#Canada Picked A Bad Week To Invest In #Wind Power Technology

(OTTAWA) – January 23, 2013 – Export Development Canada (EDC) today announced that it has provided Endurance Wind Power (Endurance), a Vancouver-based manufacturer of wind turbines designed for power grid application, with CAD 7 million in financing for the completion of new projects in the United Kingdom....


Ooops...The wind turbine that couldn't cope with a gale: £250,000 tower crashes to the ground after its blades spin out of control

The Endurance Wind Power E-3120 50kW device was the first model of its kind to be erected in the UK

h/t ZD

via blazingcatfur.blogspot.ca

Obama: Use Algae as substitute for oil

(Examiner)President Obama admitted today that he does not have a "silver bullet" solution for skyrocketing gas prices, but he proposed alternative energy sources such as "a plant-like substance, algae" as a way of cutting dependence on oil by 17 percent.
"We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance, algae -- you've got a bunch of algae out here," Obama said at the University of Miami today."If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we'll be doing alright. Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America."
The Department of Energy (DOE) currently spends about $85 million on 30 research projects "to develop algal biofuels," according to the White House, which announced that Obama is committing another $14 million to the idea.
Obama did not say when he expected algae-based fuel to reach that level, but the federal government has a dodgy track record with respect to developing alternative vehicle fuels. Biodiesel, for example, accounted for less than 1 percent of the diesel fuel market as of 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. And of course there's ethanol -- after four decades, tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, and draconian mandates that force it on unwilling consumers, ethanol was five percent of vehicle consumption (by volume) as of 2008. Although algae-to-gas is a very different idea, it is still in its early stages.
"We're not going to transition out of oil anytime soon," Obama added, before touting the record high domestic gas production right now and the agreement with Mexico to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, while still calling for expanded investment in alternative energy.
Oil industry leaders reject Obama's claim to have given significant support to oil production. "These have been the most difficult three years from a policy standpoint that I've ever seen in my career," Bruce Vincent, president of Swift Energy, an oil and gas company in Houston, said yesterday. "They've done nothing but restrict access and delay permitting."
Obama affirmed the need to protect the planet by developing clean energy alternatives, but The Washington Examiner's Michael Barone argues that he hasn't been consistent even on that front. "We’ve prohibited a pipeline, the safest way to transport oil, from Canada, but we’re aiding Mexico in offshore drilling, which is riskier, and by a firm that lacks the experience of the U.S. firms we have been trying to prevent drilling in the same body of water," Barone wrote yesterday. "Does this make any sense at all?"

Running on fumes

Documentary exposes the downside of wind power

(Louis Armstrong - Blue Yodel No.9 (1997, "The Complete RCA Victor Recordings 1932-56")

(americanthinker.com)We hear a lot from the President, his environmental allies, and crony capitalists regarding the wonders of wind energy. Obama's favorite crony capitalist, who is also a prominent supporter, heads up General Electric, a prime beneficiary of the wind power subsidies, grants, and mandates that have poured forth from the federal government ever since the president took power. These subsidies -- giveaways -- will be severely cut back at the end of this year unless Congress and the President extend them.
Now comes a documentary " Windfall" that reports on the many downsides from wind power development that you will not hear about from its promoters: neighbors suffering from the effects of these towers and their spinning propellers, among them. But the problems go beyond the "whopping, whopping" and strobe effect of the blades rotation. The movie is a revelation about the dark underside of green energy. These schemes might enrich their promoters who donate to Democrats. They also might give a warm and fuzzy feeling for  environmentalists in big cities whose exposure to them may be limited to seeing them along the road as they motor to their vacation homes. But they cause a lot of misery for the common folks left behind.
Here is a trailer of the documentary.
The Wall Street Journal reviewed the movie when it first started hitting the film festival circuit:

The film offers few experts on either side of the debate; rather, it allows local townspeople to discuss their own research, experiences and fears, such as the wind turbine's "flicker effect," as the machines pass across the sun and cast immense shadows, as well as the dangers of their low frequency hum.
Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future," and a frequent critic of the wind industry (in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal), says the "infrasound" issue is the most problematic for the wind industry. "They want to dismiss it out of hand, but the low frequency noise is very disturbing," he explains. "I interviewed people all over, and they all complained with identical words and descriptions about the problems they were feeling from the noise."

