Oil company bills to drill more look to be ineffective and risky.....
Today's post: Wednesday, 5-4-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Oil company bills to drill more look to be ineffective and risky.....
I just saw a story online that: “Congress considers West Coast oil drilling.”
May 4, 2011 by Susanne Rust Environment Reporter From: California Watch A Project of the Center for Investigative Reporting
“Nearly a year after a BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and created one of the largest environmental catastrophes of all time, federal lawmakers are considering encouraging drilling off the West Coast, including the rich oil beds off Southern California.
Lawmakers say allowing the drilling would ease the burden of high oil prices and provide an alternative to foreign oil.”
“Critics say the bills (HR 1229, HR 1230 and HR 1231) set the stage for environmental disaster and will have little or no effect on oil prices.
“Not only will the bills expand drilling, they would leave oversight of offshore drilling weaker than it was before last year’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Bob Keefe, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council.”
The article also notes: “…. a study conducted by the federal government's Energy Information Administration, which showed that new drilling off the country's coasts would only reduce gas prices by a few cents.
The bills passed the House Committee on Natural Resources in April, and two of the three bills are scheduled for a vote on Thursday. The third bill, which some call the most sweeping, will likely go to the floor next week, Charter said.
That third bill, HR 1231, or “Reversing President Obama’s Offshore Moratorium Act,” would require the federal government to lease at least 50 percent of available unleased acreage off the West Coast, Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and much of the East Coast, every five years.”
“Under existing law, the government decides which areas to lease. This new law would effectively double the current level of offshore drilling.
And states, such as California, would have no say in the matter.
“Earlier versions of bills like this generally allowed a state to veto projects,” said Regan Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“Californians have consistently made it clear that they oppose new offshore drilling off their coast," she said. “This bill is so out of sync of what people want. They’re willing to put oil production over all other considerations.”
Supporters of the bills say the need for more domestic oil is urgent.
"Gas prices in California’s Central Valley have skyrocketed to above $4 a gallon and remained above the national average for weeks," said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., one of the three local congressmen who voted for the bills.
"We can no longer afford to rely on energy supplies from unstable foreign sources. The time for inaction is over. We must expand domestic energy production to get Americans back to work, bring relief at the pump and create jobs,” he said.”
Here’s my take.:
These bills are likely to be ineffective in lowering gas prices and are likely to cause billions of dollars of damages to the coast of California.
But there are some amendments that could upgrade them enough they might make sense
1. China is very likely to begin importing as much or more oil than we are quite soon. So, it looks like having more oil from offshore drilling will likely only cut back gasoline from $8 a gallon or $9 a gallon that looks to be coming by ten cents a gallon.
If, for every dollar the oil industry spent for offshore drilling had to be matched with three times that much money in switching transport to other fuels than petroleum and in converting existing vehicles into plug-in hybrids AND installing a more efficient gasoline and diesel engine, then that combination might have an effect.
We can deal with double the price of gasoline and diesel if we also begin to only need half as much of these fuels to drive the same number of miles!
2. Since billions of dollars in potential damages are at stake and the oil very irresponsible impression of the safety competence of the oil companies is at stake.
These bills should ONLY be passed if the safety managers on these new offshore drilling rigs are NOT prevented by trying to save money cutting corners on safety.
If the chances are literally one in 10 million of one problematic spill that will be stopped with less than 5% of the oil released by the BP problem in the Gulf, why not allow it?
(This hurry up and drill program looks like a spill about once every ten years and just as big as the Gulf oftentimes will occur if these bills are passed!)
But, if those two provisions are not forceful enough or included, these bills won’t protect our economy from the doubling of gasoline and diesel nor will they make more than the damages they will likely cost.
So, in their present form, it is essential they not be passed!
With these two amendments though, they might make sense.
The one last point is that any state that remains unconvinced of the safety programs for this new drilling should be able to say no to it off the shores of that state.
So, the third amendment is to add that or leave it as is. If the safety procedures are good enough and work in practice other places, states will OK drilling for the new money they get. But they should have the right to say no if the data they see are unconvincing.
These bills in their current form do not make that confidence at all likely!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
It IS about the economy but facts count too.....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-27-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
It IS about the economy but facts count too.....
I once was extremely opposed to the Presidential candidacy of Democrat John Edwards since some of his economic policies if he became President would have truly horrible consequences if he actually did as he said he would.
His comments showed he simply didn’t understand economic facts. Following his policies would have been much like standing on the beach watching after warnings were posted for a large Tsunami later that day just because you thought you could control or ignore facts you didn’t like. As writer Robert Heinlein once put it, the actually possible events would have happened anyway. Ouch! No way was John Edwards qualified to be President of the United States.
Unfortunately, now, it’s many of the current Republicans that are willing to pretend away facts they don’t like.
There are two problems with that. It looks increasingly as if gasoline price will double from here by 2010. That’s about $8 or $9 a gallon or more!
If we try to pretend this isn’t so and pass laws to cause us to continue to use gasoline and diesel fuel for transport, our economy is in grave danger. Similarly, if we do NOT pass laws to increase mileage standards for vehicles using oil and move to alternatives other than oil for transport, the facts will begin to kill our economy.
In addition to peak oil, China plans to add nearly as many vehicles by 2020 as now exist in Europe.
Shai Agassi, the founder of Better Place, an electric-car company, said this and it was reported yesterday by TIME magazine.:
"Within less than this decade the No. 1 selling car in the world will be the electric car," he says. "It's the biggest financial opportunity the world has ever seen…..."
He added. "I'll put it this way: We have people from China here."
The TIME article said this: “The People's Republic has been busy creating a bourgeoisie, and the middle class does like to drive. Beijing's next five-year plan foresees at least 170 million new vehicles, or perhaps twice that, according to Agassi.
The lower estimate alone is as many cars as there are in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Britain combined.
The 8 million barrels of oil that would be required every day to fuel them is about as much as the U.S. imports every day.
"Do you know what the price of oil will be in five years if they're not using electric cars?" Agassi asks.”
If that happens or even comes close to it, gasoline and diesel prices will go up. They may go up by more than double the current prices in fact.
