That’s more than twice the selling price today, so I get the feeling that the folks who follow NG the most think prices are going up.

Will we not get some sort of cap and trade or carbon tax? That’s debatable. Public opinion/concern about global warming is rising. If we melt out the Arctic Ocean in the next few years and have some more years of massive weather disasters I think people will start calling for something to be done.

We’re just now crawling out of the enormous economic hole that the financial industry collapse shoved us into. I think people will start refocusing on the environment.

You’re right about renewable subsidies falling in the future. The wind industry has repeatedly stated that they need only three more years of subsidy in order to get their infrastructure in place. No one is going to push for subsidies for an industry that says that it doesn’t need them.

Solar, some are projecting, will be fine without subsidies by 2020 if not sooner. 2012 is the year of solar panels prices under $1/watt. Projections are for manufacturing costs to fall to roughly $0.60/watt by year end.

And I’ll repeat my guess that we will be looking differently at natural gas in five or so years. Once we’ve used up the current glut and the word has spread that natural gas wells don’t behave like oil wells, that they produce a lot at first but after a couple of years fall off, we’ll be less ‘gas happy’. Throw in all the new uses we’re creating for NG and supply could be a lot tighter in the near future.

Certainly it will be a great boon to society in general if wind and solar can compete with minimal subsidies.

Re: global warming/fossil-fuel/bridge-to-nowhere – this is just noise. Politically, cap-and-trade and/or a carbon tax is not going to happen for the forseeable future. Renewable subsidies will, if anything, decline in the future. (Subsidies for natural gas will decline as well, but there “subsidies” are really just accounting tricks and are much less relevant to teh production of gas). So the renewable industry will need to truly beat gas on a technology basis, without any significant advantage due to pollution issues, because that is the political reality.

I hope solar and wind can do it, but honestly, I don’t see it happening. Both of these technologies sorely need some storage/transmission solution to move forward. Gas pipelines and storage tanks are much cheaper than batteries and powerlines….

$1.62 billion dollars of electricity from waste (their claim).
$0.1144/kWh (Ohio residential electricity cost 2010)
14,160,839,161 kWh per year generated
14,161 Million kWh per year generated

146,300 Million kWh per year consumed in Ohio in 2010

I get 9.6%. My number is a bit low because I used the residential rate for all kWh rather than an average of residential, commercial and industrial rate. Didn’t have that number. So, best case, double the amount produced and you come in a bit under 20%.

That’s a lot of power and if they are able to generate electricity or gas from biomass at a competitive rate then good for them.

—

EV batteries. The CEO of Tesla is claiming $200/kW in the near future. Tesla is now a publicly traded company, so management has to be careful about statements they make. Get out too far past reality and you open yourself up to a potential stock-owner suit.

Secretary Chu is saying $300/kW by 2015. As the Energy Secretary Chu has access to some of the brightest minds in the business and the ability to look inside the labs to see what’s in the tubes. As a scientist it’s very unlikely that he gets far out in front of the data when making predictions. His statements are full of a bunch of weasel-words.

A year ago Secretary Chu also predicted that batteries will double, or perhaps even triple, the energy density within six years. Doubling the Nissan Leaf highway mileage from 70 to 140 makes it usable for almost all drivers if they have access to Level 3 chargers along major corridors.

GM worked on electric cars for a long time. The EV1 wasn’t ready for the real world. After several more years GM came up with the Volt. The Volt is an excellent option for those drivers who have a need to drive longer miles at times. Just need to get the price down, which cheaper batteries will do.

I’m really glad that the government has provided some money (a tiny bit if one is objective) to get US battery manufacturing kick-started. Because batteries have low labor inputs and are bulky to ship they are something that we can manufacture in the US and be competitive. Tax money very well spent.

I’m skeptical about biogas playing a large role in our energy future, but I’m willing to be convinced with some reliable numbers. (A skeptic, not a denier.)

I’m fairly optimistic that we will have very good EV options in our near future. Five years or less. I’m watching the behavior of car manufacturers and almost all are bring electric models to the showroom. Almost none are including the ability to swap batteries, which to me would be a sign that manufacturers feel range/recharge time won’t be adequate soon.

It’s very hard to get information about the state of the industry but it seems that battery prices have fallen from their $1,000/watt level a few years ago to around $400/watt today. The CEO of Tesla has been talking about $200/watt “in a few years”. If/when prices reach that point and highway ranges reach 175 miles or so the game is settled. One will be able to drive all day, ~500 miles, with only a couple of short stops and do it for “$1/gallon”.

I don’t think liquid fuels from any source can reach the very low cost of electricity. Liquid fuels, I suspect, have a future for airplanes, ocean transport, and long distance trucking.

—

BTW, I did find one statement that landfill biogas is about 50% methane and 50% CO2. That means that there’s a lot less energy available than one might assume based on volume.

Regarding the CNG supply projection. Those that are discussing the longevity are only considering the consumption side of the equation. Currently many of these big plays will only yield 10% of the total volume as technology/techniques will only harvest that much. But this is vastly improved over just a decade ago let alone longer. So as more gas reserves are found, as more biodigesters are built, as more companies go back and refurbish/recycle previously “dead” wells, the supply will fluctuate as well.

The main reason I am a natural gas supporter is because of biogas. As long as humans produce waste, we can generate biogas, and that is a carbon neutral event as well meaning the gas that is burned is releasing carbon that was a year ago some other organic form above ground and simply cycled, just like biodiesel. It would love it if we could transfer to biogas so quickly that significant natural gas reserves are left in the ground.

Do I think we all will mostly be driving EV’s sure … but it is way farther way than EV’s enthusiasts want to admit. I guess it will be at least two decades before EV’s are truly mainstream. Until then, do we really need to be spending $4-$10 a gallon on fuel made from foreign oil or should we keep our energy dollars at home?

I also believe the entire alt fuels community should all work together and not be so separatist, which was the original emotion that got me to initially respond to the author. We are all in this together and tearing each other down instead of lifting each other up, is counterproductive.

My guess is that we’ll hit a NG supply wall in no more than 15 years and that should soon be obvious to utility companies. I suspect they know how to project fuel prices into the future.

Biogas should be actively developed.

@Bob Wallace
I believe that biogas absolutely has potential in areas with good agricultural properties. A good example is Germany, where a huge number of farms already have biogas based co-generation on-site.

I’ve seen no numbers but my guess is that, fully harvested, biogas would be a minor player.

It’s kind of like when people first started talking about bio-diesel from restaurant grease. Exciting until you considered how few gallons of cooking oil a fast food joint uses compared to the number of cars that drive past their window each day.

Not that we shouldn’t use it, we should use every affordable green energy source we can identify. But let’s be reasonable about the role biogas might play.