Tony Blair moves closer to FuturePundit on energy policy.
The second thing, though, is that I think – and I would say probably I’m changing my thinking about this in the past two or three years. I think if we are going to get action on this, we have got to start from the brutal honesty about the politics of how we deal with it. The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem. What countries are prepared to do is to try to work together cooperatively to deal with this problem in a way that allows us to develop the science and technology in a beneficial way.
Now, I don’t think all of the answers lie in just – in developing the science and technology, but I do think there is no way we are going to tackle this problem unless we develop the science and technology capable of doing it.
Blair is beginning to sound realistic on energy policy. National governments all over the world that signed onto the Kyoto Accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have failed to follow through.
Canada leads the laggards with emissions growth at 20 percent from 1990 although it has committed to a 6 percent reduction by 2012.
Japan's emissions are up 12 percent and it has to cut them also by six, while New Zealand must show zero growth and is currently up 21 percent.
The European Union as a whole is doing better, with a 2.9 percent fall toward a 2012 target of minus 8 percent. But there are problems, for example, in Italy, which is 8 percent higher and must go 8 percent lower.
Japan would be further from Kyoto compliance if it didn't spend the 1990s in economic stagnation. Canada, enjoying better economic growth, is predictably further from compliance.
I do not see how the EU can meet their Kyoto goals. Large tax increases on energy are politically unpalatable. The European countries need to increase energy efficiency much more rapidly than their economies grow so that energy use can drop even as economic output increases. They've already gone after much of the lower lying fruit. It gets harder to squeeze out even more efficiency. Europe already has higher fuel taxes than the United States and so fuel taxes there would have to be raised even higher still to provide greater incentives for lower energy usage. I do not see that as in the cards.
Even where higher levels of energy efficiency are theoretically possible (e.g. in insulation of buildings) the problem is that the efficiency can only be realized by replacing large amounts of capital and housing stock with newer and more efficient designs. Efficiency gains from such measures cost too much to implement quickly and take decades to achieve.
Part of the EU's energy efficiency gain came from the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Less efficient communist capital equipment that used more energy to get jobs done was replaced by more efficient capital equipment from the rest of the world. But, again, the easier parts of this have already been done as well.
Considering all these factors my guess is that Europe seems very unlikely to meet its Kyoto goals. Kyoto compliance might even get worse between now and 2012 due to economic growth increasing the demand for energy. Similarly, Canada, New Zealand, and Japan aren't going to get near treaty compliance.
Director of Canada's Climate Change Bureau Alex Manson lays part of the blame for Canada's non-compliance on the United States which has experienced only 12% growth in CO2 emissions versus 20% for Canada (and I trust readers are good enough at math to see the obvious problem with this argument).
He said Canada picked up the pace against emissions in 2003, but it has been hurt by the fact that its biggest trading partner -- the United States -- withdrew from Kyoto in 2001. U.S. emissions are 12 percent up since 1990.
Canada has begun to take some steps toward reducing CO2 emissions with an agreement reached with car companies to raise fuel efficiency of new vehicles.
Switzerland has so far reduced CO2 emissions only 4% versus its stated 10% reduction goal.
While the Reuters article above puts the US green house gases increase at 12% since 1990 the EPA puts the increase at 20% from 1990 to 2003. From that Green Car Congress link:
Although overall net GHG emissions have increased more than 20% during the last 15 years, the economy as represented by the GDP grew 46%. The good news is that the economy appears increasingly less emissions-intense. The bad news is that despite the increased efficiency, we are still increasing our emissions even on a net basis year-to-year.
That gap between economic growth and energy growth represents a very large increase in US energy efficiency since 1990. Much of the difference in CO2 emissions between Europe and the United States since 1990 can be chalked up to faster economic growth and population growth in the United States. The US economy has become steadily more energy efficient as measured by a rising ratio of inflation-adjusted GDP per unit of energy consumed. But the economic growth rate has risen even faster than the rate of increase in energy efficiency. So total energy usage has increased and this has driven the increase in CO2 emissions in the United States.
Technologies that increase energy efficiency will lower the cost of the energy component of production and therefore cause faster economic growth. As a result, part of energy efficiency gains inevitably get lost as per capita GDP rises and people buy more goods and services.
Aside: If anyone can point to a source for comparative United States and EU-15 total economic growth from 1990 to 2003 or 2004 please post in the comments or email me. I'd like to get a better sense of how much the energy use difference between the US and EU is due to the difference in total economic growth.
Part of the US growth in energy demand is a consequence of an overall increase in worker productivity. An overall productivity gap has opened between workers in the United States and the core more industrialized EU states.
On average, the productivity level of the EU-15 was at 92% of the U.S. level in 2004, down from 99% in 2000 and 100% in 1995. This decline reflects both the relatively slow pace of European productivity growth and the acceleration of U.S. productivity gains after 1995. Still, six European countries—Luxembourg, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands—exhibit higher productivity levels than the U.S. in 2004.
While the productivity gap between the EU-15 and the U.S. is 8 percentage points in 2004, the per capita income gap is 28 percentage points. With the exception of Luxembourg, no European country has turned this relatively high productivity into a per capita income higher than the U.S. This is because EU countries have a smaller fraction of the population employed than the U.S., and those that are employed generally work fewer hours.
