BOSS Magazine | Latest Energy News December

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The latest energy news from Marrakesh, the Permian Basin, American Samoa

In December’s latest energy news:

Canada commits to ditching coal power by 2030…
Canada plans to completely phase out traditional coal power by the year 2030. The country will collaborate with the last four provinces that are still burning the fossil fuel in an effort to hit this national goal. This is the latest part of an introduction of a nationwide carbon levy that is slated to start in 2018.

The Western province of Alberta is by far the biggest user of coal as a source of electricity generation, and is home to five of the six biggest coal-fueled power plants in Canada.
After returning from a United Nations-sponsored climate-change conference in Morocco, Minister of Environment Catherine McKenna noted that coal energy in Canada currently represents close to 10 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions coming from four provinces—Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.
Provinces can opt to choose between phasing out coal entirely and replacing it with lower-emitting resources, or using carbon capture and storage technology.
The province’s left-leaning government has signaled its intent to phase out coal-fired generation, also by 2030.
Canada’s largest province, Ontario, phased out coal-fired electricity in 2014.
80 percent of Canada’s electricity comes from non-carbon emitting sources, and the goal is to increase that to 90 percent by 2030 by amending existing regulations to phase out coal. The minister said the move is consistent with other countries such as France, the U.K., Netherlands, Denmark, and Austria, which have accelerated their plans to phase out coal.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made efforts to tackle climate change a signature issue of his government.

Outcomes from Marrakech’s COP22…

The twenty-second annual climate change conference, Conference of the Parties (COP 22)—also the twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 12), and the first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 1)—was held in Bab Ighli, Marrakech, Morocco from November 7th through 18th 2016. Over 200 countries were represented at what was nicknamed the Marrakech “implementation” COP for an opportunity to demonstrate progress and collaborate on the challenging task ahead: transforming the UN Paris Agreement into a tangible action plan.

After the U.S. election, a large concern for attendees was whether president-elect Donald Trump would pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and what that meant going forward. However, the general understanding was that this agreement was bigger than any one country, or any particular head of state. The next three years will focus on detailing all goals, “tying up any loose ends”, and outlining the framework for COP22 participants

“This COP is the first stop after Paris and it needs to cover and take up the issues to make Paris work and be implemented, so that is what it’s doing,” shared Stephen Cornelius, Chief Advisor on climate change at WWF-UK.

Finance: Participating countries were urged to continue scaling up their financial contributions towards the pre-agreed “$100bn a year by 2020” goal for a greater balance between adaptation and mitigation.
Adaptation Fund It was argued that the Adaptation Fund—serving 1997’s Kyoto Protocol commitments through 2020—should be shifted into the Paris Agreement, to secure emission goals as political priorities. In the end, countries agreed to share views by March 2017.

Facilitative Dialogue Countries agreed in Paris that they would convene in 2018 to take stock of how climate action was going so far to determine the next national pledges—a.k.a. nationally determined contributions (NDCs). The technicalities of creating a fair rulebook should be an ongoing conversation through 2018.

Orphan issues Tasks that weren’t assigned responsibility include common timeframes for future climate pledges, and a new goal for climate finance.

Loss and damage A five-year workplan was approved addressing “loss and damage”, which will see countries start to formally address topics such as slow-onset impacts of climate change, non-economic losses, and migration.

The Marrakech Action Proclamation was regarded to be a reaffirmation of global commitment to the Paris Agreement in full.

A new fund encouraging transparency efforts was established with a $50 million injection of cash from countries including Australia, Canada, and Germany.

The U.S. delivered its roadmap to an 80 percent reduction in its emissions by mid-century, strengthened with additional strategies from Germany, Mexico, and Canada.

The establishment of the 2050 Pathways Platform helps other places and organizations formulate long-term plans, which is backed by 22 countries including the U.K., 15 cities, and 196 businesses.
47 of the world’s poorest countries committed to generating 100 percent of their energy from renewable sources between 2030 and 2050, while adding a pledge to update their NDCs by 2020 and to prepare their long-term strategies. These nations are particularly susceptible to the negative impacts of climate change, but without the help of more well-off nations, their contributions won’t be enough.

Geologists discover shale oil reserve worth $900 billion dollars…

In West Texas’ Permian Basin, the gargantuan portion known as Wolfcamp formation is now said to hold 20 billion barrels of oil, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report. This amount would be nearly three times larger than North Dakota’s Bakken play and the single largest U.S. unconventional crude accumulation ever assessed. Currently this oil is worth close to $900 billion.

Pioneer Natural Resources Co. CEO Scott Sheffield claims that the Permian’s shale endowment could hold as much as 75 billion barrels—second only to Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field.

“The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” said Walter Guidroz, Coordinator for the geological survey’s energy resources program, said in the statement.

While the Permian has been a crude goldmine since the 1920s, the layers of oil-soaked shale have be significantly untapped until the last couple years. Intensive drilling and fracturing techniques perfected in other U.S. shale regions were adopted and have changed the nature of the game.

