National Energy Infrastructure Research Articles

OPTIMAL IN THE NATIONAL ENERGY SECTOR DIRECTIONS OF FORMATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE COMPLEX

OPTIMAL IN THE NATIONAL ENERGY SECTOR DIRECTIONS OF FORMATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE COMPLEX

An approach to diagnosing suboptimal costs of energy sector enterprises

An energy sector is one of the pivotal industries of an economy. Access to electricity is a basic need for citizens, as well as for all spheres of economic activity and it is a necessity for the successful functioning of many types of enterprises. Companies, which are a part of a national energy infrastructure, have strategical importance at a governmental level. In this paper it was offered the definition of non-optimal/suboptimal costs for the companies of the Ukrainian energy sector. There were reviewed models for assessing the efficiency of the functioning of companies and their applicability for non-optimal costs identification, considering the Ukrainian energy sector context. Also, in was conducted an analysis of approaches to the financial diagnostics of enterprises. It was defined that high inflation does not allow full use of some of the approaches to find suboptimal costs. It is proved that without auxiliary analysis, none of the models considered corresponds to the business requirements and capable of identifying non-optimal costs of the companies in the energy sector of industry. An approach that combines various models for assessing the efficiency of an enterprise, financial analysis and modern means of collecting, processing and analyzing data to automate the process of searching for non-optimal costs at enterprises of the energy sector of Ukraine was proposed. The application of the proposed methodology will minimize labour losses for such a comprehensive analysis, automate the benchmarking process of the analyzed company and provide information to the company’s management, helping to identify areas of the company, where there are non-optimal costs are located and which can be optimized to improve the efficiency of the company. Dynamic reports about a company’s functioning and an assessment of the efficiency according to the proposed models will allow to initiate a project or program to optimize costs in a particular area of such a company. The effectiveness of this approach will largely depend on the effectiveness of the selected and implemented cost optimization program. The promising areas of further researches were identified, in particular – the prioritization of projects to optimize costs, identification of risks, associated with minimizing non-optimal costs, monitoring the implementation of projects and programs to optimize costs. The further direction of researches will be defined after the pilot implementation of the proposed methodology on one of the companies in the Ukrainian energy sector.

Turning a tragedy into large-scale barrier island restoration in Louisiana: A three-project case study

Louisiana has successfully utilized the proceeds from the fines imposed for the Deepwater Horizon incident to significantly jump start barrier island restoration as identified in the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) of Louisiana Coastal Master Plan (CPRA 2017). The Riverine Sand Mining/ Scofield Island Restoration (BA-40) project was the first to be implemented through a commitment of remaining funds in the initial emergency protective berms’ construction budget formulated into the Berms to Barrier Islands plan. The berm/ restoration conversion at Scofield Island was the first to utilize this funding mechanism. The Caminada Headland Beach and Dune Restoration–Increment II (BA-143) project was funded through the National Fish and Wildlife (NFWF) Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund and capitalized on a prior project constructed to the west completing the beach and dune restoration of the entire headland. Lastly, the Caillou Lake Headlands Restoration (TE-100) project was funded through the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA). The TE-100 project restored the entire degraded beach and dune system backed by a created marsh habitat to complement a prior restoration effort. Scofield Island is located west of the active Mississippi River bird’s foot delta in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. A primary objective of this project was the excavation and delivery of Mississippi riverine sand for beach and dune restoration; a first in our nation’s history. Multiple design and construction challenges arose requiring the CPRA, consulting team, and construction contractor to adapt. Construction of the beach and dune component of this project required approximately 22 miles (mi) of pipeline and four booster pumps along a sediment pipeline corridor that crossed two hurricane protection levees, went underneath two highways and a navigation channel, traversed the Empire Waterway, crossed Pelican Island, entered the Gulf of Mexico, and extended to Scofield Island. The restoration footprint length was approximately 2.4 mi, total volume placed was approximately 3.5 million cubic yards (MCY), and the benefit equaled 510 restored acres (CEC 2014). The pipeline corridor has subsequently been utilized for two other restoration projects, Shell Island East Berm Barrier Island Restoration (BA-110) and Shell Island West NRDA Restoration (BA-111). As a first in Louisiana’s restoration history, the Caminada Headland Beach and Dune Restoration–Increments I and II (BA-45 and BA-143) utilized sand dredged from Ship Shoal, an Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) sand resource located approximately 26-38 mi from the restoration areas. The 13.3 mi long headland was restored with approximately 3.7 MCY for BA-45 and 5.5 MCY for BA-143 from the borrow area (CEC 2015 and CEC 2017). A combination of cutterhead dredge/scow barges and hopper dredges were used to construct the project. A key goal of this project was restoring and protecting the fragile ecosystem which provides critical habitat for nesting shorebirds. The headland is of critical importance in serving as a defense of our national energy infrastructure. The western portion of the headland directly protects Port Fourchon, one of the nation’s most important energy ports. Caillou Lake Headlands (TE-100), known locally as Whiskey Island, is centrally located in the Isle Dernieres chain and it is a remnant of the single, larger Isle Dernieres (Last Island), which was segmented into multiple smaller islands by a major hurricane in 1856. The project included restoring the beach and dune along approximately 4.5 mi while simultaneously creating a marsh platform along approximately 5,500 feet (ft) utilizing 10.4 MCY of sand from the borrow area (CEC 2018). The borrow area lies within Ship Shoal OCS Lease Block 88 located over 10 mi along the conveyance corridor offshore of Whiskey Island. This project represents the largest barrier island restoration project to date in terms of volume per linear foot of shoreline with an average density of over 441 cubic yards per linear foot (CEC 2018).