From 2000-2004, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product growth came primarily from increased labor productivity (2.9%). Hours worked for this period fell -.4%, resulting in GDP growth of 2.5% for 2000 to 2004. During this period, the EU-15 showed GDP growth of only 1.4% with productivity growth at 1% and hours worked at .4%.
A closer examination of the proximate sources of change in total GDP growth after 1995 shows that while trend labour productivity accelerated in the United States, it slowed in the European Union and Japan, resulting in a convergence of productivity growth rates across the three major economies (Figure V.1). In the case of the European Union, the impact on GDP growth from the slowdown in productivity per hour was partly offset by an increase in employment growth. Despite such improvement in labour market performance, even faster employment growth in the United States accounted for most of the differences in growth in GDP per capita between the two economies. Japan is the only country having faced a deceleration in both productivity and labour resource utilisation. Conversely, only a few countries (Canada, Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Greece) enjoyed a clear improvement in both sources of growth in GDP per capita after 1995.
The only way to substantially reduce CO2 emissions is to develop energy technologies that obsolesce fossil fuels. Those energy technologies are coming eventually. People who want those technologies to come sooner (whether to avoid global warming or get cleaner air to breathe or to lower total energy costs) ought to support accelerated development of nuclear and photovoltaic energy technologies.
The neat thing about technological advances is that once the advances are made they start paying back and continue to pay back for years and decades to come. The sooner the advances get made the sooner the payback starts. Global warming worries aside, advances in non-fossil fuel energy technologies such as nuclear, photovoltaics, and wind will pay back by lowering energy costs and enabling greater economic growth with cleaner air as a side effect. I want the advances sooner because I want the many benefits sooner.
By Randall Parker at 2005 September 20 03:21 PM Policy Energy | TrackBack... efficiency can only be realized by replacing large amounts of capital and housing stock with newer and more efficient designs.That may not be necessary; if historical accuracy can be sacrificed for efficiency, you could use something like the Dryvit process to increase the insulation on existing building stock. (I literally just learned about this company today.)
The improvements are not as radical as some construction methods offer, but slashing a quarter off the heating demand isn't half bad and will suffice for a few years.
Randall Parker said "People who want those technologies to come sooner ... ought to support accelerated development of nuclear and photovoltaic energy technologies." Advances in those two technologies are desirable, but it is interesting to note that the world's largest proposed solar installation will not actually use any photovoltaics. Here is a link to an article at Renewableenergyaccess.com about a proposed system that will use reflective dishes and Stirling engines instead of photovoltaics.
If all goes according to plan, a partnership between SES and Southern California Edison (SCE), would see the construction of an expansive 4,500-acre solar generating station in Southern California. When completed, the proposed power station would be the world's largest solar facility, capable of producing more electricity than all other U.S. solar projects combined.The 20-year power purchase agreement signed today, which is subject to California Public Utilities Commission approval, calls for development of a 500-MW solar project 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles using innovative Stirling dish technology. The agreement includes an option to expand the project to 850 MW. Initially, Stirling would build a one-MW test facility using 40 of the company's 37-foot-diameter dish assemblies. Subsequently, a 20,000-dish array would be constructed near Victorville, Calif., during a four-year period.
Another project using the same technology is reported here. (Randall probably covered these projects but this website is not easy to search.) The technology that succeeds can be hard to predict. Another intriguing "dark horse" technology for power generation exploits "tidal power".
Garson,
The press release does not A) put a price on the total construction cost or B) say what the average energy output will be for the facility. 500 MW is probably the peak output level.
I wonder how much the economics for such a facility would improve if sited near Phoenix where the average sunlight level is even better. I also wonder what tax credits or other subsidies are going in to making this happen. Or are they doing this to meet California regulatory requirements for use of renewable energy sources?
The productivity question is not really clear as 1) US and Europe measure productivity differently and 2) Productivity measures are skewed (Economist)
http://www.forbes.com/ceonetwork/2004/06/16/0616chat_transcript.html
also the economist:
http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3352969
Economic commentators toss around the term “productivity growth” as if there were one widely agreed definition. There isn't. America's favourite measure is output per man-hour in the non-farm business sector. Since 1996, this has increased at an annual average rate of 3%, double the pace of the first half of the 1990s. Growth in GDP per man-hour across the whole economy has been more modest: 2.2% a year on average since 1996, roughly the same pace as in France and Britain but faster than in Germany and Italy.
If you look at multi-factor productivity US is exactly the same as Europe.
The Stirling dishes are interesting, because their waste heat may be able to power absorption-cycle chillers. This would be ideal for commercial and multi-unit residential buildings; the electric output could go straight to the grid (perhaps charging vehicle batteries to replace petroleum in addition to idling the gas-fired powerplants) while the A/C loads are handled by the bottoming cycle. Ice storage would allow a daytime-only chiller system to take care of cooling loads 24/7.
