Solar Panels Return to the White House

President Jimmy Carter, center, surrounded by reporters and photographers as he inspected new White House solar hot water heating system on June 20, 1979. (Harvey Georges - Associated Press)

“In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy. A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”

— President Jimmy Carter

"After nearly three years, the White House began installing solar panels on the First Family’s residence this week," the Washington Post reports. President Jimmy Carter had 32 installed in the late 1970s but President Ronald Reagan removed them in 1986.

Twenty-seven years later, renewable energy returns to the White House roof.

Drawing value from your own data

Data about you and your behavior is big business. Here's a quick look at the work Opower and Wellness FX do to help you draw value from the energy and health data around and inside you.

Opower's President Alex Laskey, and other Opower employees, discuss how the company is using data innovation to provide customers with insights and information about their energy consumption.

When we're not making marketing videos, we like to create micro-documentaries about tech companies doing awesome things that inspire us. WellnessFX™ is a breakthrough web-based service that empowers individuals to understand and improve their health in a personalized and engaging way. Check out this video to find out how they help people feel better, have more energy & find out what’s going on inside their body - quickly and conveniently.

Opower has now saved 1 TWh of energy, and we've made a short film to show what that represents.

WellnessFX is a web-based platform that gives you deep insights into the state of your health by combining advanced lab diagnostics and tracking along with phone consultations with certified health professionals. WellnessFX aggregates the underlying biomarkers of the primary detractors of wellness, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hormonal imbalances and nutritional deficiencies.

While everyone has been talking about "Peak Oil Demand" - US oil demand has been growing→

“Demand for oil in the US has grown in four of the past six months – the strongest run since early 2011 – leading the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog [IEA] to upgrade its forecast for US demand this year from zero growth to 0.3 per cent, which would be the first in two years.”

— Ajay Makan, Financial Times

More from Makan's Financial Times piece, "US oil demand rises at fastest pace in two years. "

Art Berman's Recent Shale Gas Interviews

Arthur E. Berman is a petroleum geologist with thirty-four years of oil and gas industry experience and he's also Board Member for ASPO-USA. He recently gave a series of interviews on Shale Gas focusing on supply, profitability, price uncertainty, energy efficiency, and other financial risks. The embedded playlist is below and watching all 5 videos takes about 30 minutes. Art's blog is http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com/

More info from Art:

•  "British Geological Survey Bowland Shale Gas Assessment" (07/19/13)
•  "US Shale Gas: Magical Thinking and the Denial of Uncertainty" - Rice University (01/18/12)
•  "A Few Words About Peak Oil" Feb 2013 - commentary for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists

Art on the CBS Evening News (05/11/12): 

"We owe them gratitude and not disdain"

“Arguing that a peak oil prediction was foolish or inaccurate because it was not realized is a bit like arguing that an inoculation program was unnecessary because the epidemic never occurred. The geologists who made such predictions were not fools. Their models were well thought out and carefully validated. They understood the conditions and limitations of their prognostications and saw themselves not as doomsayers but as agents of change. We owe them gratitude and not disdain.”

— Robert Frey

Noah Smith called out this comment by Robert Frey posted on his article "Peak Oil is dead! Long live Peak Oil!"

Smith added: "YES. Exactly. If physicists predict that an asteroid is going to hit Earth, and so in response we send a bomb and successfully divert the asteroid, you hail the physicists as heroes, rather than deriding them as Chicken Littles. This is something that too many economists and economics and finance commentators tend to get wrong when talking about 'predictions'." 

"Peak Oil and Energy Independence: Myth and Reality"→

View fullsize

“With conventional oil production on a plateau and with expensive unconventional sources the only means by which oil production may be increased in the short term, it is clear that societies face a major dilemma...”

— James W. Murray & Jim Hansen

"Peak Oil and Energy Independence" a new peer reviewed feature article for the American Geophysical Union is out from long-time ASPO-USA friends, James Murray of the University of Washington, and Jim Hansen of Ravenna Capital Management.

Subscribers can view the full paper through AGU.

The "references" section is a who's who of commentators in these issues including: Kjell Aleklett, Charles Hall, James Hamilton, David Hughes & Deborah Rogers, Gail Tverberg, Chris Nelder, Steven Kopits, and ASPO-USA Board Members Kurt Cobb, Jeffrey Brown, Arthur Berman and many more.

World Oil and Gas Production Forecasts up to 2100→

“Peak oil deniers claim that peak oil is an unscientific theory, ignoring that peak oil has actually happened in several countries like France, UK, Norway... and that there are more producing countries on decline than on the rise! Peak oil deniers claim that our estimate on world ultimate does not take into account the economy, in particular the oil price. They confuse proved reserves, which are supposed to represent the expected production with present technology and economy (with the oil price at end-year) with the 2P mean reserves, which are used to compute the Net Present Value from a forecast on oil price for the life of the production...”