Perpetual Motion: Energy and American Studies

Perpetual Motion:Energy and American Studies Michael Ziser (bio), Natasha Zaretsky (bio), and Julie Sze (bio) From early 2016, when construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline began, through February 2017, when the last protectors were forcibly removed by law enforcement officials, the eyes of Americans (and the world) were riveted on a spectacle of energy politics that played directly into established cultural narratives about extraction and its victims. On one side: Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline construction and management corporation (and its financial backers in the US and Canadian oil and banking industries), who were eager to connect the shale oil freed by fracking from the Bakken formation in North Dakota to existing distribution infrastructure in Illinois, through which it would enter the energy networks of the continent and beyond. On the other: the Standing Rock Sioux and over three hundred other Native nations concerned about threats to their land, water supplies, and cultural heritage sites (including ceremonial sites and burial grounds) along the thousand-plus milelong route of the pipeline, and allies concerned with the global climate crisis. Harking back to the native resistance to settler land theft during the Black Hills gold rush more than a century before, the Dakota Access protests allowed a new generation to see in vivid detail the ongoing violence against native people and lands that are more often hidden from public view. But the Mni Wiconi (Water Is Life) and #NoDAPL movements did more than reopen the painful genre of settler extractive depredation: they also stimulated a broader sort of energy education, one that would illuminate the less familiar and more dauntingly complex historical realities of the nation's energy infrastructure. As Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux) details in Our History Is the Future, the protests were rooted in earlier mobilizations against another pipeline, the Keystone XL, and connected to a long tradition of Native resistance to infrastructure and energy projects built in the service of distant populations by corporations and governments indifferent to their impacts on indigenous lands affected by centuries of colonial aggression. The scope and scale of the issues raised could not be limited to a single pipeline but traversed time and space, encompassing people and places widely separated by geography and history. [End Page 543] For outsiders inclined to connect what was happening in the Dakotas to their own daily existence, a new set of technical tools was available to help them. Accompanying the protests were maps of the existing and planned pipelines that make up the nearly half-million miles of large oil and gas pipelines that sit three to six feet below the surface in every state in the union; some of these included a link to the National Pipeline Mapping System database and mobile app (pvnpms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/), which allows the public to see a county-by-county map of the oil, gas, and liquid propane pipelines moving fossil fuels through their neighborhoods. Cartographic data sets help visualize the otherwise concealed energy infrastructure that undergirds the alliances and complicities of social life in the contemporary United States, its global networks, and the counterpublics ranged against it.1 Ubiquitous but not evenly spread across the landscape, complex in both their technical details and the affective responses they engender, these routes of literal and figurative power demand careful investigation and debate from scholars in American studies. Energy Studies, Sciences, Histories, and Humanities As in other fields where strict disciplinary boundaries have been abandoned in favor of more flexible inquiries, energy studies is coalescing around the recognition that the energetic basis of the modern world is in a crisis that requires a response from across many categories of knowledge. This broad coalition is made up of four converging approaches (each of them internally complex in ways that we cannot do justice to here). To some, energy studies is the technical study of fuel-stock and energy production, distribution, and consumption (energy sciences); to others, it is the historical account of the development of various industrial prime movers (energy histories); to still others, it is the evolving cultural and political meaning of energy as a concept and construct (energy humanities); and for others, it is the study and...

FERC‐Regulated Gas Pipelines Facing Uncertainty

The overall world of interstate gas pipeline development has involved a lot of major hurdles over the last few years, as the size and geography of the shale revolution led to a massive build‐out of the nation's energy infrastructure.

Critical Energy Infrastructure: Cyberterrorism Threats and Means of Protection

The present paper is concerned with potential cyberterrorist threats which the objects of national energy infrastructure may undergo, directions of development of counteraction means for these threats, problems arising during this development and their possible solutions. This problem field is studied by the author from scientific point of view (from point of view of computer science and information security of large systems) and this paper reflects results of such studies. Many special technical terms were omitted or substituted in order to make the statement accessible to wider range of people concerned.

Framing the national nuclear legacy at the local level: Implications for the future of federal facilities

There are several major federal nuclear facilities located in small towns and rural areas of the United States. While many of these facilities were developed in the 1950s to support national defense, in the 1960s and 1970s, some of these shifted their mission to focus on national energy infrastructure. Now, many of these facilities are in a clean-up phase, and local communities are becoming increasingly engaged in influencing decisions about the future of the sites. Communicating with the public in rural communities is challenging when it involves a complicated environmental issue that could have widespread economic impacts. The local media reflect public understanding, so getting a sense of how these media frame issues can be a crucial first step to developing an effective community engagement strategy. A media content analysis of one local newspaper was completed in relation to a major federal nuclear facility. The content analysis is compared to the results of a telephone survey in the region served by the paper and the results suggest that there is a relationship between how the facility is portrayed in local media and public concern. This study has important implications for other nuclear facilities because of the role of local citizens in decision-making.