The dish production rate of 5000 units/year (125 MW/year) is insufficient to do much about our energy issues, though. To make a significant dent in our problems we need something closer to 20 GW/year. Do we have the manufacturing capabilities to make 800,000 units a year? How fast could we make them? These will be crucial questions in the near future, I expect.
France and England have shown better productivity growth per man hour then other parts of Europe like Italy since 1990. Probably near the US level. But the US has had much higher population growth, about 1% growth a year. So the country gained almost 30 million people in the 90's. Plus the US has an unemployment rate half that of most of western Europe. If you put the US unemployment rate up to 12%, the most unproductive 6% of jobs would be eliminated. Causing a substantial rise in US productivity per man hour worked.
Since we are talking for CO2 emissions what matters however is total economic growth. Hours worked per capita, plus output per man hour, plus total number of workers.
I personally don't think man made global warming is real, and global warming may not even be happening at all. See places like the Albany temperature measuring which have seen a decline of 1.5 degrees over the last 160 years. However I think reducing pollutants is a good thing for quality of life.
Btw my own thinking on the solution is to pound in hundreds of nuclear plants. The cost of them will decline further, the efficiency will rise and so on. I think in the future we will continue to see substantial increases in energy usage. Exponentially growing.
And if ways to use energy more efficiently are pionered total energy use will actually rise. As then energy will be more tempting to use. Just like increasing computer power doesn't mean we use less computers. It means we do more and more things with those computers, and actually expand how many computers we have.
If the Gulf of Mexico keeps on getting pounded by category 4 and 5 hurricanes, we may be off the petroleum nipple teat whether we like it or not.
Regarding the new Sterling dish solar systems Randall Parker wonders "what tax credits or other subsidies are going in to making this happen. Or are they doing this to meet California regulatory requirements for use of renewable energy sources?"
The laws covering renewable energy in California and other states are myriad and complicated. Here is a link to a "Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE)" and here is a link to the "California Incentives for Renewable Energy" webpage. You can see a variety of federal, state, and local incentives and mandates. One important reason utilities are pursuing renewable energy is the following:
California's Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) was enacted on September 12, 2002 (SB 1078). This legislation, which requires retail sellers of electricity to purchase 20% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2017, is the most aggressive RPS in the country. ... Under the RPS, retail sellers of electricity are required to increase their procurement of eligible renewable-energy resources by at least 1% per year, so that 20% of their retail sales are procured from eligible renewable energy resources by 2017.
Some utilities have timetable goals that are even more aggressive as noted here:
"SDG&E (San Diego Gas & Electric) has pledged to supply 20 percent of its customers' energy needs from renewable resources like solar and wind by 2010," said Edwin A. Guiles, chairman and chief executive officer of SDG&E.
Randall Parker notes that "The press release does not A) put a price on the total construction cost or B) say what the average energy output will be for the facility. 500 MW is probably the peak output level."
Yes, one disappointing aspect of reportage on renewable energy is the incomplete and skewed data that are often presented. Solar and wind projects typically ballyhoo peak power output ratings and ignore average power output. Also, for this project the contract calls for a small 40 dish one-MW test facility to be built first. The real costs of construction may not be known yet.
Of the various elements in a dish farm (lines, foundations, dish mounts, dishes, receivers, Stirling engines) the only big cost uncertainty I can see is the O&M on the Stirlings themselves. Everything else (even the mirrors; think Luz) has been used before and has a track record.
The prospects for oil production shouldn't be affecting our behavior; we should be getting away from the need for it as fast as we can.
Here is a link to an EE Times article where a Stirling Energy Systems representative discusses economics and maintenance.
Power today costs from about 3 cents to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending upon the customer's location and the time of day. The average is 6.6 cents/kW-hr for the industrial sector in 2004, according to DOE. In contrast, the Stirling solar-powered substations operate only during peak hours (daytime) but at potentially the same or less than the peak rates paid today — or "about 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour during peak periods," said Liden of Stirling Energy Systems.... The 25-kW Stirling solar-powered dish utilizes 82 back-silvered mirrors measuring 3 x 4 feet. Manufactured by Paneltec Corp. (Lafayette, Colo.), the mirrors are just 1 mil thick and can easily bend into a slightly concave shape when laminated onto a honeycombed aluminum structure patented by Sandia National Laboratories.
The $150,000 dishes, which have by now logged more than 25,000 hours of "sun-tracking" test time, are being assembled by Stirling Energy Systems from a steel framework made by Schuff Steel Co. (Phoenix) and from engine parts built by various U.S. manufacturers. If produced in mass, their cost is predicted to fall to $50,000 by 2010. The Stirling solar dishes are also easy to maintain, since "the engine only has a single part — a seal — that needs to be periodically replaced," said Liden.
I currently pay 10 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity and hope that 6.5 cents is achievable as claimed.
Garson,
A fwe points:
1) The peak in sunlight does not correspond to the peak in electricity demand. The electric demand peak comes later into the afternoon and into the evening when people come home and turn on their air conditioners and other appliances after work.
2) The real peak therefore needs additional electric generators to supply electric during the peak periods. At least with nuclear or coal for the baseline load the baseline can continue to operate into the peak hours in addition to the natural gas surge generators. But solar effectively ups the need for peak generator capacity to the extent that solar displaces baseline generators. That additional surge capacity has to get included in electric generation costs and so the Stirling electric is not as cheap as they claim.
