Adam R. Brandt
Ph.D. Candidate
Energy and Resources Group
University of California, Berkeley
email: abrandt "at" berkeley "dot" edu
Interests
See below for more information on both current and completed projects.
See my CV for background information: CV [pdf]
Projects (current)
Analysis of energy inputs to and greenhouse gas emissions from Green River oil shale production
One substitute for conventional oil is synthetic crude oil produced from oil shale. The Green River oil shale formation (of western Colorado, eastern Utah, and southern Wyoming) is the largest oil shale deposit in the world (over 1000 Gbbl in place). In this project I model the energy inputs and outputs and greenhouse gas emissions of two oil shale production processes proposed under a Bureau of Land Management research and development support program that encourages development of Green River shale resources.
See more on the Oil shale energy and emissions page.
The Shell Mahogany Research Demonstration site, a testing site for the Shell in-situ conversion process (ICP). The ICP produces oil from oil shale by retorting the shale in place using electric resistance heating. Photo by David Hawkins, used with permission.
ROMEO, the Regional Optimization Model for Emissions from Oil substitutes
Adam R. Brandt, Richard J. Plevin, Alexander E. Farrell.
ROMEO, or the Regional Optimization Model for Emissions from Oil substitutes, models the adoption of substitutes for conventional oil. It also calculates the resulting GHG emissions from producing and consuming these oil substitutes. ROMEO is a non-linear mathematical programming model.
See more on my ROMEO page.
Model results from current version of ROMEO, showing projected production of substitutes for conventional oil. Note the price-shock induced decline in demand near the peak of conventional oil production.
Historical analysis of California Oil Production
As a historical case for my dissertation research, I will study the history of California oil production, particularly the production of low-quality oil from heavy oil reservoirs in the Central Valley of California. The California transition from light to heavy oil will be analyzed as a historical example of resource quality decline and transition to low-quality hydrocarbons.
The first year of this work is being funded by the University of California Energy Institute, with Prof. Alex Farrell as the principal investigator.
More information is available on my California oil production page.
A small pumping unit on the Midway-Sunset field, the largest oil field in California.
Projects (completed and published)
Risks of the oil transition
Alexander E. Farrell, Adam R. Brandt.
The energy system is undergoing a transition from conventionally produced oil to a variety of oil substitutes, bringing economic, strategic, and environmental risks. We argue that these three challenges are inherently interconnected, and that as we act to manage one we affect our prospects in dealing with the others.
We also argue that without appropriate policies, tradeoffs between these three risks are likely to cause increased environmental disruption in return for increased economic and energy security. Our goal should be to develop and deploy environmentally acceptable energy technologies (both supply and demand) rapidly enough to replace dwindling conventional oil production and meet growing demand for transportation fuels.
This work was published in Environmental Research Letters, an open-access (free to read) academic journal.
Farrell A.E. and A.R. Brandt (2006). Risks of the oil transition. Environmental Research Letters, 2006. 1(1)
Download supplementary information and references for Figure 1 [pdf]
Scraping the bottom of the barrel
Adam R. Brandt and Alexander E. Farrell
The most recent projections of emissions of greenhouse gases come from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (known commonly as SRES). The methodologies used in the IPCC SRES models do not account for upstream emissions from oil resources in a detailed manner. Instead, they model oil produced over the next century in an aggregated fashion, with the emissions intensity either constant or only increasing slightly over time. This is not a realistic model of future oil production systems, as the emissions intensity of low quality oil is likely to be significantly higher than that of conventional oil. We calculate the consequences of this discrepancy.
Brandt, A.R. and A.E. Farrell (2007). Scraping the bottom of the barrel: greenhouse gas emission consequences of a transition to low-quality and synthetic petroleum resources. Climatic Change 84:241-263.
Download published paper (external link to Springer)
Testing Hubbert
Current oil depletion projections are based on the Hubbert theory of oil depletion, which states that oil production in given region follows a "bell shaped" (Gaussian) curve over time. In this paper I test this theory against other simple models using a very large dataset (139 state, national, and regional oil production curves).
A preliminary version of this work was presented at the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley on February 8th, 2006, as well as for Environmental Studies 190, Special Topics in the Environment at UC Santa Barbara on February 28th, 2006.
This work was submitted to the United States Association of Energy Economists (USAEE) 26th annual meeting in Ann Arbor, MI (September 24th-27th, 2006) for consideration in their "Best Student Paper Competition." It received a student paper award, as one of the top four student papers.
This work was published in Energy Policy in May, 2007.
Brandt, A.R. (2007). Testing Hubbert. Energy Policy. 35(May):3074-3088.
See more on the Testing Hubbert Page.
German oil production from approximately 1870 to 2005. German oil production is best fit by an asymmetric exponential function, shown above, rather than the traditional "bell-shaped" Hubbert curve.
Research Roadmap for Greenhouse Gas Inventories
Alexander E. Farrell, Adam Brandt, Amber Kerr, and Margaret Torn
Methodologies for estimating greenhouse gas emissions are uncertain for a variety of reasons. These reasons include scientific uncertainty about the underlying physical processes behind emissions, poor data collection on levels of certain activities, and the use of average or aggregated data estimates. This report, prepared for the California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER Program), outlines priorities for reducing the overall uncertainty of the GHG emissions inventory prepared by the State of California.
Farrell, A.E., A. Kerr, A.R. Brandt, and M. Torn (2005). Research Roadmap for Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Sacramento: California Energy Commission PIER Program. CEC-500-2005-097. 130pp.
Other Links
Article in the New Yorker about tar sands development, includes description of my research with Alex Farrell [article] [abstract on New Yorker website]
Letter to the New York Times in response to Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer's editorial on Coal-to-liquids technology.
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A07EEDE163FF933A25753C1A9639C8B63)
Page last updated: 2/11/08