Release of the Pro-Inflammatory Markers by BEAS-2B Cells Following In Vitro Exposure to Biodiesel Extracts

Biodiesel, an alkyl ester of plant oils that can be used in an unmodified diesel engine, is the first renewable die- sel fuel alternative to become a commercially accepted part of our nation's energy infrastructure. For traditional diesel fuel exhaust, it has been demonstrated that the particulate matter (PM) organic components play a role in acute inflamma- tory reactions. However, there have been only a few cytotoxicity and mutagenicity studies on biodiesel emissions. In this study, BEAS-2B cells, a transformed human airway epithelial cell line, were exposed in vitro to the PM organic extracts from Standard Reference Material (SRM) 1975, soy ethyl ester (SEE), soy methyl ester (SME), and petroleum diesel for 24 hours. This study demonstrated that the organic extracts of biodiesel PM in an aqueous solution can increase the re- lease of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-8 and IL-6 by respiratory epithelial cells. On a microgram PM equivalent per ml (μg PM eq/ml) basis, exposure to biodiesel extracts was associated with a greater release of IL-8 and IL-6 relative to or- ganic extracts of two diesel PM samples. The dose range tested was not cytotoxic. It was also noted that the solvent ex- change method, which was used to prepare the aqueous exposure doses, may not be appropriate for the investigation of biodiesel extracts, though it has been used extensively in petroleum diesel research. A valuable new finding from these experiments is that the soluble organic fraction (SOF) of biodiesel PM begins to elicit a cytokine response in BEAS-2B cells at an exposure lower than petroleum diesel PM extract (approximately 40 μg PM eq/ml). However, more research is required to better characterize the potency of the organic fraction of biodiesel compared to petroleum diesel.

Misguided Energy: Why Recent Legislative, Regulatory, and Market Initiatives are Insufficient to Improve the U.S. Energy Infrastructure

This Article reviews recent legislative and regulatory activity seeking to increase energy infrastructure and analyzes the ability of each action to achieve this goal efficiently and effectively. In Part II, the Article briefly reviews the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005), which included the historic repeal of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA). This Part will briefly consider the events leading to the passage of PUHCA and its subsequent repeal and will assess the likely impact, positive and negative, PUHCA repeal will have on timely investment in energy infrastructure. Part III describes the use of pricing incentives and the advent of market-based rates in wholesale energy markets and the apparent economic and political rationales behind such incentives and rates. It then summarizes recent and expected developments related to such incentive pricing programs. Part IV looks at recent legislation and the subsequent regulatory actions related to approval of mergers and acquisitions under the Federal Power Act (FPA). Finally, Part V explains that while significant legislative and regulatory activities abound, the actions to date provide little reason to expect significant changes in the near future. The crisis will only get worse: the current energy infrastructure is insufficient for current demand, and the demand for energy in the United States is increasing at approximately 1.1% per year. Furthermore, this Part considers recent FERC action in the response to certain emergencies related to the California energy crisis of 2000-01 and Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. This Part argues that these emergency actions provide yet another example of plans that, despite some promise, fail to effectively and immediately improve the nation's energy infrastructure. More aggressive action than has been seen to date would be necessary to implement the programs effectively. The Article concludes that it is time for an aggressive and innovative plan that will lead to immediate and sustained energy infrastructure enhancements. Even with financial incentives tied to specific deadlines to put new facilities in service, such as those used in FERC's emergency orders, improvements in energy infrastructure under current policies are insufficient to effectuate real change.

Federally Guaranteed Terrorism Insurance Needed

This article discusses how protecting the nation's energy infrastructure is a rising priority, in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. It advocates the need for real, federally guaranteed terrorism insurance in industries that are extraordinarily sensitive to future attack and that insurers are therefore reluctant to cover, such as the water industry. The article describes a method of reducing insurance costs by establishing a government and private enterprise partnership to reduce liability by promoting risk reduction programs. Legislation can grant a discount on insurance premium rates or provide for favorable deductibles and also limit liability for eligible businesses that establish a terrorism loss prevention program.

End-use matching of solar energy systems

The choice among available energy sources for a given task requires technical and economic tradeoffs on the part of the individual investor. From the national perspective, however, the effectiveness with which available energy sources are utilized may well become an overriding consideration. End-use matching is a procedure for introducing solar energy into the national energy infrastructure. The result of end-use matching is an identification of the most cost-effective combination of process energy needs, solar collector technology, geographic location, and economics by matching currently available solar system hardware with particular industrial processes and their locations. End-use matching is not intended to be a design tool for a specific plant, but rather a planning tool for determining where and why general applications solar systems appear economically viable in the near future. This paper discusses the end-use matching methodology, and illustrates first and second law thermodynamics analyses applied to a solar system producing process steam.