60 replies to this topic

[dre]

A "revamp" of the energy sector is something I see more as an opportunity for economic growth than as a pure expense, especially if it is allowed to happen organically via the private sector.

Well as always it will be a collaboration between the public sector and the private sector. But I agree... weve neglected energy infrastructure and development, and we are going to have to get serious about it whether or not AGW is real or not.

[TimG]

Well as always it will be a collaboration between the public sector and the private sector. But I agree... weve neglected energy infrastructure and development, and we are going to have to get serious about it whether or not AGW is real or not.

Well, our bridges, roads and water systems are a higher priority than over prices renewable energy.

[August1991]

They already do. You get taxed for owning land. You pay the government a fee if you want to extract oil, lumber, metals, or other materials from crown lands. And of course you also pay tax on the profits generated by those activities. And in many jurisdictions we already tax emissions, as well.

Bonam, few politicians understand how lucrative these taxes can be, and none so far can explain them credibly.

We collectively own the environment, or at least we want to preserve it for our great-grandchildren and their offspring. As stewards of this resource, surely we should make everyone pay for its use. And in doing so, we would simply be paying ourselves. After all, that's all any tax is - payment to ourselves.

Edited by August1991, 07 July 2011 - 07:21 PM.

[Wild Bill]

$76 trillion is not peanuts. Regardless of the % of global GDP that $76 trillion represents over the next 40 years, for that price and timeframe we could colonize Mars instead.

What a wonderful idea! I think we should do it no matter what happens!

Remember Manny, the hero of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"? He was a technician schooled in what works and what doesn't work. He was continually getting frustrated by what he called "yammerheads", namely non-technical people who would not just suggest but demand the group spend resources doing silly ideas that were impractical, impossible, not cost-effective or all three! Especially when they would assume that MANNY would do the work and look after all the details for them!

Why don't we colonize Mars? Those of us who are not necessarily always right but at least practical can leave. The yammerheads will likely stay home. They don't like pioneer situations because there's too much chance of embarrassing reality checks that would prove them wrong.

Each group would then be free to run things at their home in their own way. If the yammerheads think that transferring wealth from the producing nations to the non-producing ones makes sense, let them do it and we'll see what happens. If all those "science and engineering types that make all the pollution" are ruining the earth, let them leave! Surely earth doesn't need them! Let them colonize Mars and there too we will see what works and what doesn't.

The HitchHikers' Guide to the Galaxy had it right with the "B" Ark...

[dre]

Well, our bridges, roads and water systems are a higher priority than over prices renewable energy.

Not really. Our current energy pradigm is already an impediment to global economic growth, and its going to take a massive ammount of effort and capital to advance into the next energy age, and it will take decades. We need to get started (should have started taking this seriously 30 years ago for that matter).

[Sir Bandelot]

At some point the question has to be asked "how much is your life worth?" And in this case, that would include the lives of future generations. How much are we paying for the cost of doing nothing? You won't find that one at Foxnews! There are billions of dollars lost in the floods, droughts and tornadoes that have had a real dampening effect on the U.S. economy, and the economic costs of doing nothing and burning more and more oil are going to keep on rising.

It's worth pointing out that this is a 'pay me now, or pay me later' situation. Just as you end up paying a lot more if you decide to delay replacing the timing belt in your car's engine if it breaks, we have a similar situation with climate change - since the costs of mitigating the damaging effects would have been a lot less if the global economies started reducing CO2 emissions 10 or 20 years ago, instead of waiting till now...a time when it is becoming obvious that positive feedback cycles are already in effect, and a lot of change is already in the pipeline just waiting to hit us even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow!

"Survival Trumps Economics" - S Bandelot

[TimG]

Not really. Our current energy pradigm is already an impediment to global economic growth, and its going to take a massive ammount of effort and capital to advance into the next energy age, and it will take decades. We need to get started (should have started taking this seriously 30 years ago for that matter).

We have lots of gas, coal, uranium and thorium. There is no need to screw around with useless technologies like wind and solar.

[dre]

We have lots of gas, coal, uranium and thorium. There is no need to screw around with useless technologies like wind and solar.

Neither wind or solar is useless. What makes sense varies on a case to case basis. Some countries have coal and gas, and some dont. And nuclear energy will play a part but it isnt any kind of panacea.

All of those technologies are improving though, and we just dont know at this time how big a part each will play in the future. The cost per generated KW for wind and solar has been coming down very fast. If the current trend continues it will be cheaper than either coal or nuclear in just a few years... so the success of those technologies, since they are intermittent, will depend on the emergence storage technologies. Good progress is being made there as well.