A more updated review by John Anderson for the Wall Street Journal was published on Friday;

They're sustainable, they produce no emissions and they'll reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil. Right? Not quite. And living next to one seems like a nightmare.
Ms. Israel's movie proves, once again, that the best nonfiction cinema possesses the same attributes as good fiction: Strong characters, conflict, story arc, visual style. The people of Meredith, be they pro or con the wind-turbine plan being fast-tracked by their town council, are articulate, passionate, likable. The issues are argued with appropriate gravity, and even though Ms. Israel, a Meredith homeowner herself, is clearly antiturbine, the other side gets a chance to speak its piece: Farmers, an endangered species, need income. Turbine leases are a way to it. But not only do the energy and ecological benefits fall short of what they're cracked up to be, the turbines themselves are an environmental disaster: The monotonous whoosh of the propellers, the constant strobing effect caused by the 180-foot-long propellers, the threat of ice being hurled by the blades, the knowledge that it's never going to end, all adds up to a recipe for madness. And that's just during the movie.

European nations have indebted themselves to spread this inefficient fad across their continent. Now they are slashing the subsidies for this boondoggle. The wind industry cannot survive without the oxygen of taxpayer dollars. Barack Obama made clear in his State of the Union address that he intends to double down and continue to waste billions of dollars on these green schemes and the public be damned.
Informed citizens whose money will line the pockets of wind promoters may want to check out this well-reviewed movie.

Electricity grid fails to cope with solar power systems.

A Green Nightmare from Australia. Apparently the electric grid itself could not cope with all the solar panels. The State Government admitted the electricity grid was failing to cope with its green vision.  Energex said the state's electricity network since the 1950s had been designed to deliver power from the station to the home and the voltage now heading "the other way" was causing a huge dilemma.

Global Energy Use to Jump 53%

TRANSFORM!

Global energy use is expected to jump 53% by 2035, largely driven by strong demand from places like India and China, according to a report Monday.
Combined, developing nations currently use slightly more energy than those in the developed world, according to the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration. By 2035, they are expected to use double.
“Concerns about fiscal sustainability and financial turbulence suggest that economic recovery in the [developed] countries will not be accompanied by the higher growth rates associated with past recoveries,” the report said. “In contrast, growth remains high in many emerging economies, in part driven by strong capital inflows and high commodity prices.”
The 53% rise is slightly more than the 49% increase the agency predicted in last year’s report.
Accompanying the surge in energy use is a correspondingly large jump in greenhouse gas emissions. EIA sees energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rising 43% by 2035.
The projections, in the agency’s 2011 International Energy Outlook, are based on current policies. They could change substantially if countries like the United States and China passed stronger laws restricting carbon dioxide emissions.
Higher or lower energy price projections can also influence the report’s findings.
EIA assumed slightly lower oil prices in calculating this year’s report. The agency predicts oil prices to reach $108 per barrel in 2020 and $125 per barrel in 2035.
Last year EIA thought oil would be at $133 a barrel by 2035. EIA’s numbers do not include price increases attributed to the normal rise in inflation.
Fossil fuels will continue to be the dominant fuel choice in 2035, the agency predicts, with renewables constituting just 14% to the world’s overall energy consumption.
But that’s a substantial jump from renewable energy consumption in 2008, which stood at 10%. That growth rate makes renewables the fastest growing of all the energy sources, the report said.
The agency noted that most future renewable energy supply will continue to come from wind and hydropower. It did not include biofuels like ethanol as part of its renewable catalog, instead lumping it in with liquid fuels like oil.
EIA does not expect solar power to become a significant energy source by 2035. That runs counter to the opinion of solar power supporters who foresee rapidly declining prices for solar panels in the coming years.
The agency predicts nuclear power will go from about 5% of overall energy consumption in 2008 to about 7% in 2035. The vast majority of new nuclear plants are expected to be built in China. EIA did not factor in how last year’s nuclear disaster in Japan might impact nuclear power plant construction.
Natural gas continues to make up nearly a quarter of the world’s energy consumption, driven by increasing development of shale gas.
EIA projections for natural gas use by 2035 are 8% higher in this year’s report compared to last year’s, largely due to shale gas development.
Natural gas from shale, which is found in a different type of rock than most previous natural gas developments, has grown rapidly in recent years thanks to new drilling and extracting technology.
The technology involves cracking the shale rock with pressurized, water, sand and chemicals — a process knows as hydraulic fracturing, for “fracking” for short.
But the process has many people concerned over its effects on the groundwater, and shale gas development has been put on hold or stopped in some locations.
Despite the concerns, EIA predicts shale gas and other unconventional forms of natural gas will make up three quarters of U.S. natural gas production by 2035, up from about half today. Similar patterns are expected in China and Canada.
{CNN Money/Matzav.com }