A separate TIME article on China & its incentive to go to electric cars said this:
"China, like the U.S., also has worries about dependency on foreign oil -- half of its oil comes from abroad; and it's only likely to get worse. China's oil consumption is expected to rise from 7.6 million barrels a day in 2007 to 11.6 million barrels a day by 2020."
Second, we do need to protect our economy from relying on oil while its prices go up enough to stall out our economy.
But the scientists also have found clear and increasing evidence that to save our climate and possibly our ability to grow food and keep some of our coastal cities, we also need to dramatically switch away from much of our use of natural gas and close to all our use of coal. Or we need to find a cost effective way to turn the CO2 produced into Oxygen and Carbon compounds. Cutting back in several ways AND adding cost effective CO2 removal systems is likely best.
The current Republicans who think their wish this isn’t so will prevent the consequences are wrong. If they fail to act to help prevent the disasters we are headed for, their actions are not based on fact.
Unfortunately if they continue to do this in our Congress, the actually possible will happen anyway. And, the survivors will think of them in years to come as many people think of Hitler now. Their beliefs were not based on facts – so their actions had horrible consequences
Also, though many of the economic principles Republicans believe in are sound, as this becomes evident, Republicans will return to being a weak and minority party if they continue to act like ignorant fools. Facts do count. And, pretending or even believing otherwise is not a good idea! The facts always win the argument. As our past California Governor put it, they will return to “losing at the Box office.”
On a more positive note,:
Thermal solar power from the Southwest United States and Mexico, when developed, can come close to producing all the electricity we now use or more. BrightSource Energy, a thermal solar company, has filed for a $250 million dollar ipo. This will enable them to help begin the process of harvesting this potential source of renewable energy on a moderately large scale.
Miasole, a less known Silicon Valley thin film solar photovoltaic company, has just done a deal with Intel which already looks likely to enable them to use similar technology and methods to lower the cost of making these thin film solar panels and radically increase the volume they make. That means that larger photovoltaic solar plants in cool but sunny places and small photovoltaic solar systems all over the world will be more cost effective soon. That means we will build a lot more of them. This will also help.
So, even if the politicians fail to act enough or fast enough, some businesses are working out deals that may protect us anyway.
We just need ten times as much in a quarter of the time it’s taking to avoid real economic problems.
So, every kind of energy efficiency improvement we can put into use, will help us to overcome this. We’ll need a huge amount of them as things stand now!
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-27-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
It IS about the economy but facts count too.....
I once was extremely opposed to the Presidential candidacy of Democrat John Edwards since some of his economic policies if he became President would have truly horrible consequences if he actually did as he said he would.
His comments showed he simply didn’t understand economic facts. Following his policies would have been much like standing on the beach watching after warnings were posted for a large Tsunami later that day just because you thought you could control or ignore facts you didn’t like. As writer Robert Heinlein once put it, the actually possible events would have happened anyway. Ouch! No way was John Edwards qualified to be President of the United States.
Unfortunately, now, it’s many of the current Republicans that are willing to pretend away facts they don’t like.
There are two problems with that. It looks increasingly as if gasoline price will double from here by 2010. That’s about $8 or $9 a gallon or more!
If we try to pretend this isn’t so and pass laws to cause us to continue to use gasoline and diesel fuel for transport, our economy is in grave danger. Similarly, if we do NOT pass laws to increase mileage standards for vehicles using oil and move to alternatives other than oil for transport, the facts will begin to kill our economy.
In addition to peak oil, China plans to add nearly as many vehicles by 2020 as now exist in Europe.
Shai Agassi, the founder of Better Place, an electric-car company, said this and it was reported yesterday by TIME magazine.:
"Within less than this decade the No. 1 selling car in the world will be the electric car," he says. "It's the biggest financial opportunity the world has ever seen…..."
He added. "I'll put it this way: We have people from China here."
The TIME article said this: “The People's Republic has been busy creating a bourgeoisie, and the middle class does like to drive. Beijing's next five-year plan foresees at least 170 million new vehicles, or perhaps twice that, according to Agassi.
The lower estimate alone is as many cars as there are in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Britain combined.
The 8 million barrels of oil that would be required every day to fuel them is about as much as the U.S. imports every day.
"Do you know what the price of oil will be in five years if they're not using electric cars?" Agassi asks.”
If that happens or even comes close to it, gasoline and diesel prices will go up. They may go up by more than double the current prices in fact.
A separate TIME article on China & its incentive to go to electric cars said this:
"China, like the U.S., also has worries about dependency on foreign oil -- half of its oil comes from abroad; and it's only likely to get worse. China's oil consumption is expected to rise from 7.6 million barrels a day in 2007 to 11.6 million barrels a day by 2020."
Second, we do need to protect our economy from relying on oil while its prices go up enough to stall out our economy.
But the scientists also have found clear and increasing evidence that to save our climate and possibly our ability to grow food and keep some of our coastal cities, we also need to dramatically switch away from much of our use of natural gas and close to all our use of coal. Or we need to find a cost effective way to turn the CO2 produced into Oxygen and Carbon compounds. Cutting back in several ways AND adding cost effective CO2 removal systems is likely best.
The current Republicans who think their wish this isn’t so will prevent the consequences are wrong. If they fail to act to help prevent the disasters we are headed for, their actions are not based on fact.
Unfortunately if they continue to do this in our Congress, the actually possible will happen anyway. And, the survivors will think of them in years to come as many people think of Hitler now. Their beliefs were not based on facts – so their actions had horrible consequences
Also, though many of the economic principles Republicans believe in are sound, as this becomes evident, Republicans will return to being a weak and minority party if they continue to act like ignorant fools. Facts do count. And, pretending or even believing otherwise is not a good idea! The facts always win the argument. As our past California Governor put it, they will return to “losing at the Box office.”
On a more positive note,:
Thermal solar power from the Southwest United States and Mexico, when developed, can come close to producing all the electricity we now use or more. BrightSource Energy, a thermal solar company, has filed for a $250 million dollar ipo. This will enable them to help begin the process of harvesting this potential source of renewable energy on a moderately large scale.
Miasole, a less known Silicon Valley thin film solar photovoltaic company, has just done a deal with Intel which already looks likely to enable them to use similar technology and methods to lower the cost of making these thin film solar panels and radically increase the volume they make. That means that larger photovoltaic solar plants in cool but sunny places and small photovoltaic solar systems all over the world will be more cost effective soon. That means we will build a lot more of them. This will also help.
