Viewpoints on the Migration to Renewable Energy
A colleague writes: Just finished Facts and Fantasies. Very informative, very readable. I dog-eared a bunch of pages to come back to later for reference. I’ll tackle “Doable” this week and eventually we’ll have a discussion about them. I suspect the series will show a progression in your thinking to your current position…
I responded:
Yes, the books do, in fact, represent an evolution in my viewpoints on the subject. The first three are what I guess I would call “circumspect”; I deliberately chose a range of people to interview who I knew would present the “tough realities” of the transition to renewables. The last one, however, presents what I now have come to believe: the migration away from fossil fuels is in full swing, and is happening far faster than most people understand.
Actually, in the last year (since the book was published) I’ve become even more convinced of this based on the current market economics and my observation of what has happened in the last decade. 10 years ago there was very little recognition of the realities of climate change, solar was hugely expensive, wind had yet to make any real incursion into the grid-mix, and the power utility model that had existed for 100 years looked like it would survive another 100 years. Now, at least in terms of electricity generation (more than one-third of the world’s energy consumption) all that is changing very quickly. While this is happening, electric vehicles are becoming increasingly viable (and transportation is another one-third). The final one-third is heating and lighting of our buildings, and that’s really an efficiency play, which is also moving at 100 miles per hour.
As bizarre as it may seem in a world so full of corruption and ignorance, the good guys have won the war. At this point, it’s just a matter of cleaning up the playing field and hoping we haven’t caused an irreparable level of harm to the environment.
I’ve been off-grid 8 years – long enough that my lead-acid batteries are starting to get tired. (June is not an issue – December is. ) So now I’m looking to replace them. The issue becomes finding batteries that a) are cost effective, b) don’t rely on scarce resources, c) can be easily and completely recycled.
I keep reading about new battery technology, but most of it seems to concern itself with weight vs. capacity. I don’t care about weight – I’m not driving them around, although getting them delivered is a consideration – but $/usable watt over the lifetime of the battery is a factor.
How many car batteries are “disposed of” each year? For some reason, I feel like I should be hearing much more about recycling/remanufacturing facilites, about batteries with recycled content,…
And I’d really love a primer on “care and feeding” of larger batteries – even an equalization charge doesn’t bring them back to full capacity. OK, I’ve heard about all the clever tools for de-sulphating battery plates (sorry if that’s not the right word), most of which seem to end up being scams or requiring way more energy than is gained.
So if anyone has any great ideas, I’d love to hear them – ideally, BEFORE I order new ones.
thanx
Vehicle batteries and stationary batteries have somewhat different requirements. As you say, weight, and perhaps volume, are much less important for stationary batteries than for vehicle batteries. Most publicity on battery technology seems to be about vehicle batteries. Of course that is important, but unless batteries for stationary storage become more economical, I seriously question whether being off-grid makes economic sense except in special circumstances or if another storage technology becomes economically justifiable. Of course special circumstances can be important.
Using solar collectors for heating, i.e., water and space heating, seems to be receiving less attention than it should considering that PV panels are only about 16% efficient whereas panels to heat water can significantly exceed 50% efficiency. Thus, one would think that using solar energy for heating would make more sense than using it to generate electricity.
Solar heat can also be used for air conditioning via an absorption cycle, but it remains to be seen how practical that is. A few years ago I learned that a Japanese company was working on it but I haven’t checked to see what the current status is. Absorption cycles have a COP of less than 1.0; usually it’s about 0.8. That compares with COPs for the vapor compression cycle (conventional electric air conditioning) exceeding 3.0 but when considering the low efficiency of generating electricity from solar energy a COP of 0.8 doesn’t seem so bad.
For those not familiar with COP, it is coefficient of performance. Specifically, it is cooling out divided by power in. For example, if 1000 watts of power in will produce 3000 watts of cooling (1 watt = 3.41 BTUs), the COP is 3.0. It is similar to EER except that EER uses kilowatts input and BTUs output which is a hybrid measurement and gives less of a feel for actual efficiency. You can convert from EER to COP by dividing by EER by 3410, or you can convert from COP to EER by multiplying by 3410.
Hi Roger,
You might try taking a look at Aquion.
http://www.aquionenergy.com/energy-storage-technology
“A Unique Chemistry”
“Our unique Aqueous Hybrid Ion (AHI) chemistry is composed of a saltwater electrolyte, manganese oxide cathode, carbon composite anode, and synthetic cotton separator. The battery utilizes non-corrosive reactions at the anode and cathode to prevent deterioration of the materials. The water-based chemistry results in a nontoxic and non-combustible product that is safe to handle and environmentally friendly.”
These batteries are highly abuse tolerant, very long life, and do not contain anything toxic. They have been shown to survive 5,000 full depth cycles, They are also composed of earth abundant materials (salt water, magnesium and carbon).
Cost per nominal kWh capacity is higher than Lead Acid, however considering the fact that it does no harm to 100% discharge these batteries, a smaller capacity can used. nominal cycle efficiency is around the same as new Lead Acid batteries, and rather better than tired old Lead Acid. You might also look to optimise the charging and inversion processes as MPPT charging and an efficient inverter can make a substantial difference to the effectiveness of the system (Ask Aquion about this as their battery has a unique voltage profile during charge and discharge).
I would also look at every opportunity to boost energy efficiency – LED lights, the most efficient appliances as and when replacement is required etc. In this way, your off grid experience will be even more reliable than it has been these last 8 years. .
LOL. When I saw Roger’s question (and didn’t have a good answer myself) I thought: I bet Gary will come along any second and address this.
The Aquion battery is also the safest battery in the world, and the only battery in the world to be cradle to cradle certified Bronze.
http://www.c2ccertified.org/products/registry
From the above posts, the Aquion battery certainly looks promising and worth considering in appropriate applications. It would be good to have accurate quantitave information on the economics. It may be that high volume production would lower costs.
Excellent post, Craig – the dose of good news is highly welcomed, coming as it does from someone of your level of familiarity with the subject. I hope you don’t mind if i quote you. 🙂
Ha! Of course not….
I am not sure of the exact costs for the Aquion battery, however my understanding is that the battery is of the order of twice the cost per nominal kWh of a Lead Acid deep cycle / Leisure battery, however with the ability to 100% deep cycle versus an advised 50% maximum regular discharge for Lead Acid, effective cost ends up around the same per useful kWh of capacity.
Given that a good deep cycle Lead Acid will usually only sustain around 500 to 1,000 cycles of 50% discharge before losing 20% of its capacity, and the Aquion will accept >5,000 cycles of full discharge, the Aquion looks to have a substantially lower cost of ownership than Lead Acid.
There is also the issue of battery management. For Lithium batteries, a good BMS can as much as double the cost of the battery whereas the Aquion is so abuse tolerant as to not need a BMS, or even an equilisation cycle.
In the past, the higher cycle efficiency of Lithium might have been a deciding factor, however with the dramatic drop in the cost of solar panels in recent years, it is now probably more cost effective to add a couple of extra panels than to pay the higher cost of Lithium batteries + BMS. (Unless of course you have limited space for your battery in which case the higher energy density of Lithium might be justified).
Thanks for your responses – the needs for a house-based (as opposed to vehicle-based) solution are very different, and your replies reflect that.
I’m curious how the ” Aqueous Hybrid Ion” battery gets rebuilt/recycled. Lead and sulphuric acid are pretty “old school” and I’m sure the lead can be re-cast and the sulphur re-acidededed. Since the only part of the battery that needs replacing during the life is the water, I assume that, in the end, the raw materials are basically available for re-use.
And to me, that implies that my grandkids could be using batteries from the same materials. Is that true for the new ones, or is there some component that requires a high-end technology-based replacement?
(My degree is in music – not chem or metallurgy or physics or anything useful…)
With PV running about $1/watt, I have many neighbours looking at it – mind you, I wish they would also look at upgrading insulation and general efficiency. When we did the plans for this place, the projected energy consumption was about 25% of my neighbours’ conventionally built homes. We’re close to that ideal.
We use solar hot water for interior heating – infloor radiant – also for “Domestic Hot Water”. Combined with significant insulation and (since we live in a rural area) a thermal-mass, contra-flow wood heater (with a water-heating coil in the firebox, we neither have nor need a furnace, despite living in central Canada.
One last comment on the economics of PV and batteries (regardless of the battery type) – that was never my main concern, nor is it now. Carbon-based fuels are going to get radically more expensive in the future (we can argue 10 years vs 50 years, but the supply is by definition finite).
In my eyes, any investment I make now which I can then use as a “demonstration project” to neighbours and local students has value that exceeds the dollar difference. (ok, enough ranting and patting myself on the back…)
Roger
Craig,
Whenever, I read articles like this, I’m always impressed by the enthusiasm displayed by supporters of various technologies.