Solar Energy Company Touted By Obama Goes Bankrupt

Economic isolationism is the only answer. America can not compete with slave labor. While it is true this methodology failed in the past (example: Hawley-Smoot tariff), this was before the United States became the huge Consumer market that it is.  I disagree that subsidizing alternative energy is a bad idea because there is a history of abuse from fossil fuel industries and their previous relationship to government that must be undone.  However if the price of fuel keeps on rising as it does, I see little reason for that argument. If it were 1992 I could see the benefit of subsidizing new kinds of energy.  I see no reason to do that now.  What I do see is a reason to protect our innovations from being taken by countries that abuse their labor.

This is the 3rd solar energy company gone bankrupt in 1 month. Obama touted them as flagships of his economic policies. And as such, they epitomize his epic FAIL.

(The Week) Obama nurtured the solar-panel maker with $535 million in his push to create green jobs. Now it's kaput and its 1,100 employees are out of luck Solar-power startup Solyndra — one of the flagships of President Obama's efforts to create green-energy jobs — has shut down, and plans to file for bankruptcy. Solyndra received $535 million in federally guaranteed loans to expand, and Obama once visited the company's Silicon Valley factory to congratulate its workers on their bright future. But Solyndra says it just can't compete with cheaper solar panels from China, and now its 1,100 employees are out of work. Is this a "political catastrophe" for Obama, or just a painful setback in the transition to clean energy? [MORE] Eye-on-the-World

Solar Panel Windows

Israel saving the world, again:
The dream of constructing a net zero-energy building has yet to become a reality, but now an Israeli company has come up with an idea that could make it possible.The innovative product from Pythagoras Solar can be described as a solar window that combines energy efficiency, power generation and transparency. - EOZ

One of the problems with solar panels is they are expensive and the only way you can get a grant from the government is by cutting down all the trees on your property to increase the light. With this design it makes it so the individual would want to spend their own money and not depend on the government. FRIGG'N BRILLIANT!

THE TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN OIL BOOM? This surge in domestic production would leave Iran, Kuwait and the Arab emirates combined in the rear-view mirror”

A US oil boom — unless greens abort it - By ARTHUR HERMAN

Just a year after the BP oil spill, America is on the verge of a new golden era of oil exploration and production — unless President Obama and his environmentalist friends get their way.

This surge in domestic production would leave Iran, Kuwait and the Arab emirates combined in the rear-view mirror.

The US drilling boom rests on a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to open shale-oil reserves. It’s why wells are springing up in places like North Dakota, California and Pennsylvania, with thousands of new jobs in their wake.

Fracking has also opened up supplies of natural gas, sending prices plummeting. Now, even New York’s regulators have recommended lifting the state’s ban on the fossil-fuel gold rush that’s pushed North Dakota’s unemployment rate to 3.2 percent — the lowest in the nation.

