Renewable energy can IMPROVE our economy...
Today’s post: Wednesday, 11-26-2008
1. First, burning fossil fuels is already harming our economy, our health, and our entire world’s environment.
And, it will act as an increasingly worse brake on our economy the longer we continue to do it. So, developing abundant renewable energy to replace that will begin to remove that brake. This alone will improve our economy.
Thanks to Al Gore’s groups email with the heads-up & opportunity to make public comment on the issue, I just send the following message to the EPA.:
“Dear Administrator Johnson and EPA staff:
I urge you to take immediate action and rule that carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants clearly "endanger the public health and welfare" and thus should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution is the primary cause of the climate crisis.
The future costs of overcoming the effects for CO2-driven global warming threaten our economy. This includes huge & increased costs for continuing our food production. The repeat, likely when the current economic slowdown ends, of worldwide bidding up the cost of fossil fuels threatens our economy. The potential for economic collapse when oil runs out looks very real.
Burning coal for generating electricity has now reached such a large size that it threatens the agricultural production and health of about half the earth already!
Meanwhile, it's clearly possible to build solar photovoltaic and solar thermal and wind generation of electric power to 200 % of the world's total current energy use by about 30 years from now.
However, fossil fuels do NOT yet have the real cost of their economic & environmental costs added to their cost to use for fuel. This makes the renewable sources it has become imperative we switch to, close to 100 % less competitive than they already should be.
These facts mean that it is also imperative to regulate the burning of carbon base fuels and the emission of carbon dioxide that results.
(It's also clear than carbon fuels should soon be taxed in some fashion for these same reasons.)
Please rule that carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants clearly "endanger the public health and welfare" and thus should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. And, vigorously regulate these pollutants. Start slow if you need to do so. But act now to create the authority to do so.”
2. If we increase the amount of solar photovoltaics on every building with an appropriate roof and on a roof over most parking lots; AND we build solar photovoltaic farms in locations throughout the United States and the world; we also build solar thermal farms in locations throughout the United States and the world; we install nearly that much more wind generation of electricity; & we install the new electricity distribution grid to support getting that electricity to where it will be used, we can easily generate 200 % of our current energy use from these renewable sources within 30 years.
If we also become dramatically more energy efficient, particularly in the United States, we will have close to three times the usable energy we do now from these renewable sources.
Yes, that will create jobs in building and installing this new energy source. And it will also enable us to cut our use of fossil fuels to near zero, particularly when we also get cost effective biofuels to replace most of the remaining uses of gas & liquid fuels.
But the very large and sustainable INCREASE in renewable energy and effective energy use well above today’s levels won’t just be a safe substitute for fossil fuels and a near term job creator, it will power a very real prosperity.
It’s not widely known; but the amount of effective energy use in an economy is very close to being 100 % the same as the real size of that economy. So this achievable increase in our effective use of energy and energy generation will indeed create prosperity, not just avoid economic disaster.
3. Now is the time to take action to begin to make fossil fuels too restricted and expensive to use AND to create this massive increase in renewable energy.
Many scientists say we must start now or inherit disaster because we did not.
Right no the current economic crisis has slowed the burning of fossil fuels which gives us a bit more time; and makes the new jobs needed soon a real opportunity to create new jobs in renewable energy as a badly needed solution to our current downturn.
Last week, I wrote this in that week’s post.:
“It does help some that overcoming the financial crisis and creating new jobs are now so important because of the faltering economy – because, jobs in energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy can help to solve this problem. Enthusiastic people working on worthwhile new projects that then begin to work well creates prosperity. This process now may happen enough in renewable and clean energy to lift the entire economy.
One thing I do think Obama’s new administration needs to do is to provide extremely strong positive incentives for switching to or creating renewable energy first; have cap and trade tried in a state or two, and have a plan B and a plan C ready to go if in that state or states energy costs increase at rates that cause economic problems or problems with energy supply develop.
It IS totally clear that adding the REAL environmental costs of burning fossil fuels needs to be forced into the market price of burning those fuels by governments world-wide over the next few decades. Simply put, it’s imperative that we do this enough to power the switch to clean renewables as fast as we possibly can. We need to make renewables MORE affordable and turn off using the damaging burning of fossil fuels for energy as fast as we can without damaging the overall economy while making the transition.
But, the simulation I read about of an operating model of a Cap & Trade system ran up energy costs too fast for the economy to adapt to because of people gaming the system for short term financial gains. So, although a version of Cap & Trade may work eventually, we need to be very careful of trying Cap & Trade systems without the mechanism set up in advance to tweak them or replace them with direct taxes that ramp up in a more controlled, albeit rapid, fashion.
Something very like this happened recently in California where I live when the deregulation of the production and sale of electric power generation was tried. We had utilities going bankrupt; rolling blackouts; a sharp increase in the costs of producing electricity; and some unethical types getting rich by gaming the system.
When the whole US economy is at stake, and given the impact of the US economy on the world economy and the current downturn, I think we need to try some smaller experimental Cap & Trade systems before we try it nation-wide.
This is an area of the switch to renewable energy that will be challenging to do well. And, I hope the Obama Administration handles it well.”
If we add dramatically more renewable energy AND gradually make burning fossil fuels a much more expensive and inconvenient alternative, the changes we need and the sustainable prosperity we all want will happen.
Showing posts with label renewable energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label renewable energy. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Superb analysis & a reality check on Renewable Energy....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-27-2008
A week ago, though I just happened across it yesterday, TIME published an opinion & analysis piece that was so extremely well done, I’ve included most of it below.
(The original was at:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1834265,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-healthsci .)
I added some paragraphing to make some of the writer’s points stand out & will add my comments and the reality check I found after the quote I include here.:
Putting US Energy in the Wrong Place Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008
By BRYAN WALSH
“….The reality is that whether the U.S. drills or not, it really doesn't make a difference — not against the sheer scale of the energy and climate crisis facing America and the rest of the world.
(Indeed, the other 6.3 billion people factor into this equation too.)
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently estimated that under a business-as-usual scenario — which the U.S. seems intent on abiding — global oil demand would rise 70% by 2050. That increase represents five times as much oil as Saudi Arabia produces annually. You could drill America with exploratory wells until it looked like Swiss cheese and still not make much of a dent in that figure.
That's not to say offshore drilling should be off limits. The world will be on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, and we will need more oil. If individual U.S. states want to take the risk of opening up their coastlines to drilling, let them — it's not a battle environmentalists should insist on winning.
The larger problem is that the Presidential campaign has been captured by a mostly meaningless debate over offshore drilling, which is obscuring a far more relevant question regarding the energy crisis: how can America develop workable alternative fuels — right here and right now?
Instead of squabbling over the nickels and dimes of offshore oil, we need to create a national plan to capture the future of energy: wind, solar, electric cars, next-generation biofuels. And this should be America's priority even among those who don't believe a word Al Gore has ever said about global warming.
If we have any chance of avoiding a future where we feel nostalgic for $4-a-gallon gas, or where countries with lots of oil (Russia, for example) can make a mockery of our foreign policy, we'll need scaled-up alternatives now.
Drilling advocates argue that we need to start exploring now so we'll reap the benefits in a decade, but the same goes for development of renewables — we have no time to waste.
It's too bad we seem to be treating alternative energy policy as somewhat less important than, say, passing resolutions to establish National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week (May 5-9).
Eight times this year, the Senate has failed to pass legislation that would extend tax credits that encourage the development of the wind and solar industry, legislation that will expire at the end of December.
(McCain, it should be noted, missed all eight of those votes — a record that doesn't jibe well with his campaign promises to pursue an aggressive alternative energy program along with offshore drilling.)
Without those tax credits, the renewable energy industry "is grinding to a halt," says Peter Duprey, CEO of the North American arm of the Spanish renewable company Acciona Energy, which has a 64-megawatt solar thermal plant operating outside Las Vegas, and recently launched a 180-megawatt wind farm on the border between North Dakota and South Dakota. "Everyone says America is the land of opportunity for renewables," says Duprey. "We have to get serious about it."
Duprey points out that the arguments used by proponents of offshore drilling can also be used to support aggressive investment in alternatives. "We have this vast untapped renewable energy reserves, just like oil and gas," he says, referring to the rich wind resources of the Midwest and the solar potential of the Southwest. "We just need to build the transmission lines to move that energy out."
Think of it that way, and suddenly alternatives don't seem like a far-off solution based on science fiction, but a resource that exists today, if it can be tapped — just like offshore oil.
That's a job for government, whether it means building the lines directly or using tax credits to support private industry.
This is the debate we should be having this election season — not an empty argument over offshore drilling or properly inflated tires.”
X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X*
Bryan Walsh makes some superb points in this essay. He makes them so well that I decided not to paraphrase his comments but include them directly as a quote.
Here are my comments on this; “The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently estimated that under a business-as-usual scenario — which the U.S. seems intent on abiding — global oil demand would rise 70% by 2050.”
As I’ve posted before, that is totally scary if we are on the edge of creating irreversible global warming that will bankrupt the economies of the nations of the world and devastate our ability to grow food and flood our coastal cities. If that is the case, as the evidence suggests, burning that much more oil will create catastrophic consequences.
The good news is that many people in the United States do NOT support business as usual. They know that it has unacceptable consequences and that the technology is now in place to generate that much renewable energy and more. So, it is the policy of the United States government he is actually speaking about here.
So, endorsing the people in government or who might be -- who intend to continue business as usual looks like a horrible idea to me.
George Bush & his administration have continued business as usual.
And, John McCain has done several things, from his emphasis on more drilling for oil, to declining to support renewable energy at key times even before he became a candidate for President that very much suggest he will do exactly the same thing.
That point Bryan Walsh did notice.: “(McCain, it should be noted, missed all eight of those votes — a record that doesn't jibe well with his campaign promises to pursue an aggressive alternative energy program along with offshore drilling.)”
These votes to continue the renewable energy tax credits this year that did NOT pass may well set back the launching of many well planned solar & wind projects if a bill continuing them fails to pass before the end of the year.
In my opinion, if John McCain was knowledgeable enough on these issues to be qualified to be and trusted to be President of the United States in these times, he would have been at all eight of the votes and worked to create a compromise that included some drilling provisions but continued the renewable energy tax credits AND then showed up to vote for them each time.
To me, the fact he failed to do this doesn’t just mean we should all vote for his opponent, they mean we should also pray that he never becomes our President too.
I think our country deserves a better fate than the one continuing the Bush Administration’s business as usual policies will produce.
The only point that Bryan Walsh missed is that there is ample evidence now to show that renewable energy is a larger resource that we can bring onstream faster than we can add that much oil production.
He also leaves out the fact that it may not be possible to increase oil production that much.
The reality check is that despite the far greater amount of energy available from solar, so far most of our increase of renewable energy has been from wind power.
And, the amount of that, though modestly impressive, is not yet any where near enough.
I saw recently that Texas now generates 3568 megawatts of electricity from renewable source and that Iowa generates 1267 megawatts. (And the vast majority in both of those states is from wind power.)
Despite each having the potential to generate more than those two states combined many times over from solar energy, the states that have the most solar potential, California, Colorado, Nevada, & New Mexico only generated 2058 Megawatts between them. And some of that was from wind power.
(John McCain’s home state of Arizona despite its huge solar potential generated less than the 90 megawatts that New Mexico did.)
This means that even though the need is there and the technology is there and the demand for energy is making the more limited fossil fuels rise in price enough to make renewable energy economically competitive, we have a very long way yet to go.
Will we have a President who gets it & will help us get a fast start in getting there?
Or, will we have a long delay while the situation worsens with more business as it has been before?
Like everyone else, I have my preferences on other issues. But they are irrelevant compared to this one.
Energy, more to the point, massive increases in renewable energy as soon as we can possibly deliver it, are THE issue.
Whether or not it’s even possible for the other issues to continue to be addressed, let alone addressed well, depends totally on this one issue.
Please vote accordingly.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-27-2008
A week ago, though I just happened across it yesterday, TIME published an opinion & analysis piece that was so extremely well done, I’ve included most of it below.
(The original was at:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1834265,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-healthsci .)
I added some paragraphing to make some of the writer’s points stand out & will add my comments and the reality check I found after the quote I include here.:
Putting US Energy in the Wrong Place Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008
By BRYAN WALSH
“….The reality is that whether the U.S. drills or not, it really doesn't make a difference — not against the sheer scale of the energy and climate crisis facing America and the rest of the world.