While it’s true that some technologies do become mainstream innovations, most never fulfill the dreams of their supporters, and remain only hobbyist or small scale applications.
Like you, every week, I receive dozens of proposals by dedicated, enthusiastic (sometimes a little rabid and fanatical ) innovators, seeking to finance the development, or commercialization, of all sorts of wonderful new innovative concepts.
I try to sort these into five categories:
1) Sound science and technology, with enough market potential to be worth investing in further assessment and evaluation.
2) Sound science and technology, but, ‘ whose time has not yet arrived’.
3) Interesting science and technology, but improbable to expand past a hobbyist or enthusiast market.
4) Impractical, and not worth further consideration
5) Bizarre and hilariously impractical, but brightens up the day, and adds to my collection of human folly.
The problem facing most enthusiasts and hobbyists, is they really “believe” in whatever they are supporting. Often this belief is based on ideology, or moral opinions.
Sadly, such a basis doesn’t help these folk’s ability to objectively think beyond their own circumstances.
When contemplating a ” Migration to Renewable Energy “, it’s important to decide whether you are talking about personal circumstances, or a large scale, mass migration on an industrial scale. It’s a common mistake for advocates to assume that small scale applications, can be successfully extrapolated to large scale usage.
In the past, huge, inefficient, uneconomic, logistically impractical industries, have been created by massive taxpayer-funded investment. These industries (corn-based ethanol is a good example) are often kept in existence for purely political, or ideological considerations.
It’s very hard to persuade “true believers” to adopt a sense of perspective.
This may not be the best location for this post. If there is a better location, feel free to move it to there.
Recently I was at the Los Angeles Airport. It looked as though the most popular taxi was the Toyota Priapus. It seems unlikely that they would be so popular as taxis unless their extra cost could be economically justified. Thus, it seems as though their increased fuel efficiency is worth the extra investment cost when they are used in high mileage urban situations.
There were fossil-fuled busses to take passengers to airplanes. They traveled only short distances and probably did not exceed 30 mph. Also, they spent most of their time stationary. That would seem to be a good application for electric busses since there would be plenty of time to recharge them between runs and the low speeds would not require much power.
The various hotels circulated busses past the terminals to carry passengers to the hotels. Considering the moderate speed and the time available for recharging, that would seem to be another application for electric busses.
It may be that at present, the CO2 reductions resulting from using electric vehicles might be minimal. However, in the future, if most electricity is generated by non-CO2 emitting sources, then using electric vehicles would greatly reduce CO2 emissions. And, in the above applications, using electric vehicles would be especially easy because there would be plenty of time for recharging between trips.
Frank,
Your observation is both interesting, and insightful. Unfortunately, EV applications for such vehicles, have not been well received, and lack even the most basic government incentives.
These specialist vehicles are difficult to produce, due to the small profit margins, and very difficult to sell, especially since there is market for used vehicles of this sort.
You are correct, the environmental advantage are not all that significant, but the impact and publicity value is incalculable. We have enjoyed some success with replacing ICE specialist service vehicles with superior EV powered units, but it’s a hard sell !
Roger,
For what it’s worth, I am running a set of nickel iron batteries here for the last year and a half. I felt FLAs are not suitable for renewable energy as they want to get and give power they way they want and mother nature does not give it that way. I won’t say the N/Is are great or not as I would need more time with them to feel comfortable stating that one way or another. If you want to talk about it I am willing.
Let me know
Brian
Thanks, Brian –
I’m not sure what you mean by your,
“they want to get and give power they way they want and mother nature does not give it that way.”
can you expand on that?
Roger.
Thanks for the responses, all. Seems to me that the consensus is that there’s no spectacular, magical new storage system either in use or on the horizon. And that the old, mature technologies are FAR more cost effective if size and mass are not an issue.
My current system is a set of 12 1600AHr. FLA cells in a box in the basement, about 100kg./battery. With the 1500W of PV, it almost does our home year round – we run a little short in Nov/Dec and Feb/Mar.
What I’d really like to do is to add another, identical bank – It’s far cheaper than the new “fancy” systems – but best practices for “managing” the batteries (for both maximum output and extended life) seem not to be discussed as much as I would like.
I’ve been told (many times, thanks!) that old batteries and new batteries should be separate banks, switching from one the other as needed, rather than all the old and new wired in parallel. Ok, I understand that – in a relay race, total team performance is controlled by the weakest link.
But assuming I’m doing that, am I smarter, during the sunny half of the year, to use the old, less efficient bank, saving the new “better” batteries for the winter months? or do the new, better batteries deteriorate just by sitting there being bored, and therefore I should be using the new ones (even though it’s going through “life cycles”?)
And, even during the darker months, am I better to run down the old set before switching to the new batteries? (this all assumes that I have lots of PV or other source for charging, which I do)
I realize that I sound like what I really want is to be back on the grid for stability and security – but I don’t. What I want is for the knowledge of the “elders” – the ones with both the experience and the training – to be readily, freely and easily available. But what I find, again and again, is that I don’t know the question to ask until I have a problem, and then I’m reduced to “putting out fires”.
I want the skills and information to reach the same level of penetration in the public as (say) lighting a fire in a fireplace. Everyone “sort of” knows how to do it, and one person in 3 is really good at it. In any event, with some suitable materials and an appropriate spot, we not likely to “freeze in the dark”.
We haven’t reached that stage yet with renewable energy, and I just want to be sure that we’re not “hoarding” the information to ourselves to massage our own egos… (No, I’m not accusing anyone but, of the people who visit this board, how many are teaching their kids how to check battery fluid level (and refill if necessary), to compare capacity with consumption and to appropriately modify behaviour, etc? We do that with our cars – why not with the RE systems?)
Sorry – this is sort of “ramble-y”…
Obviously your question is not an easy one to answer. Coming up with accurate answers would require a skilled cost accountant armed with detailed information about battery characteristics and detailed information about the application to enable doing an internal rate of return analysis. It would also require making assumptions which are not totally accurate.
At least you are actually reducing your carbon footprint. People who have renewable systems and remain connected to the grid are reducing their carbon footprints by much less than they think. The intermittent nature of renewables, when utilities are used for backup, does not reduce the capacity requirements of the utilities by much, if at all, since they have to be ready to deal with the failure of the renewable systems to provide any power at all. Also, they have to run their generating systems in a less efficient mode to make it possible to ramp up their output quickly when the power from renewable systems drops. The problem becomes worse when large numbers of renewable systems are connected to the grid.
To the extent the national private and public fleets are pre-loaded with EV’s, and the population becomes accustomed to their use and advantages, the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels for transportation will be both eased and simplified.
If I had an EV, I’m not sure that I would want a power company to use it for back-up; it would shorten the life of the battery. If ad hoc batteries owned by power companies are unable to do the job economically, I question whether it would be reasonable to use the batteries in EVs.
Very true. As we’ve discussed, EVs are a mixed bag environmentally given the horrible externalities of coal. Oil has less damaging unwanted consequences ecologically, but more geo-politically. I support EVs for this reason–and three or four others, as summarized here: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/01/05/electric-vehicles-environmentally/.
I also support EVs, at least in situations where they are practical and make sense. However, probably I will never buy one. The amount of car driving per year I do is less than 2K miles per year which is in addition to about 2.5K motorcycle miles per year. For people who do a lot of driving with most of it in the city, EVs could make considerable sense. They will make even more sense as non-CO2 emitting power plants become more common.
Early users of a technology contribute to its development. So, even though EVs may now be of somewhat questionable benefit, those who buy them are contributing to their development so when CO2-free electricity becomes more common, improved EVs will be ready to take advantage of it.
Cameron,
“national private and public fleets are pre-loaded with EV’s” . ( Where ?)
Er,…I might be wrong, but since 99.8 % of all new vehicles sold, are traditional gasoline-diesel vehicles, it would appear that the population is far from, “becoming accustomed to their use and advantages” .
The fact that (sadly) EV’s don’t sell without massive government incentives, makes your super-confident claim , ” inevitable transition away from fossil fuels for transportation will be both eased and simplified “, seem just a tad optimistic.
Enthusiastic as I am about EV technology, the idea that the world will adopt home battery self sufficiency because of EV’s, is fantasy !
Craig’s contention that a Migration to Renewable Energy. has already occurred, is far from certain.
Craig, like many others, sees the question in terms of morality. He thinks in terms of a moral imperative, “the good guys have won the war “.
Unfortunately, that’s not a very objective method of evaluating technology. The market for EV’s is not ” flourishing”. Despite more models, sales remain totally dependent on government support and incentives.
The supply of oil has not “peaked”, in fact, if anything it’s become a glut. Oil will remain in good economic supply for many decades.
Wind and Solar power, have proved to be largely illusions. The amount of “usable” power produced, hasn’t justified the vast economic investment in these industries.
Although Solar shows great potential, and has some useful applications, it’s still not a viable alternate power source.