3) SoCal, while not the ideal place in the US for solar, is well up there in terms of insolation. Phoenix area is better. if the cost is as they quote for LA then it is worse in the vast bulk of the country.
4) Distribution costs and retail service costs are probably half (it varies between regions) or more of total costs. Electric has to cost less than 6.5 cents per kwh at the power station to cost 10 cents at your home meter.
Randall,
It would be great if Blair, Bush and other world leaders took 10 minutes a day to read your blog. The world would be a safer and more hopeful place.
Don't take that EE Times article at face value; it's got careless errors in it. Example:
In contrast, 30-percent-efficient solar cells are direct current and drop to 16 percent efficiency by the time they generate grid-ready ac. And that's on a hot day. Efficiency can drop as low as 10 percent on a cool day.Typical PV efficiencies are 12-16%, inverters are much better than 50% efficient, and crystalline silicon cells go UP in efficiency as they get colder.
I find the cogeneration possibilities very interesting. If you've got a 25 kWe dish which is 30% efficient, you've got 83.3 kW thermal going in. If you can capture 50 kW of waste heat and convert 50% of it to cooling in an absorption chiller (reasonable for ammonia-water, I've read), that's 25 kW of cooling or about 170,000 BTU/hr. That's 14 tons of cooling; even if it only runs 6 hours/day, you'd have the equivalent of 3.5 tons continuous, which is plenty for a big house or several apartments. If you used it to make ice during the day you'd have plenty after sunset, so the "people get home" power surge would be eliminated.
If people paid the actual demand cost of their consumption, the savings alone could drive the adoption of something like this.
E-P,
Regards your comment about losses due to DC to AC conversion: Doesn't what loss there is (even if lower than the article claims) argue for putting solar photovoltaic cells on houses rather than in huge photovoltaic farms? Consider: A lot of applications for electricity in a house could handle DC if they were built for it. For immediate use DC from a roof photovoltaic collector could go right into, for example, a DC compressor motor in an air conditioner or freezer or refrigerator.
Heck, digital circuitry is almost all DC. Why convert from DC to AC, transmit across wires, and then convert back to DC again in appliances when the DC from the roof could go directly into DC inputs on appliances built for it?
Batteries also store photovoltaic electric DC power and can provide DC power when the sun is not shining.
So what would be the downsides of DC in houses? One problem is that the existing AC infrastructure exists. But couldn't DC and AC be used for different purposes in the same building? There'd be extra wiring costs though.
Most compressor motors are induction motors, so you'd be inverting to AC to run them regardless. That is, unless you re-engineered your systems to be more efficient on DC.... You'd need a lot of market penetration to make that worthwhile.
Feeding PV output through a DC-DC converter to run a computer would be highly efficient, but today's switching power supplies don't seem to lose much power as heat either. I'm not sure if you'd gain more than a few watts that way, tens at most. Being able to swap energy with the grid may be a bigger advantage than slightly higher efficiency.
The solar dishes appear to generate 60 Hz AC directly, so they're grid-compatible.
The articles cited so far are for utility-owned dish farms, but I see nothing which would prevent them from being owned and operated by industry, commercial operations and even homeowners. Siting the generation at the point of use eliminates transmission losses; user-ownership eliminates utility markups, and availability of the waste heat permits cogeneration (equivalent to about another 8 kW of electricity in the case of absorption cooling).
I read an analysis of the Stirling things which projected the eventual cost at close to $1/W a ways down the road (I think this is it... yup, see page 13). If we could aim for the higher production sooner, costs might fall faster. We could certainly use that.
US electric power consumption averages about 440 GW over the year, and probably much more in the summer. I think 20 GW/year is a conservative estimate of what the grid could absorb if we started in a band running from California to mid-Texas. Knocking the daytime peaks down to the base load is about the least you could think of doing; if you also deal with most or all of the cooling load and start powering vehicles as well, you could absorb quite a bit more.
"Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men's souls."
Randall Parker said "The peak in sunlight does not correspond to the peak in electricity demand." Yes, that is a significant problem for wind and solar power. The generation of power with wind and solar sources is neither continuous nor regular. The supply does not follow the dictates of the consumer demand. Solar power is not generated at night nor when skies are overcast. Wind power is not generated when the wind is too calm or too turbulent. But there is a massive potential application area where this problem of unpredictable power generation would be surmountable.
Plug-in hybrid vehicles could be connected to the power grid most of the time they are not being driven (at home and at work). Plug-in hybrids can store energy in batteries when it becomes available on the grid. In principle, they can even sell it back to the grid. This recent EV World article on "The Promise of Plug-In Hybrids" mentions this vision:
Looking even further down the road, a study by scientists at the University of Delaware concluded that plug-in hybrids could be made to give and take power from their local power grid — a concept called vehicle-to-grid or "V2G" hybrids. They calculate the North American grid could receive up to 50 percent of its electricity from wind power alone, if plug-in hybrids’ batteries acted as temporary electric storage devices.