So, even if the politicians fail to act enough or fast enough, some businesses are working out deals that may protect us anyway.
We just need ten times as much in a quarter of the time it’s taking to avoid real economic problems.
So, every kind of energy efficiency improvement we can put into use, will help us to overcome this. We’ll need a huge amount of them as things stand now!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Earth Day is this Friday, 4-22-2011....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-20-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Earth Day is this Friday, 4-22-2011....
Earth Day is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day was founded in the United States and was first celebrated on April 22, 1970. In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day. (I found this information on Wikipedia.)
We live on earth. The sights we see, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat all depend on the earth and on its weather and climate being safe for these things we need or enjoy.
Why have a day each year to set aside to remember this and appreciate what the earth does for us?
Why not remember it every day and be glad to have these things from Earth every day?
Because if they are not managed well, getting energy and raw materials for our economy and making things and then getting rid of used or worn out or obsolete things can damage every part of what make the earth valuable.
It’s easier and cheaper and takes less management skill to do these things in ways that harm the earth and those things that make our Earth so valuable for us.
If you do things on a very small scale a bit away from where you live, this is less critical. And, if you do things that are not very harmful that’s also the case.
Our economic efforts began when both of these things tended to be true.
When our economic efforts begin to be on a truly huge scale and generate toxins and poisons if not very carefully managed, management of them must be greatly more skilled and attended to in order to protect the earth and our use and enjoyment of it.
When energy acquisition and use and mining and manufacturing begin to make our air be harmful to breathe or putrid to look upon or cause disruptive climate change and severe weather events that cost more than it would cost to prevent these things, the managements involved have failed in their responsibilities.
Since it’s possible to make money and products without this management failure and to make money solving these problems, that is truly tragic.
Since this kind of management failure is still too often the case, it is good to take a day once each year to remember what is at stake.
That’s why we have Earth Day.
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-20-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Earth Day is this Friday, 4-22-2011....
Earth Day is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day was founded in the United States and was first celebrated on April 22, 1970. In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day. (I found this information on Wikipedia.)
We live on earth. The sights we see, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat all depend on the earth and on its weather and climate being safe for these things we need or enjoy.
Why have a day each year to set aside to remember this and appreciate what the earth does for us?
Why not remember it every day and be glad to have these things from Earth every day?
Because if they are not managed well, getting energy and raw materials for our economy and making things and then getting rid of used or worn out or obsolete things can damage every part of what make the earth valuable.
It’s easier and cheaper and takes less management skill to do these things in ways that harm the earth and those things that make our Earth so valuable for us.
If you do things on a very small scale a bit away from where you live, this is less critical. And, if you do things that are not very harmful that’s also the case.
Our economic efforts began when both of these things tended to be true.
When our economic efforts begin to be on a truly huge scale and generate toxins and poisons if not very carefully managed, management of them must be greatly more skilled and attended to in order to protect the earth and our use and enjoyment of it.
When energy acquisition and use and mining and manufacturing begin to make our air be harmful to breathe or putrid to look upon or cause disruptive climate change and severe weather events that cost more than it would cost to prevent these things, the managements involved have failed in their responsibilities.
Since it’s possible to make money and products without this management failure and to make money solving these problems, that is truly tragic.
Since this kind of management failure is still too often the case, it is good to take a day once each year to remember what is at stake.
That’s why we have Earth Day.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Why California’s good news is so badly needed....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-13-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Why California’s good news is so badly needed....
Tuesday, 4-12, yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate that requires the state's utilities to get 33 % of their electricity from renewable sources like geothermal, wind, small scale hydro power, and solar by 2020.
In 2009, California generated 14 % of its electricity from renewable sources. Last year it was likely closer to 15 to 17 % & the largest California utilities were closer to 17 to 19%.
This was done at an event announcing a Department of Energy $1.2 billion conditional loan guarantee for SunPower and NRG Solar to build a 250-megawatt photovoltaic power plant in San Luis Obispo County.
And, this past Monday, BrightSource Energy closed financing for an even larger thermal solar power plant in Southern California near Ivanpah that included $1.6 billion from a DOE loan guarantee, a $168 million equity investment from Google, and a $200 million venture capital round.
Even better, this project is one of several they are committed to build in Southern California and the rest of the Southwestern United States.
Hopefully this will now be followed up by the utilities helping their commercial and residential customers install onsite photovoltaic solar and similar wind, small hydro, and geothermal plants as well reach the mandated level of 33%.
And, there is the potential, in California at least, of increasing energy efficiency and tripling that amount of renewable energy although population an economic growth will like mean that will be 60 to 75% of California’s energy at that time.
But this progress is very badly needed!
1. Because transport in California and the rest of the United States is so dependent on gasoline and diesel fuel now, the run up in oil prices recently has the potential to derail the economic recovery. An analytic essay by UPI says it has already created a 5 percent cut in discretionary income and shows signs of worse soon. Their article went on to say that since such a large percentage of the oil comes from outside the United States that money will create jobs elsewhere – NOT here. That decrease in consumer demand and job creation they say has the potential to derail the economic recovery or keep it very weak.
When we have far more clean sources of generation of electricity than now and the majority of miles driven in our cars and trucks comes from electricity, we not only will have far less impact from the coming doubling of oil prices otherwise, not only will it derail our economy less on the demand side, far less of our money will leave the country for foreign oil so more jobs can be created here.
Even better, once that happens, electric powered vehicles will cost less per mile to drive and will quickly go to an even larger percentage of our transport.
2. We open this blog with the idea that we need to cut fossil fuel use by 2050 by 80 % while actually growing our economy. In the book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard, he says that because we are unlikely to get to 100% in time, we also will need to decide what part of our coastal cities we can afford to save from rising sea levels and plan ahead now how we will save the part we can afford to save.
We also will need to think through now how we can save enough farm output to feed ourselves.
So, this good news from California, though 20 to 40 years too late, is extremely good news indeed.
The more of this kind of thing we do and the faster we do it, the less we will have to plan how to lose our economic assets and food production and do it safely.
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-13-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Why California’s good news is so badly needed....