Can coal be made “clean”, or at least environmentally less harmful ? There are those who argue developing carbon sequestration technologies, including natural sequestration, is a better use of investment than wasting billions on unworkable alternate energy generation.
Other environmentalists, argue the best method of reducing dependance on the coal industry is by providing a more economic alternative. This can be best achieved by developing such technologies as Thorium Nuclear power.
The choice seems simple, potter around with hobbyist solutions, that will produce no real impact, or support real (if not perfect ) solutions, that will have large scale results.
Two quick comments:
1) Renewable energy and “hobbyist solutions” should not be conflated. That the big banks are investing $7 trillion (with a “t”) in the subject in the next five years is one of many reasons that this should be clear to you or anyone else.
2) Yes, I see a part of this as morality, where I wrote the other day:
What the author (you) refers to as “ideologies and moral opinions” are not really opinions at all; i.e., some are categorically wrong and others are categorically right. There is no better example of this in our world here and now vis-a-vis our environment. There are billionaires on this planet who are working hard to expand their net worth further by disseminating lies that protect their business practices that they know full well are causing incalculable levels of death, destruction and suffering. I have no more reservation about tagging this as “evil” than I do in giving the same label to the Nazis, the KKK, ISIS, or Boko Haram. They’re all rooted in a morality that is completely unsupportable.
Fortunately for all of us, it really doesn’t matter if the majority of us care about one another or not; the migration to renewables is happening regardless, since the cost are plummeting so fast and so hard.
MP – Notice the three words at the beginning of my comment, “To the extent…” and the two words toward the end, “…will be…” – you’ll see I did not infer the ideal condition presently exists. Your straw-man response is therefor invalidated
Further, it’s incontrovertible that the transition away from fossil fuels for transportation is inevitable – the only valid debate about that transition is concerning the time-frame and methodology.
Incidentally, CSP is mature, installed and proven in large scale (and growing). Thorium is not (though it may be one day).
you comment that “EVs don’t sell without massive government incentives” is not something I would contest, but… I suspect that will change as “gas” gets more expensive which it will as cheap reserves are used up. (The only situation in which I can imagine gas becoming (or staying) “cheap” is if economic collapse means that demand falls radically.)
I have no idea how much the “average” EV costs, but surely it’s easy to price a Civic gas, and a Civic EV (assuming there is one) (IOW, so we’re comparing apples and apples) so we can say that putting gas in the non-EV for the next 10,000 miles will bring the price to the equivalent of the EV. (I made that up – but there must be a number…)
Then we (as a society) start to promote the longer-term financial benefits (auto financers will like that) as well as the environmental benefits and social/ethical benefits. We don’t do this well so far. But when presented with information and evidence to back it up, “the public” will change. Witness the backlash against (was it California grapes about 30 years back?).
Maybe slowly but combining these benefits – direcct and indirect – will in time make the EV a desirable choice. But so far “we” the believers haven’t done a good enough job promoting the switch. That’s why I talk to high school students – they’ll be in the market soon, and I hope they’ll crunch some numbers, go to the bank and say, “If you’ll finance the EV, you can see from the numbers how much better off I (and you) will be in the short and long run
Gotta try, at any rate.
Roger, here are a couple of interesting articles on comparative TCO…
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/total-cost-of-ownership
http://www.plugincars.com/total-cost-ownership-cheaper-electric-cars-study-proves-127503.html
Graig,
” Renewable Energy ” is a very loose term. The term ” hobbyist, ( or small scale ) is perfectly valid for some renewable energy applications. In Australia, I have a neighboring farmer who for some years has diligently made his own, (very good ) bio-diesel.
This gentleman is a good farmer, great neighbour, and loyal friend. However, despite his passion for the environment, and great faith in bio-diesel, he can’t understand my opinion that making bio-diesel is a great hobby, but can’t be extrapolated to large scale, economic production.
Despite billions of dollars in research, and even more billions on attempting to commercialize bio-diesel, the fact remains that attempting to grow fuel from agricultural products, just isn’t economically or logistically feasible, except in unusual circumstances.
Anyone studying the disastrous result of US corn-ethanol, should quickly understand the appalling mistake of trying to sustain an industry on ideological grounds.
As I think I have mentioned before, in the UK we installed a bio-mass generator of our family estate. It works really well, (much better than expected ), not only powering all the estates needs, but even supplying surplus power to the village. From an environmental aspect, I’m very proud of the installation. However, I fully accept that it’s not an economically viable investment, nor could it be replicated on a larger scale.
As for “Big Banks” investing 7 Trillion dollars in renewable energy over the next 5 years. Well, sadly, bank aren’t always known for investment sagacity ! But seriously, you would have to name the banks, the projects and the terms of lending, to establish any creditability to support the idea that a renewable energy ” revolution ” is in full swing !
Craig, this may not be very tactful, but in my opinion, the “moral” approach to environmental issues, can create a prism through which a distorted perspective obscures reality.
Fossil fuel’s, once written off by prophets of doom only 10 years ago, have made a dramatic resurgence. A resurgence so strong, that evidence exists to argue they will remain an important source of energy for the rest of the century.
What does that portend for the environment ? Surely, it means that environmentalists must adapt.
Advancing the theory that environmental problem are due to the machinations of an ” evil ” cabal ” billionaires’ plotting to wreck ” incalculable levels of death, destruction and suffering- as “evil” as the Nazis, the KKK, ISIS, or Boko Haram “, is unlikely to find support from a wide audience !
It might be more productive to start doing what is possible, realistic and beneficial. In other words, maybe it’s time to prioritize, concentrate on the good, not the unachievable “perfect”.
I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk (it’s hard not to be), but in reality, who has done more for the environment, 50,000 Tesla model S, or nearly 10 million Toyota Hybrids ?
I should declare my vested interest. In Australia, I’m the major shareholder of a specialist electric vehicle business. So I want to see EV’s become mainstream vehicles. But that won’t occur until the technology can match the convenience, price and flexibility of ICE equivalents. Sooner or later, every technology must stand on it’s own feet.Government subsidies, incentives and regulations can’t continue forever.
Nor can “rosy” predictions. Germany has not achieved it’s “no nuclear” renewable energy targets, with solar and wind power. Instead it has ramped up it’s coal fired power stations, while buying from electricity from Czech and French nuclear power plants.
So what did the huge ($ 650 billion and rising) investment in Wind and Solar produce ? Well a lot of jobs, votes, hopes and high expectations in the Wind and Solar industries.
But what do German consumers get for the extra $40 billion a year added to their electricity bills ? Not a lot ! In fact, of the 24.2 gigawatts of electricity fed into the grid by Solar in 2013, only 6.6 gigawatts were actually used, the rest were dumped. Wind power figures are the subject of controversy, since some ‘mistakes’ reporting the amount of dumping in favour of Wind. But even accepting the figures on face value, it would appear that less than 20% of wind generation proved useful.
How long the German electorate will accept higher power bills, only to use more coal, buy foreign power, is a matter of opinion.
Much of what you say I can agree with, but I have a problem with part of the underlying premise:
“Fossil fuel’s, once written off by prophets of doom only 10 years ago, have made a dramatic resurgence. A resurgence so strong, that evidence exists to argue they will remain an important source of energy for the rest of the century.”
It’s my understanding that the resurgence in fossil fuels is a function of desperation, not desirability. Yes, we will absolutely burn evey last drop of gas, oil and coal rather than impose any limits on ourselves or accept any change in our “lifestyles”, but is that the “best case scenario”?
Tar sands oil is only “an important source of energy” if one ignores the peripheral costs of develolping and burning it. If all those “indirect” costs were monetized and attached directly to each barrel of oil, the picture would change considerably. Tailings ponds, air polution (both in production and by end user) – imagine if all the polution had to be cleaned up – not “one day”, but “today”, ie. the day it was created.
We could do it – but man, would it be expensive! And all those costs attached to the retail price of a gallon of gas would radically change the way we think about burning it!
And that would be a good thing. Can we continue to consume energy as we have? Well, we certainly need to become more aware of how much is wasted (with inefficient transportation and housing for example). And the “as usual” part in the “business as usual” motto SHOULD look very different.
What I dread is the series of self-justifications that will come out as we move to dirtier and uglier energy supplies instead of dealing with a reality – we had a one-time patrimony of plentiful and easy to use energy, and we burned it.
I’d like to make some comment about how we deserve what we’ll get – but in fact I think that it’s the kids who will get it. “The sins of the fathers…”
Thank you for your reply.
Like you, only five years ago, I was an enthusiastic advocate for the immediate need to develop large scale alternatives energy solutions, no matter what the cost. I believed that “finite resources” and Peak Oil, were obvious facts.
I also reasoned that issues like global warming, and resource scarcity, were urgent imperatives, and shortages would develop creating the need for urgent disruptive technologies.