(Indeed, the other 6.3 billion people factor into this equation too.)
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently estimated that under a business-as-usual scenario — which the U.S. seems intent on abiding — global oil demand would rise 70% by 2050. That increase represents five times as much oil as Saudi Arabia produces annually. You could drill America with exploratory wells until it looked like Swiss cheese and still not make much of a dent in that figure.
That's not to say offshore drilling should be off limits. The world will be on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, and we will need more oil. If individual U.S. states want to take the risk of opening up their coastlines to drilling, let them — it's not a battle environmentalists should insist on winning.
The larger problem is that the Presidential campaign has been captured by a mostly meaningless debate over offshore drilling, which is obscuring a far more relevant question regarding the energy crisis: how can America develop workable alternative fuels — right here and right now?
Instead of squabbling over the nickels and dimes of offshore oil, we need to create a national plan to capture the future of energy: wind, solar, electric cars, next-generation biofuels. And this should be America's priority even among those who don't believe a word Al Gore has ever said about global warming.
If we have any chance of avoiding a future where we feel nostalgic for $4-a-gallon gas, or where countries with lots of oil (Russia, for example) can make a mockery of our foreign policy, we'll need scaled-up alternatives now.
Drilling advocates argue that we need to start exploring now so we'll reap the benefits in a decade, but the same goes for development of renewables — we have no time to waste.
It's too bad we seem to be treating alternative energy policy as somewhat less important than, say, passing resolutions to establish National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week (May 5-9).
Eight times this year, the Senate has failed to pass legislation that would extend tax credits that encourage the development of the wind and solar industry, legislation that will expire at the end of December.
(McCain, it should be noted, missed all eight of those votes — a record that doesn't jibe well with his campaign promises to pursue an aggressive alternative energy program along with offshore drilling.)
Without those tax credits, the renewable energy industry "is grinding to a halt," says Peter Duprey, CEO of the North American arm of the Spanish renewable company Acciona Energy, which has a 64-megawatt solar thermal plant operating outside Las Vegas, and recently launched a 180-megawatt wind farm on the border between North Dakota and South Dakota. "Everyone says America is the land of opportunity for renewables," says Duprey. "We have to get serious about it."
Duprey points out that the arguments used by proponents of offshore drilling can also be used to support aggressive investment in alternatives. "We have this vast untapped renewable energy reserves, just like oil and gas," he says, referring to the rich wind resources of the Midwest and the solar potential of the Southwest. "We just need to build the transmission lines to move that energy out."
Think of it that way, and suddenly alternatives don't seem like a far-off solution based on science fiction, but a resource that exists today, if it can be tapped — just like offshore oil.
That's a job for government, whether it means building the lines directly or using tax credits to support private industry.
This is the debate we should be having this election season — not an empty argument over offshore drilling or properly inflated tires.”
X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X* X*
Bryan Walsh makes some superb points in this essay. He makes them so well that I decided not to paraphrase his comments but include them directly as a quote.
Here are my comments on this; “The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently estimated that under a business-as-usual scenario — which the U.S. seems intent on abiding — global oil demand would rise 70% by 2050.”
As I’ve posted before, that is totally scary if we are on the edge of creating irreversible global warming that will bankrupt the economies of the nations of the world and devastate our ability to grow food and flood our coastal cities. If that is the case, as the evidence suggests, burning that much more oil will create catastrophic consequences.
The good news is that many people in the United States do NOT support business as usual. They know that it has unacceptable consequences and that the technology is now in place to generate that much renewable energy and more. So, it is the policy of the United States government he is actually speaking about here.
So, endorsing the people in government or who might be -- who intend to continue business as usual looks like a horrible idea to me.
George Bush & his administration have continued business as usual.
And, John McCain has done several things, from his emphasis on more drilling for oil, to declining to support renewable energy at key times even before he became a candidate for President that very much suggest he will do exactly the same thing.
That point Bryan Walsh did notice.: “(McCain, it should be noted, missed all eight of those votes — a record that doesn't jibe well with his campaign promises to pursue an aggressive alternative energy program along with offshore drilling.)”
These votes to continue the renewable energy tax credits this year that did NOT pass may well set back the launching of many well planned solar & wind projects if a bill continuing them fails to pass before the end of the year.
In my opinion, if John McCain was knowledgeable enough on these issues to be qualified to be and trusted to be President of the United States in these times, he would have been at all eight of the votes and worked to create a compromise that included some drilling provisions but continued the renewable energy tax credits AND then showed up to vote for them each time.
To me, the fact he failed to do this doesn’t just mean we should all vote for his opponent, they mean we should also pray that he never becomes our President too.
I think our country deserves a better fate than the one continuing the Bush Administration’s business as usual policies will produce.
The only point that Bryan Walsh missed is that there is ample evidence now to show that renewable energy is a larger resource that we can bring onstream faster than we can add that much oil production.
He also leaves out the fact that it may not be possible to increase oil production that much.
The reality check is that despite the far greater amount of energy available from solar, so far most of our increase of renewable energy has been from wind power.
And, the amount of that, though modestly impressive, is not yet any where near enough.
I saw recently that Texas now generates 3568 megawatts of electricity from renewable source and that Iowa generates 1267 megawatts. (And the vast majority in both of those states is from wind power.)
Despite each having the potential to generate more than those two states combined many times over from solar energy, the states that have the most solar potential, California, Colorado, Nevada, & New Mexico only generated 2058 Megawatts between them. And some of that was from wind power.
(John McCain’s home state of Arizona despite its huge solar potential generated less than the 90 megawatts that New Mexico did.)
This means that even though the need is there and the technology is there and the demand for energy is making the more limited fossil fuels rise in price enough to make renewable energy economically competitive, we have a very long way yet to go.
Will we have a President who gets it & will help us get a fast start in getting there?
Or, will we have a long delay while the situation worsens with more business as it has been before?
Like everyone else, I have my preferences on other issues. But they are irrelevant compared to this one.
Energy, more to the point, massive increases in renewable energy as soon as we can possibly deliver it, are THE issue.
Whether or not it’s even possible for the other issues to continue to be addressed, let alone addressed well, depends totally on this one issue.
Please vote accordingly.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Solar thermal electricity makes a huge positive difference....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-20-2008
Last Thursday, I went to a presentation by John O’Donnell, Executive Vice President of Ausra Inc which manufactures and builds solar thermal farms and electricity generation.
(See www.ausra.com .)
The number & value of the useful facts I learned was impressive. And, these were in addition to the positive things I already knew about renewable energy and the importance of switching our economy to it.
Many people believe that only tiny amounts of renewable energy can be developed or that it is not cost effective or both which results in their belief that it won’t do as much for our economy or lowering our cost of transport and driving as drilling for more domestic oil.
The facts do NOT back this view.
Wind power can provide a surprisingly large amount of our electricity. Depending on how you calculate it, it can provide 10 to 20% of our electricity use, perhaps more. And, somewhere in the United States the wind is blowing 24 hours a day.
And, solar photovoltaic panels can provide up to 100 % of our current electricity use.
But both wind power and solar photovoltaic power are variable power sources. Solar photovoltaic power is not available at night. And, unless inexpensive and energy efficient batteries or other forms of electricity storage are developed, we would need something more reliable on a 24, 7 basis in addition to those sources.
In addition, solar photovoltaic is not quite to the cost level needed to be less expensive than electricity produced by fossil fuels. And, it will need to be installed in literally thousand of locations across the country.
But when you add solar thermal to the equation the picture changes dramatically for the better in every respect.
1. Electricity generated by solar thermal farms of the kind already being built by Ausra and its many competitors world-wide, is ALREADY cost competitive with electricity produced by fossil fuels.
2. In addition, just this one source alone can provide over 90 % of our current energy use in the United States or more and do it 16 to 17 hours a day.
a) This is achievable from solar farms that it’s doable to build in the Western and South Western United States alone. If you add those that could be build in Baja California and Northwest Mexico, you can just about double that output.
b) It seems that storing the heated fluid from solar thermal at night is over 90 % efficient and far more efficient and inexpensive than saving that much electricity in batteries would be. So by building solar thermal farms and generation facilities in this entire area may be able to achieve electricity very close to the 24 7 availability we need with 16 hours a day being quite doable.
3. It’s not generally known but we already added about 25 % of our current electricity generation from natural gas over the last 15 years or so without any subsidies from government.
So, if we add some government incentives to build renewable energy & some disincentives to using fossil fuels, moving to 100 % renewable energy in 10 years WOULD be extremely challenging. But doing it in 15 years is doable. And doing it in 20 years would be easy.
In addition, if we start now and push we can add so much new cost-competitive renewable electricity within 5 to 10 years that electric cars and plug-in hybrids will begin to lower the demand for gasoline a good bit MORE than drilling for more oil will do in twice that time. And, the auto makers have already announced plans to produce those cars.
Also, John McCain spoke about nuclear power as an alternative solution. It seems that the industry has been mothballed to such an extent due to opposition to it that if we are to build any significant amount of it, we are talking about rebuilding this highly technical industry and this is so much the case, we would have trouble adding more than a few nuclear reactors in the next few years. John O’Donnell made it sound like adding just 5 in the next 10 years would be a considerable challenge.
Adding the 45 proposed by John McCain is extremely unlikely. So much so, John O’Donnell thinks Senator McCain is seriously misinformed.
And, although it’s true that recycling inside a nuclear reactor instead or removing the uranium will turn it into plutonium and produce more energy over dramatically longer time periods and eliminate the need to move and store radioactive waste for tens of thousand of years, if a terrorist gets the plutonium out, it takes relatively little expertise or cost to make a nuclear device. So such reactors will be virtually too costly to operate safely due to the extremely high cost of adequate security.
And, if we go the route of NOT doing this kind or recycling or breeder reactor, we only have about 35 years of uranium left and WOULD have to worry about moving and storing radioactive waste for tens of thousand of years.
We may decide that using breeder reactors and providing the security needed even though it has this very large downside risk may be a lesser evil than having all the coastal cities of the world be under 50 feet or more of seawater and having our weather change for the worst so much it keeps us from growing food to eat.
But, the good news is that we CAN do it all with renewable energy. And, this is in part the case because of what large scale solar thermal farms and generators can provide.
And, what little we cannot do directly with renewable energy now, we may well be able to do at less cost than nuclear reactors with adequate security by using the new battery technologies now being developed.
To do this will require that government at least work intelligently with the renewable energy industry even if there are NO incentives from government.
Now, the Bureau of Land Management is apparently only processing applications in a timely manner for oil companies and is dragging its feet to the point of incompetence or deliberate obstruction, possibly at the direction of the Bush administration, when processing renewable energy applications.
John McCain has voted against or abstained from votes where his supporting vote would have allowed more solar thermal projects to be built soon, and this is true even when some of the solar thermal projects were in his own home state of Arizona.
And, he spoke of his belief that nuclear power is the best solution literally as he was being photographed at a large wind power project.
Here is my take on it.:
John McCain seems like a good guy personally. And, he has said he thinks global warming should be addressed.
But his actions predict that if elected he will continue the policies of the outgoing Bush administration: The deliberate lack of action on renewable energy and giving front burner support ONLY to the oil industry that have gotten us into this mess and are in part responsible for the lack of action to hold down gasoline prices is not desirable or even safe to continue.
Since the health of our economy and our way of life in the climate we have adapted ourselves to depend on action to install massive amounts of renewable energy, which is DOABLE NOW, I think John McCain is a risk we cannot afford to take.
Barack Obama is far from perfect and I don’t support some of his policies. But those considerations are secondary.
If our economy crashes or the effects of global warming cause both our economy and our ability to grow food to collapse, none of those considerations are at all important in comparison.
The energy economy and the policies of the next President and his administration will ruin us or save us. This is the single most important issue.
Obama will at least get us started on the right path. He even is willing to make some compromises with the backers of the oil industry to do so.
McCain’s actions suggest he is badly informed and will do little or worse, will prevent us from beginning.
And, at the moment, because Obama and the Democratic party have not yet communicated this information at all well, they are now running behind in the polls.
This is unnecessary since the facts are on their side and have been all along.
Will they show the voters in the United States this information and explain how it will impact these voters if they don’t know this information and act on it and support politicians who do?