Tuesday, 4-12, yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate that requires the state's utilities to get 33 % of their electricity from renewable sources like geothermal, wind, small scale hydro power, and solar by 2020.
In 2009, California generated 14 % of its electricity from renewable sources. Last year it was likely closer to 15 to 17 % & the largest California utilities were closer to 17 to 19%.
This was done at an event announcing a Department of Energy $1.2 billion conditional loan guarantee for SunPower and NRG Solar to build a 250-megawatt photovoltaic power plant in San Luis Obispo County.
And, this past Monday, BrightSource Energy closed financing for an even larger thermal solar power plant in Southern California near Ivanpah that included $1.6 billion from a DOE loan guarantee, a $168 million equity investment from Google, and a $200 million venture capital round.
Even better, this project is one of several they are committed to build in Southern California and the rest of the Southwestern United States.
Hopefully this will now be followed up by the utilities helping their commercial and residential customers install onsite photovoltaic solar and similar wind, small hydro, and geothermal plants as well reach the mandated level of 33%.
And, there is the potential, in California at least, of increasing energy efficiency and tripling that amount of renewable energy although population an economic growth will like mean that will be 60 to 75% of California’s energy at that time.
But this progress is very badly needed!
1. Because transport in California and the rest of the United States is so dependent on gasoline and diesel fuel now, the run up in oil prices recently has the potential to derail the economic recovery. An analytic essay by UPI says it has already created a 5 percent cut in discretionary income and shows signs of worse soon. Their article went on to say that since such a large percentage of the oil comes from outside the United States that money will create jobs elsewhere – NOT here. That decrease in consumer demand and job creation they say has the potential to derail the economic recovery or keep it very weak.
When we have far more clean sources of generation of electricity than now and the majority of miles driven in our cars and trucks comes from electricity, we not only will have far less impact from the coming doubling of oil prices otherwise, not only will it derail our economy less on the demand side, far less of our money will leave the country for foreign oil so more jobs can be created here.
Even better, once that happens, electric powered vehicles will cost less per mile to drive and will quickly go to an even larger percentage of our transport.
2. We open this blog with the idea that we need to cut fossil fuel use by 2050 by 80 % while actually growing our economy. In the book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard, he says that because we are unlikely to get to 100% in time, we also will need to decide what part of our coastal cities we can afford to save from rising sea levels and plan ahead now how we will save the part we can afford to save.
We also will need to think through now how we can save enough farm output to feed ourselves.
So, this good news from California, though 20 to 40 years too late, is extremely good news indeed.
The more of this kind of thing we do and the faster we do it, the less we will have to plan how to lose our economic assets and food production and do it safely.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Manhattan project or Moon shot approach to clean energy solutions....
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-6-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Manhattan project or Moon shot approach to clean energy solutions....
This week’s post is about what conceptual approach is needed to get to clean energy solutions in time to prevent catastrophic problems from warming or severe economic disruption from that or fossil fuels becoming too scarce and expensive before we have enough alternatives in use.
Tom Friedman and others have suggested that we use the Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon as a conceptual model to get enough clean energy solutions in place soon enough. The Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon were things ignited the public imagination or get very serious government funding or both and got successful results. They also got successful results in the shortest possible time.
They do inspire the imagination; suggest speed of execution is essential, and by implication suggest a successful result.
But the massive size, multiple aspect, and complexity of the energy situation needs a comparable model to emulate that had these characteristics I think.
The Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon had complexities but not at the very multiple level of complexity that the energy crisis does.
However, there WAS a historical event that compared well with the energy crisis. It had multiple aspects and locations and kinds of stakeholders just as the energy crisis does.
That was the focused effort of the United States and its allies to win World War II. It was also successful. But even better, it had several models of the components of that success that also may be helpful.
Yes, it may have won the war to have had the Manhattan project. And, it certainly shortened the war and saved hundreds of thousands of deaths of the Japanese people and the soldiers and other military forces of the United States that an invasion would have produced.
But a review of the progress of the war shows that the war was close to irrevocably won by that time.
It was the strategies that won the war in Europe and were winning in the Pacific war until that time that truly won the war.
These included having the key interest groups work together and support each other at least to some degree. And, it included multiple and massive efforts to deploy effective technologies and make small but real improvements on the fly and multiple sources of innovation and in virtually every area needed at the same time. And a real spirit of public support across our society supported that and helped us win the war.
So, I think what we need is a world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources.
The good news first is that we are beginning to have part of this in place. We are beginning to have the needed, “multiple and massive efforts to deploy effective technologies and make small but real improvements on the fly and have multiple sources of innovation and in virtually every area needed at the same time.”
Here are just a couple of examples.
For example, if a safe and doable way to supply vehicles with hydrogen was developed. We could use wind, solar, geothermal, or nuclear power located close enough to water – lakes, rivers, oceans, etc to use the electricity from those sources to provide the hydrogen and release back into the air some the oxygen we’ve already used and the oxygen the fuels cells in the vehicles powered then use by turning the water into hydrogen and oxygen. (These renewable sources near oceans could desalt the water and use just part of that to produce hydrogen.)
Now it seems we may have that technology. This time I seem to have lost my notes on who developed it; but I saw a recent story that explained that there is a new way to store and deliver hydrogen by encapsulating hydrides from which hydrogen can be extracted for fuel cells and which uses nanotechnology. These encapsulated hydrides can be safely stored, transported, and even piped into vehicle fuel tanks much as gasoline and diesel fuel is now.
Another technology we have posted on before is by the Swedish company that now has an office in Sunnyvale, California in the silicon valley, GLO AB.
They use nanotechnology to make manufacturing LED lights something like a fifth as expensive as the manufacturing of LED lights now requires.
Now, I’ve replaced most of the incandescent bulbs we use for lighting with compact fluorescents which use only 25% of the energy of the incandescent bulbs they replaced. But so far, despite their far greater safety to me and my family and using only an eighth of the electricity of incandescent bulbs & half that of compact fluorescents I’ve only replaced two of the compact fluorescents with KED bulbs.
The reason is that I had to pay over a hundred dollars for just those two LED bulbs!
If they only cost a fifth as much. I would have replaced 10 compact fluorescents for the same money. And with only a bit over $10 each, by now I’d have replaced several more compact fluorescents with LED bulbs.
