Openness To New Energy Ideas
In the comments to my post on new energy paradigms, a reader takes me to task: I find your comments disingenuous, Craig, as I have mostly seen you play the comfortable role of the skeptic when it comes to out-of-the-box exotic technologies. It’s easy to play the role of the armchair skeptic. …. There are many important solutions unfolding but they struggle and they need supporters, helpers, not skeptics.
Here’s my position: I believe violations of the laws of thermodynamics are impossible, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a crackpot, a fraud, or an ignoramus. I see assertions about new inventions that put out more power than they consume at the rate of about one per week. When I demand that the inventor let me see a working model (which I’ve yet to be shown), I’m often (erroneously) put down as a defender of the status quo, an elitist, a supporter of the energy monopolies, or whatever–but I’m unwilling to change my position on this.
There are other kinds of bad ideas, btw, including concepts that are not theoretically impossible, but extremely unlikely to yield positive results for humankind. One of thousands of examples that I’ve seen over the years is putting a whole bunch of solar PV on the moon and beaming the power down to Earth. I’m not saying that it can’t be done given enough money, but I am saying that it’s supremely impractical.
I think of myself as a kind of “Catcher in the Rye” (see below) for those who want to take energy-related ideas forward, in that I bear the self-perceived duty to protect people from the dangers of their own folly. I don’t think that makes me a bad guy. You could call me rigid and doctrinaire, or maybe even a bit pompous, but here, I think that’s a good thing; I’m providing a service that many (though not all) people find valuable.
As you may be aware, I vigorously support ideas that I deem to represent potential improvements in cost-effective clean energy, as well as concepts in dozens of other peripheral technologies: electric transportation, energy storage, efficiency…sustainable anything, really.
Something else you should know about me is that I love being wrong. We learn far more from our mistakes than we do from our successes; it’s a far more productive strategy to try to disconfirm our hypotheses than to find evidence that supports them. To that end, I’m really hoping to find a perpetual motion machine, or even a way to harvest zero-point energy (though I’m not counting on it).
From Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”
“You know that song ‘If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’? I’d like – “
“It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’!” old Phoebe said. “It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.”
“I know it’s a poem by Robert Burns.”
She was right, though. It is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” I didn’t know it then, though.
“I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body,'” I said. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.” (22.51-55)
I don’t see you position as unreasonable. Surely it would be wasted effort to spend $millions on proposals which clearly violate the laws of thermodynamics. Unfortunately many people do not understand that.
violations of the laws of thermodynamics are not impossible as we do not know all the laws especially in other gravity such as the other planets or deep space
Having been involved in energy efficiency and renewable energy for most of my 39 year career I have seen a lot of promising technologies come and go, so a healthy dose of skepticism id called for.
I like to think that the future of energy is distributed power with many small local producers helping bring greater balance to a shared system much like the rural electrification program.
Dear Bruce,
I couldn’t agree more but I have being seeing a lot of post that does not address adequacy the importance of a National Grid. Reliability, pick demand and large customers are vital so is the grid!
My worries in energy are similar to App X telecomunications companies, Telecommunications companies’ incomes are dropping and no proposal is put forward (in Brazil) to solve the problem of infrastructure maintenance. To use an App you need mobile infrastructure!
In the last decade in Brazil we develop a national programme for “energy for All!” bringing the grid to 97% of customers (Amazonia is a nightmare!). Diversification of our matrix is beeing done! Wind, PV and soon solar thermal added large amounts to our mix!
Bruce, I agree that the future of energy is distributed power with many small local producers helping bring greater balance to a shared system much like the rural electrification program. And to me those small local produces should include entities from neighborhoods to villages to municipalities and towns and cities of all sizes and even counties of all sizes. This I would say is the basic concept behind my innovation.
My firm AAEC is all about enabling conversion and utilization of locally available biomass resources including wood wastes, municipal wastes, agricultural biomass and fossil fuels in markedly more efficient and cleaner and even carbon negative distributed power generation and biofuels production.