They haven’t done it at all well yet. And, the clock is ticking.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-20-2008
Last Thursday, I went to a presentation by John O’Donnell, Executive Vice President of Ausra Inc which manufactures and builds solar thermal farms and electricity generation.
(See www.ausra.com .)
The number & value of the useful facts I learned was impressive. And, these were in addition to the positive things I already knew about renewable energy and the importance of switching our economy to it.
Many people believe that only tiny amounts of renewable energy can be developed or that it is not cost effective or both which results in their belief that it won’t do as much for our economy or lowering our cost of transport and driving as drilling for more domestic oil.
The facts do NOT back this view.
Wind power can provide a surprisingly large amount of our electricity. Depending on how you calculate it, it can provide 10 to 20% of our electricity use, perhaps more. And, somewhere in the United States the wind is blowing 24 hours a day.
And, solar photovoltaic panels can provide up to 100 % of our current electricity use.
But both wind power and solar photovoltaic power are variable power sources. Solar photovoltaic power is not available at night. And, unless inexpensive and energy efficient batteries or other forms of electricity storage are developed, we would need something more reliable on a 24, 7 basis in addition to those sources.
In addition, solar photovoltaic is not quite to the cost level needed to be less expensive than electricity produced by fossil fuels. And, it will need to be installed in literally thousand of locations across the country.
But when you add solar thermal to the equation the picture changes dramatically for the better in every respect.
1. Electricity generated by solar thermal farms of the kind already being built by Ausra and its many competitors world-wide, is ALREADY cost competitive with electricity produced by fossil fuels.
2. In addition, just this one source alone can provide over 90 % of our current energy use in the United States or more and do it 16 to 17 hours a day.
a) This is achievable from solar farms that it’s doable to build in the Western and South Western United States alone. If you add those that could be build in Baja California and Northwest Mexico, you can just about double that output.
b) It seems that storing the heated fluid from solar thermal at night is over 90 % efficient and far more efficient and inexpensive than saving that much electricity in batteries would be. So by building solar thermal farms and generation facilities in this entire area may be able to achieve electricity very close to the 24 7 availability we need with 16 hours a day being quite doable.
3. It’s not generally known but we already added about 25 % of our current electricity generation from natural gas over the last 15 years or so without any subsidies from government.
So, if we add some government incentives to build renewable energy & some disincentives to using fossil fuels, moving to 100 % renewable energy in 10 years WOULD be extremely challenging. But doing it in 15 years is doable. And doing it in 20 years would be easy.
In addition, if we start now and push we can add so much new cost-competitive renewable electricity within 5 to 10 years that electric cars and plug-in hybrids will begin to lower the demand for gasoline a good bit MORE than drilling for more oil will do in twice that time. And, the auto makers have already announced plans to produce those cars.
Also, John McCain spoke about nuclear power as an alternative solution. It seems that the industry has been mothballed to such an extent due to opposition to it that if we are to build any significant amount of it, we are talking about rebuilding this highly technical industry and this is so much the case, we would have trouble adding more than a few nuclear reactors in the next few years. John O’Donnell made it sound like adding just 5 in the next 10 years would be a considerable challenge.
Adding the 45 proposed by John McCain is extremely unlikely. So much so, John O’Donnell thinks Senator McCain is seriously misinformed.
And, although it’s true that recycling inside a nuclear reactor instead or removing the uranium will turn it into plutonium and produce more energy over dramatically longer time periods and eliminate the need to move and store radioactive waste for tens of thousand of years, if a terrorist gets the plutonium out, it takes relatively little expertise or cost to make a nuclear device. So such reactors will be virtually too costly to operate safely due to the extremely high cost of adequate security.
And, if we go the route of NOT doing this kind or recycling or breeder reactor, we only have about 35 years of uranium left and WOULD have to worry about moving and storing radioactive waste for tens of thousand of years.
We may decide that using breeder reactors and providing the security needed even though it has this very large downside risk may be a lesser evil than having all the coastal cities of the world be under 50 feet or more of seawater and having our weather change for the worst so much it keeps us from growing food to eat.
But, the good news is that we CAN do it all with renewable energy. And, this is in part the case because of what large scale solar thermal farms and generators can provide.
And, what little we cannot do directly with renewable energy now, we may well be able to do at less cost than nuclear reactors with adequate security by using the new battery technologies now being developed.
To do this will require that government at least work intelligently with the renewable energy industry even if there are NO incentives from government.
Now, the Bureau of Land Management is apparently only processing applications in a timely manner for oil companies and is dragging its feet to the point of incompetence or deliberate obstruction, possibly at the direction of the Bush administration, when processing renewable energy applications.
John McCain has voted against or abstained from votes where his supporting vote would have allowed more solar thermal projects to be built soon, and this is true even when some of the solar thermal projects were in his own home state of Arizona.
And, he spoke of his belief that nuclear power is the best solution literally as he was being photographed at a large wind power project.
Here is my take on it.:
John McCain seems like a good guy personally. And, he has said he thinks global warming should be addressed.
But his actions predict that if elected he will continue the policies of the outgoing Bush administration: The deliberate lack of action on renewable energy and giving front burner support ONLY to the oil industry that have gotten us into this mess and are in part responsible for the lack of action to hold down gasoline prices is not desirable or even safe to continue.
Since the health of our economy and our way of life in the climate we have adapted ourselves to depend on action to install massive amounts of renewable energy, which is DOABLE NOW, I think John McCain is a risk we cannot afford to take.
Barack Obama is far from perfect and I don’t support some of his policies. But those considerations are secondary.
If our economy crashes or the effects of global warming cause both our economy and our ability to grow food to collapse, none of those considerations are at all important in comparison.
The energy economy and the policies of the next President and his administration will ruin us or save us. This is the single most important issue.
Obama will at least get us started on the right path. He even is willing to make some compromises with the backers of the oil industry to do so.
McCain’s actions suggest he is badly informed and will do little or worse, will prevent us from beginning.
And, at the moment, because Obama and the Democratic party have not yet communicated this information at all well, they are now running behind in the polls.
This is unnecessary since the facts are on their side and have been all along.
Will they show the voters in the United States this information and explain how it will impact these voters if they don’t know this information and act on it and support politicians who do?
They haven’t done it at all well yet. And, the clock is ticking.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
More renewable energy IS the solution....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-13-2008
As we have been posting about, the most important thing we can do to allow us to drive where we want to go and get everything we need shipped to stores, including food, at prices we will be able to afford is to dramatically increase our production of electricity generated by renewable energy sources.
(It looks like we should also increase our generation of electricity from nuclear power for the same reasons. But some people have reservations about doing so. And, renewables will work. Our position is that it will work faster and create a more reliable availability of electricity to do both. But whether we use more nuclear or not, we absolutely must use massive amounts of renewable sources and put them in place soon.)
Since a massive increase in our use of renewables has the potential to cut our demand for oil by well over 50 percent, this will also begin to drop the price of gasoline. And, it will begin to offer alternatives that cost LESS than gasoline. This will strengthen our economy in ways that a bit more domestic oil cannot even dream of doing.
It will also protect our economy for when oil simply begins to run out, which it will do at some point.
This process will take some amount of time to get into place. But it will work.
Unfortunately most Americans do not yet know this.
Meanwhile, doing more drilling for oil offshore and other places in the United States will both only provide enough oil to keep the price of gas from going up quite as fast. It will take a good bit of time to get online as well. And, the increased burning of oil that it will cause will worsen global warming.
So, it both has a negative effect on global warming AND has less than ten percent of the upside that adding massive renewable energy will have.
Apparently, most Americans do not yet know this either.:
Just a few days ago I found this polling result on the Rasmussen news item in the online news:
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) support going ahead with offshore oil drilling, an issue that John McCain seized on in early June as a way to help lower gas” (prices.)
And, it also said this:
“Forty-two percent (42%) said that offshore oil drilling would have the biggest impact in terms of reducing the price of oil -- a far higher percentage than believe that for several other options now being floated by the two major presidential candidates.”
& “Only 20% of Americans now oppose offshore drilling….”
This polling report also said this:
“By substantial margins, voters believe that the Republican candidate's top priority is finding new sources of energy while his Democratic opponent is more focused on reducing the amount of energy we consume.
Yet a separate survey found that for nearly two-thirds (65%), finding new sources of energy is more important that reducing the amount of energy Americans now use.”
This should be 100 percent in my view. Using less energy means a weaker economy and less buying power, personal freedom, and less economic security for everyone.
But by using massive amounts of new energy from renewables and retrofitting our economy to get more effective work done for less energy we will have a stronger economy with all the benefits that go with it. We will have MORE energy we get constructive use out of.
If we continue to rely on oil, the prices for the fuels made from it will continue to rise and our economy will remain at serious risk of collapse.
Of the two candidates, from what I’ve seen only Obama seems to know this & understand its implications.
Other than his proposal to increase nuclear power, John McCain is looking to simply continue the policies of the outgoing Bush administration to ignore all this.
In my view, if we have 4 to 8 more years of this, we are headed for economic disaster.
So, in reality, Obama has by far the better take on what we need to protect our economy.
And, given the problems recently with our economy, that’s the issue that will decide the election.
But here’s the relevant results from the recent Rasmussen poll:
“… in terms of voter trust, other survey data shows that more voters now trust McCain over Obama on the energy issue.
Nationally the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll continues to show a very close race for the White House.”
This means that unless the Obama campaign can begin to show the American people that our economy is at even more risk than most people realize and that Obama truly wants to improve the economy – not just have everyone make do with less, and that there is massively MORE upside in his approach, he will very likely lose.
And, it looks to me that if the election were held now before this is done, he would lose.
The Obama campaign needs to get T Boone Pickens and his comment that this is a situation “we simply cannot drill ourselves out of” & the real proven, upside of his wind program wide publicity.
And, they can publicize information like this from the CEO of Nanosolar that shows the huge upside of powering electric cars with solar electricity.
“http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/
Going All-Electric
August 7, 2008
By Martin Roscheisen, CEO
The following is one of my favorite charts: A comparison of the distance a car can drive based on either of the following forms of energy, each produced on 100m x 100m of land (2.5 acres):
How come that biofuel does not really cut it? Electric cars are about four times more energy efficient than fuel based cars, no matter whether they are based on biofuel or other fuel. This is because any fuel engine mostly creates heat and thus wastes the majority of the available energy units. Combine this with plants not being very efficient solar energy harvesters relative to semiconductor based solar electricity, and the result is this huge difference.
In other words, it is clear that if the goal is to maximize energy efficiency, the end point to go after is all-electric cars everywhere. Moving all of transportation to all-electric would essentially cut in half our overall energy consumption while delivering the same distance.
I for one have vowed that the Prius I bought six years ago will have been the last fuel powered car I'd buy in my life. (Given that I may very well own the highest-mileage Prius on the planet, this probably reflects my confidence in the quality of this vehicle and the near-term readiness of electric car technology…) Presently, it is baking in the sun all day while I'm at work. My future all-electric car would charge up while idling under a solar carport.”
If the average American doesn’t know the upside of renewables and that it’s real and larger than the upside of drilling for more oil, Obama will lose.
And so will everyone in this country and in the world if our analysis is correct
The good news is that the politicians who believe we should drill for more oil are right about two things. It will give the public the feeling that everything possible is being done to reduce gas prices. And, it will eventually increase our country’s energy independence slightly.
But of far more importance, these politicians will be willing to trade support for more drilling for oil for allowing the go ahead for the support of renewables we so desperately need.
That Barack Obama understands this & was willing recently to say so publicly is one of the most encouraging pieces of news I’ve heard for a long time.
It’s NOT a statement by a weak man bowing to the popular view. It’s the statement of a skilled politician who shows me he has a shot at getting the changes we need done in place.
People ARE tired all over the country of divisive do nothing squabbles in Washington DC.
If his campaign can show that he wants MORE for Americans instead of less; that renewables will deliver more; & that Obama CAN put them in place if elected because of just this political skill, people will trust him MORE than they do McCain to help the economy.
And, that will get him elected.
But he’s not yet done this. And, if he fails to do it and do it well enough, I’m gravely concerned he will not be elected with frightening results and consequences for our economy & for us all.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-13-2008
As we have been posting about, the most important thing we can do to allow us to drive where we want to go and get everything we need shipped to stores, including food, at prices we will be able to afford is to dramatically increase our production of electricity generated by renewable energy sources.
