I was on a conference call this morning on which I told the audience that the American electorate is becoming far more focused on environmental issues than they were just a few short months ago. Based on what I read and hear, I get the distinct feeling that incidents like Exxon’s tar sands spill in Arkansas are causing a lot of people to gnash their teeth in advance of the decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. Sure, there are people who just nod their heads and go along with whatever their corporate-controlled government tells them, but the good news is that there are fewer of them every single day.
I spend a fair amount of time writing about how the vested interests in energy (e.g., the oil companies), keep bad ideas in place (e.g., extracting and burning petroleum), at the expense of good ideas (e.g., renewables).
But there is, in fact, another major enemy of good ideas: bad ideas.
Here’s an article on a topic I’ve seen before: synthesizing fuel from the CO2 in ocean water. As it happens, there are some excellent concepts in synthetic fuels from CO2, but, as a minimum requirement, they contemplate the use of point-sources for the carbon dioxide, for example, coal-fired power plants or concrete manufacturing facilities. Extracting CO2 from the ocean or the atmosphere will be exorbitantly expensive and is therefore a non-starter.
Dr. David Doty, one of the world’s most senior researchers in this space, amplifies my comments:
For reasons I can’t begin to understand, the U.S. Navy keeps promoting this garbage. By the measure that matters most, kg/kg, the concentration of CO2 in surface waters of the ocean is less than 1/4 its concentration in the atmosphere. I pointed out their misrepresentations at least five years ago here — about 2/3 of the way down the page, under “Sea Fuels,” and “More Sea Fuels.”
My crude estimate several years ago was that taking CO2 from the ocean would be at least 5 times more expensive than taking CO2 from the atmosphere, and taking CO2 from the atmosphere would be at least 5 times more expensive than taking it from point sources.
Needless to say, the process of evolving a working approach to supplying power for a large and increasingly energy-hungry population is not served with the continued promotion of ideas that lack scientific merit.
Based on its title, I have to say that my initial impression of the article linked below wasn’t too favorable. Calling something “The Truth About Solar Energy,” or “The Truth About ….(anything)” is a bit off-putting. Yes, I’d rather have the truth, as opposed to the lies, any day of the week; I think that goes without saying.
But the more I got into this, the more value I found it had to provide. For instance, there is a discussion of PERI’s (the Political Economics Research Institute) oft-quoted infographic on the number of jobs that would be created with an incremental $1 million investment into each of a dozen different types of energy generation, conservation, and efficiency. One of PERI’s key people, Dr. Robert Pollin, was good enough to favor me with an interview for “Is Renewable Really Doable?” and he spoke at some length about this subject.
I wish this subject would come up more in our usual political discourse; frankly it’s a bit strange that it doesn’t. After all, we just had a presidential election that was all about jobs, and the subject is at least as hot now as it was then. Romney attacked Obama for not being sufficiently friendly to the coal industry, and he nearly convinced enough voters that renewable energy was a job killer. This, of course, is ironic, as precisely the opposite is true, as readers will see.
I have to say that I laughed out loud at one of the comments: “I suspect those low numbers for job creation in coal don’t count all the awesome jobs in the health-industry for cancer care, lung and heart diseases, etc.” Now there’s someone with a sense of humor.
Occasionally I go off by myself for a “happy hour” drink at a local upscale restaurant/bar — a place that’s almost always good for an interesting conversation with the people sitting next to me. Last evening was no exception: I found an elderly couple that looked like they were right out of the “Society” column of the New York Times — dressed to the nines, very nicely educated, with warm and sophisticated old-money smiles. In fact, she was from Boston, Wellesley to be exact, and her paternal heritage was a line of “Harvard men” that was (I’m not exaggerating) four generations long.
The couple was so cordial and so sincerely excited to meet a fellow transplant from the East Coast that it was hard to imagine that the conversation could possibly turn sour, but it did precisely that when they asked me about my vocation and I explained that I was in renewable energy. The guy, perhaps 80, who, a moment before, was regarding me as if I could have been a rowing mate on the Charles, was at a loss to contain his anger. He demanded to know: What about clean coal? Could I convince him that we won’t be burning oil in 100 years? Did I think people really want these spinny toys (wind turbines), an aesthetic blight, all over the place? After all, we’re not running out of coal and oil; we keep finding more.
At least he had enough class and self-composure to emphasize repeatedly, “I’m not an expert, but…” before throwing out another unworkable defense for the continued extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. That, in fact, is the part I find most interesting with people like this; it’s what I call the “I’m Not an Expert, but… Syndrome.”
It’s unclear to me how people who know quite well that their understanding of the energy industry is limited feel entitled to extremely rigid positions – especially ones that fly in the teeth of the beliefs of the vast majority of scientists – i.e., actual experts. Would this guy have felt comfortable being so doctrinaire if the discussion were on cancer research or criminal psychopathology? Nope. Yet when it came to energy, he didn’t mind latching onto a few sounds bites and blasting them at me as if they had come from Mount Sinai.
I’m normally pretty good getting people to see that there really are tough realities here, that perhaps there are issues that make this subject a bit more complicated than they may have initially realized. In such situations, I try to fashion myself after Socrates (one of my great heroes growing up); I just try to ask good questions. But this gentleman was having absolutely none of it.
The experience served as an important reminder: part of what makes the migration to renewable energy such an interesting challenge is getting the world to back down off of what they think they know, and look at our problems fairly and squarely in the eye. I suppose that’s why the public relations angle is so crucial here. This fellow’s intractable viewpoint is the product of a considerable fortune that’s been spent convincing him of something extremely specific; the problem is that it’s also totally incorrect.
Craig: Well, this IS exactly what algae researchers are doing… And it DOES have promise, IMO.