And, at that price level, utilities facing the need for electricity for electric cars or rising prices for electricity from fossil fuels could make LED bulbs available to their customers for ALL their lights at no charge to their customers and still be money ahead themselves.
There are literally hundreds or thousands of such efforts now in every part of energy savings and energy efficiency and clean energy production. Even nuclear may stay around though with much better and more reliable safety features. And, the venture capital firms are beginning to put some serious money into expanding the companies that are successfully deploying those technologies according to a story this week here in the Silicon Valley.
What we are so far missing is the spirit and energy and mulitple buy-in from all kinds of people that the United States, England, and Russia had during World War II.
We need more leaders with that vision and who know how to sell it to all of the stakeholders involved, not just some of them.
I’m out of time today but will list some potential ideas to solve that problem next time.
Until then I challenge you to commit yourself personally to do what you can for the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources.
What can you already do in your home or at work?
How can you help get support from everyone for the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources?
Even a single new LED light or more replacing a single energy using device with a more energy efficient one will help.
Even getting one other person to also commit to winning the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources -- will help.
Today's post: Wednesday, 4-6-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Manhattan project or Moon shot approach to clean energy solutions....
This week’s post is about what conceptual approach is needed to get to clean energy solutions in time to prevent catastrophic problems from warming or severe economic disruption from that or fossil fuels becoming too scarce and expensive before we have enough alternatives in use.
Tom Friedman and others have suggested that we use the Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon as a conceptual model to get enough clean energy solutions in place soon enough. The Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon were things ignited the public imagination or get very serious government funding or both and got successful results. They also got successful results in the shortest possible time.
They do inspire the imagination; suggest speed of execution is essential, and by implication suggest a successful result.
But the massive size, multiple aspect, and complexity of the energy situation needs a comparable model to emulate that had these characteristics I think.
The Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon had complexities but not at the very multiple level of complexity that the energy crisis does.
However, there WAS a historical event that compared well with the energy crisis. It had multiple aspects and locations and kinds of stakeholders just as the energy crisis does.
That was the focused effort of the United States and its allies to win World War II. It was also successful. But even better, it had several models of the components of that success that also may be helpful.
Yes, it may have won the war to have had the Manhattan project. And, it certainly shortened the war and saved hundreds of thousands of deaths of the Japanese people and the soldiers and other military forces of the United States that an invasion would have produced.
But a review of the progress of the war shows that the war was close to irrevocably won by that time.
It was the strategies that won the war in Europe and were winning in the Pacific war until that time that truly won the war.
These included having the key interest groups work together and support each other at least to some degree. And, it included multiple and massive efforts to deploy effective technologies and make small but real improvements on the fly and multiple sources of innovation and in virtually every area needed at the same time. And a real spirit of public support across our society supported that and helped us win the war.
So, I think what we need is a world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources.
The good news first is that we are beginning to have part of this in place. We are beginning to have the needed, “multiple and massive efforts to deploy effective technologies and make small but real improvements on the fly and have multiple sources of innovation and in virtually every area needed at the same time.”
Here are just a couple of examples.
For example, if a safe and doable way to supply vehicles with hydrogen was developed. We could use wind, solar, geothermal, or nuclear power located close enough to water – lakes, rivers, oceans, etc to use the electricity from those sources to provide the hydrogen and release back into the air some the oxygen we’ve already used and the oxygen the fuels cells in the vehicles powered then use by turning the water into hydrogen and oxygen. (These renewable sources near oceans could desalt the water and use just part of that to produce hydrogen.)
Now it seems we may have that technology. This time I seem to have lost my notes on who developed it; but I saw a recent story that explained that there is a new way to store and deliver hydrogen by encapsulating hydrides from which hydrogen can be extracted for fuel cells and which uses nanotechnology. These encapsulated hydrides can be safely stored, transported, and even piped into vehicle fuel tanks much as gasoline and diesel fuel is now.
Another technology we have posted on before is by the Swedish company that now has an office in Sunnyvale, California in the silicon valley, GLO AB.
They use nanotechnology to make manufacturing LED lights something like a fifth as expensive as the manufacturing of LED lights now requires.
Now, I’ve replaced most of the incandescent bulbs we use for lighting with compact fluorescents which use only 25% of the energy of the incandescent bulbs they replaced. But so far, despite their far greater safety to me and my family and using only an eighth of the electricity of incandescent bulbs & half that of compact fluorescents I’ve only replaced two of the compact fluorescents with KED bulbs.
The reason is that I had to pay over a hundred dollars for just those two LED bulbs!
If they only cost a fifth as much. I would have replaced 10 compact fluorescents for the same money. And with only a bit over $10 each, by now I’d have replaced several more compact fluorescents with LED bulbs.
And, at that price level, utilities facing the need for electricity for electric cars or rising prices for electricity from fossil fuels could make LED bulbs available to their customers for ALL their lights at no charge to their customers and still be money ahead themselves.
There are literally hundreds or thousands of such efforts now in every part of energy savings and energy efficiency and clean energy production. Even nuclear may stay around though with much better and more reliable safety features. And, the venture capital firms are beginning to put some serious money into expanding the companies that are successfully deploying those technologies according to a story this week here in the Silicon Valley.
What we are so far missing is the spirit and energy and mulitple buy-in from all kinds of people that the United States, England, and Russia had during World War II.
We need more leaders with that vision and who know how to sell it to all of the stakeholders involved, not just some of them.
I’m out of time today but will list some potential ideas to solve that problem next time.
Until then I challenge you to commit yourself personally to do what you can for the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources.
What can you already do in your home or at work?
How can you help get support from everyone for the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources?
Even a single new LED light or more replacing a single energy using device with a more energy efficient one will help.
Even getting one other person to also commit to winning the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources -- will help.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Much safer nuclear or alternatives....
Today's post: Wednesday, 3-23-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Much safer nuclear or alternatives....
This week’s post is on the nuclear situation.
There are two responses that make sense for nuclear energy now that the Japan quake and some checking of other reactors since have found safety issues.
I think the best answer is to do both. BUT they are both challenging to do. So we need to tackle them with a lot of brains, knowledge, energy and, unfortunately, money.
But the alternative of building a supposed to be safe nuclear facility near population centers and farms that was inadequately designed for effective safety cannot be allowed to continue. The situation in Japan shows this.