(It looks like we should also increase our generation of electricity from nuclear power for the same reasons. But some people have reservations about doing so. And, renewables will work. Our position is that it will work faster and create a more reliable availability of electricity to do both. But whether we use more nuclear or not, we absolutely must use massive amounts of renewable sources and put them in place soon.)
Since a massive increase in our use of renewables has the potential to cut our demand for oil by well over 50 percent, this will also begin to drop the price of gasoline. And, it will begin to offer alternatives that cost LESS than gasoline. This will strengthen our economy in ways that a bit more domestic oil cannot even dream of doing.
It will also protect our economy for when oil simply begins to run out, which it will do at some point.
This process will take some amount of time to get into place. But it will work.
Unfortunately most Americans do not yet know this.
Meanwhile, doing more drilling for oil offshore and other places in the United States will both only provide enough oil to keep the price of gas from going up quite as fast. It will take a good bit of time to get online as well. And, the increased burning of oil that it will cause will worsen global warming.
So, it both has a negative effect on global warming AND has less than ten percent of the upside that adding massive renewable energy will have.
Apparently, most Americans do not yet know this either.:
Just a few days ago I found this polling result on the Rasmussen news item in the online news:
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) support going ahead with offshore oil drilling, an issue that John McCain seized on in early June as a way to help lower gas” (prices.)
And, it also said this:
“Forty-two percent (42%) said that offshore oil drilling would have the biggest impact in terms of reducing the price of oil -- a far higher percentage than believe that for several other options now being floated by the two major presidential candidates.”
& “Only 20% of Americans now oppose offshore drilling….”
This polling report also said this:
“By substantial margins, voters believe that the Republican candidate's top priority is finding new sources of energy while his Democratic opponent is more focused on reducing the amount of energy we consume.
Yet a separate survey found that for nearly two-thirds (65%), finding new sources of energy is more important that reducing the amount of energy Americans now use.”
This should be 100 percent in my view. Using less energy means a weaker economy and less buying power, personal freedom, and less economic security for everyone.
But by using massive amounts of new energy from renewables and retrofitting our economy to get more effective work done for less energy we will have a stronger economy with all the benefits that go with it. We will have MORE energy we get constructive use out of.
If we continue to rely on oil, the prices for the fuels made from it will continue to rise and our economy will remain at serious risk of collapse.
Of the two candidates, from what I’ve seen only Obama seems to know this & understand its implications.
Other than his proposal to increase nuclear power, John McCain is looking to simply continue the policies of the outgoing Bush administration to ignore all this.
In my view, if we have 4 to 8 more years of this, we are headed for economic disaster.
So, in reality, Obama has by far the better take on what we need to protect our economy.
And, given the problems recently with our economy, that’s the issue that will decide the election.
But here’s the relevant results from the recent Rasmussen poll:
“… in terms of voter trust, other survey data shows that more voters now trust McCain over Obama on the energy issue.
Nationally the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll continues to show a very close race for the White House.”
This means that unless the Obama campaign can begin to show the American people that our economy is at even more risk than most people realize and that Obama truly wants to improve the economy – not just have everyone make do with less, and that there is massively MORE upside in his approach, he will very likely lose.
And, it looks to me that if the election were held now before this is done, he would lose.
The Obama campaign needs to get T Boone Pickens and his comment that this is a situation “we simply cannot drill ourselves out of” & the real proven, upside of his wind program wide publicity.
And, they can publicize information like this from the CEO of Nanosolar that shows the huge upside of powering electric cars with solar electricity.
“http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/
Going All-Electric
August 7, 2008
By Martin Roscheisen, CEO
The following is one of my favorite charts: A comparison of the distance a car can drive based on either of the following forms of energy, each produced on 100m x 100m of land (2.5 acres):
How come that biofuel does not really cut it? Electric cars are about four times more energy efficient than fuel based cars, no matter whether they are based on biofuel or other fuel. This is because any fuel engine mostly creates heat and thus wastes the majority of the available energy units. Combine this with plants not being very efficient solar energy harvesters relative to semiconductor based solar electricity, and the result is this huge difference.
In other words, it is clear that if the goal is to maximize energy efficiency, the end point to go after is all-electric cars everywhere. Moving all of transportation to all-electric would essentially cut in half our overall energy consumption while delivering the same distance.
I for one have vowed that the Prius I bought six years ago will have been the last fuel powered car I'd buy in my life. (Given that I may very well own the highest-mileage Prius on the planet, this probably reflects my confidence in the quality of this vehicle and the near-term readiness of electric car technology…) Presently, it is baking in the sun all day while I'm at work. My future all-electric car would charge up while idling under a solar carport.”
If the average American doesn’t know the upside of renewables and that it’s real and larger than the upside of drilling for more oil, Obama will lose.
And so will everyone in this country and in the world if our analysis is correct
The good news is that the politicians who believe we should drill for more oil are right about two things. It will give the public the feeling that everything possible is being done to reduce gas prices. And, it will eventually increase our country’s energy independence slightly.
But of far more importance, these politicians will be willing to trade support for more drilling for oil for allowing the go ahead for the support of renewables we so desperately need.
That Barack Obama understands this & was willing recently to say so publicly is one of the most encouraging pieces of news I’ve heard for a long time.
It’s NOT a statement by a weak man bowing to the popular view. It’s the statement of a skilled politician who shows me he has a shot at getting the changes we need done in place.
People ARE tired all over the country of divisive do nothing squabbles in Washington DC.
If his campaign can show that he wants MORE for Americans instead of less; that renewables will deliver more; & that Obama CAN put them in place if elected because of just this political skill, people will trust him MORE than they do McCain to help the economy.
And, that will get him elected.
But he’s not yet done this. And, if he fails to do it and do it well enough, I’m gravely concerned he will not be elected with frightening results and consequences for our economy & for us all.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Renewable Energy Challenge...
Today’s post: Weds, 7-23-2008
Last week, Al Gore challenged the United States to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other renewable energy sources within 10 years.
His Alliance for Climate Protection estimates the cost of transforming achieving this at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build greenhouse gas-polluting coal plants to produce that much electricity.
In 2005 in the United States, coal produced slightly more than half of our electricity generation while nuclear power accounted for 21 percent of it, natural gas 15 percent, & renewable sources, including wind and solar, about 8.6 percent.
It was recently predicted that world energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next 20 years.
This means that even if we meet his challenge in 20 years instead of 10, we will need to produce about 129 percent of the electricity we produced in 2005 from renewable sources alone.
Since, in my estimation, the 5 percent or so we got from hydroelectric sources in 2005 is likely to go down, perhaps falling as much as in half due to drought conditions from global warming already in place, that means solar, wind, & geothermal will need to go from the 3.6 percent or so it did produce in 2005 to something like 131.5% of all the electricity we produced in 2005 to achieve his goal. This means a 100 fold increase in electricity from solar, perhaps 20 times as much from geothermal, & about three times as much from wind.
The good news is that each one of these increases may well be doable, particularly as new technologies ramp up & the costs come down per unit with the much increased production AND as the costs of the alternatives begin to double once or twice in that same time period.
(T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman and wind-power booster T. Boone Pickens, an oilman for over 20 years said that this is ..”one problem we can’t drill our way out of.” And, he warned that “….oil could cost $300 a barrel in 10 years as supplies drop, if the nation continues to "drift" on energy policy.”)
And, if these increases come to pass we will also need, as Al Gore & his group emphasizes, to sharply increase & improve our national electricity distribution grid to get the electricity from where it’s generated to where it is being used.
Gore said that:
“The nation's electric grid is still not sufficiently developed to move solar power from sunny states out West or wind power from windy states to power-hungry markets.”
The other piece of good news is that when oil goes over $300 a barrel, it will then be cost effective to use the coal we no longer burn for electricity production to make gasoline, diesel fuel, & jet fuel. Then by adding alcohols & biodiesel from nonfood biofuels to that plus producing new cars to be electrics & plug in hybrids and retrofitting existing vehicles to operate as plug-in hybrids, we can also totally stop using oil to run our cars, trucks, & buses.
(This will also give today’s coal producers and coal producing regions an economic role in the transition instead of simply bankrupting them by using no coal at all.
Oil companies have lots of money now & still have time to invest in owning some of the new energy producing companies plus it will take more than 20 years to wean the whole world away from using oil. So they have plenty of cushion now, IF they act in time.)
The bad news is that NOT doing this over the next 20 years guarantees gasoline will hit $20 a gallon, food prices will also triple, & fires, floods, and droughts will get even worse world wide. We may even have our coastal cities begin to need to invest in dikes or relocate to higher ground. This will be caused by burning the coal, natural gas, & coal NOT converting to carbon free sources will add to the CO2 that is already in the process of causing these exact climate changes.
The other piece of bad news is that neither the man on the moon analogy that Gore used in his speech nor the Manhattan project analogy New York Times columnist Tom Friedman uses are as large in scope or scale as Gore’s challenge or the very real problem it aims to solve.
To get the job done will require massive action by almost everyone in the United States over the initial 5 or 10 years to adequately get this huge change into place.
The only historical precedent of comparable size is the effort the entire United States made to win World War II. Virtually everyone in the country was involved and made strong and focused efforts to get the job done and did so over a several year time period.
The other thing that will be necessary, according to Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities that produce 70 percent of the nation's electricity. He said this.
"We cannot do the job with renewables and energy efficiency alone," he said. "We have …. to include nuclear. And we frankly think that nuclear should be increased."
I agree with Al Gore that we can get to his goal of using renewables only. But it may well take longer than 20 years. And to begin to approach replacing all coal, oil, & natural gas for generating electricity in 20 years, let alone in 10 years, I suspect Jim Owen is correct. It will be necessary to produce the speed of this change we look to desperately need, to at least double our generation of nuclear power over the next 20 years.
John McCain looks to plan to carry on the other policies of the Bush administration that helped get us into this mess. So I plan to vote for his opponent. But I think his nuclear policy is a good idea. I hope Obama adopts it in addition to doing his best to make exactly the changes Gore suggests.
Can we make all these changes in 10 years?
I personally suspect it will take 20 years if we do an excellent job with all the national effort we can muster.
But that’s the WRONG question. Since it’s desperately needed and clearly the right thing to do, we need to ask instead:
1. Presuming making these changes IS doable within 10 years, what are some of the ways we might get it done?
(Gore pointed out that the United States gets more than enough solar energy to the job alone & the mid-Western United States gets enough wind to do it with wind alone. So it is doable in theory at least.)
2. How can we make as much progress right away as we can?
We’re 30 years too late in starting; & the results of that are beginning to hurt us economically. So we need a FAST start.
3. And, if we cannot get there in 10 years, how can we get it done in as close to 10 years as possible?
By the way, gasoline in the United States will very likely go to nine or ten dollars a gallon as this transition happens.
The key thing to remember is that this transition will cause the price of gasoline to go DOWN once that happens and to provide alternatives that cost LESS than gasoline to power cars and trucks.
If we don’t do as Gore suggests, twenty dollar a gallon gasoline plus rationing plus gas lines will result. And, world wide economic depression or collapse is possible.
(Drilling for more oil would mean $18 or $19 dollars a gallon instead of $20.)
If anything, I think Gore UNDERSTATED the problems that will occur if we fail to do as he suggests.
Former Rep. Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate: "None of us can walk away from this issue without agreeing with him that we do have a very serious problem, and it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it. ... I hope to be a part of that, and I would like to see the free market take the lead, not the government."
Gore believes in the entrepreneurial businesses we have to rise to this challenge. And, I think he knows that many already are. But he understated how important it is to have government support and speed this process as a part of the solutions he recommends.
Businesses CAN help do the job. But they respond much more and dramatically faster to incentives for doing the right thing than they do from penalties for doing the wrong thing. So, to get the job done, I think we need to dramatically boost the incentive side more than Gore suggested.
One good effect of the recent run up in gasoline prices is that they begin to make it cost effective to put the changes Gore recommends in place.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: Gore “…. pointed out that the only way we have a chance to drive down oil prices is if we become free of the slavery of oil. If we can give Americans choices of electrical cars or ... biodiesel cars, then and only then do we have a chance of dealing with this cost issue. That is why $4-a-gallon gas is not an enemy of action, it's an ally of action."
