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11 June 2015, Energy Post, Canada will find US shale oil revolution hard act to follow:The new edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, just released, reports that the US recorded the largest increase in oil production in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia, thanks to its shale revolution. Can Canada follow the US example now that huge new shale oil deposits have been identified in the country’s remote Northwest Territories? Andrew Topf of Oilprice.com reports that the oil may well be there, but the external conditions are very different from those in the famous Bakken Formation in the US. There are many hurdles to overcome before the Northwest Territories become another Bakken. Read More here
9 June 2015, Renew Economy, How South Australia coped without any baseload power: South Australia’s electricity system was put the test over the long weekend when the state’s only baseload power contributor, the brown coal Northern power station near Augusta, suddenly tripped and stopped providing power. The incident was caused by a fire that caused several injuries, including one serious injury to a worker still in hospital. This is not the first time that South Australia has been without baseload coal power, of course. Northern was mothballed for nearly a year because of the declining economics of the coal generator. The difference with this event is that it came unannounced. While declines and increases in the output of wind and solar are quite predictable, sudden outages in baseload fossil fuels are not, which is why the energy system needs a large amount of redundancy to support large centralised generation. Read More here
9 June 2015, Science Daily, Land management practices to become important as biofuels use grows: The handling of agricultural crop residues appears to have a large impact on soil’s ability to retain carbon, making land management practices increasingly important, especially under a scenario where cellulosic materials become more heavily used as a feedstock for ethanol production, according to a recently published study led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. “Plants and soil are carbon sinks,” said Argonne climate scientist Beth Drewniak, who led the study. “Soils lock carbon away for long periods of time. But when plant residues are harvested, not only are inputs of carbon and other nutrients to soil lost, but decomposition is accelerated, causing soils to lose additional carbon.” Read More here