1. Germany was downwind from Chernobyl a few years ago. They already have done a close to best in the world job of adding energy conservation upgrades and renewable energy sources for electricity. And that experience is one of the reasons.
Now in today’s news, AP, in a story datelined Berlin reports that Germany now plans to begin to wean itself from nuclear power entirely. This is of interest for two reasons. One is that anything effective they manage to do can be used here and around the world. The second is that the United States in just California has more potential to generate renewable sources for electricity. So if Germany can even come close, the United States can do even better.
So what would doing without nuclear or adding very little more in the United States require?
Quite a lot which I’ll list. But the more we do, the less nuclear we will need and the more likely it is any nuclear we do add will be done safely instead almost safely but not really as it has been so far.
a) In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.
The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.”
Doing what he recommends at a flat out fast speed all over the economy right away will return more money than it costs. And, the improved GDP per energy used will arrive far sooner than we can add more renewable energy or nuclear that is actually safe or far closer to it can be done.
So, whether or not we build more nuclear, this set of things has to be the number one priority.
b) We need to do dramatically more building of renewable energy sources than we have.
Following Germany’s incentive system to ensure this happens is a first key. They have roughly a half to a third of California’s solar potential and have been installing nine times as much solar as California for many years. We must find locally effective versions of these incentives and use them very soon in California and across the United States.
We need to build close to the maximum that is even close to environmentally safe of large thermal solar plants throughout the Southwestern United States and most of Mexico. And, we need to build the transmission lines and make the upgrades to the current transmission grid to get that electricity to where it will be used.
We need to do the same with wind generated electricity from Minnesota to West Texas and add wind energy in most of the other places that have wind.
We need to add photovoltaic solar in moderate sized but inexpensive locations near cities and existing transmission grids and make the process of doing so easy, cheap, and quick where permits and grid connections are concerned.
We need to install photovoltaic solar on close to every rooftop and cover every parking lot of reasonable size with a canopy and install photovoltaic solar on every square foot of these canopies.
c) We need to continue our development and roll out of much better batteries so that homes, businesses, and cities can store the irregular supply of electricity from renewable sources for when it is actually needed.
d) We need to convert coal to gas and use that and natural gas to generate electricity in Bloom Energy’s fuels cells or those of a set of competitors if Bloom Energy isn’t up to the job; stop burning these fuels; and feed the CO2 released to algae to make biofuels.
e) We need to find out how to use far more geothermal energy including drilling much deeper to access it and to find out how to do this without causing earthquakes. Once we do that, we need to multiply our supply because like nuclear and natural gas and coal, geothermal delivers energy as needed.
The other good news besides the massive amount of usable electricity these steps can net our economy is that as expensive and time consuming as doing them all well is, it likely is cheaper and faster than building truly safe nuclear plants.
So, this is the better choice that we should rely on most and do the most and do the fastest.
2. But the recent TED talk by Stewart Brand supporting nuclear power make some good points.
Nuclear power uses dramatically less land than all of the renewable sources of any size and delivers power as needed as renewable energy sources do not – at least so far.
And, it deliver so much less air pollution and CO2 than burning coal it’s scary to contemplate.
To avoid having unbreatheable air as early London had and part of China do now, we need to burn dramatically less coal. (Gasifying it and using fuel cells to make electricity solves that problem.) But Brand has a legitimate point that so does using nuclear power instead.
And, if we really have already used up the safe limits of sending CO2 into the air as the evidence increasingly says we have, his point that nuclear can solve that problem and may well be badly needed to do so, is also legitimate.
So, I agree with Energy Secretary Chu and President Obama that we should keep nuclear power as an option.
But it’s only worth doing at all if it is done far more safely than it was recently in Japan and that level of safety likely is not in our existing reactors.
The reason is that the downside is so dreadful.
There are two problems that need to be solved every single time and solved far better than they have been.
Yes that will make nuclear far more expensive and slower to get more of. But no nuclear plant should be built or kept long in operation without it.
1. Nuclear plants should only be built in politically stable and relatively sane countries. Countries such as Iran and North Korea should have none based on their current politics. They should have nuclear power but from other countries that can afford to build safe reactors and won’t weaponize them. South Korea or China can supply North Korea and Russia can supply Iran.
In addition, every reactor should get extremely tight 24/7 security from the military of the country where they are located every single day they operate.
If that’s too expensive, don’t build nuclear. I think it is that simple.
2. Building safe reactors we are now seeing is much harder and expensive than was initially thought as the Japan experience has shown.
Here are just a few ideas I’ve had since the Japan situation has revealed the need for them.
Going forward, I think no reactor should be built that doesn’t have all of these needed steps in place that the Japanese reactors did not have.
a) Radioactive steam was released into the air and then spread out. They did not have a superfort sized building encasing the entire site that would have allowed that steam to enter there but not the surrounding community. The VAB, vehicle assembly building that was used for the Saturn moon rockets show we can build such structures.
That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.
b) Many of the things the workers in these reactors could not do because of high radiation can be done by robots controlled from safer locations. Such robots are just now arriving in Japan to the stricken sites. That’s unacceptably unsafe, they should have already been inside and ready to use. Every nuclear site should have them & likely doesn’t now.
That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.
c) The cooling that didn’t happen caused the problem in Japan and its severity.
Better reactor design and fuel rod storage design going forward can make this problem less likely. But dramatically better electric power backup within each site and of the coolants needed as well must be in every site.
They should have a mini-reactor that is even better protected than the main reactors that can supply the electricity needed to run the plant and its cooling systems – at least in shut down mode for the main reactors.
And, if that fails, they also need the natural gas and fuel cells to make electricity onsite with at least 3 weeks of supply necessary to maintain the controls, robots, and shut down mode cooling.
There would have been no problem in Japan if they had all these things ahead of time.
Doing all these things for every reactor built or retrofitted to those we will keep will be expensive to do for each and every reactor; but it can be done.
My position is that we need the nuclear reactors; but we should not use them or build more without these safe-guards. It will make them a lot more expensive and make them take longer to build.
But better that than nuclear accidents that happen near people and farmland. And, without these safeguards we run a very large risk.
Today's post: Wednesday, 3-23-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Much safer nuclear or alternatives....