The other thing that Gore said that I like is that if we do this in the United States and take the lead in it, it will have two very desirable effects.
It will at least partly restore the United States in the eyes of people in other countries to being thought of as a country that takes the lead in making good things happen.
And, as the methods we use and the positive economic effects of these changes happen and begin to be copied and emulated, we will also help solve these problems world wide.
Today’s post: Weds, 7-23-2008
Last week, Al Gore challenged the United States to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other renewable energy sources within 10 years.
His Alliance for Climate Protection estimates the cost of transforming achieving this at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build greenhouse gas-polluting coal plants to produce that much electricity.
In 2005 in the United States, coal produced slightly more than half of our electricity generation while nuclear power accounted for 21 percent of it, natural gas 15 percent, & renewable sources, including wind and solar, about 8.6 percent.
It was recently predicted that world energy demand will grow 50 percent over the next 20 years.
This means that even if we meet his challenge in 20 years instead of 10, we will need to produce about 129 percent of the electricity we produced in 2005 from renewable sources alone.
Since, in my estimation, the 5 percent or so we got from hydroelectric sources in 2005 is likely to go down, perhaps falling as much as in half due to drought conditions from global warming already in place, that means solar, wind, & geothermal will need to go from the 3.6 percent or so it did produce in 2005 to something like 131.5% of all the electricity we produced in 2005 to achieve his goal. This means a 100 fold increase in electricity from solar, perhaps 20 times as much from geothermal, & about three times as much from wind.
The good news is that each one of these increases may well be doable, particularly as new technologies ramp up & the costs come down per unit with the much increased production AND as the costs of the alternatives begin to double once or twice in that same time period.
(T. Boone Pickens, Texas oilman and wind-power booster T. Boone Pickens, an oilman for over 20 years said that this is ..”one problem we can’t drill our way out of.” And, he warned that “….oil could cost $300 a barrel in 10 years as supplies drop, if the nation continues to "drift" on energy policy.”)
And, if these increases come to pass we will also need, as Al Gore & his group emphasizes, to sharply increase & improve our national electricity distribution grid to get the electricity from where it’s generated to where it is being used.
Gore said that:
“The nation's electric grid is still not sufficiently developed to move solar power from sunny states out West or wind power from windy states to power-hungry markets.”
The other piece of good news is that when oil goes over $300 a barrel, it will then be cost effective to use the coal we no longer burn for electricity production to make gasoline, diesel fuel, & jet fuel. Then by adding alcohols & biodiesel from nonfood biofuels to that plus producing new cars to be electrics & plug in hybrids and retrofitting existing vehicles to operate as plug-in hybrids, we can also totally stop using oil to run our cars, trucks, & buses.
(This will also give today’s coal producers and coal producing regions an economic role in the transition instead of simply bankrupting them by using no coal at all.
Oil companies have lots of money now & still have time to invest in owning some of the new energy producing companies plus it will take more than 20 years to wean the whole world away from using oil. So they have plenty of cushion now, IF they act in time.)
The bad news is that NOT doing this over the next 20 years guarantees gasoline will hit $20 a gallon, food prices will also triple, & fires, floods, and droughts will get even worse world wide. We may even have our coastal cities begin to need to invest in dikes or relocate to higher ground. This will be caused by burning the coal, natural gas, & coal NOT converting to carbon free sources will add to the CO2 that is already in the process of causing these exact climate changes.
The other piece of bad news is that neither the man on the moon analogy that Gore used in his speech nor the Manhattan project analogy New York Times columnist Tom Friedman uses are as large in scope or scale as Gore’s challenge or the very real problem it aims to solve.
To get the job done will require massive action by almost everyone in the United States over the initial 5 or 10 years to adequately get this huge change into place.
The only historical precedent of comparable size is the effort the entire United States made to win World War II. Virtually everyone in the country was involved and made strong and focused efforts to get the job done and did so over a several year time period.
The other thing that will be necessary, according to Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities that produce 70 percent of the nation's electricity. He said this.
"We cannot do the job with renewables and energy efficiency alone," he said. "We have …. to include nuclear. And we frankly think that nuclear should be increased."
I agree with Al Gore that we can get to his goal of using renewables only. But it may well take longer than 20 years. And to begin to approach replacing all coal, oil, & natural gas for generating electricity in 20 years, let alone in 10 years, I suspect Jim Owen is correct. It will be necessary to produce the speed of this change we look to desperately need, to at least double our generation of nuclear power over the next 20 years.
John McCain looks to plan to carry on the other policies of the Bush administration that helped get us into this mess. So I plan to vote for his opponent. But I think his nuclear policy is a good idea. I hope Obama adopts it in addition to doing his best to make exactly the changes Gore suggests.
Can we make all these changes in 10 years?
I personally suspect it will take 20 years if we do an excellent job with all the national effort we can muster.
But that’s the WRONG question. Since it’s desperately needed and clearly the right thing to do, we need to ask instead:
1. Presuming making these changes IS doable within 10 years, what are some of the ways we might get it done?
(Gore pointed out that the United States gets more than enough solar energy to the job alone & the mid-Western United States gets enough wind to do it with wind alone. So it is doable in theory at least.)
2. How can we make as much progress right away as we can?
We’re 30 years too late in starting; & the results of that are beginning to hurt us economically. So we need a FAST start.
3. And, if we cannot get there in 10 years, how can we get it done in as close to 10 years as possible?
By the way, gasoline in the United States will very likely go to nine or ten dollars a gallon as this transition happens.
The key thing to remember is that this transition will cause the price of gasoline to go DOWN once that happens and to provide alternatives that cost LESS than gasoline to power cars and trucks.
If we don’t do as Gore suggests, twenty dollar a gallon gasoline plus rationing plus gas lines will result. And, world wide economic depression or collapse is possible.
(Drilling for more oil would mean $18 or $19 dollars a gallon instead of $20.)
If anything, I think Gore UNDERSTATED the problems that will occur if we fail to do as he suggests.
Former Rep. Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate: "None of us can walk away from this issue without agreeing with him that we do have a very serious problem, and it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it. ... I hope to be a part of that, and I would like to see the free market take the lead, not the government."
Gore believes in the entrepreneurial businesses we have to rise to this challenge. And, I think he knows that many already are. But he understated how important it is to have government support and speed this process as a part of the solutions he recommends.
Businesses CAN help do the job. But they respond much more and dramatically faster to incentives for doing the right thing than they do from penalties for doing the wrong thing. So, to get the job done, I think we need to dramatically boost the incentive side more than Gore suggested.
One good effect of the recent run up in gasoline prices is that they begin to make it cost effective to put the changes Gore recommends in place.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.: Gore “…. pointed out that the only way we have a chance to drive down oil prices is if we become free of the slavery of oil. If we can give Americans choices of electrical cars or ... biodiesel cars, then and only then do we have a chance of dealing with this cost issue. That is why $4-a-gallon gas is not an enemy of action, it's an ally of action."
The other thing that Gore said that I like is that if we do this in the United States and take the lead in it, it will have two very desirable effects.
It will at least partly restore the United States in the eyes of people in other countries to being thought of as a country that takes the lead in making good things happen.
And, as the methods we use and the positive economic effects of these changes happen and begin to be copied and emulated, we will also help solve these problems world wide.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Criteria for good energy policy...
Today’s post: Weds, 6-18-2008
In his book, The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker listed several key ways the effective executives he’d met used to be so effective.
Three that relate well to energy policy are:
1. Focus on Contribution What is the most useful & valuable purpose of my efforts? And, how can I best contribute to achieving that purpose?
2. Refuse to be limited or stalled by what you cannot do. Find the most promising things you CAN do & do as many of those as you can.
3. When you make a major decision, think through in advance what criteria or characteristics an ideal decision would need to have. He called these criteria boundary conditions.
In energy policy here are some of what I see as being these boundary conditions or criteria for energy policy for the United States.
a) Will the decision prevent severe economic problems in the short run?
b) Will the decision prevent severe economic problems in the near future & far future?
c) Will it help us or hinder us in lowering CO2 emissions in time to prevent the foreseeable huge problems not doing so will cause?
d) Will it help us or hinder us in removing & ending our over-dependence on oil and coal as energy sources?
e) Will it serve as a good example to other countries in the world in reaching these objectives?
f) Will the technologies, products, & services – and businesses developed be helpful to countries in the world in reaching these objectives?
g) Will it make the United States self sufficient in its energy supplies and end our dangerous over-dependence on energy sources elsewhere in the world?
If you have been paying attention to the news & want an energy policy that does a good job, I think you’ll agree that these are the right boundary conditions.
The bad news is that the only one of these the outgoing Bush administration has done a good job on is the first one.
They have done some work on the others here and there. But so little that it’s clear these are not priorities for them.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Republicans in our congress & their Presidential nominee, John McCain, seem to be only focused on the first one & the last one.
I’d be just as happy to support Republicans as I would Democrats who would make ALL of these priorities. I am registered as a Republican largely because I am pro business. And, I even campaigned for a Republican not long ago who would support ALL of these boundary conditions & understood why that’s necessary.
But most of today’s Republicans now in office are stuck in the outmoded thinking of the outgoing Bush administration.
In my view, we court economic disaster & devastation of the security of the United States if we keep these people in office.
We simply no longer can afford such incomplete & dangerous energy policies.
To be specific, this group has suggested much more domestic oil production by drilling in coastal areas & in Alaska that are now off limits to drilling for oil. They also have voted against taxing oil companies who decline to invest some of their large, current profits in transitioning to renewable energy sources in part because it would take funds & management attention away from extracting more oil from within the United States.
They have proposed efforts to burn coal more safely with far less CO2 release & large increases in nuclear power plants.
To be sure these would increase our domestic energy production & help to slow down the near term rise in fuel prices which looks like it would be of some help in protecting our economy in the short run and would lessen our dependence on energy supplies for a while.
Although it is very difficult to do with sufficient safety and is thus very, very expensive to do well enough to be safe to use, more nuclear power may well serve most of these boundary conditions. As I recently posted on, doing this is a good bit more doable than most people realize. And, energy-wise it would generate a lot more energy than it would cost to build in the amount of energy used to do it.
In addition, we now use so much coal that it’s clear we do need a way to reduce the CO2 released by coal burning power plants while we transition to other sources.
The two pieces of bad news are that their emphasis on drilling for more domestic oil and NOT having any significant emphasis on energy efficiency or dramatic increases in renewable energy generation are totally wrong policies.
As just one example, if we obtain more domestic oil by drilling in places now off limits, the world supply of oil will at least temporarily go up. More will be burned & more CO2 will be released. And, it will make it look as if it’s economically safe to ignore the pressing need to address these other issues.
This would generate MORE CO2 when it’s extremely important to use less. And it tends to postpone action on other ways to protect the economy short term that help us speed the transition to renewable sources that do not do this
If we must insist that all these boundary conditions be met -- and I think it’s clear we must, then this policy is not just wrong, it’s incompetent.
I’d love to have Republicans who understand these issues. And, as I’ve said I campaigned for one, precisely because he did.
But the current crop of them does not & seemingly will not.
Unfortunately, at this time, that looks as if it includes John McCain.
There is no guarantee that Barack Obama will be able to solve these problems as they are very challenging indeed. But he has a chance. He hasn’t run on his energy policies as well as I think he could & should have. But it’s clear he does know we need decisions that meet all these criteria.
But, I think John McCain is looking like his policies would be sure to prevent him from doing much better than George Bush who has done far too little, too late.
To me that makes McCain look like a very bad choice on the most important set of issues today.
Today’s post: Weds, 6-18-2008
In his book, The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker listed several key ways the effective executives he’d met used to be so effective.
Three that relate well to energy policy are:
1. Focus on Contribution What is the most useful & valuable purpose of my efforts? And, how can I best contribute to achieving that purpose?
2. Refuse to be limited or stalled by what you cannot do. Find the most promising things you CAN do & do as many of those as you can.
3. When you make a major decision, think through in advance what criteria or characteristics an ideal decision would need to have. He called these criteria boundary conditions.