According to the Financial Post, the world’s largest independent oil producer by market value, ConocoPhillips, increased its estimate for the size of its Wolfcamp holdings in November to 1.8 billion barrels from 1 billion last year. And only a day earlier, Concho Resources Inc. CEO Timothy Leach told investors and analysts that two recent wells it drilled in the Wolfcamp were each pumping an average of 2,000 barrels a day.

In Samoa, Tesla has powered an island…

Now that Tesla has secured its $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity, they have also announced a major solar energy undertaking. Tesla has installed a microgrid of solar energy panels and batteries across an entire island of Ta’u in American Samoa. Previously, the island ran on diesel generators, but now the company will supply “nearly 100 percent” of power needs for Ta’u’s 600 residents.

Is Tesla just showing off? Well, Ta’u’s microgrid is comprised of 5,328 solar panels from SolarCity and Tesla, along with 60 Tesla Powerpacks batteries for storage. Showcasing the perks of Elon Musk’s “Master Plan” may thwart the speculation that this merger was a risky one.

As The Verge puts it, “Buying SolarCity remains a risky move for Tesla, with the purchase including billions of dollars of debt for a company that’s far from profitable (SolarCity spends $6 for every $1 it makes in sales).”

The project in Ta’u shows the benefit of this. It was funded by American Samoan and U.S. authorities, including the Department of Interior.
Tesla says it will offset the island’s use of more than 109,500 gallons of diesel per year, as well as the expense of shipping that fuel in—the amount of fuel used by one generator.

“Factoring in the escalating cost of fuel, along with transporting such mass quantities to the small island, the financial impact is substantial,” explained SolarCity in a blog post.

Wind energy to power Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud data centers…

Microsoft has announced two new agreements to purchase wind energy, bringing the company’s total investment in wind energy projects in the U.S. to more than 500 megawatts.

Microsoft has contracted with Allianz Risk Transfer (ART) to fix its long-term energy costs and purchase the environmental attributes connected with the new, 178-megawatt Bloom Wind project in Kansas.

“We are constantly looking for new ways to approach energy challenges and avenues of engagement with our utility partners,” said Christian Belady, General Manager of cloud infrastructure strategy and architecture at Microsoft.

“The team worked closely with ART to come up with a completely new model to enable faster adoption of renewables. Likewise, the tight engagement with Black Hills created the opportunity for Microsoft’s datacenter to become an asset for the local grid, maintaining reliability and reducing costs for ratepayers. This kind of deep collaboration with utilities has great potential to accelerate the pace of clean energy, benefitting all customers—not just Microsoft,” Belady added.

Amazon Web Services has also announced Amazon Wind Farm US Central 2, which debuted a 189 megawatt wind farm in Hardin County, Ohio. This new farm for Amazon will generate 530,000 megawatt hours of wind energy annually starting in December 2017.

Amazon’s two initiatives demonstrate cloud providers’ growing need for sustainable sources of energy for their power-hungry data centers.

“We’re excited to work with the community in Scurry County and a great team to generate more clean energy and bring additional jobs and investment to the area,” Amazon shared. “This group effort will generate 1,000,000 megawatt hours of wind energy annually—that’s enough energy to power almost 90,000 American homes for a year. And when this wind farm is complete, it will join our other wind farms in Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio, and our solar farm in Virginia.”

BP and GE launch offshore big-data system…

In the latest energy news, BP PLC and GE announced the startup of Plant Operations Advisor (POA), a big-data digital system designed to improve the efficiency, reliability, and safety of BP’s oil and gas production operations offshore.

The pilot started with Atlantis oil and natural gas field in the Gulf of Mexico and the POA system is expected to be deployed next year to other BP offshore platforms around the world. This is part of a development partnership that BP and GE announced earlier this year.

This digital technology concept could potentially be expanded to include onshore drilling and production sites as well as downstream equipment if clients wanted to do that.

As The Verge puts it, “Buying SolarCity remains a risky move for Tesla, with the purchase including billions of dollars of debt for a company that's far from profitable (SolarCity spends $6 for every $1 it makes in sales).”

The project in Ta’u shows the benefit of this. It was funded by American Samoan and U.S. authorities, including the Department of Interior.

Tesla says it will offset the island’s use of more than 109,500 gallons of diesel per year, as well as the expense of shipping that fuel in—the amount of fuel used by one generator.

"Factoring in the escalating cost of fuel, along with transporting such mass quantities to the small island, the financial impact is substantial," explained SolarCity in a blog post.

Wind energy to power Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud data centers...

Microsoft has announced two new agreements to purchase wind energy, bringing the company’s total investment in wind energy projects in the U.S. to more than 500 megawatts.

Amazon’s two initiatives demonstrate cloud providers’ growing need for sustainable sources of energy for their power-hungry data centers.

“We're excited to work with the community in Scurry County and a great team to generate more clean energy and bring additional jobs and investment to the area,” Amazon shared. “This group effort will generate 1,000,000 megawatt hours of wind energy annually—that's enough energy to power almost 90,000 American homes for a year. And when this wind farm is complete, it will join our other wind farms in Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio, and our solar farm in Virginia.”

BP and GE launch offshore big-data system...

This digital technology concept could potentially be expanded to include onshore drilling and production sites as well as downstream equipment if clients wanted to do that.

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