This week’s post is on the nuclear situation.
There are two responses that make sense for nuclear energy now that the Japan quake and some checking of other reactors since have found safety issues.
I think the best answer is to do both. BUT they are both challenging to do. So we need to tackle them with a lot of brains, knowledge, energy and, unfortunately, money.
But the alternative of building a supposed to be safe nuclear facility near population centers and farms that was inadequately designed for effective safety cannot be allowed to continue. The situation in Japan shows this.
1. Germany was downwind from Chernobyl a few years ago. They already have done a close to best in the world job of adding energy conservation upgrades and renewable energy sources for electricity. And that experience is one of the reasons.
Now in today’s news, AP, in a story datelined Berlin reports that Germany now plans to begin to wean itself from nuclear power entirely. This is of interest for two reasons. One is that anything effective they manage to do can be used here and around the world. The second is that the United States in just California has more potential to generate renewable sources for electricity. So if Germany can even come close, the United States can do even better.
So what would doing without nuclear or adding very little more in the United States require?
Quite a lot which I’ll list. But the more we do, the less nuclear we will need and the more likely it is any nuclear we do add will be done safely instead almost safely but not really as it has been so far.
a) In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.
The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.”
Doing what he recommends at a flat out fast speed all over the economy right away will return more money than it costs. And, the improved GDP per energy used will arrive far sooner than we can add more renewable energy or nuclear that is actually safe or far closer to it can be done.
So, whether or not we build more nuclear, this set of things has to be the number one priority.
b) We need to do dramatically more building of renewable energy sources than we have.
Following Germany’s incentive system to ensure this happens is a first key. They have roughly a half to a third of California’s solar potential and have been installing nine times as much solar as California for many years. We must find locally effective versions of these incentives and use them very soon in California and across the United States.
We need to build close to the maximum that is even close to environmentally safe of large thermal solar plants throughout the Southwestern United States and most of Mexico. And, we need to build the transmission lines and make the upgrades to the current transmission grid to get that electricity to where it will be used.
We need to do the same with wind generated electricity from Minnesota to West Texas and add wind energy in most of the other places that have wind.
We need to add photovoltaic solar in moderate sized but inexpensive locations near cities and existing transmission grids and make the process of doing so easy, cheap, and quick where permits and grid connections are concerned.
We need to install photovoltaic solar on close to every rooftop and cover every parking lot of reasonable size with a canopy and install photovoltaic solar on every square foot of these canopies.
c) We need to continue our development and roll out of much better batteries so that homes, businesses, and cities can store the irregular supply of electricity from renewable sources for when it is actually needed.
d) We need to convert coal to gas and use that and natural gas to generate electricity in Bloom Energy’s fuels cells or those of a set of competitors if Bloom Energy isn’t up to the job; stop burning these fuels; and feed the CO2 released to algae to make biofuels.
e) We need to find out how to use far more geothermal energy including drilling much deeper to access it and to find out how to do this without causing earthquakes. Once we do that, we need to multiply our supply because like nuclear and natural gas and coal, geothermal delivers energy as needed.
The other good news besides the massive amount of usable electricity these steps can net our economy is that as expensive and time consuming as doing them all well is, it likely is cheaper and faster than building truly safe nuclear plants.
So, this is the better choice that we should rely on most and do the most and do the fastest.
2. But the recent TED talk by Stewart Brand supporting nuclear power make some good points.
Nuclear power uses dramatically less land than all of the renewable sources of any size and delivers power as needed as renewable energy sources do not – at least so far.
And, it deliver so much less air pollution and CO2 than burning coal it’s scary to contemplate.
To avoid having unbreatheable air as early London had and part of China do now, we need to burn dramatically less coal. (Gasifying it and using fuel cells to make electricity solves that problem.) But Brand has a legitimate point that so does using nuclear power instead.
And, if we really have already used up the safe limits of sending CO2 into the air as the evidence increasingly says we have, his point that nuclear can solve that problem and may well be badly needed to do so, is also legitimate.
So, I agree with Energy Secretary Chu and President Obama that we should keep nuclear power as an option.
But it’s only worth doing at all if it is done far more safely than it was recently in Japan and that level of safety likely is not in our existing reactors.
The reason is that the downside is so dreadful.
There are two problems that need to be solved every single time and solved far better than they have been.
Yes that will make nuclear far more expensive and slower to get more of. But no nuclear plant should be built or kept long in operation without it.
1. Nuclear plants should only be built in politically stable and relatively sane countries. Countries such as Iran and North Korea should have none based on their current politics. They should have nuclear power but from other countries that can afford to build safe reactors and won’t weaponize them. South Korea or China can supply North Korea and Russia can supply Iran.
In addition, every reactor should get extremely tight 24/7 security from the military of the country where they are located every single day they operate.
If that’s too expensive, don’t build nuclear. I think it is that simple.
2. Building safe reactors we are now seeing is much harder and expensive than was initially thought as the Japan experience has shown.
Here are just a few ideas I’ve had since the Japan situation has revealed the need for them.
Going forward, I think no reactor should be built that doesn’t have all of these needed steps in place that the Japanese reactors did not have.
a) Radioactive steam was released into the air and then spread out. They did not have a superfort sized building encasing the entire site that would have allowed that steam to enter there but not the surrounding community. The VAB, vehicle assembly building that was used for the Saturn moon rockets show we can build such structures.
That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.
b) Many of the things the workers in these reactors could not do because of high radiation can be done by robots controlled from safer locations. Such robots are just now arriving in Japan to the stricken sites. That’s unacceptably unsafe, they should have already been inside and ready to use. Every nuclear site should have them & likely doesn’t now.
That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.
c) The cooling that didn’t happen caused the problem in Japan and its severity.
Better reactor design and fuel rod storage design going forward can make this problem less likely. But dramatically better electric power backup within each site and of the coolants needed as well must be in every site.
They should have a mini-reactor that is even better protected than the main reactors that can supply the electricity needed to run the plant and its cooling systems – at least in shut down mode for the main reactors.
And, if that fails, they also need the natural gas and fuel cells to make electricity onsite with at least 3 weeks of supply necessary to maintain the controls, robots, and shut down mode cooling.
There would have been no problem in Japan if they had all these things ahead of time.