Since then, I believe I have acquired more knowledge, and a wider sense of perspective. I’ve learned to adapt to a new reality.
About 10 years ago, the environmental movement began to lose it’s way, mainly due to it’s own success. Once the public the public began to take notice of environmental issues, politically skilled ideologues of the old left, hi-jacked the environmental movement as a new camouflage for old dogmas.
Largely discredited by the collapse of the Eastern Europe, and Marxist economics in the PRC, they were desperate for a new platform.
With their involvement, the environmental movement became radicalized. The”Watermelon effect ” appeared. (Green on outside, but red under the skin and all the way through !). Fanatical advocates appeared with shrill cries of Armageddon and exciting visions of apocalyptic futures. Ernest politicians, academics, advocates, journalists, pontificators of every hue, flew to important sounding talk-fests, around the globe, while committing vast amounts of public funding, for green studies, programs, and technologies.
The hype continued, supported by a host of well meaning, selfless individuals, wanting a better world.
A vast new industry was created around environmental issues. Funded by borrowed or public money, speculative investments etc. Very little investment monitoring was undertaken, but the party just kept getting bigger, and more exciting. Even the oil companies invested billions in alternate fuels.
But, the party is beginning to run out of steam. As the new dawn breaks, no amount of stifling of opposition, screams of “heretic ” or ”denier” , can hide the fact that the general public has grown weary of all the hype, wasted money, and false expectations.
The grim spectre at the door, is old fashioned economics, fiscal responsibility, and the catering bill must be paid
The first guests to quit the party were the fossil fuel companies. Seeing the billions wasted, on algae-bio-fuels, ethanol, and other nonviable technologies, they sobered up, and reinvested in new hydro-carbon technologies.
The result has been little short of miraculous. The new technologies have brought back to productivity oil fields long thought played out decades ago. Refining and new management techniques have reduced production cost and dramatically increased production. The use of nono-robots has reduced the cost of exploration, and drilling buy up to 90 % !
Shale and natural gas fields, are becoming more productive, with less waste, and greater productivity. The new technologies are also dramatically reducing the risk and environmental problems previously associated with extraction. New sources of oil (hydro-carbons) are being discovered, and the associated costs are being reduced dramatically.
These changes are real, and the effects on, not just the US economy, but the global economy can be measured and monitored.
The fossil fuel companies aren’t going away. The general public around the world, is beginning to realize that they live in an industrialized world. The only way out of poverty, is by investing in industrial power. Real solutions, that bring prosperity, not disruptive ideologies with dubious economic merit.
Alternate energy must be able to compete economically. ( not morally) !
Morality is subjective. A family, with a nice first world suburban villa, with sufficient income to invest in Solar panels, and a government able to afford to pay a subsidy for the power company to buy uneconomic electricity from the householder, may feel very self-righteous about their “carbon footprint” . They may feel very moral, and proclaim how solar energy can “save the world”.
But the majority of the world doesn’t live in such a cocoon. Very few solar power projects are economically viable, and even those have very small impact on power where it’s needed.
That’s not to say that Solar and other technologies, don’t have potential and considerable merit, just that making over-optimistic, hyped claims, are starting to become counter-productive.
Optimism, has it’s place, but so does reality. Environmentalists, must start leaving the party, and concentrating on demonstrable, practical priorities if they want to remain creditable and relevant.
One of the most serious challenges we face with economic calculations about energy is the failure to include the externalized costs associated with fossil fuels (which the IMF concludes are about $5 trillion annually worldwide).
Including those externalized costs is merely a path to accuracy, and that path renders prehistoric sunshine woefully costly in a fair comparison with modern sunshine, whether harvested in the form of wind, or more directly through PV or CSP. That’s not a moral judgment, it’s a logical conclusion.
Further, it’s a conclusion necessary to the stability of the biosphere upon which humanity will always depend for health and prosperity as a species. To externalize those costs causes people to make choices based on incomplete data that result in dangers to themselves and others, not just presently but continually and increasing long into the future.
Although we’ve known about externalities for decades, not enough has been done to address the problem, at least partly because of political reasons. It seems clear that the cost of externalities should be shifted to users to eliminate that economic distortion. To reduce disruptions, that should be done over a period of years instead of in one step.
Cameron,
If it were a simple choice between Wind and Solar power generation, or Fossil Fuels, there would be no need for debate.
However, that’s just a utopian fantasy !
Trying to support inadequate, uneconomic technologies, by inventing “externalized costs” is disingenuous.
Just as arguing that what works on a small scale, in specialized circumstances can be extrapolated to a mass situation, is disingenuous.
(The inhabitants of cities like Mumbai, are more worried about owning a roof, let alone what type of solar system to put on the roof ! ).
Yesterday, I gave my daughter’s friends a ride to the airport in my company Tesla. These young students were full of praise and enthusiasm, at the idea of being free from the “evil’ oil companies.
Later, I reflected on the joys of being young, and so certain of the simplicities of ideas. One of the sad aspects of getter older, is the realization of complex ironies.
The ship bringing my Tesla to the UK, probably emits more bio-spheric pollutant than the Tesla could save in a million years. 65% of the power generated in the UK is powered by fossil fuels, even the Tesla’s tyres and the blacktop we drove on, are products of the oil industry.
The idea that Wind and Solar can replace, base load power is an illusion !
Or, more accurately, it could be accomplished, but only with enormous disruption and great human suffering. That not going to happen.
The good news is that new coal fired power stations are much cleaner, gas is even cleaner, and power consumption is dropping, especially through smaller distribution leakage.
Not glamorous, not exciting, but very good new for the bio-sphere, which is quite happy with the merely good, if not ” perfect ! “.
marcopolo… We can begin with the realization that the ultimate choice between modern and prehistoric sunlight is not available for useful debate (though people will persist in debating it).
The fact that fossil fuel resources are finite is inescapable. The fact that they have lethal and lasting impacts on the biosphere is also inescapable. Our proximity to thresholds in both categories is unsettling. Ignoring those facts is a genuine Utopian fantasy, and one that will cause lots of misery and get lots of people killed.
Perhaps I would be more comfortable if I could engage in the self-deception that that the externalized costs of using prehistoric sunlight are “invented.” I prefer truth and reason.
Prehistoric sunshine is an option that’s available to us for limited time only, not only because it’s a finite resource, but also (and far more urgently) because the large scale use of it is prohibitively toxic and damaging to the biosphere. Therefore, the transition to various forms of modern sunlight energy is an absolute imperative.
As a species (and especially as developed countries) we have two choices with regard to this imperative.
Choice One, we can deal with that transition in the shorter term, while we’re better enabled to cope with it economically, wisely using the combination of remaining accessible fossil fuel resources to implement infrastructure adaptations for the proven and mature modern sunlight harvesting technologies already available to us, and by further innovating along the way and beyond.
Choice Two, we can wait to be panic-forced into that transition by the extremity of biosphere impacts and fossil fuel scarcity later, and begin amid far-worse and rapidly deteriorating circumstances.
By the way, I’m painfully aware of the prevalence of prehistoric sunlight in our product stream to a far greater depth than just fuel, notably for plastics, as I’ve written repeatedly over the years. That’s yet a further reason to speed the transition and conserve that prehistoric sunlight, not to a reason to delay.
I find it particularly interesting that you chose the example of rooftop solar for an impoverished populace in Mumbai, and that you place the example as the very next sentence after you asserted that “arguing that what works on a small scale, in specialized circumstances can be extrapolated to a mass situation, is disingenuous.” You’ve defended your untenable position with yet another straw man fallacy. Try avoiding those.
To illustrate the wayward nature of the your Mumbai example, it’s useful to consider a comparison of the energy footprint of an average family in the Mumbai slums and an average family in the US.
A review of the percent of total global fossil fuel emissions, by country, reveals that the US population as a whole accounts for about 20%, and the whole population of India about 5%.
The population of India is about four times that of the US, so per capita we can see the average US family burns up about 16 times the fossil fuel of an average family in India. Your example of impoverished Mumbai inhabitants “worried about owning a roof” relates to an even lower rate of fossil fuel consumption than the average family in India.
It’s quite true that the population of India (and particularly China where total emissions are already greater than the US, but still less than a third per capita) is a huge concern if they continue toward adopting our current fossil intensive product stream and infrastructure. (…and this is yet another reason to avoid delay acting on the imperative transition.)
That said, the people in India and China are not presently even remotely the greatest per capita consumers of fossil energy. The US tops the list of places where the transition is soonest needed, and where the money to manage that transition is the most plentiful.
It remains patently obvious that the transition won’t be quick or painless – even with powerful and organized incentive from the political sphere – but the longer we delay the transition, the slower and the more painful it will be. The less that incentive exists, the greater the delay will be.
It’s therefore quite correct to observe that we cannot wait upon the “perfect” – for example, the development of an energy technology now in its infancy. Instead we must continue (or begin now) to do what we can, where we are, with what we have.