Craig, you say you support ideas that you deem to represent potential improvements in cost-effective clean energy, but the key phrase there is “I deem” and I say that limits your support to only those ideas you can get your head around and relate to and understand and you don’t ask questions about other’s ideas that would likely be highly disruptive to the status quo and have the potential to bring the needed new paradigm.
Speaking of the grid;
AAEC believes we will do better and be safer in the long run if we can deploy a practical way to power our societies on extraction of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into earth’s atmosphere while also reducing ongoing greenhouse emissions and thereby begin protecting our communities and electric power grids. We are claiming to be the inventor of one of the repowering “tools” needed to enable humanity to completely overhaul the power delivery system, in the USA and elsewhere, and help get us out of the box fossil fuels and governmental inaction have humanity boxed up in. We propose that we can do this through deployment of advanced alternative energy projects at residential, village, community and county scale because many good paying infrastructure construction jobs are needed worldwide. Thus AAEC is seeking support from any and all that may care to support this grass roots – trickle up – project.
There are many ideas out there. Some will garner popular interest. It then becomes harder to see the unpopular but valid ideas. It is to your credit Craig that you want to look at the idea rather than the popular conception of it.
For too many the opposite is true. There is a tendency to judge the validity of an idea by its popularity. Scammers take advantage of this quirk in our collective personalities by making popular appeals. Curiously we also saw many popular appeals in big tobacco’s advertisements, in anti-global warming literature and by the NRA.
Solar and wind are the popular alternative energy concepts and although both can provide non polluting energy neither can remove CO2 that has been emitted to the atmosphere let alone convert it into bio-char that can be used to revitalize degraded farm soils. This is one of the many advantages of the global repowering system I’m offering.
Craig you have been a regular instigator of many debates over the years and I always value your contributions, but I want you to reinvent yourself and come out fighting in 2016 with a freshened up and streamlined mindset so you can remain an interesting and relevant commentator with a practical global focus.
Despite your best intentions, you run the risk of obsolescence in technical debates [like all of us] mainly through giving in to self-indulgence [a predictable malady we seem to all drift towards eventually] and this has become evident in your commentary. Self-indulgence is best suited to professions other than energy technology oriented ones [like JD Salinger’s for example].
To acquire meaningful influence and relevance as a commentator requires a pin point focus on practical solutions and outcomes in whatever space one chooses to operate in. Many commentators in the energy tech space have drifted entirely off the planet over the last 5 years from my observations, and this is not at all helpful to the world’s best and brightest emerging young technocrats, physicists, scientists and engineers, looking for some guidance.
Get back to basics and invent a new energy technologies vocabulary Craig. Energy tech commentary heavy with the term RE has become polarising, and it’s easy to fall into a stratified mindset that stifles more meaningful and practical solutions and outcomes, technical debates.
Consider replacing the term RE with “Low Cost and Abundant Energy Technologies” perhaps. It is a good choice [I use it when lecturing to middle grade students – and they quickly get it] and when you think about it, RE per se has acquired a tarnished image over time due in part to the fact that the industry heavy hitters always lacked transparency about the true costs of energy technology. This is particularly true for wind technology and all of the other mainstream technologies quickly embraced the same negative attitude.
So let’s shift the debate to energy technologies that fulfil the global imperative to power the myriad of new age energy intensive industries of the modern era, cost effectively.
The world needs engineers, technocrats, and policy makers with their focus firmly fixed on “Low Cost and Abundant Energy Technologies” NOT merely RE technologies. You have an opportunity to stay relevant or disappear off the radar if exposed as a commentator who is prepared to dabble in “wishful thinking mumbo jumbo type” debate.
The most important contributors to the energy debate will in 2016 be those who are skilful enough to filter reality from fiction concerning useful energy technologies that can pass the “low cost and abundant energy technology” and “commercial viability” test, and have the balls to be as condemning of useless energy technology commentary [there is plenty of that in the energy sector] as they are complimentary of those who can remain focussed on high energy density and cost effective practical solutions energy technologies.
Good luck with your transition Craig, and in particular to remaining a relevant commentator on “Low Cost and Abundant Energy Technologies” for the future, and the future is now of course.