The irony is that Obama had hoped higher oil prices would make us all drive electric cars and install backyard windmills. Instead, they’re making it profitable for US companies to expand the hunt for new reserves and to use fracking to reopen old ones.

Just last month, Exxon-Mobil announced the discovery of a vast field in the Gulf of Mexico, with as many as 700 million barrels waiting to be tapped. Other companies are using fracking to return to the Texas basin, the center of US oil production in the 1930s — which will mean millions in investment and thousands of jobs for that state. Montana and North Dakota are sitting on a shale-oil formation that could yield nearly 4 billion barrels.

Not many Americans realize we are already the world’s No. 3 oil producer, at 7.5 million barrels a day. The coming boom should add another 1.5 million by 2015. That’s closing in on Saudi Arabia’s daily total.

And oil-shale rich Canada could surpass Iran’s barrel-per-day output in a few years — so we’re looking at a major shift in the geopolitics of oil.

Easy-to-find oil is running out in the Mideast. After deliberately wrecking a multibillion-dollar deal with BP, Russia — the world’s biggest oil and gas producer — is looking more and more like a bad bet for foreign investors. If you want to make money in the oil biz, America will be the place to go.

But the environmental lobby is bent on preventing it — waging an all-out war on fracking, claiming (against all evidence) that it contaminates ground water. The ideologues hope to use memories of the BP spill and a more recent one on the Yellowstone River to dam up all exploration and pipeline construction.

Never mind that fracking goes on thousands of feet below groundwater sources, and that Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling did more damage to the Gulf economy than the BP spill ever did — or that the Yellowstone accident has affected an area of less than 10 miles on the edge of a national park of 3,500 square miles.

The promise of prosperity and jobs was enough to get even a blue state like New York to ignore the green lobby’s fearmongering. But Obama may yet derail the boom.

The president has had the oil industry’s two most important tax incentives — the percentage-depletion allowance and the deduction for intangible-drilling costs — in his cross hairs for a long time.

Both help oil and drilling companies recoup the heavy capital investment they need to look for oil, even when they turn up nothing. The White House argues that we must end both “tax breaks for Big Oil” to close the budget deficit.

This is nonsense. Manhattan Institute oil guru Robert Bryce notes that the entire value of the industry’s tax advantage comes to $4.4 billion a year. The notion that scrapping tax abatements that have been around since the 1920s will put a dent in a deficit of $1.4 trillion is laughable — and dangerous.

Besides, those few billions in savings would be washed away in rising oil prices if the impending rebirth of the US oil industry is aborted.

So there’s more at stake in the debt-ceiling impasse than just how we pay for our government. It’s also about whether America will dictate its own energy and economic future — or whether it’s left in the hands of sheiks, dictators and the EPA.

Arthur Herman is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise via ibloga.blogspot.com

America Has More Recoverable Fossil Fuel Resources Than Any Other Country

Doug Brady
Yes, despite the conventional wisdom being peddled by the inept Obama Administration, you read the headline correctly. Via Peter C. Glover at the Energy Tribune:
In case anyone missed it, let me repeat something that is of a magnitude of 10 on the scale of news-quakes for Joe Public USA: America’s combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined – and that’s without including America’s shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.