Doing all these things for every reactor built or retrofitted to those we will keep will be expensive to do for each and every reactor; but it can be done.
My position is that we need the nuclear reactors; but we should not use them or build more without these safe-guards. It will make them a lot more expensive and make them take longer to build.
But better that than nuclear accidents that happen near people and farmland. And, without these safeguards we run a very large risk.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Current Republicans are misleading people....
Today's post: Wednesday, 3-16-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Current Republicans are misleading people....
(Next week’s post will be on the nuclear situation. This week it may be a bit too early to know how bad it will get.)
In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.
The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.”
Since the majority of these changes improve energy efficiency for the use of electricity and natural gas, the savings he speaks of will only cut petroleum use if we also begin to use dramatically more plug-in hybrid and all electric cars and trucks.
But doing both these things well and soon and on a large enough scale will indeed increase the energy independence of the United States.
We will need far less oil from outside our country and the reduction in demand will cut the prices for fuel from petroleum to less than they would have been.
In fact, gasoline and diesel prices would be much higher now if Federal Standards had not mandated higher mpg standards in cars and trucks.
Tightening these standards now will help speed the adoption of plug-in hybrids and all electric cars – and increase the efficiency of new vehicles that still use gasoline and diesel.
Recently we had an increase of gasoline prices from close to $3 a gallon to close to $4 a gallon. This was due entirely to the growth in demand and the threats to supply and its increased costs.
So, the more we are able to reduce demand for petroleum fuels, the less we will pay for gasoline and diesel fuel.
In fact, gradually beginning to tax oil in some way for part of its real cost for climate change will help speed the changes that cut demand.
That means that adding something like 25 cents a gallon to gasoline and diesel from such taxes is a way to make the future price of gasoline closer to $6 a gallon instead of $12.
So, trying to cut back fuel efficiency standards or these carbon taxes is penny wise and twenty dollar bill foolish.
Meanwhile I got an email today from a conservative Republican source that said that the only way to energy independence was to drill for more oil within the United States and to trash or turn off the kinds of programs that will cut the long term prices of oil. It came right out and said that doing anything else was only boosting gasoline prices and cutting back our energy independence.
So, fight back against people who disagree.
Simply put, this is either total ignorance or deliberate deception – and it’s a campaign which many current Republicans openly endorse.
It deliberately leaves key parts of a solution off the table and only leaves solutions favorable to the oil companies and the oil industry instead.
They actually have a reasonable point that increased oil production and drilling within the United States would help, particularly in the short run once the oil starts flowing.
So, I was saddened by the recent offshore drilling disaster in our Gulf of Mexico since that’s the best place to do this increased drilling.
Before that, the support was there from most people for more drilling in the Gulf.
But their email was NOT about energy independence or keeping gasoline costs low. It SAID so but completely left out the large additional leverage of the ways to cut demand to achieve these things.
This is irresponsible and inaccurate. And, they are trying so hard with it, it’s clear they hope to fool a lot of less informed people into leaving out many parts of the solutions we need badly.
Some people believe it. Unfortunately, it’s dangerously wrong.
If the other solutions are blocked because of it, we will all be in worse trouble and gasoline prices will both be higher and increasing faster.
This is most unfortunate. But it also shows that the other side has not stepped up to the plate enough that most people getting these emails know it’s inaccurate and incomplete at best.
Today's post: Wednesday, 3-16-2010
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.
And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.
Today’s post:
Current Republicans are misleading people....
(Next week’s post will be on the nuclear situation. This week it may be a bit too early to know how bad it will get.)
In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.
The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.”
Since the majority of these changes improve energy efficiency for the use of electricity and natural gas, the savings he speaks of will only cut petroleum use if we also begin to use dramatically more plug-in hybrid and all electric cars and trucks.
But doing both these things well and soon and on a large enough scale will indeed increase the energy independence of the United States.
We will need far less oil from outside our country and the reduction in demand will cut the prices for fuel from petroleum to less than they would have been.
In fact, gasoline and diesel prices would be much higher now if Federal Standards had not mandated higher mpg standards in cars and trucks.
Tightening these standards now will help speed the adoption of plug-in hybrids and all electric cars – and increase the efficiency of new vehicles that still use gasoline and diesel.
Recently we had an increase of gasoline prices from close to $3 a gallon to close to $4 a gallon. This was due entirely to the growth in demand and the threats to supply and its increased costs.
So, the more we are able to reduce demand for petroleum fuels, the less we will pay for gasoline and diesel fuel.
In fact, gradually beginning to tax oil in some way for part of its real cost for climate change will help speed the changes that cut demand.
That means that adding something like 25 cents a gallon to gasoline and diesel from such taxes is a way to make the future price of gasoline closer to $6 a gallon instead of $12.
So, trying to cut back fuel efficiency standards or these carbon taxes is penny wise and twenty dollar bill foolish.
Meanwhile I got an email today from a conservative Republican source that said that the only way to energy independence was to drill for more oil within the United States and to trash or turn off the kinds of programs that will cut the long term prices of oil. It came right out and said that doing anything else was only boosting gasoline prices and cutting back our energy independence.
So, fight back against people who disagree.
Simply put, this is either total ignorance or deliberate deception – and it’s a campaign which many current Republicans openly endorse.
It deliberately leaves key parts of a solution off the table and only leaves solutions favorable to the oil companies and the oil industry instead.
They actually have a reasonable point that increased oil production and drilling within the United States would help, particularly in the short run once the oil starts flowing.
So, I was saddened by the recent offshore drilling disaster in our Gulf of Mexico since that’s the best place to do this increased drilling.
Before that, the support was there from most people for more drilling in the Gulf.
But their email was NOT about energy independence or keeping gasoline costs low. It SAID so but completely left out the large additional leverage of the ways to cut demand to achieve these things.
This is irresponsible and inaccurate. And, they are trying so hard with it, it’s clear they hope to fool a lot of less informed people into leaving out many parts of the solutions we need badly.
Some people believe it. Unfortunately, it’s dangerously wrong.
If the other solutions are blocked because of it, we will all be in worse trouble and gasoline prices will both be higher and increasing faster.
This is most unfortunate. But it also shows that the other side has not stepped up to the plate enough that most people getting these emails know it’s inaccurate and incomplete at best.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)