Sustainable Energy Pricing

This is the first book to address the issues of affordable power, sustainable energy, and reduced environmental impact through the science of energy pricing. Looking at the availability of natural resources from an engineering perspective, and determining how they can be priced to achieve sustainability in the energy sector, is the aim of this groundbreaking new work.

Most current models used in energy pricing are based on linear analyses. While these models work well for targeted scenarios within a short time frame, they do not provide one with a scientific tool that can include many facets of the information age. The existing models do not include environmental sustainability in an integrated fashion. This is mainly because environmental costs are still considered to be intangible, and intractable with conventional economic analysis tools. Though one existing model acknowledges some possible theoretical truth to concerns expressed about the onset of 'peak oil'--the period in which new oil production must begin a decline of unknown and indefinite duration --this model has little or nothing to say about continuing practices in the extraction and production of fossil fuel that are themselves based on denying any significance or role for such thinking in the immediate future.

A serious limitation of that discourse is its insistence on polarizing opinions "for" or "against" environmental sustainability, peak oil, and affordable energy prices. This book proceeds instead to isolate the absence of any agreed criteria for what would constitute inherently sustainable development and examines the main outlines of the history and political economy of energy resource exploration and development since the 1850s from this standpoint. It proposes specific directions in which to take some of the leading alternatives and amendments to current energy pricing practices (as well as some of the most promising energy development alternatives) in order to fulfill the time criteria required for an inherently sustainable trend.

The author shows how, and why, identifying unsustainable practices and consequences can make a case for closing down particular oil and gas production operations, while averting the time-wasting approach of trying to fix what really has gone beyond fixing. However, it is possible, necessary, and actually far better to replace these methods with newer, scientifically based methods for achieving overall energy sustainability.

Auteur
Gary M. Zatzman is a researcher with the EEC Research Organisation, in Halifax NS, Canada, a multinational community of researchers from various fields in engineering, social science, and the natural sciences researching ways for industry to become sustainable, both from an economic and environmental standpoint. With this latest work, the author synthesizes decades of industry and teaching experience and dozens of papers and books into a work that breaks new ground in the discussion of sustainability in the energy sector.

Contenu

Acknowledgements xiii

Preface xv

Introduction 1

0.1 Requirements of a Sustainable Energy Pricing Model 9

0.2 Outline of the Contents of this Volume 30

1. Fundamental Notions 37

1.1 "Energy Crunch" or: The Problems and Issues of Modeling an
Energy Price 39

1.2 Matter, Energy, and Efficiency from Scientific Standpoint
66

1.3 Truth as a Scientific Frame of Reference 69

1.4 Phenomenally-based Sustainability: The Nature-science
Criterion 80

1.5 Value Assessment, Value Addition and Phenomenally-based
Energy Pricing 94

1.6 Newtonian 'Mechanism' and Mystification of How Value is
Transformed into Price 104

1.7 Risk Assessment & Management and Aphenomenal Energy
Pricing 107

1.8 The Temporal Criterion of Long-term Sustainability and its
Implications 116

2. Newtonian Mechanism and Deconstruction of Scientific
   Disinformation 137

2.1 Introduction 139

2.2 Einstein's Relativity and Newton's Mechanism Compared
140

2.3 Newton's First Assumption 142

2.4 Fundamental Assumptions of Electromagnetic Theory 153

2.5 The Engineering Approach and Its Significance 175

2.6 First Conclusions 182

2.7 Continuity and Linearity 182

3. Offshore Networks of Control: Providing Short-Term
   Multi-Entity International Oil and Gas Plays with a Guarantee
   209

4. Current Energy Pricing Models" Origins & Problems
   223

4.1 Consumption without Production 226

4.2 Imposed Energy Pricing 246

4.3 Inherent Features of the Current Energy-Pricing Model:
Matters Affecting Individuals' Daily Existence 256

4.4 Societal Implications of the Current Energy-Pricing Model
for the Long Term 269

4.5 Long-term vs Short-term Returns-on-investment [ROI] From
Energy Exploration & Development 296

4.6 Resource "Renewability" and 'Sustainable Negative Rent'
304

5. The Role of Coal in the Modern Evolution of Energy Pricing
   309

5.1 Introduction 309

5.2 Significance of Commodifying Labor-time & All Material
Production -- Including its Energy Source 313

5.3 From "Law of Supply & Demand" (at the margin) to
"Consumption without Production" 335

6. Carbon Emission Credits -- Theory & Practice
   341

6.1 Introduction 341

7. "Peak Oil" and Other Fits of Pique Among Resource
   Economists 435

7.1 Introduction 435

7.2 Human Factor Social Consciousness & "Abstracting
Absence" 453

Bibliography 477

Appendix -Disinformation in the Social & Historical
Sciences: Concerning Time Functions and Sustainability of Resource
Development 521

Index 575