Glover provides this helpful chart to illustrate his point:
Glover first debunks the liberal myth that America has no oil:
While the US is often depicted as having only a tiny minority of the world’s oil reserves at around 28 billion barrels (based on the somewhat misleading figure of ‘proven reserves’) according to the CRS in reality it has around 163 billion barrels. As Inhofe’s EPW press release comments, “That’s enough oil to maintain America’s current rates of production and replace imports from the Persian Gulf for more than 50 years”.
Of course to utilize our vast oil reserves, we have to actually drill for it. But alas, our president is determined to lock up those resources for the foreseeable future, a point Governor made in a recent Facebook Note. If anything, Obama prefers that America increase its reliance on foreign oil. Glover continues his piece discussing America’s enormous coal reserves:
Next up, there’s coal. The CRS report reveals America’s reserves of coal are unsurpassed, accounting for over 28 percent of the world’s coal. Much of it is high quality too. The CRS estimates US recoverable coal reserves at around 262 billion tons (not including further massive, difficult to access, Alaskan reserves). Given the US consumes around 1.2 billion tons a year, that’s a couple of centuries of coal use, at least.
We have the largest coal reserves in the world, and those reserves will last at least 200 years (probably much longer), and Obama has publicly stated he wants to “bankrupt” anyone who wants to build coal plants. Think about that. Glover next discusses natural gas which, when combined with its cousin, methane hydrates, is likely America’s most abundant energy resource:
In 2009 the CRS upped its 2006 estimate of America’s enormous natural gas deposits by 25 percent to around 2,047 trillion cubic feet, a conservative figure given the expanding shale gas revolution. At current rates of use that’s enough for around 100 years. Then there is still the, as yet largely publicly untold, story of methane hydrates to consider, a resource which the CRS reports alludes to as “immense…possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels.” According to the Inhofe’s EPW, “For perspective, if just 3 percent of this resource can be commercialized … at current rates of consumption, that level of supply would be enough to provide America’s natural gas for more than 400 years.”
We often hear from our friends on the left that America’s energy future is tied to “green energy”. This is as delusional as it is suicidal. There are no green energy “magic bullets” available now, nor will there be in the foreseeable future. They’re simply not economic. They only exist for two reasons. First, Obama is purposely following policies designed to make green energy appear economic by causing the price of its competition, conventional energy, to “necessarily skyrocket“. Obama’s hope is that consumers will choose expensive green energy instead of artificially expensive conventional energy.
He’s wrong, of course, because the real choice consumers will face is one between expensive green energy that doesn’t work and artificially expensive conventional energy that does. This is not a difficult choice. Consumers will simply spend more money on energy than is necessary, and less on everything else. Not exactly a recipe for economic growth.
The second reason inefficient green energy exists is because Obama is lavishing billions of dollars in taxpayer funds (at a time we can ill-afford such waste) on his corporate cronies. GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, for example, is receiving copious subsidies to build wind turbines and related infrastructure that would never be built absent said subsidies. And let’s not forget the Chevy Volt. (Incidentally, where do proponents of electric cars think electricity comes from? Do they think it’s created magically within walls and, to access it, one simply has to slap an outlet on the wall? If not, how do they think we can drive electric cars if they’re against building the coal and nuclear powered plants necessary to generate the electricity to charge them? Just asking.)
If these subsidies didn’t exist, and the Obama Administration stopped following policies designed to make conventional energy prices necessarily skyrocket, we wouldn’t even be talking about green energy. We don’t need it (see above), it’s not economic and, more importantly, it doesn’t work very well. Certainly not as well as conventional energy. Moreover, as Governor Palin recently noted, so inefficient is green energy that for every new “green job” created, four are lost in the overall economy. I’m not a mathematician, but that would appear to be a poor tradeoff, and with a real unemployment rate in excess of 16%, just plain stupid. And we can no longer afford to be stupid.
The good news is that we don’t have to be. We have more conventional energy resources than every other country in the world. With the recent tsunami disaster in Japan being exploited to put nuclear energy on hold for another generation at least, we need to be developing the proven energy resources with which this nation is so richly endowed. Unfortunately, to do this, we need a president whose goal is to make reliable energy more — not less — available, and one whose energy policy is designed to make energy more — not less — affordable. Sadly, the current occupant of the White House takes the opposite approach. To quote Governor Palin, “2012 can’t come soon enough”.
Read Glover’s entire article here. It’s eye-opening.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Obama Misleads Energy Facts:

Obama claims the glass as half empty without stating a correlative truth that the glass can fill itself.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com ....He just can't stop lying.
Each time Obama tells the truth, but the truth misleads. The final example towards the end of the video is the most interesting. Obama points out that America is two percent of the world's crude, but the potential is there for America to be Seventeen percent of the world's crude and therefor America could be completely self sufficient.

via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com 

UN report: US can quickly become a vast energy power and exporter of cheap energy

For the past year or so I have been writing about the vast wealth America has beneath our feet in the form of shale gas. We have huge amounts trapped in shale rock that can be liberated by blasting it open via a process called hydraulic fractioning ("fracking"). Wells are drilled horizontally miles underground and then a stream of water, sand, and a minor amount of chemicals fracture the rock and release the gas. All this happens far below the surface and the water tables. Natural gas is relatively clean-burning, is on-shore, and is ours.