Awareness of plug-in hybrids continues to grow. Here is a recent CS Monitor article entitled "Plug-in hybrids: a here-and-now alternative". Engineer-Poet has discussed plug-in hybrids at his blog "The Ergosphere" here.
Great Blog - wish I'd discovered it before now.
I've believed for some years that improved energy storage ought to be one of our highest priorities. Compact high energy density batteries would revolutionise transport very rapidly with retrofitting to existing vehicles potentially a bigger market than new vehicles - just throw out (recylcle) those complex and heavy engines and drive trains and use ultra reliable maintenance free electric motors - (the internal combustion engine of today really is a marvel of engineering and it amazes me that they can be manufactured so cheaply but for good reasons they really need to be consigned to obsolescence). Just how low mass, compact and reliable energy storage can get is something I'd be interested to know. Are there any theoretical limits to how compact? something that gets near to hydrocarbons for energy density would of course open the possibility of physically shipping electricity around the world much as oil and coal are presently. In some respects fuel cells (especially those that can use alcohol or hydrocarbons) seem to offer some potential to get the best of both worlds - the high energy density with efficient conversion to and from electricity. For non transport purposes being bulky is less of a constraint. It does matter if it takes a small room rather than a washer sized bank to hold a household x days or weeks worth of energy yet if that bank has good storage and conversion efficiency and a very long service life then the space used may be worth it. Vanadium redox comes to mind in this regard with the electrolytes (IIRC) potentially usable or at least recyclable indefinitely even if the conductive plastic plates, as they currently exist, of the battery stack need replacement on a decade basis. (BTW I believe the VR batteries are very efficient DC - DC transformers so that (say) a photovoltaic roof could be charging the system at it's optimal Voltage whilst current is drawn off at another or several other voltages according to need. )
I agree that Photovoltaics will become cheap enough eventually but how long that will be is the question. Given the ever growing number and variety of novel ways of making photovoltaics one or more will end up proving itself and turning the whole energy equation around. I have this optimistic vision of highways paved with solar cells somewhere in our future.
Ken
Garson: good link there, even if they do repeat the nonsense about E-85 and such. Here's a link for single-page format.
Here's another link: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/09/sanyo_to_more_t.html
Sanyo is increasing production of NiMH cells for hybrids by 150% and is looking to convert to Li-ion.
Insist that the government divert all the money earmarked for the futile re-building of New Orleans, into a research fund to develop better storage batteries. It would do a lot more good.
Peak solar and peak demand don't match, but what about moving the electricity? We have a few hour time gap in the US. Noon solar one place could provide 3 pm peak somewhere else.
Rob,
3 PM Eastern time is 12 noon Pacific. But 3 PM central time is 12 noon out in the Pacific. Yes, some shifting could get done. But that'd be a lot easier to do in Asia than in the United States.
I agree with Bulldog about the need for a huge battery research push.
We also need electric pricing that varies throughout each day and even dynamic pricing that varies based on demand and supply. Both industry and home users could find many ways to shift demand around if they had an economic incentive to do so.
A lot of the afternoon-peak phenomenon occurs because of air conditioning loads. It's probably simpler to make ice in the morning and use that for the peak A/C load instead, or dump the morning's excess generation to plug-in hybrids.
E-P,
I don't see a difference between what you said and "Both industry and home users could find many ways to shift demand around if they had an economic incentive to do so."
If the battery technology exists for cars, presumably it will exist for shifting load from one period to another. Why increase the size of the batteries for my car to accomodate my air-conditioning when I can find a space the size of my car or even larger in my basement or buried under my backyard for nothing but batteries.
Think of how much better off we would all be after a natural disaster. "An ice storm knocks out electricity transmission for two weeks? No problem! Turn off a few more lights, use the clotheline a little more, and I got that covered with the batteries in the backyard with enough left over to sell a little to a neighbour in an emergency."
The engineering constraints on car batteries are a lot tougher than on home batteries. In cars volume, weight, and ability to handle vibrations all matter much more than with home batteries.
On the other hand, if batteries become cheap enough to operate cars then car electricity would be available for houses when needed in a pinch.
But home batteries will not make economic sense until either photovoltaics become much cheaper or grid power costs vary a lot at different times of the day and night. Plus, batteries have to become much cheaper as well.
So we get back the basics: Big advances in battery technology would be great. Ditto for big advances in photovoltaics.
A battery in a car is providing a much higher-valued function (displacing motor fuel at an effective 40¢/kWh or more) than a battery in a basement. It's also going to have a rather high discharge rate, and perhaps also a high charge rate.
It makes no sense to make a bigger battery for the car because of the A/C, but it does make sense to add more solar capacity if it is guaranteed to be creating value both afternoon and morning. It may make little sense to add solar if the cost of purchased power is only greater than the cost of solar from the hours of 3 to 7; OTOH, if the morning's production can displace motor fuel (40¢/kWh at the wheels) with solar (30¢ or so) that solar just got a whole lot more attractive.