For most of us that means increases in efficiency in our personal habits – trading in the SUV for a more efficient vehicle, turning the compact fluorescent bulbs off instead of letting the incandescent bulbs burn, replacing the old appliances with efficient models, etc.
However, it also means a far greater engagement with others to organize and advocate behind the proven and mature technology we have available now for the sustainable harvest of modern sunlight to replace the prehistoric stuff.
It’s a good thing that increased public focus on biosphere impact (including human health), the resulting increased regulation, and the ultimately inexorable rise of the economic cost of coal and gas (both at the extraction and retail level) have helped urge those industries find ways to be marginally more efficient – it might even help their bottom line if the efficiencies have a decent near term ROI.
That shred of “good news” doesn’t alter the plain fact that the current predominance of prehistoric sunlight in human affairs is doomed, and we’d best get the developed and developing societies moving faster toward the proven alternatives of solar and wind and the requisite energy storage for base load, while we still have some relatively cheap fossil energy to work with.
Incidentally, marcopolo, I wouldn’t recommend that you beat yourself up too much for buying a Tesla shipped from across the pond. It’s quite true that we need to advocate for the enforcement of more efficient ocean freight transport, and for more distributed production, to cut the need for such freight. Still, that particular freighter was going to be making the trip anyway, and it’s better that you did your small part by buying a Tesla that can at least potentially use modern sunlight energy, instead of a ICE Hummer and burning the prehistoric stuff.
Cameron,
” Strawman ” argument ? Do you really think the bio-sphere really cares about ‘per capita’ moralizing ?
To lift people out of poverty, requires industrialization. Industrialization requires massive amounts of economical power generation.
Your lofty assumptions, and confidant dismissals of anything that contradicts the tenets of your faith, serve as an excellent example of why Joe Public has lost interest in environmental causes that need government funding.
Oh, and thanks for the advice, but I’m afraid I’ll continue to observe that ” what works on a small scale, can’t always be extrapolated to a larger scale “. Despite your advice I’ll also continue to maintain that for an impoverished family in Mumbai, the question of installing a roof top solar system, and a Tesla style, power storage device, is pretty academic, since the families main concern is to find enough income to keep the existing roof above their heads !
Moralizing about “prehistoric sunlight”, is all very well, but Joe Public has lost interest in such vague nonsense. Joe Public has lost interest in paying for endless rhetoric and distorted, disingenuous ‘scientific’ information which although sounding credible, he discovers on closer examination, to be simply cunningly disguise political propaganda.
Nobody is suggesting that investment R&D for alternate energy, should cease. However, over optimistic predictions, and distorted claims, will inevitably prove counter-productive, by losing the confidence of those taxpayers asked to support new technologies.
It seems to me that people generally are far more concerned about the destruction of the environment now than they ever have been in the past. E.g., just 10 years ago, there almost no recognition of climate change; it’s almost universal now.
Maybe I’m wrong. Let me try to find some market research on that….
Based on this research from Yale University, it appears I’m right: http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/article/american-opinion-on-climate-change-warms-up.
Please see also: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/05/24/public-opinion-on-climate-change/.
Marcopolo,
Externalized costs are not an invention; they are a reality as anyone who has studied economics beyond introductory courses is aware. Perhaps I need to explain.
An externalized cost is a cost that is external to the entity that is creating it. For example, a coal burning power plant pollutes the air. The polluted air results in costs that have to borne by others in the form of health problems, extra cleaning, etc. The owners of the coal burning power plant have no monetary incentive to reduce or eliminate the pollution since it is not costing them anything. Thus, the cost is external to the coal burning power plant which is why it is called an externality.
CO2 emissions, because of their effect on climate, are also an external cost. Probably eventually we will need to get about 90% of our power from non-CO2 emitting sources to limit climate change. Burning natural gas instead of coal does reduce CO2 emissions, but by only approximately 50%. Probably, to reduce CO2 emissions to acceptable levels, we will need to get most of our power from nuclear sources, especially considering that by the year 2100, global demand for power will likely increase by about four times.
Frank, thank you for your comment.
Perhaps it’s me that owes an explanation of my comment ” invented externalized costs” !
My comment was to be taken in context, not as a generalization. I was referring to the danger of accepting or including vague, or unsubstantiated/ unqualified “externalized costs” to equations, in order to influence an analysis to produce a desired conclusion.
Properly quantified ‘externalized costs’, are a legitimate factor in any economic analysis. But, just how far do we go in establishing “externalized costs” ? There has to be some recognized limitations, or no economic comparisons are possible.
At some point, ideological considerations must be set aside, and realistic analysis take place. As I pointed out to Craig, just accepting a statement, or report at face value, then using this as a foundation for extrapolation, is likely to produce an inaccurate conclusion.
Time after time, we see highly respected institutions, issue reports which prove to be inaccurate. The problem becomes when an original error is made but accepted as the basis for further studies. Once something has become an accepted “fact” or “truth”, its very hard to stop it being used as verification of other studies.
Few can be bothered to go back and unravel the original error. Partly, this is why the public has lost faith in “climate change science”. So many of the predictions by “climate change ” experts and advocates, just haven’t occurred. Joe Public, may not know much about science, but he instinctively knows when “Wolf ! “, is being called too many times !
Frank, I don’t disagree with you, but I worry that “a period of years” leaves too much chance that some subsequent “power” (government of whatever nation or level) will decide that it’s too much hassle.
There WILL be disruptions, and there will be many unhappy people. That doesn’t change the necessity. Assuming that we fairly, honestly and accurately assess the cost of those externalities, what about raising fees to adjust prices at (for example) 10% every six months. This will hurt, and it will be a shock, but after 3 years we’re at 60% (simple) or about 66% (compound). People have had warning – they’ll be able to plan to adapt behaviour.
But it won’t happen unless there’s a HUGE publicity effort. (You can call it propaganda if you like…) You’ve GOT to get the population on-side. Start with the kids in school. At the same time, enlist the parents – they have a vested interest in their childrens’ future. (Well, so do we all, but many don’t want to defer the happiness…)
And it has to be sold as “the new norm”, not a temporary measure. If we start soon, we may avoid the worst of the climate and economic shocks, or at least spread them out over more time. OTOH, if we wait until oil scarcity starts to really boost prices, the shock will be worse and so will the temptation to blame the “other”.
Wars have started for far less.
Anyway, that’s how I would do it if I were king of the world . Convince the kids, let them take it home to mom and dad… and go from there.
(Now you know why I will never run for office, nor get elected.)
Roger,
Billing users for externalities would meet more resistance if it were not phased in. When such a change is phased in it gives people more time to adjust and is less disruptive. I’m sure that many economists would support such a change if it were phased in but most would reject it if it were imposed in a single step. I would propose a phase in time of perhaps five years.
On your other points, I agree. When there are externalities there is an accompanying economic distortion unless users have to pay for the externalities. That principal has been established for many decades.
Marcopolo,
I find nothing with which I disagree in your 24 May post.
As you point out or at least imply, one of the problems is that we are dealing with unsupported statements and positions, i.e., statements and positions which we are expected to believe even though there are no objectively gathered data to support them. We are apparently expected to accept far too much on faith alone simply because it would be nice if it were so. If we did that, we could spend many billions of dollars before finally learning that the approach is impractical. That would delay taking effective measures to limit CO2 emissions.
It seems clear that we both want objectively determined and relevant data before embarking on an exceedingly expensive program. And, some data are irrelevant. From time to time we read how much energy the earth receives from the sun every hour or every day or whatever. It is unclear how that figure could be of any use. Apparently it is bandied about simply because it is such a huge number.
I’m convinced that global warming is a very serious problem even though we cannot know the exact effects. Ocean currents and air currents which are not completely understood greatly affect climate. Thus, it would not be surprising to find that as the average temperature of the earth increases, some areas could actually become colder while other areas become far hotter than the average. So, doing nothing is not a reasonable option.
It looks as though most of our power will have to come from nuclear sources, but there is no reason that we have to continue using our pressurized water reactor technology. We need a reactor design that is inherently safe without multiple safety systems, uses the nuclear fuel more efficiently to reduce the amount of nuclear waste, and costs less. Unfortunately, just about all of the nuclear reactor R & D over the last several decades has been devoted to improving pressurized water reactors instead of developing better types of reactors. But even if the pressurized water reactor were the only type possible, its risks would be lower than the risks associated with global warming. So far it looks to me as though the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) is the most promising reactor technology, but in case that doesn’t pan out, R & D should also be done on other types of reactors, perhaps gas cooled or sodium cooled if they can be made inherently safe and use the nuclear fuel efficiently.
Surely it would help if physics were a required subject for high school and college graduation; one year at each level should suffice. That would enable people to evaluate more accurately and objectively the statements they read about energy issues. It would also help if people had a basic understanding of how to evaluate investments, such as discounted cash flow and internal rate of return.