Lawrence Coomber
Thanks, Lawrence. You make some terrific points here, from which I can benefit greatly.
Craig,
I wouldn’t worry about becoming an “arm chair” critic, with staid conservative beliefs. No one who has followed your work and advocacy could possibly believe such nonsense !
In fact, if a criticism could be leveled ( and I say if) it’s that you’re slightly too willing to hope the full potential of sustainable and renewable technologies can be achieved without sufficiently assessing the negatives.
Each year several hundred proposals for new technologies and schemes are brought to me for assessment. Very few contain any really practical or commercial potential. Unfortunately, some people believe what they want to believe, without any regard for reality. The idea that because some thing should be true, therefore it is true, runs deep in the philosophies of many earnest advocates, and would be entrepreneurs .
There’s a fine line between praiseworthy steadfast persistence, and bloody minded obsession. For every Elon Musk, there are 1000 dreamers with failed projects.
Thanks for this.
For me, the problem isn’t “dreamers with failed projects.” I don’t mind failing if I’ve made good decisions and tried my hardest. And I certainly don’t resent dreamers. I DO, however, refuse to be a part of forwarding terrible ideas, and, like you, I see them every day.
Low power harvesting for low power devices will become important, it will increase efficiency. Same for mobile applications. Even automobiles will eventually harvest sunlight while parked. Could start with golf carts.
Why burn something to make electricity? It is very inefficient to go thru the Carnot Cycle. Of course the fuel cell is not really any better. How can we turn photons into electrons?
My first 8th grade rhetoric speech bored my teacher and his students into near acoma, it was about fusion power. It was nearly possible, fusion, in 1963. Have you seen fusion plants in your neighborhood?
Cold fusion will happen in my lifetime?
Perhaps we don’t need to produce a lot more electricity, only use it more wisely.
Perhaps we don’t need to burn fossil fuels to produce electricity?
What would you do to reduce your demand?
My 96 year old father and I use about 300 kWh and a few therms of natural gas, h2o is down a bit since we installed turf.
The two Prius sip gasoline, the F150 gets about 500 miles per year.
Garbage can goes out every other week, yard waste containers kitchen biodegradables, recycling is seldom full because we buy carefully.
How do match up?
napaeric,
I think you miss the point. Craig is not handing out awards for personal devotions to energy conservation, (I’m sure you would be in the running) he’s countering accusations of being resistant to radical new technologies.
The point I think Craig is making, is that any new technology must be based on sound scientific principles and have at least a chance of being viable and make a worthwhile contribution. Grandiose schemes and “flux capacitor” type claims only serve to make the acceptance of more valuable new technologies that much harder to institute.
That’s exactly right. Thank you. I couldn’t have written that any better myself.
Napaeric,
I think that we will need to produce much more electricity although wise use of it surely can limit the increase.
Global warming is already occurring. It will force us to become more dependent on air conditioning and that uses power. Also, in some areas, rainfall will decrease forcing us to depend on sea water desalination which is very energy intensive.
Poor countries will have to increase greatly their use of power to lift their people out of poverty. Although no one really knows accurately how much more power will have to be generated, some estimates are from three to four times as much power as we are now generating, and about 90% of power should come from non-CO2 emitting sources.
Many of us see no alternative to greatly expanding nuclear power. However, we do need a better, more economical, safer, and less wasteful nuclear power technology. If we in the U.S. had not stopped funding nuclear power R & D as “unnecessary”, probably we would already be using a much superior nuclear power technology. The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) looks very promising and China is doing R & D on it but if that doesn’t pan out, there are also other possibilities.
as a consult for ‘new technology ‘ i have seen an operating systen in an flat witch
outputed more electrical enegy then feed in;the grup showig the sytem tray to sell
the patent for the system to my customer (an rich company owner) for big Money.
but wat we find was that the system was powerd bay an rotating magnetic field
behind the Wall to the next flat !!! means this was an fraud projekt only to steel
monney . later i heared that they sell the same projekt to more ten on customer.