energy

Fungible vs Nonfungible

Energy Is Non-Fungible: Costing the World Billions

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Electricity has fundamental physical constraints that make it “non-fungible”—it cannot be freely moved across time or space like money or commodities. Understanding this principle reveals a staggering global inefficiency: curtailment of renewable energy, natural gas flaring eight times larger than cryptocurrency mining, and transmission losses equivalent to powering entire nations. This article explores why energy markets ignore this reality and what practical solutions exist to capture and use stranded energy.

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European Energy Crisis

The European Energy Crisis May Be Back Soon

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Unfortunately, the European Union bureaucrats declared the end of the energy crisis as if it were the result of decisive policy action, but the reality is that the energy problem in the EU was only diminished by purely external factors: a very mild winter and the decline in global commodity prices due to the central bank rate hikes. Thus, the energy crisis remains, and the problems of security of supply and affordability of the system persist.

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The Future of U.S. Energy Independence

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Historically, access to energy has been of strategic importance as countries that are not energy independent are subject to embargos, shortages, and political blackmail. In years past, wars were fought over land that produced oil and gas, but more recently we have seen battles like those in Ukraine where the battle was for the land that held pipelines transporting the gas. So, one reason that being energy independent is so important is that it makes your country more secure. But it also makes it less susceptible to price increases.

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Oil & Chemicals

Merger Mania: The World’s Largest Oil Company And Petrochemical Company Merge

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In the following article from  OilPrice.com we see a major merger in the works to expand Saudi Aramco from just energy into chemical products. In previous articles we’ve discussed the possibility that Saudi Arabia is looking for alternative revenue streams as the world shifts toward renewable energy. 

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China Vanadium Battery Factory

Move Aside Lithium – Vanadium Is The New Super-Metal

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The lithium ride was a great one. Cobalt, too. All they needed was their Elon Musk moment, which came in the form of the Nevada battery gigafactory. The next Elon Musk moment won’t be about lithium at all—or even cobalt. It will be for an element that takes everything electric to its revolutionary finish line: Vanadium.

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Why Graphene hasn't taken over the world

Why Graphene Hasn’t Taken Over the World- Yet

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Graphene burst into the general consciousness in 2010, when the Nobel Prize committee brought its discovery to the attention of the world with its almost sci-fi inspired properties. Graphene is the strongest material ever tested, efficiently conducts heat and electricity, can be levitated by neodymium magnets and is nearly transparent. Graphene is a form of carbon that is so thin it is actually just a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. Since it is only a single atom thick it is considered two-dimensional rather than three dimensional.

Scientists had theorized about graphene for years, and although it had been unintentionally produced in small quantities for centuries it was not mass produced. It was originally observed via electron microscopes in 1962, but it was studied only while supported on a metal surface.

Then in 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov  were able to isolate and further study it at the University of Manchester. This work resulted in them  winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the material graphene.”

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Big Oil Betting On Electric Vehicles?

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I’ve been enamored with electric vehicles since long before they were commercially available. Way back in 1975, Mechanix Illustrated featured the “Urba Town car” and offered plans to build your own Electric Car. It required removing the body from a VW bug, and building a new cool looking body out of fiberglass. I spent a whopping $20, (which was much more valuable back then, not just because of inflation but because I was a poor college student without a job). It even had an option of adding a generator and making it a hybrid. Unfortunately, I never got around to using the plans but over the years I’ve enjoyed reading about quite a few successful conversions of various vehicles and I followed Tesla’s rise to fame in the electric vehicle market with marked enthusiasm hoping to one day, own one myself. Well, today Jon LeSage of Oilprice.com tells us that the electric vehicle may have finally reached the Tipping Point and other experts saying “By 2020 there will be over 120 different models of EV across the spectrum,” . ~Tim McMahon, editor.

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