Serious energy analysts usually find lots to complain about in the mainstream media’s coverage of energy issues, and those complaints — a tendency toward stenography, innumeracy, lack of context and “magical thinking” — are often justified. But the Daily Ticker article titled “US to Be Free from Foreign Oil by 2030: BP” dials those complaints up to 11.

How? Let’s have a look, shall we?

• Start with the headline: “US to Be Free from Foreign Oil by 2030: BP” – This is supposedly the big news flash coming out of BP’s latest “Energy Outlook 2030,” which was released last month. Only that’s not what the “Energy Outlook 2030″ says. The closest any statement from BP comes to resembling the breathless headline is this comment from the press release accompanying the report: “The growth of unconventional supply, including US shale oil and gas, Canadian oil sands, and Brazilian deepwaters, against a background of a gradual decline in oil demand, will see the Western Hemisphere become almost totally energy self-sufficient by 2030.” Hmm, Western Hemisphere = US? Nope. Foreign Oil = Energy? Wrong again.
• Then there’s this howler from the article: “The drilling process used to bring (natural) gas to the surface is widely known as ‘fracking.’ ” Um, no. “Fracking,” the much-despised (by the gas industry) shortened term for “hydrofracturing,” is just one way of extracting natural gas from the earth.
• Preceding that reference to fracking, the article also offers up this non-sequitur: “As the country expands its domestic natural gas production, the US will buy less foreign oil.” Sorry, the two aren’t equivalent fuels … and if you want to replace transportation oil with natural gas, there’s a heavy price to pay. As Natural Gas Vehicles for America has pointed out, converting an existing new vehicle from gasoline-powered to natural gas-powered costs an average of $12,000 to $18,000per car. Multiply that by the 194 million or so light-duty vehicles the Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimated were on US roads in 2009, and you get a price-tag of $2.3 to 3.5 trillion. Yeah, that’ll happen.

All we can say is, considering coverage like this, it’s impressive that so many of the article’s commenters cried foul. As one appropriately responded, “And the US will colonize Mars by 2040.”

The US remains the world’s second-largest consumer of coal. And, globally, coal use has been on the rise, growing by more than 70 percent between 2000 and 2010, with China dominating the market. Not only is China the top consumer of coal … it’s also the leading producer by far.

“China’s share in global coal production is almost four times that of Saudi Arabia’s production of oil,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) notes in its “Medium Term Coal Market Report 2011.”  “Its share in global coal consumption is more than twice that of the demand for oil in the United States. Overall, the Chinese domestic coal market is more than three times the entire international coal trade. Therefore, any imbalance between Chinese production and demand has the ability to have a large impact on global coal trade.”

It’s largely because of China’s huge appetite for coal that the global outlook is “marked by extreme uncertainty,” the IEA states. The country is already consuming about half of all the world’s coal every year. It’s uncertain how much longer that trend could continue.

In fact, even though global reserves are “plentiful,” as the IEA puts it, coal is facing price and production pressures similar to that of oil: wildly increasing demand has forced producers to turn to more marginal — and more expensive to produce — sources to keep up. With many of those sources farther away from export infrastructure, and because of shipment bottlenecks in transport, the result has been “significantly higher costs of supply.”

All those challenges aside, though, how much coal is realistically left worldwide?

In its most recent World Energy Outlook, the IEA estimates that “economically exploitable” global coal reserves add up to 1 trillion tons, or “some 150 years of production in 2009.” That’s 3.2 times as much energy as natural gas can supply us with, and 2.5 times that of oil.

And what about the coal that’s not currently economically exploitable with current technology? Add that to the mix, and the world has some 21 trillion tons of coal buried underground … enough, in theory anyway, to keep meeting 2009-level demand for more than 3,000 years.

Whether that coal remains affordable, both literally and figuratively, though, is another matter. Harder-to-produce supplies, transport challenges and health, safety and environmental regulations all add to the price of coal, and supply costs have already gone up by an average of 12 percent a year since 2005. As affordable oil supplies are depleted, coal-to-liquid technology might become an option to create fuel for cars and trucks — but that’s a costly (not to mention carbon-intensive) process.

And then there’s the carbon footprint of coal itself — far higher than that of oil or natural gas. If we keep burning the stuff at current rates (or ever higher ones), we’ll be adding yet more carbon dioxide to an atmosphere that’s already more carbon-heavy than it has been for 15 million years. Considering that, back then, “global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today” and sea levels were anywhere from 75 to 120 feet higher than they are now, we might want to look seriously at other energy alternatives than coal.

Earlier that same day, though, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a sneak-peek at its 2012 Annual Energy Outlook, which included a dramatic cut in the agency’s estimate of “technically recoverable” shale gas resources from 827 trillion cubic feet to 482 trillion cubic feet. The agency attributed the revision to a rapid improvement of information based on extensive drilling in areas such as the Marcellus shale formation. Despite that correction, the EIA predicts US natural gas production will rise significantly between now and 2035, with 49 percent of supplies at the end of that period coming from shale gas.