Frank and Roger,
It seems to me, you both believe the majority of the general public hasn’t grown increasingly skeptical about the need for urgent action on climate change.
What can’t be denied, is the increasing reluctance by electorates to support economically untenable schemes. All over the world, electors are beginning to understand the real ramifications of Emission or Carbon Taxes.
It’s beginning to dawn on consumers and taxpayers, that they will be the ones to pay for these ideologically based schemes. In all the excitement of the “green boom”, alternate energy industries looked to be successful, economically beneficial and environmentally new opportunities to create economic wealth.
Flush with money from a booming PRC and Indian economies, Western voters (especially the young) supported progressive Green-Left politicians, into forging a brave new world.
So what happened ? Voters looked around and realized that very little had been accomplished. Most of the new “green industries”, were uneconomic and needed massive public money, or mandates, to stay afloat. The level of public debt had risen to unprecedented levels, and the only economic bright spot was the resurgence of the Oil/Gas industry.
Rhetoric about “evil’ billionaires, apocalyptic climate change, more taxes, greater government expenditure, (spending other people money) started lose appeal, and the average voter stopped listening. Ramping up the rhetoric, will only prove counter-productive.
Worse, doubt creeps in about the entire necessity for action on climate change. Joe Public starts to think in terms of the old joke about a man who met another man wearing a tin foil hat ;
Man (A) “why are you wearing a Tin Foil hat ? ”
Man (B) ” to prevent an Alien invasion ”
Man (A) ” But there are no Aliens ! ”
Man (B) smugly, and with impeccable logic ” See how effectively my hat works! “.
The average voter is losing faith in environmental issues as a priority. (the recent UK election is an example) . Voters are beginning to reject environmental programs as extensions of leftist political agendas.
There is still enough electoral good will and confidence to support genuine, practical environmental policies, which can deliver positive, measurable results.
This may be disappointing news for ” true believers” , but it’s reality. There will be no exciting “revolution” , just a lot of hard work to achieve those unexciting priorities that can be achieved, without massive economic disruption.
Unlike many environmentalists, but certainly not all, I am very concerned with the economics and practicality of methods used to reduce CO2 emissions drastically. If costs are excessive or if there is no proof that proposed solutions are practical, the public will object.
At one time I was strongly in favor of wind and solar power. That changed when I took a motorcycle trip from here in Albuquerque to Savannah, Georgia. I saw many wind farms with stationary blades. Then I belatedly wondered whether the intermittent nature of wind and solar power had been adequately considered. I spent countless hours reading books and doing research on the Internet. Many environmentalists asserted that if wind and solar systems were tied together all across the country they would provide reliable and economical power because, “The wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun is always shining somewhere.”. I did not consider that as proof of anything. I was unable to find even one credible study that proved that interconnecting systems across the country would provide adequate reliable power. Figures about how much energy the earth receives daily from the sun may be interesting but they are completely meaningless in this context yet they are often mentioned as if they were proof of practicality.
I had always had reservations about nuclear power but was never totally opposed to it. When I discovered that there were many possible nuclear reactor designs and not just pressurized water or boiling water reactors, I figured that there must be better nuclear reactor technologies available. Then I discovered the liquid fluoride thorium reactor which seemed exceedingly promising as a solution to our energy problems but if that failed, there were also other reactor designs which could do the job.
There are those who claim that implementing adequate nuclear power would take too long yet France went from zero nuclear power to 80% nuclear power for electricity in just 17 years. Not that I favor that nuclear technology but compared with the dangers of climate change, the dangers of even our current nuclear technology are quite small. Then there are those who use Germany as an example of a country that is successfully moving away from nuclear power, but they ignore that fact to make it possible, Germany is building more coal burning power plants and importing more power from France where most of it is generated with nuclear reactors.
In short, I do not cling tenaciously to ideas simply as a matter of principal. I am willing to change my mind if I see clear and objective evidence that warrants doing so which, unfortunately, many environmentalists are unwilling to do. The evidence must be very strong and backed up by verifiable numeric data. The intransigent insistence of many environmentalists on eschewing nuclear power and insisting on using mostly solar and wind power seems to be courting disaster.
The public will be more willing to accept the changes necessary to limit climate change if practical solutions are presented.
I’m sorry that this isn’t better organized but right now I’m pressed for time.
Frank,
Thank you for most cohesive and pertinent observations.
re: This may be disappointing news for ” true believers” , but it’s reality. There will be no exciting “revolution”
It doesn’t look that way to me. Here’s what I just wrote about Citigroup and its $100 billion commitment to clean energy: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/05/21/the-ever-accelerating-migration-to-renewable-energy/.
And here’s an excerpt from this post http://2greenenergy.com/2015/05/20/heard-it-at-the-low-carbon-investors-conference/, where I talk about a conversation I had with Ron Litzinger, ex-president of Southern California Edison (13,000 employees serving 14 million electric power customers):
The EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration) radically underestimates everything. We’re experiencing exponential, not linear growth in renewable energy. The migration to renewables is happening far faster than people realize.
Great info, Craig – thanks for responding, and saying what needs to be said.
There is a ridiculous amount of money pouring into this subject in the OECD countries. The issue (for global sustainability) is handling the non-OECD.
Indeed, Craig, it’s only regrettably that India and China aren’t on that list as we can see here: http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/
However, as reported in Forbes in June last year, “According to The Global Status Report, which was released earlier this month by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, China once again led the rest of the world in renewable energy investment in 2013, spending a total of $56.3 billion on wind, solar and other renewable projects. The report stated that China accounted for 61 percent of the total investment in renewables by developing countries, and that China invested more in renewable energy than all of Europe last year.”
Indeed, the International Business Times report last October, “Worldwide spending on renewable-energy projects reached $175 billion in the first three quarters of 2014, up 16 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. China drove the surge with record investment in solar energy, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.
“Global spending in the third quarter hit $55 billion, a 12 percent rise from a year earlier. Nearly $20 billion of that came from China, which could add 14 gigawatts of solar capacity this year alone, the London-based research company said. That’s more than all the solar power installed in the United States.”
For India, we can see a February 2014 Acedemia.edu policy brief that states, “Energy security is essential to ensure achievement of the projected growth rate of 8-9% annually in India by 2016-17, the end of the 12th Plan period. The current Plan recognizes the concerns of energy deficit and advocates for commercial energy supplies to grow at a rate between 6.5-7% per year, which translates into capacity addition of around 1,00,000 MW power by 2016-17. At the beginning of the 11th Plan, the total installed capacity from renewable sources was 10,255 MW, which witnessed a substantial increase over the plan period with the installed capacity reaching 28,000 MW at the end of March, 2013. Currently, renewable energy contributes approximately 12.5% in the installed national electricity capacity.”
The policy brief further states the Proposed Capacity Addition of Grid-Interactive Renewable Power under the 12th Five Year Plan is 10 GW of solar and 15 GW of wind.
There we can see what two very different governments – covering about 3 billion people – are doing and planning, to move away from prehistoric sunlight onto various forms of the modern stuff.
As I wrote in my post here: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/05/20/heard-it-at-the-low-carbon-investors-conference/:
Someone said, “Outside the OECD countries, no one gives a … (no one cares) about clean energy or the environment. China has wind farms so they can show you that they’re doing something.”
True. Renewable energy will not hit China, India, and certain other countries until it becomes so cheap that market conditions push them that way. I appreciate the work of Raj Pachauri and the IPCC, but I don’t see an end to the frustration he clearly faces in negotiating multi-national deals.
The good news is that the LCOE from solar PV and wind continues to plummet. Better efficiencies, better scale.
It is easy to have exponential growth during the early phases of the introduction of a new technology, but that does not mean that the exponential growth will continue. Regarding wind and solar, the real problems associated with them will not be readily apparent while they represent only a low percentage of the power produced. But as the percentage increase, the problems will become more obvious.
Even if wind generators and PV panels were free, attempting to use them to generate a major portion of the power required for most large prosperous countries would not be economic the reason being the exceedingly high cost of the energy storage systems which would be necessary to make wind and solar work. It is conceivable that the economics of energy storage could change enough to make it practical but that has not yet happened and may never happen. It is best not to count on something that is not available.
Even if the storage problem had been solved, the fact that wind and solar systems would have to be greatly overbuilt would make them very costly. For example, solar systems, on average, generate only about 30% of their peak power. Therefore, the installed capacity would have to be about three times greater than if they could generate power continuously. I have not looked up the figures for wind power, but the same problem exists with it in addition to the fact that sometimes for weeks at a time, a wind farm may produce zero power.