[Bonam]

so the success of those technologies, since they are intermittent, will depend on the emergence storage technologies. Good progress is being made there as well.

As much of a proponent of technological progress trumping everything else as I am, the reality is, energy storage on the scale needed is, technologically, about as far away as, say, fusion. Without a nearby dam where water can be pumped uphill to store energy, there really is no way to store the kinds of energy we are talking about. We are talking about GW quantities of power stored over a day or so timeframe, minimum. That's on the order of about 100 TJ to backup the amount of energy that a large powerplant produces in a day.

The most advanced rechargeable batteries have about 1 MJ/kg of energy density (that's already a stretch beyond any real commercial battery suitable for a high power application by quite a bit). So you would need 100,000 TONS of advanced Li Ion battery to provide energy storage backup sufficient to replace one base load coal/oil/nuclear station for just one day, which would be necessary with power provided from an intermittent source. At the present costs of lithium batteries, that's about $14 billion dollars worth of batteries. Not to mention that amount of lithium simply isn't available. That's $14 billion for each 1 GW of dirty power you want to shut down. To replace all the world's dirty energy, 13 TW, with wind/solar backed up by energy storage, would take $180 trillion, and would take more lithium for batteries than exists in the Earth's crust.

The economics for other energy storage schemes, when scaled to the necessary sizes, don't look any better. People talk about ultracapacitors, but those have a lower energy density than the above mentioned batteries and a far higher cost. People talk about mechanical flywheels, but for the necessary scales, you can only do it with maglev ones that use superconducting magnets... again, the costs are too high by many orders of magnitude. You can store energy by electrolyzing water and reacting it back in fuel cells, but that entails huge efficiency losses, and, again, vast expense.

Even if you assume exponentially accelerating progress in energy storage technologies, entailing breakthroughs in applications of nanotechnology for energy storage, it will be decades yet before they are at the level they need to be to eliminate the need for backing up intermittent power sources with base load power sources. But if the progress does accelerate that way when it comes to energy technologies, then we'll have fusion anyway by the time these technologies are ready.

Edited by Bonam, 07 July 2011 - 10:19 PM.

[Bonam]

To add to that, a shorter term solution for the intermittancy of renewables is a lossless power distribution infrastructure. That is, while wind and solar power is intermittent over the size of countries or even continents, if you could average over the whole globe, you could get a much more stable power level. But power transmissions around the world right now would involve too high of an ohmic loss. Superconducting transoceanic electricity transfer trunks that span across the continents before branching off to local power grids would be a big enabler for renewable energy. They could be built with current technology for about a $ 1 billion per km, so a global infrastructure could be built for a few tens of trillions, as opposed to the hundreds of trillions needed for an energy storage infrastructure.

The downside is they are essentially not very useful until the entire system is complete, whereas energy storage backups become usable incrementally as they are built. They are also much more politically difficult since they would require a high degree of international cooperation.

Edited by Bonam, 07 July 2011 - 10:18 PM.

[WIP]

To add to that, a shorter term solution for the intermittancy of renewables is a lossless power distribution infrastructure. That is, while wind and solar power is intermittent over the size of countries or even continents, if you could average over the whole globe, you could get a much more stable power level. But power transmissions around the world right now would involve too high of an ohmic loss. Superconducting transoceanic electricity transfer trunks that span across the continents before branching off to local power grids would be a big enabler for renewable energy. They could be built with current technology for about a $ 1 billion per km, so a global infrastructure could be built for a few tens of trillions, as opposed to the hundreds of trillions needed for an energy storage infrastructure.

The downside is they are essentially not very useful until the entire system is complete, whereas energy storage backups become usable incrementally as they are built. They are also much more politically difficult since they would require a high degree of international cooperation.

Let's boil it all down to essentials. Your presentation on what you believe our energy needs are depend on maintaining the kind of society we have today. Here's a thought -- get rid of the car culture that the highway lobby has pushed on us since the end of WWII. The building and maintaining of private automobiles, and roads for their use, not to mention the energy needed to drive everyone around in their separate little iron boxes that weigh between one and four tons...try costing that out in energy use terms and then tell me how many power plants and windmills and lithium batteries we need to supply our energy needs!

We've been told that everyone wants their own car and to spend their days driving an hour or more each way from the suburbs to work, but is this really true? Automobiles are the single, greatest cause of accidental death and injury by far, and have become larger as a factor causing stress illnesses than workplace, finances and other typical concerns.