Good ideas in these blogs, yes we have global warming and should be doing something about it. BUT, have we got the cart before the horse, there are studies that show that WARMING PRECEEDES CO2 increases (Kuo et al and H Metzner) with data going back millenia. There are plenty of studies showing that Solar Activity, not just sunspots, is now at the highest for a thousand years, and the Sun does have a direct effect on cloud cover and greenhouse effect. If you look closely at the figures of the "warming our fault" brigade many of them exclude Water Vapour from Global Warming gases, It comprises 95% of Greenhouse Effect and non human natural activity comprises 4.72% leaving just 0.28% with us to blame. With a quarter of one percent or so to save, just how much of income are we prepared to pay to save CO2 emmissions ? Global Climate Models exclude the Sun's Ultraviolet Radiation influence on heating and circulation system of the Troposphere, "because it is "too complex" for heavens sake! Other GCMs don't include water vapour , assuming it is constant, which it certainly isn't See 'Soon et al'for Coronal Hole area and Troposphere temperature, Astronomical forcings of change to the earths climate, and Svensmark Effect.Landscheit shows how Suns motions and activity can be predicted, look out for a cold 2030 and after!.
One of the problems with home generation systems is that most urban households lack the technical savvy to maintain their own power systems. A lot of people underestimate the amount of learning and adjustment required to coexist with a home energy system. Advanced fuel cell systems may change all that, becoming as reliable and as "hands off" as a central heating/air system. Solar systems are not that trouble-free for homeowners, unless it is a grid intertie system without on-site storage. Grid-intertie without local storage only makes sense if the utility provides reasonable compensation for site generated power, which is not yet common.
Most people don't have the technical savvy to maintain their own gas furnaces; they call for maintenance on the schedule or when something breaks down.
People like Julian Braggins always leave me wondering whether to be amused or disgusted. They've bought into the "sunspots" propaganda without bothering to look at it. Anyone who takes a look at historical records of sunspot counts (available in hundreds of places on the web; here's one) will see that sunspot activity is lower than it was in the 80's and 90's, and well below the recent peak in the 50's. If the solar-activity theory held any water, the earth would be cooling.
On this debate about the role of solar output see my previous posts "Sun Energy Output At Over 1,000 Year Peak" and "Sun Shines At 8000 Year Peak Of Brightness" and "Variations In Solar Output Play Role In Climate Trends" and "Variations In Sun's Magnetic Field Influence Climate Trends?".
You missed the point, epee`. As I said, until home energy systems reach the level of reliability of a central home heating or cooling unit (think furnace etc.), they will not be practical for most urban dwellers. Current home energy systems require a great deal of accomodation and familiarity on the part of the user. Installing an all-solar off grid system in hot humid environments, for instance, is not generally practical. Doing the same thing on the dry side of the Colorado Rockies is extremely practical, if the homeowner is savvy and accomodating (or rich enough to go long on the panels and storage).
Randall, your views on global warming are singularly enlightened. They are one reason I am attracted to this blog. That and your enlightened views on human diversity and genetics.
Marvin,
I have always wondered what the reliability level is for the typical home solar collector system. I'd expect reliability to be lower in areas where wind can blow hard. I have been thinking about that while watching the hurricanes hit (and I've also been thinking "why the heck do the rest of us have to subsidize people who choose to live in harm's way for their own luxury?" but I digress).
So (to anyone who knows the answers) what is the MTBF for off-grid totally self-contained solar systems with lots of batteries? How often do the batteries have to be replaced? How often do the electronics components for generating AC current, regulating, and so on fail? Also, how often do rain and wind cause damage to solar collectors? At what rate does photovoltaic collector output drop? Are collectors covered by glass or plastic? If plastic then sun is going to wear out the plastic and make it cloudy.
What percentage of total costs is initial installation versus on-going maintenance?
Also, when a house needs to get a new roof don't they have to pull off all the solar collectors and then put them on again?
Again, I do not know the answer to all these questions but would like to.
One problem I think with solar is that our energy needs are going to keep growing. So even if we can in get solar panels in the future able to handle today's energy needs, our energy needs in the future could be a lot higher. Having said that if you can make solar panels that you just paint on roof tiles or maybe even cars you might as well.
Meanwhile other technologies like nuclear are going to keep declining in cost per megawatt as well. That imo was the biggest problem with the last time the world put in a lot of nuclear power is the capital costs were huge. They seemed way more then other forms of electricity production and that was during a time when capital was expensive.
Meanwhile from what I've seen today nuclear is actually nearing the coal and gas costs of installation, but then no operating costs. In a time where inflation is 3% and interest rates are maybe 5% you want to put in the most capital intensive equipment.
I think its entirely possible that by 2035 we could see nuclear again dramatically come down in price per megawatt produced. So solar of the future or whatever technology will have to be competing against that. And on a much larger scale then today, especially in developing world.
Thank you Randall,
you did read my post correctly,about Solar Holes and Activity,as opposed to Engineer-Poet,who only considered Sunspots, (who is right about technical savvy for maintaining alt energy systems). I know someone who is very technically able who has spent tens of thousands over the last few years on solar, has dedicated battery rooms with ex submarine cells, inverters for 10,000 watts, can tell you exactly on the property where a fox is, and see it with night vision, but is still on the grid and has a power bill nearly the same as mine !