In energy policy here are some of what I see as being these boundary conditions or criteria for energy policy for the United States.
a) Will the decision prevent severe economic problems in the short run?
b) Will the decision prevent severe economic problems in the near future & far future?
c) Will it help us or hinder us in lowering CO2 emissions in time to prevent the foreseeable huge problems not doing so will cause?
d) Will it help us or hinder us in removing & ending our over-dependence on oil and coal as energy sources?
e) Will it serve as a good example to other countries in the world in reaching these objectives?
f) Will the technologies, products, & services – and businesses developed be helpful to countries in the world in reaching these objectives?
g) Will it make the United States self sufficient in its energy supplies and end our dangerous over-dependence on energy sources elsewhere in the world?
If you have been paying attention to the news & want an energy policy that does a good job, I think you’ll agree that these are the right boundary conditions.
The bad news is that the only one of these the outgoing Bush administration has done a good job on is the first one.
They have done some work on the others here and there. But so little that it’s clear these are not priorities for them.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Republicans in our congress & their Presidential nominee, John McCain, seem to be only focused on the first one & the last one.
I’d be just as happy to support Republicans as I would Democrats who would make ALL of these priorities. I am registered as a Republican largely because I am pro business. And, I even campaigned for a Republican not long ago who would support ALL of these boundary conditions & understood why that’s necessary.
But most of today’s Republicans now in office are stuck in the outmoded thinking of the outgoing Bush administration.
In my view, we court economic disaster & devastation of the security of the United States if we keep these people in office.
We simply no longer can afford such incomplete & dangerous energy policies.
To be specific, this group has suggested much more domestic oil production by drilling in coastal areas & in Alaska that are now off limits to drilling for oil. They also have voted against taxing oil companies who decline to invest some of their large, current profits in transitioning to renewable energy sources in part because it would take funds & management attention away from extracting more oil from within the United States.
They have proposed efforts to burn coal more safely with far less CO2 release & large increases in nuclear power plants.
To be sure these would increase our domestic energy production & help to slow down the near term rise in fuel prices which looks like it would be of some help in protecting our economy in the short run and would lessen our dependence on energy supplies for a while.
Although it is very difficult to do with sufficient safety and is thus very, very expensive to do well enough to be safe to use, more nuclear power may well serve most of these boundary conditions. As I recently posted on, doing this is a good bit more doable than most people realize. And, energy-wise it would generate a lot more energy than it would cost to build in the amount of energy used to do it.
In addition, we now use so much coal that it’s clear we do need a way to reduce the CO2 released by coal burning power plants while we transition to other sources.
The two pieces of bad news are that their emphasis on drilling for more domestic oil and NOT having any significant emphasis on energy efficiency or dramatic increases in renewable energy generation are totally wrong policies.
As just one example, if we obtain more domestic oil by drilling in places now off limits, the world supply of oil will at least temporarily go up. More will be burned & more CO2 will be released. And, it will make it look as if it’s economically safe to ignore the pressing need to address these other issues.
This would generate MORE CO2 when it’s extremely important to use less. And it tends to postpone action on other ways to protect the economy short term that help us speed the transition to renewable sources that do not do this
If we must insist that all these boundary conditions be met -- and I think it’s clear we must, then this policy is not just wrong, it’s incompetent.
I’d love to have Republicans who understand these issues. And, as I’ve said I campaigned for one, precisely because he did.
But the current crop of them does not & seemingly will not.
Unfortunately, at this time, that looks as if it includes John McCain.
There is no guarantee that Barack Obama will be able to solve these problems as they are very challenging indeed. But he has a chance. He hasn’t run on his energy policies as well as I think he could & should have. But it’s clear he does know we need decisions that meet all these criteria.
But, I think John McCain is looking like his policies would be sure to prevent him from doing much better than George Bush who has done far too little, too late.
To me that makes McCain look like a very bad choice on the most important set of issues today.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Energy upgrades needed to protect the economy....
Today’s post: Weds, 6-11-2008
Relying on fossil fuels for energy, we are now realizing, is NOT environmentally safe. This is particularly true for burning coal; but it’s also true even if to a slightly smaller extent for burning natural gas.
What is still often missed even with the recent run up in the price of oil -- & of gasoline in the United States, is that it is no longer ECONOMICALLY safe.
When they are healthy, economies grow. And, usually populations grow. So the demand for energy will reliably increase as economies can only grow if they have access to more energy.
Since our supplies of fossil fuels are finite, & our effective access may even have begun to shrink, this means that the time has come or will very soon that prices will go up & that will likely accelerate if we continue to use fossil fuels only. It’s also incredibly important that we have put other sources in place well before we run out totally.
In addition, to these last comments that were in last week’s post, here are some more related points.
Severe weather, droughts, floods, &disruptions to water supplies can & do cost millions & millions of dollars. They also can cause health problems & deaths.
And, flooding of developed & populated coastal areas can create similar problems. Some things can be located to higher ground & some areas be protected with dikes as the Dutch have done for centuries. But not all of the people & economic value can be salvaged given such flooding world wide. And, these protective steps cost a lot of money.
Increases in tropical & insect borne diseases from global warming have similar risks & costs.
If we can prevent or minimize all these things, by adding renewable energy on a massive scale, sharply increasing energy efficiency, & likely also adding a good bit more nuclear power, the money saved will likely be larger than the costs, however high, of these energy upgrades & transitions.
Here’s a recent report suggesting it really is necessary to do all of the above.:
“$45 trillion needed to combat warming
By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 6, 7:06 AM ET
TOKYO - The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.
2008
The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth "Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.
A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.
Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.
Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.
The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century.
The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.
Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said.
That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.”
As I remember, this report also said that a large number of new nuclear plants would need to be built as well.
But there can be no doubt that we must “massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy” whether or not we add more nuclear power if we are to avoid severe economic collapses at some point in the next 20 to 50 years.
Of course, 1.1 % of the entire world economy is a LOT of money. But it IS doable.
Meanwhile, in the United States, two measures to move in the needed direction were defeated recently.
1. Oil companies currently have the money to invest in beginning to shift their businesses to providing energy & transport fuels with renewable sources – not just oil.
I’d strongly prefer that they do this themselves as it seems to me to be prudent management on their part. And, I personally prefer businesses to do things rather than be pushed by government regulation.
But the need is clear. We are already 10 to 25 years late in starting to make these changes & are running out of time.
The largest oil companies have simply NOT done the job & begin to look as if they are incapable of it on their own.
So, when the bill for the US government to step in with tax policies to jump start this change—which is actually in the best interests of the oil companies in my view, was defeated recently, I think every legislator who voted against this bill, should be replaced in the next election for that district. It does NOT matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, I think they should be opposed next time if they run for election again in BOTH the primaries & the actual election.
We cannot afford the delay their lack of knowledge & understanding will otherwise cost us.
2. Similarly, the current bill to renew R & D tax credits & existing tax credits for renewable energy lost recently.
If this situation is not repaired, the United Sates will become less economically competitive due to reductions in R & D spending. And we will GO BACKWARDS on implementing renewable energy at a time we should be quadrupling our efforts.
The legislators who either introduced killer amendments or riders to this bill or voted against it, must be replaced at the next election.
We cannot afford the delay their lack of knowledge & understanding will otherwise cost us.
Our economy, our survival, & our way of life may well depend on replacing these people with legislators who will help speed the solution to these problems instead of voting against solutions or delaying solutions.
Today’s post: Weds, 6-11-2008
Relying on fossil fuels for energy, we are now realizing, is NOT environmentally safe. This is particularly true for burning coal; but it’s also true even if to a slightly smaller extent for burning natural gas.
What is still often missed even with the recent run up in the price of oil -- & of gasoline in the United States, is that it is no longer ECONOMICALLY safe.
When they are healthy, economies grow. And, usually populations grow. So the demand for energy will reliably increase as economies can only grow if they have access to more energy.
Since our supplies of fossil fuels are finite, & our effective access may even have begun to shrink, this means that the time has come or will very soon that prices will go up & that will likely accelerate if we continue to use fossil fuels only. It’s also incredibly important that we have put other sources in place well before we run out totally.
In addition, to these last comments that were in last week’s post, here are some more related points.
Severe weather, droughts, floods, &disruptions to water supplies can & do cost millions & millions of dollars. They also can cause health problems & deaths.
And, flooding of developed & populated coastal areas can create similar problems. Some things can be located to higher ground & some areas be protected with dikes as the Dutch have done for centuries. But not all of the people & economic value can be salvaged given such flooding world wide. And, these protective steps cost a lot of money.
Increases in tropical & insect borne diseases from global warming have similar risks & costs.
If we can prevent or minimize all these things, by adding renewable energy on a massive scale, sharply increasing energy efficiency, & likely also adding a good bit more nuclear power, the money saved will likely be larger than the costs, however high, of these energy upgrades & transitions.
Here’s a recent report suggesting it really is necessary to do all of the above.:
“$45 trillion needed to combat warming
By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 6, 7:06 AM ET
TOKYO - The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.
2008
The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth "Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.
A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.
Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.
Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.
The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century.
The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.
Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said.
That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.”
As I remember, this report also said that a large number of new nuclear plants would need to be built as well.
But there can be no doubt that we must “massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy” whether or not we add more nuclear power if we are to avoid severe economic collapses at some point in the next 20 to 50 years.
Of course, 1.1 % of the entire world economy is a LOT of money. But it IS doable.
Meanwhile, in the United States, two measures to move in the needed direction were defeated recently.
1. Oil companies currently have the money to invest in beginning to shift their businesses to providing energy & transport fuels with renewable sources – not just oil.
I’d strongly prefer that they do this themselves as it seems to me to be prudent management on their part. And, I personally prefer businesses to do things rather than be pushed by government regulation.
But the need is clear. We are already 10 to 25 years late in starting to make these changes & are running out of time.
The largest oil companies have simply NOT done the job & begin to look as if they are incapable of it on their own.
So, when the bill for the US government to step in with tax policies to jump start this change—which is actually in the best interests of the oil companies in my view, was defeated recently, I think every legislator who voted against this bill, should be replaced in the next election for that district. It does NOT matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, I think they should be opposed next time if they run for election again in BOTH the primaries & the actual election.
We cannot afford the delay their lack of knowledge & understanding will otherwise cost us.
2. Similarly, the current bill to renew R & D tax credits & existing tax credits for renewable energy lost recently.
If this situation is not repaired, the United Sates will become less economically competitive due to reductions in R & D spending. And we will GO BACKWARDS on implementing renewable energy at a time we should be quadrupling our efforts.
The legislators who either introduced killer amendments or riders to this bill or voted against it, must be replaced at the next election.
We cannot afford the delay their lack of knowledge & understanding will otherwise cost us.
Our economy, our survival, & our way of life may well depend on replacing these people with legislators who will help speed the solution to these problems instead of voting against solutions or delaying solutions.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Oil companies & new political policies....
Today’s post: Weds, 5-28-2008
Just before sailing ships were replaced by powered ships, initially steam driven, the clipper ship was developed.
It was the best & most evolved design for sailing ships. But it soon disappeared from world commerce & became an antique.
Oil companies are becoming the clipper ships of today.
They are highly evolved to find, transport, refine, & sell oil for fuel & petrochemicals.
And, with shareholders to report to, record profits now, & rising demand, they are mostly deciding to try to respond to rising demand at time when supply is getting harder to obtain.
The executives would be fired by their shareholders if they didn’t.
However, the major oil companies are reported to be doing that ONLY. Some oil companies that have invested in alternative energy sources are even reported to be trying to sell them & leave the field of alternative energy sources.
The Rockefeller shareholders of Exxon Mobil are correct in my view that to decline to use a significant part of the very high profits & cash available to move into alternative sources of energy jeopardizes the future economic viability of the oil companies.
Meanwhile, driven by the rapidly escalating costs both in dollars & environmental impact, the rest of the world is switching to cost effective biofuels, renewable energy sources, & nuclear power plus plug-in hybrid & electric cars. And, more people will begin to telecommute.
It will take longer than is good for our economy both in the United States & worldwide to transition from fossil fuels to other sources. But, if we survive the problems that causes & make the transition successfully, which we still have a shot at doing, oil companies will still have petrochemicals for what oil remains. But they will become depleted relics of their current selves in size & profitability. The action is moving elsewhere. And, if oil companies don’t get into it with part of their money, they will become the clipper ships of our time. Unfortunately for them, that is the course they seem to be all following today.
One of the promising signs that we may make it is that the increasingly mandated use of renewable fuels & reductions in CO2 by governments is beginning to drive really large markets for virtually all the alternative energy sources.