Now comes a report from the UN (of all places) that asserts America can be on the verge of energy independence and can become one of the world's great exporters of energy because of our shale gas and oil reserves. Natural gas is the one commodity that has been plummeting in price and delivering an economic jolt of its own for consumers more accustomed to higher energy prices.

From the Washington Examiner that picked up a report from Canada's Globe and Mail :

Toronto's Globe & Mail quotes a UN report that includes this observation: "Within a decade or so, North America will almost certainly emerge as the world's biggest supplier - and exporter - of reasonably cheap energy."

How can that be? As The New York Times reported last month, it's because the U.S. is incredibly rich with natural gas and oil shale deposits that can be reached affordably using hydraulic fracturing, the injection of liquids into rock formations thousands of feet below the drinking water table.

The injections force the gas or oil into recoverable areas, thus opening up millions of new barrels of oil and trillions of feet of natural gas for production here in America.

These new resources are having a profound impact on the U.S. energy situation and it's happening right now, not off in some projected future, as is the case with the arrival of alternative energy resources like solar, wind, and biomass.

Intrigued? Here's more detail from the Globe & Mail:

"With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world's largest supplier of natural gas.

"Shale now accounts for 10 per cent of the country's natural gas production - up from 2 per cent in 1990. Chesapeake's production from its next Texas project, expected by the end of 2012, will by itself supply the energy equivalent of 500,000 barrels of oil a day.

"For new oil, the U.S. has the huge Green River play that overlaps Colorado and Utah, one of the largest shale oil fields in the world. The EIA reports that the country's proven reserves of crude rose last year by 9 per cent to 22.3 billion barrels.

"For natural gas, the U.S. has the four largest fields in the world: the Haynesville field in Louisiana (with production up by 77 per cent in 2009); the Fayetteville field in Arkansas and the Marcellus field in Pennsylvania (both with production up by 50 per cent); and the Barnett field in Texas and Oklahoma (with production up by double-digit increases).

"The EIA reports that proven U.S. reserves of natural gas increased last year by 11 per cent to 284 trillion cubic feet - the highest level since 1971."

It is all there for the taking. But Democrats threaten to plug all those holes warming our homes and saving us money. Meanwhile, oil prices are going through the roof -- helped along by the Obama administration's efforts to stop oil drilling off-shore, take land out of commission for exploring, and impose new rules and regulations.

Not only do they overtly and covertly favor green schemes that try to kill carbon in all forms,  they have tried to enact one roadblock after another to stop us from tapping our shale gas and oil reserves (see, for example, my columns "Cheap Natural Gas and Its Democratic Enemies,"  a follow-up to my previous column Cheap Natural Gas and Its Enemies).

Who would benefit from stopping this energy revolution in its tracks? George Soros, environmentalists, green schemers that need government help (subsidies, investments, mandates) to make their ventures fly -- and who reward Democrats with donations, Russia, Hugo Chavez, Arab oil powers, terrorists, and other assorted international bad actors. The Russian government recently expressed concern regarding their international power because America was developing our shale gas resources.

Those are the groups Democrats help when they curtail our own development of this treasure beneath our feet. Nice company to keep, huh?

via americanthinker.com

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

World oil reserves at tipping point, but stupid Woodstock hippies tip us over

Oil rig. Capacity to meet projected future oil demand is at tipping point, according to new research.