In its last World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) prefaced its forecast for global natural gas production with the headline, “Nothing but blue skies?” Like its US counterpart, the IEA expects a wealth of natural gas supplies over the next two decades. And, as does the EIA, it predicts that about half of those supplies will come from “unconventional” sources such as shale gas formations.

There are a few bumps on the optimistic roadmap being drawn for natural gas, though. A New York Times investigative piece last year, for example, quotes industry insiders who believe the current shale gas fever is “inherently unprofitable,” a “giant Ponzi scheme” that “reminds you of dot-coms.

There are also the questionable impacts of hydrofracturing, a chemical- and water-intensive process for releasing natural gas from underground rock formations that opponents have linked to poisoned wellwater supplies and flammable streams of gas emerging from kitchen faucets.

And then there’s the nature of the natural gas deposits themselves. While shale formations might hold plenty of gas, wells dug to extract that gas deplete quickly, with production dropping by as much as 60 to 90 percent from peak in the first year alone.

In one of its three energy-outlook scenarios, the IEA expects global demand for natural gas to hit 4.75 trillion cubic meters by 2035 — up 55 percent over 2009 levels of 3.1 trillion cubic meters. That’s always been a tricky aspect of the IEA’s outlooks, though: the agency typically focuses on demand rather than on production … and “it’s production that matters,” as researchers James W. Murray and David King recently pointed out in a commentary in the journal Nature.

That’s the message from two scientists who warn that declining oil supplies and increasing price volatility are posing a growing threat to the global economy, and a more immediate threat than global warming.

“Historically, there has been a tight link between oil production and global economic growth,” researchers James W. Murray and David King write in a commentary in the journal Nature. “If oil production can’t grow, the implication is that the economy can’t grow either.”

And recent world oil production, they point out, is a serious reason for concern. Before 2005, if oil prices started going up, so too did production. In the past seven years, though, prices have risen by an average of 15 percent a year … but output has stayed essentially flat, at around 75 million barrels per day.

That’s been the case despite reported increases in oil reserves, tar sands production and hydrofracturing-generated natural gas. For one, Murray and King argue, reserves don’t equal production … and production is what matters to the economy. And even if new-found reserves do make it above-ground, those gains might not be enough to make up for decreasing production from aging fields.

“The true volume of global proved reserves is clouded by secrecy; forecasts by state oil companies are not audited and appear to be exaggerated,” they write. “More importantly, reserves often take 6 – 10 years to drill and develop before they become part of the supply, by which time older fields have become depleted.”

Depletion at the world’s existing fields is running at 4.5 percent to 6.7 percent per year.

“For the economy, it’s production that matters, not how much oil might be in the ground,” Murray says. “We’ve already gotten the easy oil, the oil that can be produced cheaply … It used to be we’d drill a well and the oil would flow out, now we have to go through all these complicated and expensive procedures to produce the oil.”

Even those new technologies can’t prevent depletion. In fact, advanced extraction methods often lead to an oil or gas field seeing output decline quickly and dramatically. In their commentary, Murray and King note that production at shale gas wells can drop by as much as 60 to 90 percent in the first year of operation.

Shale-based natural gas reserves are not only expensive to develop, but could be vastly overstated. Just last week, for example, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced it would be revising downward its estimate of the nation’s “technically recoverable” shale gas resources from 827 trillion cubic feet to 482 trillion cubic feet.

Murray also points to a New York Times article from last June reporting that “the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells.”

Taken together, all these pieces indicate that a business-as-usual approach to oil could not only hamper economic growth but send the world back into recession.

Of the 11 recessions in the US since World War II, for instance, 10 were preceded by a spike in oil prices. And the International Monetary Fund has calculated that, for the world’s economy to grow by 4 percent in the next five years, oil production would need to increase by around 3 percent per year.

“Yet to achieve that will require either an heroic increase in oil production, … increased efficiency of oil use, more energy-efficient growth or rapid substitution of other fuel sources,” Murray and King write. “Economists and politicians continually debate policies that will lead to a return to economic growth. But because they have failed to recognize that the high price of energy is a central problem, they haven’t identified the necessary solutions: weaning society off fossil fuel.”

While most of us can’t control those kinds of water-energy systems, we can improve the efficiency of the water and energy systems in our homes. Heating water for showers and baths, for instances, takes energy, and the water heaters we use are often out-of-date and wasteful.

It’s with that kind of water-energy connection in mind that two utilities in the UK are teaming up in a unique partnership.

