The work that Brazil has done in renewable energy is legendary. Clean energy – mainly ethanol made from huge sugarcane fields — accounts for more than 85.4% of their domestically supplied energy.
The country stands as a model of decision making that spans the public and private sectors. After the volatility of the oil markets of the 1970s, Brazil made concentrated attack on developing alternative sources of energy. In addition to powering its fleets with a minimum of gasoline, Brazil has been extremely effective in diversifying its energy portfolio with wind and hydrokinetics.
It is for this reason that I can think of no better host for an energy conference. One of the directors of the Renewable and Alternative Energy in the Southern Cone asked me to let readers know about it, and I said I’d be happy to; just click the link above.
I try to be judicious in my blogging about the politics associated with renewables, mindful that taking sides can alienate certain people. But guest blogger Cameron Atwood brings up something in response to my piece on Campaign Finance Reform that I think is so major and basic that it’s hard to understand how anyone could be offended.
He points out that there are 11,000 corporate and special interest lobbyists for our 535 congress members – a ratio of over 20 lobbyists per member. He further points out that the recent SCOTUS decision (“Citizens United” vs. Federal Elections Commission) granting the status of human beings to corporations, has fully unleashed this terrible power upon the well-being of the common American. As an example, the financial reform bills now inching their way forward face fierce opposition from no fewer that 1500 lobbyists (mostly representing the interested Wall Street, banking and insurance corporations). That’s a ratio of 3 to 1.
History buffs will remember that our forefathers contemplated the possibility of this very mess at the onset of the Union. In particular, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison knew enough about the potential effects of corporations that they both made very clear statements as to how these entities needed to be regulated with great care so as to avoid the trampling of the democratic process – such as we’re seeing today.
We all want to hope that a leader will spring up with the bravery and determinism to make all this corruption simply evaporate. But how likely is that, given the way our leaders raise funds for their election campaigns?
We’ve all had that feeling of exultation as we realize we’re in the home stretch of something that’s been a true odyssey in our lives — perhaps the end of final exams or the last few points of a marathon sports content. That’s certainly the way I feel about this book I’m finishing up on renewables. With every interview transcript I edit, I’m that much closer to having this project — and this phase of my life — behind me.
I have to say that reading over each interview provides me with a new opportunity to learn from the speaker. And if I’ve done anything right on this project, it was certainly choosing people to interview who had something to offer: Nobel prize laureates, great authors, industrialists, humanitarians, researchers, educators, and presidential appointees. By the way, let me again thank 2GreenEnergy readers for the wonderful suggestions they made along these lines. I’ve learned a great deal from every single one of these talks.
In a way, I’ll miss this project when it’s gone — just like, as a reader, coming to the end of a great novel. In a way you’re somewhat relieved to have your life back, but in a way, you’re sorry to see the journey come to an end.
A reader points out:
Craig, you seem to think that there should be a single best solution for clean energy. I would agree with you if you qualified your assertion to state that there is a single best solution for a given site. For example, a mountain top with high steady winds may be crying out for a a wind farm, but a wooded valley location with almost no wind would probably benefit from a low head hydro plant…..
I acknowlege that I am in a slim minority of those who do not favor a wide variety of renewables. I’m optimistic that we as a civilization will find our way out of the mess we’ve created for ourselves. But I find it hard to believe that this solution will come in the form of 8 – 10 different renewable technologies.
You raise a good point, of course, in that different sites lend themselves to different renewable energy technologies: the plains support wind, the mountains geothermal, the deserts solar, etc. And if you’re truly a “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” type of guy, maybe you really DO want all of them. But I ask: Why?
Let’s keep our eye on the ball. All we need to do is harvest and distribute 1/6000th of the sun’s energy. I grant that this can be done through a variety of means, but if we can choose one or two that meet all our criteria (low-cost, scaleable, safe, clean, etc.) do we really need to develop and support them all?
Of course, all this does presuppose a cost-effective way of distributing power around the continent. As I’ve written elsewhere, I believe that we have to upgrade our grid — even in the absence of deeper penetration of renewable energy. As an integral part of this upgrade, I favor high voltage DC power transmission (VHDC), minimizing line losses over long distances.
I’m not a futurist by trade. But I’ll go on record right now and make a bold prediction. Long before the midpoint of this century, the technology surrounding solar thermal will have matured to such a point that it will represent a clean and bankable path to the end of the world energy conundrum. At a certain point soon thereafter, 90+% of the Earth’s population will enjoy low-cost and very clean energy brought about by a combination of solar thermal (concentrated solar power), molten salt energy storage and VHDC power transmission.
Given the realities of our time, most of us are short-term focused – even those in renewable energy R&D. We tend to want to know what can we do NOW to lower our carbon footprint and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. I’m not saying that this thinking is flawed, but occasionally I like to ask questions that attempt to get at the long-term answers as well.
To that end, in preparing my book on renewables, I’ve conducted a few interviews with extremely senior physicists, and asked questions about the theories and experiments in the lab right now that may change the may we power our world 100 years hence.