Dr Oliver Inderwildi, Head of the Low Carbon Mobility centre at the Smith School, said: 'The common belief that alternative fuels such as biofuels could mitigate oil supply shortages and eventually replace fossil fuels is pie in the sky. There is not sufficient land to cater for both food and fuel demand. Instead of relying on those silver bullet solutions, we have to make better use of the remaining resources by improving energy efficiency. Alternatives such as a hydrogen economy and electric transportation are not mature and will only play a major role in the medium to long term.'

via sciencedaily.com

so stop it with the Alternative or bust jive. you are killing us.

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Rare Earth Elements: The World Is Rapidly Running Out And China Has Most Of The Remaining Supply

Most people have no idea what rare earth elements are, but a wide array of the technologies that we use every single day are dependent on them. Without rare earth elements, we would have no hybrid car batteries, flat screen televisions, cell phones or iPods. Without rare earth elements, the entire "green economy" would not be able to function, because almost all emerging green technologies use them. Not only that, but rare earth elements are used by the U.S. military in radar systems, missile-guidance systems, satellites and aircraft electronics. Without rare earth elements, the U.S. military (and militaries all over the globe) would not be able to function. There are 17 key rare earth elements that we rely on every day. But there is a huge problem. China owns more than 85 percent of the known global reserves of rare earth elements. Right now, the rest of the world is absolutely dependent on China's exports of these metals. Without these Chinese exports, the western world would quickly run out of these precious resources. But in just a few years, the rapidly expanding Chinese economy will gobble up the entire domestic production of Chinese rare earth elements. So what will the rest of the world do at that point?
This is a major problem that you aren't hearing a lot about in the mainstream news.
But analysts are now predicting that by 2012 this could be a tremendous crisis.
So exactly what are rare earth elements?
Well, rare earth elements are a group of 17 relatively rare chemical elements that you can find on the periodic table. These rare metals have names you may not be familiar with such as lanthanum, cerium, tantalum, neodymium and europium. As mentioned above, they are used in products that we use every day such as laptop computers, iPhones, magnets, catalytic converters, night vision goggles and wind turbines. These metals are not well known, but they are absolutely crucial to our way of life.
So what is going to happen when we start running out of them?
According to The Independent, the move towards "green technology" will cause a dramatic increase in demand for rare earth metals in the years ahead. In fact, it is being projected that the world will need 200,000 tons of rare earth elements by the year 2014.
But analysts fear that China may drop exports of rare earth elements to exactly zero tons by 2012.
Can anyone else see a problem forming?
Last summer, one leaked report indicated that Chinese authorities were already considering a complete export ban of the most critical of the rare earth elements.
But while we may speculate when the complete ban is coming, the truth is that China has already moved to dramatically cut back exports of the metals.
China recently announced that they have cut export quotas for rare earth elements by 72 percent for the second half of 2010. The U.S. government reacted quite angrily to this news and warned that this could potentially cause a trade war.
TechNewsDaily recently quoted W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey, regarding the coming shortage of rare earth elements....
"Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China's growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China's exports of rare earths."
So what needs to be done?
Well, nations and corporations that use rare earth elements need to start weaning themselves off the supply coming from China.
But there is a huge problem.
That cannot be done overnight.
According to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, building an independent U.S. supply chain for rare earth elements could take up to 15 years.
So what in the world will we do until then?
That is a very good question.
The truth is that those running the U.S. government are just not very good at thinking strategically.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office report mentioned above lists Mountain Pass, California as perhaps the largest non-Chinese rare earth deposit in the world.
But it almost fell into Chinese hands unnoticed.
You see, the mine in Mountain Pass is owned by Unocal, and in 2005 a Chinese bid for Unocal almost succeeded.
Yes, the Chinese were trying to strengthen their monopoly on rare earth elements and it almost worked.
Not that they don't have the rest of the world in a very difficult situation already.
The truth is that if China cut off the export of all rare earth elements to the rest of the world tomorrow, it would throw the global economy into absolute chaos.
That is a lot of power for China to have.
Let's just hope they don't use it any time soon.

via intermexfreemarket.blogspot.com

uh oh... one of those uh huh moments. we need to look at all these green technologies and ask ourselves how sustainable are they really?

noahdavidsimon's posterous