Another is that if the major oil companies continue to decline to make this investment themselves, there are increasing signs they will be taxed in various ways by governments who will then invest in alternative sources separately from the oil companies.
As improved technology is adapted & the market responds, the governments will up the ante in all these areas & the process will accelerate.
Which oil companies will be large scale players on the world scene then?
Some who don’t want to be the clipper ships of today, will be; but based on today’s news, most of them will not.
The really unfortunate thing is that they have the money to do both.
They can maximize the oil they can deliver while it is still at a premium as best they can AND create a viable foothold in the alternative energy sources of tomorrow.
As someone who grew up in oil country & benefited from the prosperity the oil companies created there as a kid & as young man, I hope some of them smarten up in time.
But of most importance, I hope we make the transition in time to avoid really horrible economic problems without their help as it now looks likely we will need to do.
Today’s post: Weds, 5-28-2008
Just before sailing ships were replaced by powered ships, initially steam driven, the clipper ship was developed.
It was the best & most evolved design for sailing ships. But it soon disappeared from world commerce & became an antique.
Oil companies are becoming the clipper ships of today.
They are highly evolved to find, transport, refine, & sell oil for fuel & petrochemicals.
And, with shareholders to report to, record profits now, & rising demand, they are mostly deciding to try to respond to rising demand at time when supply is getting harder to obtain.
The executives would be fired by their shareholders if they didn’t.
However, the major oil companies are reported to be doing that ONLY. Some oil companies that have invested in alternative energy sources are even reported to be trying to sell them & leave the field of alternative energy sources.
The Rockefeller shareholders of Exxon Mobil are correct in my view that to decline to use a significant part of the very high profits & cash available to move into alternative sources of energy jeopardizes the future economic viability of the oil companies.
Meanwhile, driven by the rapidly escalating costs both in dollars & environmental impact, the rest of the world is switching to cost effective biofuels, renewable energy sources, & nuclear power plus plug-in hybrid & electric cars. And, more people will begin to telecommute.
It will take longer than is good for our economy both in the United States & worldwide to transition from fossil fuels to other sources. But, if we survive the problems that causes & make the transition successfully, which we still have a shot at doing, oil companies will still have petrochemicals for what oil remains. But they will become depleted relics of their current selves in size & profitability. The action is moving elsewhere. And, if oil companies don’t get into it with part of their money, they will become the clipper ships of our time. Unfortunately for them, that is the course they seem to be all following today.
One of the promising signs that we may make it is that the increasingly mandated use of renewable fuels & reductions in CO2 by governments is beginning to drive really large markets for virtually all the alternative energy sources.
Another is that if the major oil companies continue to decline to make this investment themselves, there are increasing signs they will be taxed in various ways by governments who will then invest in alternative sources separately from the oil companies.
As improved technology is adapted & the market responds, the governments will up the ante in all these areas & the process will accelerate.
Which oil companies will be large scale players on the world scene then?
Some who don’t want to be the clipper ships of today, will be; but based on today’s news, most of them will not.
The really unfortunate thing is that they have the money to do both.
They can maximize the oil they can deliver while it is still at a premium as best they can AND create a viable foothold in the alternative energy sources of tomorrow.
As someone who grew up in oil country & benefited from the prosperity the oil companies created there as a kid & as young man, I hope some of them smarten up in time.
But of most importance, I hope we make the transition in time to avoid really horrible economic problems without their help as it now looks likely we will need to do.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Nuclear as a transition energy source? New information....
Today’s post: Weds, 3-26-2008
Nuclear power plants using uranium are NOT a renewable energy source. (The amount of uranium that can be mined & used is finite & can be all used up.) And, nuclear power plants have serious problems or potential problems with safety in operation, security risks, & waste disposal.
And, even without the political challenges stemming from those problems, they have long lead times to build & take very large capital outlays.
In addition, they may not help global warming all that much since they produce power by using heat that they create directly that was not present in the locations where they are installed before the nuclear plant at each location was installed there.
However, they do have some legitimate advantages & there might be a relatively safe way to deploy some of them as a way to accelerate the transition to renewable energy & away from fossil fuels. The two most important points supporting this were not known to me until very recently. And, most people do not now know them as yet.
Nuclear power plants do NOT produce any CO2. If run properly, they produce very reliable power that is unaffected by lack of sunshine or wind.
In the United States, nuclear plants can produce power that does NOT depend on imports of either petroleum or natural gas -- or on burning coal with its CO2 & air pollution problems.
I’ve known those things for quite a while.
And, since I believe solar & wind power and other renewable sources will grow to provide all the energy we need & have been aware of the risks, particularly the security risks, of producing materials that can be used to release radioactivity or build nuclear weapons by terrorists or comparable governments, I have been mostly against considering more nuclear power plants as a way to turn off our reliance on fossil fuels.
I think & continue to think that our major efforts need to be aimed at increasing renewable energy sources, making our economy dramatically more energy-efficient, & creating disincentives for use of fossil fuels
Recently however, I’ve learned something that gives me a sound reason to think nuclear power plants might be worth considering as a transitional energy and power source. And, & I’ve learned something that might be used to make using them considerably safer than it otherwise might be.
For me, these two points definitely re-open the discussion on something I considered a dead issue.
1. Adding new nuclear power plants has a significant advantage a physicist who is both very knowledgeable & a bit of a fan of nuclear power told me about that I did not know before.:
While solar power & biofuels are just now beginning to have any kind of reasonable positive payback time in terms of the ENERGY needed to build them, the payback time for the energy required to build nuclear reactors is less than 3 months.
He said that at today’s state of the art, it takes more like 20 years or more for solar cells & that’s if they are in ideal locations.
And, we are just beginning to learn how to create biofuels that give us more energy than it costs to produce them so there even IS any positive payback time for the energy used to create them.
This suggests that using the energy from nuclear reactors to provide the new energy needed to produce very large amounts of solar cells & biofuels might make doing so more doable & happen sooner.
And, building new nuclear power plants would help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels & on fossil fuels imported from outside the United States.
2. Here’s the other point I learned about recently that has the potential to make creating & running new nuclear power plants both faster AND safer & more secure.
I’ve known that since 50 years ago, the United States Navy has had nuclear powered submarines.
What I did not know or was just barely aware of until just a few weeks ago is that the United States Navy uses nuclear power plants to power an increasing majority of ALL its ships. Further, it has done so with an extremely good safety record. The ex Navy man who spoke up an a discussion on energy issues I attended recently said that in addition, there are large numbers of men who leave the United States Navy each year who have been properly & adequately trained to operate these nuclear reactors who would be delighted to have good paying jobs using those skills.
This suggests a potential solution of how new nuclear power plant might be used with some degree of safety.
We could make all nuclear power plants a three way joint venture between the United States government as a financing catalyst, which would dramatically shorten the time lag in bringing these plants online reliably; the United States Navy & other armed forces onsite at every nuclear power plant to provide 24 hour a day, seven day a week security, & private companies to handle the management & the sales of the energy produced.
The United States Navy has proven that it can operate nuclear power plants safely; & the contractors that serve it know how to build nuclear power plants that can be run safely.
There are still huge costs involved & serious risks with nuclear power plants. But I wanted to pass on that there are two reasons not generally known by most people to at least consider building new nuclear power plants as a transitional energy source to help create renewable energy & energy independence in the United States.
Today’s post: Weds, 3-26-2008
Nuclear power plants using uranium are NOT a renewable energy source. (The amount of uranium that can be mined & used is finite & can be all used up.) And, nuclear power plants have serious problems or potential problems with safety in operation, security risks, & waste disposal.
And, even without the political challenges stemming from those problems, they have long lead times to build & take very large capital outlays.
In addition, they may not help global warming all that much since they produce power by using heat that they create directly that was not present in the locations where they are installed before the nuclear plant at each location was installed there.
However, they do have some legitimate advantages & there might be a relatively safe way to deploy some of them as a way to accelerate the transition to renewable energy & away from fossil fuels. The two most important points supporting this were not known to me until very recently. And, most people do not now know them as yet.
Nuclear power plants do NOT produce any CO2. If run properly, they produce very reliable power that is unaffected by lack of sunshine or wind.
In the United States, nuclear plants can produce power that does NOT depend on imports of either petroleum or natural gas -- or on burning coal with its CO2 & air pollution problems.
I’ve known those things for quite a while.
And, since I believe solar & wind power and other renewable sources will grow to provide all the energy we need & have been aware of the risks, particularly the security risks, of producing materials that can be used to release radioactivity or build nuclear weapons by terrorists or comparable governments, I have been mostly against considering more nuclear power plants as a way to turn off our reliance on fossil fuels.
I think & continue to think that our major efforts need to be aimed at increasing renewable energy sources, making our economy dramatically more energy-efficient, & creating disincentives for use of fossil fuels
Recently however, I’ve learned something that gives me a sound reason to think nuclear power plants might be worth considering as a transitional energy and power source. And, & I’ve learned something that might be used to make using them considerably safer than it otherwise might be.
For me, these two points definitely re-open the discussion on something I considered a dead issue.
1. Adding new nuclear power plants has a significant advantage a physicist who is both very knowledgeable & a bit of a fan of nuclear power told me about that I did not know before.:
While solar power & biofuels are just now beginning to have any kind of reasonable positive payback time in terms of the ENERGY needed to build them, the payback time for the energy required to build nuclear reactors is less than 3 months.
He said that at today’s state of the art, it takes more like 20 years or more for solar cells & that’s if they are in ideal locations.
And, we are just beginning to learn how to create biofuels that give us more energy than it costs to produce them so there even IS any positive payback time for the energy used to create them.
This suggests that using the energy from nuclear reactors to provide the new energy needed to produce very large amounts of solar cells & biofuels might make doing so more doable & happen sooner.
And, building new nuclear power plants would help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels & on fossil fuels imported from outside the United States.
2. Here’s the other point I learned about recently that has the potential to make creating & running new nuclear power plants both faster AND safer & more secure.
I’ve known that since 50 years ago, the United States Navy has had nuclear powered submarines.
What I did not know or was just barely aware of until just a few weeks ago is that the United States Navy uses nuclear power plants to power an increasing majority of ALL its ships. Further, it has done so with an extremely good safety record. The ex Navy man who spoke up an a discussion on energy issues I attended recently said that in addition, there are large numbers of men who leave the United States Navy each year who have been properly & adequately trained to operate these nuclear reactors who would be delighted to have good paying jobs using those skills.
This suggests a potential solution of how new nuclear power plant might be used with some degree of safety.
We could make all nuclear power plants a three way joint venture between the United States government as a financing catalyst, which would dramatically shorten the time lag in bringing these plants online reliably; the United States Navy & other armed forces onsite at every nuclear power plant to provide 24 hour a day, seven day a week security, & private companies to handle the management & the sales of the energy produced.
The United States Navy has proven that it can operate nuclear power plants safely; & the contractors that serve it know how to build nuclear power plants that can be run safely.
There are still huge costs involved & serious risks with nuclear power plants. But I wanted to pass on that there are two reasons not generally known by most people to at least consider building new nuclear power plants as a transitional energy source to help create renewable energy & energy independence in the United States.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Good news & bad on renewable energy….
Today’s post: Weds, 3-5-2008
There have been several really positive news stories lately.
Some time ago the large Silicon Valley technology company, Applied Materials bought a thin film solar company. Since then they have been quietly growing a quite large volume of sales in solar. They are large enough that this has become a quite substantial business already.
Now it’s just been announced that they have signed a deal, apparently with a company in China to build enough solar electricity generation –IN THIS ONE DEAL –that by itself it will increase current world-wide solar electricity generation by about 1/12th or 8 % above its current levels. They are using large arrays of large format, “garage door” sized, thin film panels in a solar energy farm to do this.
This is great news for three reasons. It shows we are beginning to get large scale increases of electricity generated from solar sources. The announcement said that they already are able to do this for about what a fossil fuel plant can do per kilowatt generated costwise. And, by simply continuing to build more capacity, the economy of scale alone will allow them to soon cut costs by another 15 to 20 %. That will make solar cost LESS than fossil fuels for generating electricity. Third, if this solar energy farm is located IN China, it will likely replace a new coal burning plant that otherwise would have been built to generate this electricity.
Secondly, it has been announced that both General Motors & Daimler will begin making & selling hybrid cars using lithium ion batteries.
