Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
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Natural Gas NOW readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy. As usual, emphasis is added.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics?
What? Yes, that law. I came across it recently doing some research on a project, and found these insights into what makes natural gas such a wonderful source of energy:
The laws of thermodynamics describe the relationships between thermal energy, or heat, and other forms of energy, and how energy affects matter. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; the total quantity of energy in the universe stays the same. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is about the quality of energy. It states that as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is wasted. The Second Law also states that there is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state…
One thing the Second Law explains is that it is impossible to convert heat energy to mechanical energy with 100 percent efficiency. After the process of heating a gas to increase its pressure to drive a piston, there is always some leftover heat in the gas that cannot be used to do any additional work. This waste heat must be discarded by transferring it to a heat sink. In the case of a car engine, this is done by exhausting the spent fuel and air mixture to the atmosphere…
Modern gas turbine
“The most efficient engines we build right now are large gas turbines,” said David McKee, a professor of physics at Missouri State University. “They burn natural gas or other gaseous fuels at very high temperature, over 2,000 degrees C , and the exhaust coming out is just a stiff, warm breeze. Nobody tries to extract energy from the waste heat, because there’s just not that much there.”
As they say, “is there anything it can’t do?”
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Keep Declining in U.S.
One nation—one very important nation, the U.S.—is reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a meaningful way:
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 2.7 percent last year… even as… global emissions continued to climb…
The years long decline in U.S. emissions has been widely credited to the oil and gas boom. Power plants increasingly turned from coal to natural gas as innovations in extraction technology resulted in lower prices…
Per-capita greenhouse gas emissions fell to a 67-year low this year, according to the Energy Information Administration…
The reported emissions from 8,000 large facilities showed that greenhouses gases from power plants have dropped by 4.5 percent since 2016 and 19.7 percent since 2011.
Global carbon dioxide emissions hit record highs last year after rising by 1.6 percent. China, which has attempted to reduce its coal reliance while building coal plants abroad, had the largest increase of any nation at 1.6 percent, according to the June 2018 BP Statistical Review of Global Energy.
How many more years of greenhouse gas reductions due to natural gas will it take before fractivists give up the ghost? That’s a rhetorical question, of course.
You Know You’re Over the Target When You’re Taking Incoming Fire
Pennsylvania Senate Bill 652 would make it illegal to “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, tamper with equipment or impede or inhibit operations of the facility.” This has fractivists and other extremists extremely upset. The Clean Air Council, an anti-gas attack dog funded by the Heinz Endowments and William Penn Foundation, is alarmed and has put out this word, in fact:
A staff attorney at the Clean Air Council has offered these talking points based on the version of the bill amended by the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee:
1) We must protect first amendment rights of peaceful protesters.
2) This bill criminalizes peaceful protest. This bill makes peaceful protest a 2nd degree felony on par with sexual assault or aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. This bill makes peaceful protest a felony for individuals who have no intention of causing harm. A repeat offense constitutes a first degree felony on par with kidnapping, rape, and murder.
3) This bill, in its current form, makes trespass with “intent to impede or inhibit operations” a 2nd degree felony. “Intent to impede or inhibit” is not defined. These terms could be interpreted very broadly. The bill could establish that simply entering a property (nothing more!) impedes or inhibits operations and is a felony.
4) This bill, in its current form, makes conspiring to peacefully protest a 2nd degree felony. Helping to plan a protest could make one a “co-conspirator” and a 2nd degree felon.
5) This bill, in its current form, makes a second offense a 1st degree felony. First degree felony charges can carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and up to $20,000 in fines. Second degree felony conviction could carry penalties of prison sentence of up to 10 years and Maximum fine of $20,000.
6) The bill was recently amended to include additional language focused on property damage and vandalism, yet trespass is still treated as the greater offense. This is a clear indication that this bill is designed primarily to threaten free speech and peaceful protest.
The hyperbole reaches fever pitch in these talking points but reading carefully reveals the truth; they want the right to enter other people’s property unimpeded—to trespass—and, they don’t the fact these protests are orchestrated and funded by uber-wealthy special interests revealed. SB 652 is right over the target and that’s why it is producing such harsh reaction from the other side and why it should be passed as soon as possible.
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The post Natural Gas NOW Picks of the Week – October 20, 2018 appeared first on Natural Gas Now.
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