There are places where PV solar power has been very successful. For example, in Pacific island countries, many people live in small villages on small islands. Without PV solar power, the alternative is Diesel power. Typically the Diesel generators are run only from sunset until bed time and small Diesel generators are very expensive to maintain. In that situation, PV power, though expensive, makes sense. It at least, with battery back up, permits people to operate a few low power LED lights in the evening, to recharge cell phones, and to use lap top computers. Providing enough power for refrigeration and air conditioning is too expensive. But that is very different from providing most of the power for large prosperous countries.
Most likely most large prosperous countries will have to rely on nuclear sources for most of their power.
Marcopolo,
From figures I’ve seen, it does look as though the public has become increasingly skeptical about climate change. Even so, it looks as though at least a small majority still sees it as a problem.
One of the problems is that people are greatly influenced by how often they hear a position stated. I’d swear that if “The moon is made of green cheese.” were repeated often enough that many people would believe it. The fact that so many people are greatly influenced by constant repetition indicates an inability to think rationally and objectively which is concerning. Obviously it gives people and organizations with large amounts of money to spend the ability to exert undue influence on the public. It even greatly influences our political system and what actions our politicians take.
I don’t know to what extent our schools attempt to teach people to think rationally and objectively. When I was in high school in Manitowoc, WI, we were taught propaganda techniques and how they influenced people. We were also shown that if syllogisms contained an emotionally laden premis that people were more likely to reach an invalid conclusion. We were shown that how pictures of women were rated for beauty was influenced by the names attached to them. Presumably we were taught all that to make us more able to reach valid conclusions and be less influence by propaganda techniques. I have no idea how many schools have that in their curricula, but all should since it is exceedingly important for people to learn to think clearly and rationally.
Much of what I read here seems to pre-suppose a future that looks a lot like the present, only more so. Whereas I suspect that the arch of human civilization if going to be much more like a bell curve, with the peak somewhere in the ’70’s or ’80’s.
There is a limit to resources. There is also a limit to how much “crud” we can put into our ecosphere without causing massive, perhaps irreversible damage.
(Two groups will not like this statement – the cornucopians who believe that we will always find more of the stuff we will need, and the “technophiles” who believe that we will always be able to come up with technological solutions.)
We also have a very short and convenient memory when it comes to forecasts we don’t like.
Remember Chernobyl? That scared the crap out of lots of people – so much so that many planned nuclear programmes were killed or delayed.
Remember the Exxon Valdez? That resulted in the delay or cancellation of many deep sea or far north projects.
Yes, we could go forward with both those technologies in a far safer way now – but the EROI will be significantly reduced and the possibility of catastrophe will always remain. (One of my favorite aphorisms from my youth – “It’s impossible to make things foolproof. Fools are much too inventive!”)
And I’m sure we will go forward with some equally risky projects – in fact, we’ll do anything rather that voluntarily go back down the wealth ladder.
So, hands up all those who believe that we’ll still be burning fossil fuels in a hundred years? How about all who believe that the orbital solar collectors and thorium reactors will be providing for all our “wants”…
If your hand is still down (as mine is), then you need to take a look at how we’re using resources and what we’re doing to preserve some of the most valuable and versatile for the generations that will follow.
Graig,
Nobody is saying that research and investment into alternate energy technologies, is dead. Nor would any reasonable person suggest that alternate energy technologies, especially solar, won’t improve and secure a significant role in the energy dynamic, over future decades. (especially with better ESD (Energy Storage devices).
But what I’m saying, is that this will be a long process of ‘evolution’, not an apocalyptic ‘revolution’. !
It’s also true that overly optimistic claims, and wildly exaggerated advocacy are counter-productive.
I’m grateful that you have provided the example of Citigroup.
Michael Eckhart, is indeed the former President of the American Council on Renewable Energy, and head of Global Head of Environmental Finance and Sustainability at Citigroup.
Micheal Eckhart is a sincere, well meaning guy. He’s an enthusiastic advocate for “green investment”.
However, let’s be honest, Micheal is only a rather minor executive of a Bank infamous for intrigue, double dealing, and deceptive practices.
Even he qualifies his commitments with vague time periods, ( 40 to 100 years), and even then the 100 billion is to be invested in vague technologies ranging from “clean water and waste management ” , to “greener housing”.
If we go further into Citigroup’s claims, we would discover that part of this commitment is providing funds to borrowers, who are backed by US DOE guarantees.
So, I hope you’ll forgive me for being a little skeptical, even cynical, about your original claim that Citigroup were investing 100 billion over 5 years in Renewable Energy !
A cynical observer, might conclude that it would be very naive to believe any announcement from Citigroup, at face value ! The same cynical observer, might also observe that anyone deducing from Citigroup’s “green-washing PR “, a real commitment of 100 billion to renewable energy, is just hearing what they want to hear !
This is exactly why Joe Public has grown to mistrust the environmental message ! There have been too many exaggerations, passionate claims, over optimism. Too much hype, naivety , and political rhetoric.
Please don’t think this is a reflection on your sincerity, because it’s not. It’s just that I suspect a more objective analysis of your claim that $7 Trillion will be invested by major banks in renewable (wind and solar) energy, over the next 5 years, might reveal a very different conclusion, than your optimistic claim.
Like I say, and evolution, not revolution.
Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/05/22/migration-to-renewable-energy-revolution-evolution/
It’s “Craig” with a “C” btw.
Ooop’s ! Sorry, didn’t see my typo !
I’m sorry if I sounded a little harsh concerning your faith in Citigroup’s green investment program.
But while I don’t subscribe to most conspiracy theories, I certainly don’t deny that large banks, corporations and even governments can be,….well,.. a little ‘creative’ when it comes to green public relations !
The renewable energy industry in the PRC, is very akin to the old wild west at the height of the gold rush. Speculators, dreamers, visionaries, exploiters, fraudsters, and all kinds of opportunists, have gathered to prey upon the gullible. (Hanergy is just the latest example). But there are also genuine, even hardworking and practically minded visionaries, with sufficient business skills to develop new and exciting technologies.
Solar Power will continue to grow in importance as part of every developed nation’s energy dynamic. With growing popularity, it will provide problems for the older distribution power utilities, who must not only generate electricity, but maintain very expensive distribution infrastructure.
Solar will also present a problem for local and national governments, who tax energy production and consumption, as a source of tax revenue. All governments are facing increasing demands for government services, and falling revenues. Just as electric vehicles pose a problem for government bodies dependent on gasoline-diesel tax, and the massive taxation paid by the oil industry, governments will start to seek tax revenue from Solar installations.
Possible future taxes should be factored, when assessing future “falling prices”.
Considerations, like tax etc, may sound negative, but probably shouldn’t be left out of any long term investment analysis.
Just as the IMF believes that including such considerations as public health, military and climate change costs, to conventional power generation costs, is important when assessing the economic viability of “renewable energy”.
It’s always difficult to decide when analysis, becomes advocacy.
This may sound slightly weird but I don’t worry too much about tax implications on solar/wind, expecially small scale. (BTW, I have no particular expertise in this area – I’m just old…)
If the big utilities try to raise rates to make up for a declining subscriber base, they’ll simply drive more people off the grid. There is no “law” that says large scale electricity is compulsory – if we find that we can service the network with a huge number of small scale inputs, then we can.
In the ’70’s, if a company wanted a computer, it meant a huge investment into a “mainframe” – literally 100’s of 1000’s of dollars. Within 15 years, every junior in the bookkeeping pool had a PC on their desk.
I expect the same revolution in energy generation.
I have better access to sun than my neighbour, but his house is slightly elevated and get’s better wind. I already have a line running between the houses to power their pump if the grid goes down, and to boost my batteries if we get a foot of snow that I can’t clear from the solar panels.
Micro-grids will become the order of the day.
The major utilities will adapt – look at the phone companies. Their business model will change , and maybe their overall operations will contract, but that’s really only a crisis for the stockholders.
In the longer term, I wonder where we’re going to get the infrastructure to manufacture new solar panels, batteries and inverters – without the energy surplus we get from petroleum, how will we maintain the products that have the highest embedded energy.
But, to be honest, that won’t be my problem – the kids’s kids, or the kid’s kid’s kids will have to deal with it. And the next generation already think I’m raving mad.! (Wish I was going to be around long enough to say, “Told you so!”)
Beautiful sunny day – batteries charging, water heaing – all is good.
Craig,
After looking at the articles for which you posted links, I cannot recall any that even mentioned nuclear power. Even politicians refuse to address nuclear power even when its importance is pointed out to them. They see mentioning nuclear power as the kiss of death for their political careers. The misguided people who have made mentioning nuclear power the kiss of death may be responsible for a global disaster.
If present trends continue, I expect that more will be spent on wind and solar power until it becomes inescapably clear that they are impractical as the major source of power for most large developed countries. Then, when power becomes unreliable, in a state of panic more fossil fueled power plants will be built followed by the building of more nuclear power plants. By that time a better nuclear technology will probably be available since the Chinese are working on it with some help from other countries.