There are systems coming on line that have Tech. support, Pyramid power pack, (solar, battery diesel in one unit) Lutec, super efficient perm. magnet generator, but it takes time for new stuff to become general, even with big corporation backing, in the meantime, pump the tires up, drive slower, and think ahead ! Julian Braggins
re Julian's comment that warming has preceded CO2 increase in the past - this sounds like more reason to be concerned, not less, about global warming since ongoing releases of CO2(and Methane) stored in tundra, forest humus and other natural stores are expected due to warmer temperatures, which will lead to even more warming. The science underlying the greenhouse gases/global warming link seems to be very sound and the sun's activity is not something that's overlooked, just that the sun's activity doesn't appear to explain the recent spike in global average temperature Whatever natural forcings are at work, the manmade component appears very real and can add to and take us beyond the natural fluctuations we would have to cope with.
Ken
Climate models leave far too many unknowns, for climate theories to be allowed to hijack the international economies of the world.
Reading Ken's comment above, it should be clear that climatologists are wallowing in ignorance regarding climate trends. They have no clue as to what triggered the great climate cycles of the past. All they can say is, "whatever causes natural fluctuations in climate, we know that the human component is adding to the fluctuation. Indeed. What if the human component is helping to prevent a new ice age? Conventional wisdom among mainstream politicized climatologists is that human caused global warming may either trigger ruinous warming or trigger an ice age. One must wonder how all the other warmings and ice ages were triggered, without the human component? Is the human component 10% of the current rise in CO2? 1%? 0.0001%? No one knows. But whatever it is, it absolutely must make the fluctuations worse. Take it on faith. Base your vote on it. Rally, protest, donate to the cause. Join your brothers in the cause.
Yes Ken, we should be very concerned. I'm not sure I explained my point very well. If we use our recources to cut down on Greenhouse Gases produced by fossil fuels, our total reduction of warming would be in the region of a fraction of one percent. If for instance,we do more research on the oceans and can get some concensus on large scale iron doping to increase biological growth, the reduction in CO2 is potentially huge, for a minimal investment, compared with CO2 sequestration at power plants, which can be half the cost of the fuel.
The trials done in the early 90's seemed successful and locked up many times the weight of the iron ore dust used in CO2,up to 100 times I recall, the pioneer of the idea said he could bring on a new ice age with a few supertankers. Unfortunately he died, and the fears of changing the marine environment by the fish huggers ended further work. It could be that our taking so much biomass from the ocean, and it seems iron in particular, has reduced its capacity to absorb surplus CO2 as it did in the past ages when CO2 was many times what it is now or predicted to be.
A lot more can be done to grow forests where they used to be, and is now desert, or in the melting tundra, but these large scale projects have to be National and International, and the science for them is not likely to be from private funds. A regulated capitalist system seems the best of both worlds, but the present Western Systems seem to be biased towards the multinationals and profits, with little regard for the Big Picture. I don't belittle environmentalists, only small focussed ones, get the Problem defined, and its not just manmade GG's, do the research on proposed solutions, get governments to sponser actions, and get it done by private enterprise. Julian Braggins
Julian Braggins,
Several iron seeding trials have been conducted. They did not all work well. If memory serves the last big one down into the southern Pacific funded by US NSF in particular did not get such great results. About a year ago I saw a lady prof from Scripps lecture on this on the University of California cable channel. She outlined all the expeditions and what their results were. She discussed problems with currents and how perhaps some of the iron was pulled down too quickly to do much. She goes off the coast of California and conducts smaller scale trials trying to better understand surface current flows and algae growth.
Anyway, I do not still by the argument that iron seeding will necessarily be cheaper. Maybe. Maybe not.
The same organizations and people I see trying to push socialism try to push the global warming theory. To control people you have to make them afraid. Of crime or a rival nation, or really as many things as you can. Few except die hard communists are going to want wide scale government intervention in the fuel they use in their cars for example. Look at the incredible taxes Europeans are paying for gasoline, making prices go up to over 7 dollars a gallon. That really hurts the standard of living. But the only way they can justify the confiscatory taxes is claiming to use it as a way to deter greenhouse gasses. Making people afraid of the world ending in a fiery inferno.
Its similiar to the war on drugs all over the world. You dont' just tell people they have a 10% chance of becoming addicts if they use the drug socially. You take the worst case example and show hideous pictures, and stop anyone who questions your party line, to justify the huge expenditures in policing, jailing, organized crime, loss of property rights and so on, that goes with a war on drugs. You have to make the average person very afraid of drugs to justify taking away a large amount of that person's money and freedom.
I increasingly believe the hysteria of infectious diseases is just fear mongering by pretty much the same people, in a desperate attempt to save their communist style healthcare. Make people fear disease as a way to justify putting the whole population under state healthcare as in Canada.
Btw perfect example of a person who uses the global warming theory to justify increased government interference and taxation: The ex-communist party member Tony Blair right from this article.
Love the comment about Tony Blair, AA2, great orator with it too!
The more I read about the late Dr Landscheidt ( apologies for previous spelling of his name) and his climate theories, backed up by his long term forecasting, the more I think we are being taken for a ride on man made global warming. His most telling remark was that the GCM's are based on the same non linear differential equations that brought up the "butterfly effect" that showed that long range weather predictions are impossible because of the atmosphere's extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.