Thames Water and British Gas, the country’s largest water company and largest energy company, respectively, are kicking off a five-year joint effort to promote both energy- and water-saving products in customers’ homes. The program aims to offer some 2.3 million customers a number of efficiency improvements, including solar panels, heat pumps, energy-efficient water heaters, shower savers, dual-flush toilets and free installation of insulation.

Yes, there’s a certain amount of self-interest involved. British Gas, for example, will also check to see if water customers could cut their electricity bills by switching from another energy provider, which could mean new customers for British Gas. But the program also promises to deliver meaningful benefits to the public at large, especially considering the southeast part of the UK that it’s targeting is facing drought conditions.

London and other parts of the southeast have seen below-average rainfall in 17 of the past 22 months, and the drought  is predicted to continue into this coming summer. That means any actions that can help reduce household water consumption are well worth exploring.

“The link between energy and water is one that we all need to be mindful of, particularly with water in short supply in the southeast this year and with energy prices not set to go downwards over the long term,” said David Bland of the Consumer Council for Water. “For instance, often water in homes is heated up only to cool down then be re-heated again — a problem that can be addressed simply enough with a combination boiler.”

“About a third of all the energy we use in our homes goes on heating water, so if we save water we save money off two utility bills, not to mention burning less carbon,” added Piers Clark, commercial director for Thames Water. “It is this crucial overlap between energy and water efficiency that the partnership will help address.”

In Germany, for example, energy-related industries accounted for an average of just 2.5 percent of GDP in the years between 1994 and 2003, according to the WEF report, “Energy for Economic Growth: Energy Vision Update 2012.” That’s less than half the 6.5 percent contributed by the health and social work sector during that same time period, and only one-ninth the share — 22.3 percent — generated by manufacturing.

Of course, the picture’s different in oil- and gas-rich countries. Norway, for instance, which produces an abundance of fossil fuels from the North Sea, draws nearly one-fifth — 19.1 percent — of its GDP from energy industries and significantly less from manufacturing (11.8 percent) or health and social work (8.5 percent).

None of those figures, though, suggests that energy is less important in one country than in another. Because without energy, no sector of the economy anywhere could function the way it does today. That points to an inherent problem with energy: it comes with a host of externalities that we don’t always measure or take into account. While we know, for example, that rising energy costs generally mean the cost of food and other goods also goes up, we usually don’t take into account how much the availability of food and other goods depends upon energy.

That could make for a very rude awakening in a world where energy is increasingly difficult — and expensive — to produce.

“The key factors in maintaining the health of this nexus of resources (energy, food and water) are sustained investment, increased efficiency, new technology, system-level integration (e.g. in urban development) and supportive regulatory and social conditions,” Peter Voser, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell and the WEF’s 2011 Energy Community Leader, notes in the beginning of the energy report. “Looking towards the decades ahead, this nexus will come under huge stress as global growth in population and prosperity propel underlying demand at a pace that will outstrip the normal capacity to expand supply. To face this strain, some combination of extraordinary moderation in demand growth and extraordinary acceleration in production will need to take place.”

Even the word “extraordinary” doesn’t seem enough to describe what Voser’s advocating. “Sustained investment”? That’s ever-harder to come by these days. And “supportive regulatory and social conditions”? More often than not, those seem to be moving in the wrong direction lately, as protestors at these latest WEF talks in Davos, Switzerland, pointed out. And that’s the basic problem with so many “brain-trust” gatherings like these: the words are often right, but the action doesn’t follow.

In today’s energy environment, action counts more than ever.

That’s a big if, of course. But that’s what the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) sees in the country’s energy future under status quo circumstances.

Released this week, the EIA’s “Early Release Reference” case provides a sneak preview of the agency’s Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), which is scheduled to come out this spring. The predictions based on a business-as-usual environment paint a fairly encouraging broad-brush picture, from an energy security standpoint.

As usual, though, the devil is in the details. Study the image a bit more closely, and some of the finer brush-strokes in the early-release numbers give reasons for concern:

• Carbon dioxide emissions per capita are expected to shrink by about 1 percent per year between 2005 and 2035, thanks not just to federal fuel-economy standards but to “higher energy prices.”
• By 2035, world oil prices, the EIA says, will hit $146 per barrel in 2010 dollars. To anyone who glances at commodity prices once in a while, that’s an interesting figure: it’s just $1 lower than the oil-price peak of July 2008, a record-high that many believe contributed to that year’s global economic meltdown.
• And why will oil prices rise so high again? Insatiable global demand, according to the EIA. While US demand for fossil fuels in general, and imported energy in particular, is expected to keep declining through 2035, those reductions will be overshadowed by a rising energy hunger in developing economies like China, India and the Middle East. They’ll help drive up world consumption of liquids — which is not just “regular” oil but unconventional oil such as from Canada’s tar sands and biofuels — to, the EIA predicts, 109.7 million barrels per day.