One such interview was yesterday’s, featuring Martin Perl, Nobel Laureate in particle physics – a man so brimming with warmth and kindness (not to mention overwhelming intelligence) that I really hated to leave when the interview was over. We sat just a few feet from the Stanford Linear Particle Accelerator — a device that speeds up particles – normally electrons – to velocities just under the speed of light – and then subjects them to various conditions, e.g., strong magnetic fields. Suffice it to say that wild things happen under those conditions.
The reason I traveled those 300+ round-trip miles was my belief that:
- the point of cutting-edge physics is to understand the ultimate building blocks of the universe,
- depending on whom you believe, we as a civilization are somewhat close to achieving that understanding, and
- with that understanding will come (somehow) an endless supply of clean energy
But surprise! Dr. Perl’s beliefs are 180 degrees opposed to these points. Summarizing an hour-long conversation, one that was both fascinating and disappointing at the same time, he believes that we’re nowhere close to understanding those building blocks and mechanics of the universe, and, even if we were, there is no indication that clean, useful, and inexpensive energy would ever come as a result. (Having said that, there are some extremely powerful implications of Dr. Perl’s work that will be a true boon to mankind in other areas, e.g., medical science.)
So what’s the take-away from all this for us fans of renewables? I suppose it’s this: If you believe Dr. Perl – and it’s hard not to given his credentials – we’ll have to look elsewhere for a long-term answer to our energy challenge. In a way, I suppose, that ratchets up the pressure to find answers using today’s technology that work within the confines of the law of conservation of energy as we know it. And is that impossible, when the sun bestows 6000 times more energy each day on the earth that all 6.8 billion of us consume? Hardly.
I quoted Lou Schwartz of China Strategies in an earlier post on wind power, and I found what he said so fascinating that I placed a call to him just now to ask him more about his overall take on China generally. In particular, I asked about American perceptions of China: What are they? What should they be?
He said that conversations with Americans about China — even with extremely well educated people — usually gravitate quickly to everything that’s wrong with the country: foreign exchange, trade deficits, pollution. There is very little sense for what the Chinese call “shuang ying” or “dual win” (“win-win” as we might put it).
When I asked for a good example, Lou pointed to the very article that I posted earlier on the $1.5 billion Texas wind project. Senator (Charles E. “Chuck”) Shumer (D-NY) says he’s going to try to block this project, because it’s partially funded with stimulus money. “It hurts to hear that,” Lou said. “China is spending huge amounts of money on renewable energy, ultimately more than the US, and will be embarking on enormous projects for environmental remediation that will use money and expertise from companies all over the globe. If we can embrace this spirit of shuang ying, there will be huge opportunities for American companies. Shortsighted thinking like this hurts everyone – including our own interests.
I’m looking forward to working with Lou as a 2GreenEnergy associate. I constantly come across the need for answers about the realities of doing business in China, and I’m thrilled to have found this resource.
I urge readers to go through this excellent article explaining the costs of various means of generating electrical power. This is a wonderful presentation of the most important ingredients in the calculus that we would like to think our leaders employ in establishing public energy policy.
To present a few of the basics:
- The availability of renewables fluctuates during each 24-hour cycle, and thus it’s normally assumed that they are inappropriate for providing baseload power.
- The cost of building the plant is independent of the cost of the fuel to operate the plant.
- Where solar and wind can be switched on and off in seconds, fossil fuel and nuclear plants cannot.
- The cost of pollution needs to be included in the calculations.
While I don’t dispute any of this, there are important aspects of the discussion that I feel need to be brought forward:
- The reason that we believe renewables cannnot provide baseload power is not intrinsic to the generation method per se, but to our perceived inablility to store energy inexpensively. However, molten salt technology, which stores energy as heat and coverts it to electricity on demand, is a proven method of removing this objection. I urge readers to note the work of Ausra, the US leading solar thermal company, based in Northern California. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. David Mills, the company’s founder, in preparation for my book on renewables.
- The actual cost of building these plants is almost never anywhere near the projected budget. Readers may want to Google “nuclear plant cost overrun,” and read a few of the 54,700 articles they’ll find on the subject. Here’s one that refers to a certain nuclear project as “satanic,” based on the the actual amount of the overrun ($6.66 billion). The Florida utility, FPL Group, now estimates the cost of building a new nuclear power plant at over $9 billion, nearly double their previous estimate.
- The nuclear industry and its lobbies have carefully confused us about the costs and safety of shipping and storing nuclear waste, which remains dangerous for as long as one million years.
- As noted, the author of the article above mentions the cost of the pollution, but does not suggest any real way of quantifying it. While I’ll grant that this is not a straightforward issue, it’s really crux of the matter.
As I’ve written many times in the past, if the price we pay per kilowatt-hour of electricity (or for a gallon of gasoline) included the cost of addressing the lung disease and long-term environmental damage to our skies and oceans, the math would be changed completely. Society’s desire to continue to mine, process, ship and burn coal and oil would be gone in the blink of an eye.
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