competition for the same resources.

We can wait until a crisis forces us to do something. Or we can commit to working together, and start by asking the tough questions: How do we meet the energy needs of the developing world and those of industrialized nations? What role will renewables and alternative energies play? What is the best way to protect our environment? How do we accelerate our conservation efforts? Whatever actions we take, we must look not just to next year, but to the next 50 years.

At Chevron, we believe that innovation, collaboration and conservation are the cornerstones on which to build this new world. We cannot do this alone. Corporations, governments and every citizen of this planet must be part of the solution as surely as they are part of the problem. We call upon scientists and educators, politicians and policy-makers, environmentalists, leaders of industry and each one of you to be part of reshaping the next era Of energy.

Signed,

Dave

The clean tech race is on. While the Chinese are investing heavily in clean technologies and in the process creating jobs….what are we doing? We are overturning environmental initiatives. We have groups such as the Tea Party who are well financed by the oil companies trying to overturn environmental regulations in states like California. They claim it is about protecting jobs, when in fact it is about protecting oil company profits. And meanwhile the Chinese have clearly defined strategic goals to make clean tech a pillar of their society.

The arguments that environmental protection hurts job creation reminds me of India after the British were kicked out. India closed their borders from foreign trade and taxed heavily any imports. This was about protecting jobs and foreign intervention. Many of the jobs within India were in protected industries. Over the years India fell increasingly behind the rest of the world. Inefficiency and poor quality became the norm.

The parallel here is that China is progressing ambitiously towards a Green future. And what are we doing? We have groups that are protecting the interests of the oil companies and in so doing, we’ll stand the risk of increasingly falling behind in clean technologies.

See Thomas Friedman in the NYTimes

An Energy-Independent Future
The last eight presidents have gone on television and promised to move America towards an energy-independent future.

The future of fossil fuels look problematic. People keep discussing proven reserves and whether peak oil already has arrived or not. What is most important is the fact that – no matter how much additional oil we can still retrieve – future barrels will be much more difficult to extract relative to the past.

This is expected to result in a rapid increase in oil prices from a decline in the availability of cheap and easily accessible oil sources. Our prices today are artificially constrained by the global recession. When the recession passes, prices of oil can be expected to soar.

Loyd’s of London, the world’s leading insurance market, recently published a report stating that businesses are underestimating the catastrophic consequences of declining oil.

Ron Oxburgh, a former chairman of Shell, wrote that “It is pretty clear that there is not much chance of finding any significant quantity of new cheap oil. Any new or unconventional oil is going to be expensive.” He went on to quote King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia commenting on a new oil find: “Leave it in the ground…our children need it.”

Loyd’s of London warned of “catastrophic consequences” for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy.

The Guardian paper wrote “The Lloyd’s insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, says Britain needs to be ready for “peak oil” and disrupted energy supplies at a time of soaring fuel demand in China and India, constraints on production caused by the BP oil spill and political moves to cut CO2 to halt global warming.”

A similar warning was written in an earlier piece by the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/11/peak-oil-energy-disruption

(REPRINTED FROM REPOWER AMERICA)

Extreme weather is putting hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods at risk all around the world. In order to avoid the worst and most devastating impacts of the severe weather events that are consistent with climate change, we must begin to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Learn more about climate change and extreme weather and make sure your friends and family get the facts.

Get the Facts: Extreme Weather and Global Climate Change

Pollution from human activities is warming our climate. The 10 warmest years on record all occurred since 1990, and the last decade was the hottest recorded since worldwide record keeping began more than 100 years ago. The period between January and June of 2010 was the warmest six months on record.

A warming climate increases the chance that we will experience extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and intense storms, and ramps up the risk that severe weather events will cause catastrophic damage.
The floods, fires and droughts we’re seeing in places like Pakistan and Russia are consistent with the effects of global warming, including temperature increases, increased precipitation in some parts of the world, and droughts in others.

In early August, a 97-square mile chunk of ice–the largest since 1962–broke away from the northwest coast of Greenland.1 Canadian officials fear the massive “ice island” could pose a risk to ships and oil platforms.

Unless we significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, we are likely to see even more extreme weather events and the consequences they bring.

What does Minneapolis have in common with Portland OR, Boulder CO, Austin TX, Madison WI, San Francisco CA, Burlington VT?

Minneapolis is considered to be one of the top 10 Green cities in the nation.