That’s more than 20 million barrels per day more than the world consumed in 2010. Producing enough oil to meet that kind of demand will require anything but a status quo, business-as-usual approach.

Which, when you consider the oil-rich hotspots where US armed forces have been engaged lately and how much fuel the military itself consumes, is also an issue related to energy and sustainability.

Coming from a leader who has emphasized the need for clean energy and advanced technology development throughout the first three years of his term, most of Obama’s speech wasn’t surprising in content. The tone in many parts, though, was more forceful than usual — almost in-your-face forceful — clearly a message intended for political opponents from the right wing.

So what do Obama’s words signal for the year ahead and, depending on the outcome of November’s presidential election, the four years following?

• Early hints of de-globalization – The end of cheap oil, as economist Jeff Rubin has noted, will make all those cheap imported goods from places like China, Thailand and Vietnam … well, increasingly not so cheap for consumers on the other side of the world. While he didn’t pin the reason on oil, Obama did note in his speech that “it’s getting more expensive to do business in places like China,” and gave the example of one company — Master Lock — that has already de-globalized some and is back to running a manufacturing plant in Milwaukee at full capacity.
• Speaking of China … — East-west relations don’t appear to be heading for chummier times, as Obama gave notice the US will be on the lookout for unfair foreign trade practices and intellectual property piracy. In addition to a new Trade Enforcement Unit, the president said, “There will be more inspections … ” That question raises the question about how China might respond, especially, say, in the area of rare earth minerals, which it has lots of and the US, Japan and Europe, not so much of.
• Hunting for energy change — Not so much change of the “we’re-doing-it-differently-now” variety, but change as in the stuff you look for under the couch cushions when your wallet’s running on empty. Basically, Obama said, if there’s energy to be found somewhere, we’ll be looking to develop it: oil, natural gas, wind, solar, even the so-called “fifth fuel”: energy efficiency. The strategies he outlined include energy-efficiency incentives for businesses, more military use of renewables and, apparently, cleaner fracking (chemical-dependent hydrofracturing to free natural gas from underground rock formations).
• The long-awaited “peace dividend”? — The first President Bush and Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher promised more spending on other domestic needs after the end of the Cold War, and Obama suggest the post-Iraq War era offers a similar opportunity: “Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.” Given the current fervor for austerity and deficit-cutting, though, don’t hold your breath on this one.

Here are a few prognostications about what energy markets might look like in 2040, based on ExxonMobil’s 2012 “Energy Outlook”:

• With a global population of nearly 9 billion, we’ll be using about 30 percent more energy than we use today.
• Our biggest energy appetite will be for electricity, which will account for more than 40 percent of the all power we consume in 2040.
• For all the growth we’ve seen in renewables, oil, gas and coal will still be king, together generating around 80 percent of all energy we’ll use.
• With natural gas set to overtake coal as the second-most consumed fuel, carbon dioxide emissions will be declining, having peaked around 2030.
• Wind, solar and biofuels will meet around 4 percent of the world’s energy needs by 2040, with wind being the fastest-growing source of those three.
• India and Africa will have the largest populations, but China will have the greatest number of households … more than 600 million.
• 90 percent of the world’s transportation will still run on petroleum-based liquids — not much of a drop from today’s level o 95 percent. Personal vehicles will be much more efficient: nearly half of those on the road will be hybrids, electric or some other advanced design. Any gains there, though, will be lost to the dizzying growth (70-plus percent between 2010 and 2040) in fuel demands from commercial transport, including trucks, planes, ships and trains.
• The demand for steel, iron and cement will be twice what it is today.
• About 55 percent of the world’s oil resources will still remain unproduced in 2040.

Yes, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is back again.

Never mind US unemployment, the price of oil and weekly expectations of financial doom from the EU — the CES is always good for a temporary escape to Consumer Electronics Wonderland. This year’s show is also, organizers say, larger than ever, with more than 3,100 exhibitors occupying a space larger than 37 football fields.

As usual, there’s tech hype and hope galore, with some of the innovations unveiled on the first day including smartphones; smart, 3D and other cutting-edge-style TVs; solar-charging devices; digital health-related products; and various smart-home technologies. And, because so many of those devices are used on the go and suck up lots of power, Duracell’s lifted the curtain on its new line of Duracell Powermat battery-charging and portable wireless backup power products.

The Duracell Powermat pitch? “A world where phones never die.”

Due to hit the market in the second quarter of 2012, the new power products are part of the Procter & Gamble-Powermat joint venture’s plans for a “Wireless Power Nation.” The plan includes bringing accessible, networked power to New York’s Madison Square Garden and releasing a Duracell Powermat app to let people know when their smartphones are running low on power and where they can find the nearest networked location for a wireless recharge.