That’s also very good news for several reasons. It means the energy efficiency of the fleets of cars these two large companies make & sell will begin improving sharply over time. And, as they & other companies perfect using lithium ion batteries, all electric cars like the Tesla cars & plug-in hybrids will increasingly be common & used widely.
Lithium ion batteries are so much lighter & more compact than batteries using heavier metals this is now looking more & more likely. Further, it suggests GM now expects it to MAKE THEM MONEY to make more energy efficient cars. And, if they once manage to do that, all major car manufacturers will do so as well.
Combining these two stories strongly suggests that within 20 years we will increasingly be able to use solar generated electricity to power our cars & SUV’s – or at least provide the majority of their energy needs with solar generated electricity.
These are very large players. So these stories are extremely good news.
The bad news is that not ONE of the three major candidates for President of the United States has yet begun to run as their most important campaign issue that they are the best candidate to lead the conversion of the economy of the United States & the world to run on renewable energy.
We are already about 20 to 40 years late in doing this to avoid serious economic problems from global warming & are within just a few years of the deadline to avoid great depression levels of economic disaster caused by global warming.
Secondly, oil prices have more than tripled in just the past few years. The resulting increase in gasoline prices this has caused have begun to exert a strong braking effect on disposable consumer spending. If increased world wide demand continues to rise faster than new supplies are developed – which looks likely – gasoline prices could easily triple again in 10 years. That won’t be kind to our economy or to people holding on to their jobs. And, this is a very real near-term problem.
Third, the money spent by the United States, Western Europe, Japan, & China on imported oil is directly & indirectly funding terrorists from the countries that have oil to export. This is a very dangerous situation that threatens our national security.
To avoid really harsh economic problems & slow global warming we must have as our next President a leader who will lead an extraordinary, focused effort by virtually every able person in the United States to switch our economy to one powered by renewable energy that we are increasingly efficient at using.
The comparison to the Manhattan Project is apt for this. But it really needs even more than that. It will require an effort comparable to all of what the United States did to win World War II.
John McCain clearly values national security. And, as a Republican, he likely wants to keep our economy & the businesses that make it up strong.
Barack Obama has written in his Audacity of Hope book statements that suggest he knows something about this issue; & most of his stated policy on energy listed on his campaign website is reasonably good. And, he clearly has inspirational leadership ability.
Hillary Clinton has said nothing to suggest she is against renewable energy. And, while Bill Clinton was our President, he did more to advance energy efficiency & renewable energy than is generally known.
But, so far not ONE of them has made this issue the main theme of their campaign.
Gentlemen, Lady, the handwriting is on the wall & has been for quite some time.
It’s the energy economy stupid!
I think the first of the 3 candidates who notices that & runs as the best person to lead us in that area -- & who explains how our economy, our jobs, & our way of life depend on us making this change, will be our next President.
Anything any of you reading this can do to get this to them or the people running their campaigns would be much appreciated.
Today’s post: Weds, 3-5-2008
There have been several really positive news stories lately.
Some time ago the large Silicon Valley technology company, Applied Materials bought a thin film solar company. Since then they have been quietly growing a quite large volume of sales in solar. They are large enough that this has become a quite substantial business already.
Now it’s just been announced that they have signed a deal, apparently with a company in China to build enough solar electricity generation –IN THIS ONE DEAL –that by itself it will increase current world-wide solar electricity generation by about 1/12th or 8 % above its current levels. They are using large arrays of large format, “garage door” sized, thin film panels in a solar energy farm to do this.
This is great news for three reasons. It shows we are beginning to get large scale increases of electricity generated from solar sources. The announcement said that they already are able to do this for about what a fossil fuel plant can do per kilowatt generated costwise. And, by simply continuing to build more capacity, the economy of scale alone will allow them to soon cut costs by another 15 to 20 %. That will make solar cost LESS than fossil fuels for generating electricity. Third, if this solar energy farm is located IN China, it will likely replace a new coal burning plant that otherwise would have been built to generate this electricity.
Secondly, it has been announced that both General Motors & Daimler will begin making & selling hybrid cars using lithium ion batteries.
That’s also very good news for several reasons. It means the energy efficiency of the fleets of cars these two large companies make & sell will begin improving sharply over time. And, as they & other companies perfect using lithium ion batteries, all electric cars like the Tesla cars & plug-in hybrids will increasingly be common & used widely.
Lithium ion batteries are so much lighter & more compact than batteries using heavier metals this is now looking more & more likely. Further, it suggests GM now expects it to MAKE THEM MONEY to make more energy efficient cars. And, if they once manage to do that, all major car manufacturers will do so as well.
Combining these two stories strongly suggests that within 20 years we will increasingly be able to use solar generated electricity to power our cars & SUV’s – or at least provide the majority of their energy needs with solar generated electricity.
These are very large players. So these stories are extremely good news.
The bad news is that not ONE of the three major candidates for President of the United States has yet begun to run as their most important campaign issue that they are the best candidate to lead the conversion of the economy of the United States & the world to run on renewable energy.
We are already about 20 to 40 years late in doing this to avoid serious economic problems from global warming & are within just a few years of the deadline to avoid great depression levels of economic disaster caused by global warming.
Secondly, oil prices have more than tripled in just the past few years. The resulting increase in gasoline prices this has caused have begun to exert a strong braking effect on disposable consumer spending. If increased world wide demand continues to rise faster than new supplies are developed – which looks likely – gasoline prices could easily triple again in 10 years. That won’t be kind to our economy or to people holding on to their jobs. And, this is a very real near-term problem.
Third, the money spent by the United States, Western Europe, Japan, & China on imported oil is directly & indirectly funding terrorists from the countries that have oil to export. This is a very dangerous situation that threatens our national security.
To avoid really harsh economic problems & slow global warming we must have as our next President a leader who will lead an extraordinary, focused effort by virtually every able person in the United States to switch our economy to one powered by renewable energy that we are increasingly efficient at using.
The comparison to the Manhattan Project is apt for this. But it really needs even more than that. It will require an effort comparable to all of what the United States did to win World War II.
John McCain clearly values national security. And, as a Republican, he likely wants to keep our economy & the businesses that make it up strong.
Barack Obama has written in his Audacity of Hope book statements that suggest he knows something about this issue; & most of his stated policy on energy listed on his campaign website is reasonably good. And, he clearly has inspirational leadership ability.
Hillary Clinton has said nothing to suggest she is against renewable energy. And, while Bill Clinton was our President, he did more to advance energy efficiency & renewable energy than is generally known.
But, so far not ONE of them has made this issue the main theme of their campaign.
Gentlemen, Lady, the handwriting is on the wall & has been for quite some time.
It’s the energy economy stupid!
I think the first of the 3 candidates who notices that & runs as the best person to lead us in that area -- & who explains how our economy, our jobs, & our way of life depend on us making this change, will be our next President.
Anything any of you reading this can do to get this to them or the people running their campaigns would be much appreciated.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Renewable Energy Arrives
Renewable Energy Arrives is our name & theme in this blog.
Our first post: Weds, 1-23-2008
Here's why we think it IS arriving & why a good deal of focused effort will also be needed to make it happen soon enough.
Here's the bad news.:
The world's economy today is almost exclusively based on burning carbon based fuels.
This involves cutting down trees which both adds CO2 to the air & removes these trees as free CO2 removal agents.
And, it involves burning coal, natural gas, & petroleum in various forms.
Unfortunately, this is no longer safe or sustainable. It most certainly is not in the United States. And, it is definitely not safe anywhere in the world.
Unless we switch quite soon to renewable fuels, we face a global economic collapse that will make the depression of the 1930's seem like a fun time in the park by comparison. This is on course to happen. The only question is how soon. Better technology & effort may make this more like 60 years from now than 30. But the risk is quite real regardless of the timeline.
Unfortunately, there are several worse problems from this dependence -- some of which are already here or beginning to arrive in force.
As the world population grows & the economies of the world's nations grow -- & as long as we depend on these energy sources, the costs will continue to rise with the increased demand. This will act as a brake on economic growth & also on the current level of our economies.
This is already happening.
Also, it already is making the world unstable & dangerous politically by intensifying the competition between nations for this kind of energy reserves & empowering unstable governments who happen to have reserves.
This is already severely threatening the security & safety of the United States, its economy, & its people.
Then there is the really dangerous problem that is even more of a grave concern.
We may have already put more CO2 into our world's air than is safe. And, in most places, the amount of CO2 we are adding each year is rising rapidly.
This is definitely changing our weather in economically damaging ways. That is still in the early stages but is already threatening our economy.
Even worse, though I've not seen a timeline on it, the time will come when people who have evolved as we have will not be able to breathe the outside air. That would solve the population problem. But the survivors would only care about that if there are any.
The good news is:
that by using large solar thermal & solar photovoltaic energy generation in large & appropriate places and dispersed solar photovoltaic on roofs all over the world, we have the ability to completely replace our dependence on burning carbon as a driver of our economy.
& that this is becoming massively more doable as technologies already online & in development are used.
& that this is, albeit MUCH too slowly, already beginning to happen.
Adding wind power & vastly improved battery technology & other safe, renewable sources will make this more doable & reliable.
The other thing is that we desperately need to make our use of energy much more efficient.
This will make it sooner that we can do everything with renewable energy. And, it will help us buy time to get enough solar generation in place.
This too is beginning to happen; & new technologies are coming online. So far, it's been too little too late.
Our blog & upcoming website are dedicated to acting as an extra catalyst to accelerate these positive trends.
Both of us live in the Silicon Valley of California. And, many of the companies that are already providing the technologies & tools to make this happen are here.
So we see hopeful signs. But we need badly to pick up the pace & accelerate these changes.
Our first post: Weds, 1-23-2008
Here's why we think it IS arriving & why a good deal of focused effort will also be needed to make it happen soon enough.
Here's the bad news.:
The world's economy today is almost exclusively based on burning carbon based fuels.
This involves cutting down trees which both adds CO2 to the air & removes these trees as free CO2 removal agents.
And, it involves burning coal, natural gas, & petroleum in various forms.
Unfortunately, this is no longer safe or sustainable. It most certainly is not in the United States. And, it is definitely not safe anywhere in the world.
Unless we switch quite soon to renewable fuels, we face a global economic collapse that will make the depression of the 1930's seem like a fun time in the park by comparison. This is on course to happen. The only question is how soon. Better technology & effort may make this more like 60 years from now than 30. But the risk is quite real regardless of the timeline.
Unfortunately, there are several worse problems from this dependence -- some of which are already here or beginning to arrive in force.
As the world population grows & the economies of the world's nations grow -- & as long as we depend on these energy sources, the costs will continue to rise with the increased demand. This will act as a brake on economic growth & also on the current level of our economies.
This is already happening.
Also, it already is making the world unstable & dangerous politically by intensifying the competition between nations for this kind of energy reserves & empowering unstable governments who happen to have reserves.
This is already severely threatening the security & safety of the United States, its economy, & its people.
Then there is the really dangerous problem that is even more of a grave concern.
We may have already put more CO2 into our world's air than is safe. And, in most places, the amount of CO2 we are adding each year is rising rapidly.
This is definitely changing our weather in economically damaging ways. That is still in the early stages but is already threatening our economy.
Even worse, though I've not seen a timeline on it, the time will come when people who have evolved as we have will not be able to breathe the outside air. That would solve the population problem. But the survivors would only care about that if there are any.
The good news is:
that by using large solar thermal & solar photovoltaic energy generation in large & appropriate places and dispersed solar photovoltaic on roofs all over the world, we have the ability to completely replace our dependence on burning carbon as a driver of our economy.
& that this is becoming massively more doable as technologies already online & in development are used.
& that this is, albeit MUCH too slowly, already beginning to happen.
Adding wind power & vastly improved battery technology & other safe, renewable sources will make this more doable & reliable.
The other thing is that we desperately need to make our use of energy much more efficient.
This will make it sooner that we can do everything with renewable energy. And, it will help us buy time to get enough solar generation in place.
This too is beginning to happen; & new technologies are coming online. So far, it's been too little too late.
Our blog & upcoming website are dedicated to acting as an extra catalyst to accelerate these positive trends.
Both of us live in the Silicon Valley of California. And, many of the companies that are already providing the technologies & tools to make this happen are here.
So we see hopeful signs. But we need badly to pick up the pace & accelerate these changes.
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