— Jean Lahérrere

Jean Lahérrere's latest over on the Oil Drum is a must read: "World Oil and Gas Production Forecasts Up to 2100"

"Do what you can in the face of the Hype-Hurricane"

ASPO-USA Co-Founder, Randy Udall

Catching up on the news from the July 4th break. And I have to start with the tragic loss of ASPO-USA co-founder Randy Udall.

Sally Odland, Steve Andrews, and John Theobald wrote a wonderful tribute to him this week in Peak Oil Review. Also, Joe Romm and Auden Schendler wrote a great piece, "Are You Strong? Remembering Randy Udall" in Climate Progress. (Updated 07/10/13: Adding to the list, Chris Nelder's tribute: "Randy Udall: An Energy Hero's Journey")

On a personal note, I didn't know Randy well, because he was no longer part of the ASPO-USA Board of Directors when I came aboard. But I'm thankful that the last time I spoke to him I was describing our recent efforts to release the videos of ALL the ASPO-USA conferences online, and I thanked him for all the hard work he did in those early years. I also told him that I edited one of his commentaries and included it on the website. It feels a little silly admitting this now, but I tracked down and embedded the video at the top of that commentary, just out of the hope that Randy would see it - and that it would help remind him of those days.

In his email response, he expressed joy that ASPO-USA was still fighting the good fight, reiterated how critical these energy issues are, and closed with the final words Randy Udall would ever say to me: "Do what you can in the face of the hype-hurricane."

"The Energy of Nations"

“Most of us think that both below-and above-ground factors will define the peak, but the peak will be the peak: the most oil that can ever be produced in any one day. Perhaps production wobbles along on a plateau for a while before dropping, but it will never exceed that peak level. If we think of all the theoretically extractable oil under the ground as a tank, what we have to worry about is not so much the size of that tank, but the size of the taps: the actual global production capacity...

The risk debate is not about the oil ‘running out’. It will never run out. Oil reserves under the ground... are not the same as oil flows from production pipes at the surface.”

— Jeremy Leggett, The Energy of Nations

A quick peek at the first chapter of Leggett's soon to be published book "The Energy of Nations: Risk Blindness and the Road to Renaissance"

Shale Gas Won't Stop Peak Oil, But Could Create An Economic Crisis

Nafeez Ahmed, with his new gig at the @guardian is quickly picking up the tinfoil hat audience http://t.co/16aasgi8qD

— Andrew Holland (@TheAndyHolland) June 24, 2013

Nafeez Ahmed's newest piece in the Guardian is yet another must-read piece in what is quickly becoming a rare collection of articles on Peak Oil and depletion issues in a major publication.  

This time he examines overinflated industry claims and draws from the work of David Hughes, Deborah Rogers, and the Post Carbon Institute with their website Shalebubble.org. It's well worth the read.

Of course, some would rather examine Ahmed's audience instead of the article itself. But if every speaker were judged not by the merits of their own thoughts, but by the thoughts of those at the fringe of their audience... then no speaker would be considered sane. 

That Time a Rear Admiral Presented at a Peak Oil Conference

Wednesday I found myself at the Hyatt Regency here in DC for the Bipartisan's Policy Center's event on "The Geopolitical Impacts of the U.S. Tight Oil Boom" - I'll have more on that in a few days once the video is available. The ballroom in the Hyatt, where the event was held, is pretty familiar - in that same room a few years ago we held both the 2010 ASPO-USA Conference and the 2011 conference.

I thought about that room again this morning while reading yet another must read piece by Nafeez Ahmed that ties the recent release of NSA documents with fears of public unrest due to environmental disasters and energy shocks. The article mentions the 2010 US Joint Operating Environment report. And one of the leaders of the report, Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice, addressed the 2010 ASPO-USA conference. I've embedded the fascinating video here, and you can hear Rice describe the pushback they received from those who did not want them to include climate change and Peak Oil in the report. And you'll get a sense of how the military views these very serious matters of energy.

I bring this video out from time-to-time to push back on the notion that many promote: a view that the only people that discuss Peak Oil are cranks in the wilderness who are best avoided and ignored. That view is false. There are countless examples serious, sober, and thoughtful examination of these issues from voices in academia, the energy industry, Wall Street & finance, health care, and other fields.

And as Dr. Ahmed's article powerfully outlines, obviously our national security organizations take the risk analysis of these issues very seriously.