I’m a huge fan of “advanced nuclear,” meaning primarily liquid fluoride thorium reactors, but I think the path to getting there is much longer and more expensive than the proponents claim.
You may well be right. I’ve seen the videos and read the material on the LFTR and considered the likelihood that excessive optimism existed, which is not surprising.
One of the potential problems is that with the two fluid LFTR system, there has to be a barrier to separate the two fluids; neutrons have to pass through that barrier. The neutron bombardment would have a negative effect on the barrier, a problem for which the principal promotor, Kirk Sorensen, assumes is an engineering problem for which a solution will easily be found. He may be right, but it is entirely possible that the problem may be far more serious than he expects. That might make it necessary to use a one fluid system which would complicate reprocessing as the reactor operates. There could also be other problems.
The integral fast reactor (IFR) uses sodium cooling. That reactor type also shows promise, but again, it could be more difficult to make it practical than one might suppose.
There are various other types of reactors, including gas cooled reactors.
I think that it is quite likely that some reactor design can be developed that would be far superior to our present reactor technology, but I think that R & D should be done in parallel with different possibilities to maximize the likelihood of success as quickly as possible. If R & D is done in series, the process could take far longer and time is not unlimited.
In terms of huge penetrations of PV and wind, my prediction (which was re-enforced by my conversation with the ex-president of Southern California Edison), is that we’re going to see this happen far faster than most people believe. It’s true that “exponential growth” is harder to achieve as penetration rates get larger, but market economics and scale are both on our side.
Market penetration will be made exceedingly challenging by the intermittent nature of wind and solar systems which would require an economical technology for storing huge amounts of energy. There are a number of theoretical solutions (flywheel storage, pumped storage, elevated weights, compressing air into natural cavities, thermal storage, batteries, etc.), all of which work, but costs, low efficiency, or other problems limit their practicality on a large scale. It is possible that one or more could become practical, but they aren’t now.
It is also possible that energy storage could become the responsibility of the power user. That way users who could tolerate less than total reliability could buy minimal storage for themselves while users who require high reliability could buy more storage. They might decide to eat cold meals and not use air conditioning when power is limited. That could cost less than providing grid-wide storage to provide all users with reliable power.
Some processes may not require total reliability. For example, sea water desalination, which is likely to become far more common, could deal with intermittent power simply by having sufficient storage for desalinated water. In many cases, it might not be necessary for electric vehicles to be charged every day depending, of course, on usage and range.
The above could reduce the need for energy storage, but it is still a serious limitation for wind and solar power.
Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/05/24/amory-lovins-40-year-energy-plan/
I was not impressed with the presentation. Some of the following comments were very good and spelled out the problems quite well. On the other hand, some of the comments were total nonsense, such as the one that stated that a 24 hour kitchen timer, by some unstated magic, could generate enough power, via a piezo electric transducer energized by clicks from the timer, to operate a 100 watt light bulb for 23 hours.
Say what??? Are you talking about Amory Lovins’ presentation? There is no reference to any of that.
No. In addition to not finding the presentation effective, I commented on the comments following the presentation and stated that the comments were not all of the same quality.
OH! Now I get it. Yes, Some nut-job did in fact, make that comment. But it’s no worse than some of the stuff I see on a day-to-day basis. You wouldn’t believe…
Craig,
Just three observations on your recent replies ;
1) Amory Lovins is certainly influential, especially with young students. His soft, quieter presentation style, and almost shy demeanor, make him an effective advocate.
Unfortunately, his message is largely “mom and apple pie”, lightweight and simplistic. He preaches things which his audience wants to hear, supported by enough vague obvious facts, to make his predictions, desirable and even creditable.
An example of his thinking is his Rocky Mountain Institute’s pet project, the ” Hypercar ” !
To facilitate this dream he founded a company called ” Fiberforge “. Fiberforge was goinge to transform the transport industry through the would “Hypercar’s Fiberforge process” . By 2004. Lovins predicted that the adoption of this process, would revolutionize motor transport within10 years.
Pundits, such as the DOE, Pres.Obama, and Discovery Channel, lauded Fiberforge as evidence of successful technologies reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. Politicians like U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo, urged investors to “get on board” as recently as 2012.
No one seemed to listen to critics, who pointed out that the although the auto-industry is constantly researching new materials, it’s not a simple process.
In 2013, Fiberforge finally ran out of funds, and went into liquidation.
But, did this experience daunt Amory Lovins ? Not at all ! He simply claimed credit for BMW’s lightweight materials program ! ( BMW’s engineers angrily dismissed Amory Lovins claims ).
2) Thank you for the reference to the Yale University Study. Hmmm…let’s see, Yale University, sounds impressive ! If Yale concluded that acceptance of Climate Change is “universal ” ,and support for climate change programs is growing, well they’d know…or would they ?
The “Yale study “, is hardly indicative of anything of the sort !
The “Study” was conducted by 4 academics working for the Center for Climate Change Communication, and funded by a group of Climate Change advocacy groups. Hardly an unbiased source.
The methodology of the study, is equally questionable !
The study was conducted by asking some very loaded questions, with 1023 respondents of an “internet panel”. (It also included asking students during “climate change awareness week”).
As opposed to the election results from the UK, and other nations where “Green Politics” are being increasingly rejected, in the only polls that really matter ! Naturally, with all the massive publicity and propaganda distributed during the last 10 years, it’s hardly surprising that more people are aware of “Climate change” than 10 years ago.
But, that doesn’t mean that Joe Public wants to keep funding failed environmental projects !
3) I found your statement ;
” That the big banks are investing $7 trillion (with a “t”) in the subject in the next five years is one of many reasons that this should be clear to you or anyone else ! ”
….really intriguing . I’ve tried hard to research which banks, and the nature of that investment, but to no avail. (just the usual vague green washing, or normal funding backed by government guarantees).
I’d be really grateful if you could point me in the direction of your sources, so I can do a bit of reading on this subject.
Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/05/25/credit-suisse-projects-energy-demand-growth-renewables/.
Actually, I would believe it; I sometimes see it too. However, I think that I should be more specific about the presentation.
Certainly the amount of power used by building could be considerably reduced. One of his examples was pumps. By making pipes larger, the amount of power required to move liquid through them would be considerably reduced. Also, as he pointed out, motors could be made more efficient; actually, many are already being made more efficient. Although he didn’t go into detail, HVAC systems could be (and often are now) made more efficient. He also went into lighting and more efficient windows. The technology for all that has been around for a long time. The principal problem is that, although much it can already be economically justified, incentives are often lacking because building space is often rented out and the owners and builders don’t pay the utility bills. Probably that problem could be solved. However, there is a limit to the extent that older building can be retrofitted to make them more efficient. In any case, all of the above has been common knowledge for many years.
It was good to see that for long term investments he actually used internal rate of return. Payback is useful only when it is very quick.
On the other hand, he advocated using electric cars for grid storage without going into any detail about the economics of that. It would require electric car owners to have bigger batteries than they would otherwise have thereby increasing their costs. It would also shorten battery life and reduce range. Thus, it is very questionable whether using electric cars for storage would be acceptable and whether it would cost less than using dedicated storage. And, it is only because dedicated storage would be too expensive that using electric cars for storage is even being considered.
Most of his points on electric cars made sense, although reducing the weight of electric cars makes less difference in efficiency than one might suppose considering that electric cars, unlike non-hybrid fossil fuled cars, use regenerative braking. He mentioned nothing about how carbon fiber materials used to make electric cars could be recycled.
He advocates continuing to use natural gas. That may be possible here in the U.S., but there are many areas of the world that lack access to natural gas. Moreover, natural gas still emits about 50% as much CO2 as coal so, if natural gas continues to be used, it is unlikely that the world could get 90% of its power from non-CO2 emitting sources.
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He assumes that interconnecting renewable sources, i.e., wind and solar, coupled with natural gas, could result in reliable and adequate power. He is right, but we are supposed to be eliminating fossil fuel usage and natural gas is a fossil fuel. And if we use natural gas for backup, then we are unlikely to be able to get 90% of our power from non-CO2 emitting sources. He did not present a quantitive study showing just how much natural gas would be required to back up the renewable systems. Then too, having natural gas generation in addition to renewables would greatly add to capitol costs. Nuclear systems can do load following (they do in France) and would not require the additional capitol cost of natural gas generating systems.
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Also, he should have covered the power problems in other countries. If we in the U.S. completely eliminated CO2 emissions, on a global basis it would be a greatly insufficient reduction.
Probably the only way to reduce CO2 emissions to acceptable levels as the world’s demand for power increases by about four times by 2100 is to get most of the power from nuclear reactors. Otherwise, renewables would have to be backed up with fossil fueled power sources (which he admits without emphasizing) which, in addition to emitting CO2, would be an additional cost which is not likely to be acceptable.