Friend: It certainly would give us a much more carbon neutral solution for the existing transportation infrastructure – and, effectively, it’s solar energy. 🙂
Craig: You’re absolutely right. As long as we’re married to liquid fuels, there’s a lot to like here, including the fact that algae can be grown on non-arable land with salt water, and it’s 30 – 50 times more energy-dense that ANY terrestrial plant.
The problem is that it’s really hard to grow outside of carefully controlled laboratory conditions. If this is going to work, it’s going to take a lot of time and money, and a lot of that money is going to have to come from the public sector, since the private sector is so focused on short-term ROI.
The other issue is competition from electric transportation charged from wind and solar; i.e., we won’t be married to liquid fuels forever.
I had lunch yesterday with a young attorney (more details on him soon) who will be researching and writing on the legal aspects of renewable energy for our readers at 2GreenEnergy. I view this as a fantastic opportunity, since there are dozens of legal elements that need to be sorted out in order to accelerate the adoption of clean energy and, over time, phasing out the consumption of fossil fuels. We discussed a few of these over our meal:
• Looking at the approach that countries like Germany have taken, i.e., standardizing the process of permitting, installing, and grid-tying solar PV such that lawyers are almost completely removed from the process
• Using the law to create a level playing field for renewables – and everything this implies: incentives, subsidies, carbon taxes, renewable energy credits, etc.
• Establishing Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) – the same legal framework for capital formation of renewable energy projects as those in oil and gas exploration enjoy
• Getting rid of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling that enables corporations to spend as much as they like influencing our elections
• Exploring the work of the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) in using litigation to protect our natural environment
• Reporting on the work performed by the Environmental Law Institute, which “fosters innovative, just, and practical law and policy solutions to enable leaders across borders and sectors to make environmental, economic, and social progress.”
• Understanding the status of eminent domain law, as it may apply to establishing a build-out of our electrical grid with, perhaps, high-voltage DC power transmission.
There is a ton of extremely interesting and important material to be unearthed here, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity of presenting it here on our site.
I predict the next half-century will see a great number of reports like this one on islands of renewable energy that are generated and consumed off-grid. This article explains how a region of India has built a large microgrid for Ladakh, its northernmost state – one whose communities previously had spotty electricity from diesel generators, or, in some cases, none at all.
According to the article:
The high cost of DG (distributed generation) in Ladakh, currently INR25-28/kWh (US$0.47-0.52), makes renewable energy very competitive. Off-grid solar PV-generated electricity worked out over 20 years’ system-life in Ladakh currently comes to INR16-18/kWh ($0.30-0.34). And the cost of solar keeps falling due to technological development and scalability.
Again, I predict that large regions of Asia and Africa will find that distributed generation using solar and wind will electrify parts of the world for the first time, improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people without installing a single fossil fuel plant.
I stumbled onto the film “Cool It” a couple of nights ago. I understand the thesis, but in a way, the film makes it a bit easier to dismiss the subject matter by those who tend to view it in a superficial fashion….. I remain pessimistic regarding our country taking meaningful actionable steps. In one part of the film they even mentioned the moral hazard of speaking to solutions such as geoengineering, given the typical reception being “see, there’s no problem”. We live in interesting times.
Yes, we live in interesting times, but I often wonder, “Who didn’t?” Even if by “interesting times” you mean the imminent destruction of the whole of human civilization, you wouldn’t want to count out the plague that happened along a few hundred years before modern medical science, or the nuclear stand-off of the early 1960s.
My concern about our current situation is the nature of climate change as we understand it. A build-up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that we have no way to disperse will cause a loss of farmland and a rise of ocean levels that will last a very long time; it won’t be like “point disasters” – epidemics, earthquakes, etc. Yet the long-term nature of the problem is precisely what makes it tough for some people to embrace.
Wanxiang’s purchase of battery maker A123 may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to Fisker Automotive. Huh? Yeah, now Fisker not only has a battery supplier, but I bet Wanxiang will give Fisker some kind of bridge loan to keep it afloat while it seeks a “strategic partner” i.e. some company with cash to invest in the struggling plug-in hybrid electric company. But Fisker still needs cash, fast. And it is sniffing around China to find some.
Development of its next model, the Atlantic, is stalled awaiting funding. Production of its current model, the Karma, was also stalled as Fisker waited to hear the fate of its battery maker, A123. (and it didn’t have any money…) Now it knows A123 will survive. “We will start to re-negotiate the contract for batteries with Wanxiang in the very near future now that the sale is complete,” Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher told me.
Alysha: do you believe that the answer to Fisker’s woes is tied to its inability to develop its next model? What about its inability to sell and deliver its current model? Or that the real issue here is battery supply? What’s the matter with the far more obvious explanation: they’ve half-built a super-expensive, super-complicated car that virtually no one wants.
But, as implied above, I respect you, and I’m listening. If you can convince me of any fraction of your points here, drinks are on me, next time I see you in Los Angeles or Detroit.
You can claim “Super” storm Sandy was a result of global warming but I think that you are skating on thin ice…..Mixing climate change into the argument is a distraction from the important issue of whether there should be federally subsidized flood insurance available in flood plains and whether zoning laws should even permit this construction in the first place.
Thanks, Larry. I agree that it’s foolishness to attribute any one storm, or the temperature of any one year, to climate change. In fact, I used “many people think that…” precisely for that purpose; it’s certainly true that Sandy sounded an alarm bell on the subject to many millions of people who, up to that point, had been manipulated by the deniers’ paid propaganda. Any alarm in an emergency, regardless of why it’s ringing, is a good thing, if you ask me.
Regarding the most important long-run issues in this arena, I predict that the discussion about the damage caused by climate change will dwarf the conversation around federally subsidized flood insurance available in flood plains and related zoning laws.