The fact is that our cities and suburbs are deliberately designed for the benefit of the automobile, and penalize everyone who either doesn't own a car or just wants to do less driving. The car culture has increased the stratification among income classes, since car ownership is an obvious larger burden for poor people living in cities with little or no alternative for transportation. Here's an excellent suggestion from Radio Ecoshock producer Alex Smith's latest episode: Kill The Car. And for further information: Yves Engler - Pushing our addiction to cars

[dre]

To add to that, a shorter term solution for the intermittancy of renewables is a lossless power distribution infrastructure. That is, while wind and solar power is intermittent over the size of countries or even continents, if you could average over the whole globe, you could get a much more stable power level. But power transmissions around the world right now would involve too high of an ohmic loss. Superconducting transoceanic electricity transfer trunks that span across the continents before branching off to local power grids would be a big enabler for renewable energy. They could be built with current technology for about a $ 1 billion per km, so a global infrastructure could be built for a few tens of trillions, as opposed to the hundreds of trillions needed for an energy storage infrastructure.

The downside is they are essentially not very useful until the entire system is complete, whereas energy storage backups become usable incrementally as they are built. They are also much more politically difficult since they would require a high degree of international cooperation.

You can store energy in smaller ammounts at or near the point of consumption, and you can generate energy there as well. Some appliances will have their own capacity as well, and this can become part of the system. For example... if there was millions of electric cars that automatically plugged into the grid when you parked in your driveway or garage their storage capacity would because part of the grid. Under normal conditions it doesnt matter when you charge an electric car. And a growing number of appliances wont need to be connected to the grid at all... things like streetlights can be solar LED. If solar PV comes down in price as much in the next ten years as it has in the last ten years then most lowrise buildings can generate all the energy they need plus have extra to sell back to the grid. And while storing the power from a huge central plant is hard with todays technology, storing enough energy to smooth over fluxuations in grid availability for a home is not that tough or expensive to do.

The real trick is to build the grid and make the pricing model. If you do it right, then you would reduce the need for gigantic public utilities. You need universal net-metering, and a fluxuating pricing model, so that electricity costs more during periods of low availability... this will motivate independant power producers to supply power during these periods because theyll get more per KWH. If you make a smart enough grid you could potentially harness the enginuity of millions of entrepreneurs, inventors, and small IPP's, and get the government out of the power generation part.

Without a nearby dam where water can be pumped uphill to store energy, there really is no way to store the kinds of energy we are talking about

100's of millions of homes have just such a damn near by! And pumping water isnt the only way to store it. The trick is the energy has to be cheap enough so that you can afford the change of phase. Youre going to lose quite a bit of energy turning electricity into mechanical energy to pump water. But assuming you can absorb that cost, then theres a number of ways to store the energy that would scale. You can pump water uphill like you suggested... you can use the energy to speed up gigantic flywheels that spin in a vacuum on magnetic bearings... or you could heat oil in gigantic insulated tanks, and use a heat exchanger to get the power back out... or you could make hydrogen and store it in huge tanks.

Storage technologies arent the bottleneck still its generation costs. If we could produce renewable energy for a few cents per KWH the storage problems will get solved.

[TimG]

Let's boil it all down to essentials. Your presentation on what you believe our energy needs are depend on maintaining the kind of society we have today.

That is the only option that is on the table. Society will not change because of government fiat. It will only change based on real market forces and technological change.

Here's a thought -- get rid of the car culture that the highway lobby has pushed on us since the end of WWII.

The car culture is essential to the economic freedom that has generated the wealth that we have now. Even in places like Germany and Japan you see that cars are extremely important form of transportation and their societies could not function without them.

The fact is that our cities and suburbs are deliberately designed for the benefit of the automobile, and penalize everyone who either doesn't own a car or just wants to do less driving.

Suburbs exist because they provide the kind of lifestyle that people want. No matter how much you pontificate nothing will change even if you tried to make it less affordable.

Edited by TimG, 09 July 2011 - 03:37 PM.

[dre]

Suburbs exist because they provide the kind of lifestyle that people want. No matter how much you pontificate nothing will change even if you tried to make it less affordable.

Right but transportation is 3 or 4 times as expensive when most of those suburbs were built, and in many places we are running out of space to build them. You wont find very many city planners who wont tell you we need to increase density to support growth.

[TimG]

Right but transportation is 3 or 4 times as expensive when most of those suburbs were built, and in many places we are running out of space to build them. You wont find very many city planners who wont tell you we need to increase density to support growth.

As far as city planners are concerned it would be cheapest to have everyone living in concrete boxes in the city core. But the job of city planners is not to dictate the way we live but to manage cities designed the way people want to live. Every where in the world people want their own piece of private property if they can afford it. Nothing will change that. The only thing that seperates North America from the rest is we have enough land to allow a larger percentage of the population to achieve that universal goal.

Edited by TimG, 09 July 2011 - 05:08 PM.