His predictions are cyclic, borne out by past data of history, ice cores,sediment deposits, they are not regular timings but interactions of several cycles, and are caused by the total output of the sun,( the visual and infra red, ultra violet being only part of the picture). Examine the Temperature Data thrown around to support the Global Warming worriers, coastal Alaska warming ? yes, coinciding with a cyclic warm ocean current from the Pacific. Inland, no, like continental Antarctica, it's cooling. More Hurricanes in the Atlantic?, I looked up the year of my birth, 21 Hurricanes and Tropical storms, and a dozen or more each year around then. Individuals blogging their temperatures in Canada find their own readings 2-4 degrees below the official ones at airports, could't be acres of tarmac and a few little jet engines eh? leading up to the minimum around 2030, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation will be negative to around 2016 with La Nina's being more frequent and stronger which are both indicative of cooling. Look for cooler conditions as early as next year, but historically, cold periods in Europe ,at least, caused more widespread storms than warmer spells, so build up the levees or head for higher ground !
AA2 writes:
The same organizations and people I see trying to push socialism try to push the global warming theory.No, they're pushing the Kyoto treaty (the means) which they see as a means of weakening the USA relative to the world (the end). A uniform carbon tax would not have this effect.
The facts behind global warming are rather simple: man-made greenhouse gases are increasing the IR-trapping capacity of the atmosphere, increasing the radiative forcing of global temperatures. The solar variability argument does nothing to address the data which confirm an independent forcing from CO2, CH4, SF6 and the like; the earth may deal with increases in the solar constant by weathering rocks to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, and we are defeating this mechanism.
There is also the fossil record which associates the Permian mass extinction with a ~10°C rise in global temperatures. This is not something I'd care to test, and I doubt that the public would wish to either. Pity they aren't being asked.
Arctic sea ice is going, and the Siberian permafrost looks to be letting go of enormous amounts of methane as it thaws. This may soon become a runaway phenomenon, unstoppable short of blocking sunlight from hitting the Earth.
And braggins writes:
His most telling remark was that the GCM's are based on the same non linear differential equations that brought up the "butterfly effect" that showed that long range weather predictions are impossible because of the atmosphere's extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.That sounds like bullshit. Even if a system has the characteristics of a chaotic attractor (with a specific state which cannot be predicted accurately for very far in advance), it does not mean that the attractor itself cannot be characterized. Knowing what kind of weather you're going to have is one thing, knowing exactly what day of the week you're going to get it is quite another.
Thanks for the links to solar output being at peak levels, RP. As I understand it, the general circulation models are helpless in dealling with solar variation. I guess that lets the pseudopods off the hook for their wild predictions. If solar output is peaking, you'd just have to expect melting of arctic sea ice and permafrost thawing. The sun is probably going to cool down quickly, though. Once that happens it's gonna be maybe ten years before things get really cold. Braggins may be right about getting control of c02 somehow. If we can raise or lower c02 levels at will we might be able to blunt the next glaciation. Trouble is we still don't know how to do that. They still don't know nothing about climate after all.
E-P,
But a carbon tax is just a way to implement Kyoto.
Even if you accept that global warming is a problem the point Blair is making is that majorities are not going to vote for politicians who make them pay higher prices and experience slower economic growth in the short run. I've been making this argument for years now.
I favor acceleration of energy technology development with government funding in part because of popular opposition to higher prices. Granted, higher prices would both provide an incentive for more energy R&D in industry and reduce consumption. But higher prices due to tax increases are not going to happen. Even Europe's higher prices due to taxes are not enough to prevent consumption growth. Taxes would have to put gasoline at probably $6 per gallon or higher in order to meet the Kyoto emissions goals. Not going to happen.
I think it would be far easier to get a US President to support Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley's call for $10 billion a year additional for energy research than to impose huge taxes in the short run. I also think the money, aimed at nuclear, solar, and batteries, would do the trick in 10 or 20 years time. The money spent would pay itself back just in lower energy prices, more efficient technologies, and cleaner air at ground level.
Bulldog,
In the longer run we'll get cheaper access to space and go put up satellites that will either deflect light away from Earth or reflect light toward it to adjust for the Sun's output. 50 or 100 years ago, assuming the robots or nanotech goo don't take over, we'll be able to large scale climate engineering. Though that'll be hugely difficult politically since every engineered climate change will produce winners and losers.
For readers with a science background, http://www.climatechangeissues.com/files/PDF/conf05mckitrick.pdf this link will take you to a very interesting discussion of the "hockey stick phenomenon," which is the primary "proof" that recent warming is due to human activity. Those without science backgrounds are unfortunately left in the awkward position of being forced to choose someone to believe.
See here too, Sensei. ">http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm (For the lazy among us, a clickable link to Sensei's recommended PDF document.)
But a carbon tax is just a way to implement Kyoto.Not so. Kyoto has per-nation quotas for carbon emissions and an international wealth-transfer scheme as part of its tradeable credits, and also exempts many nations entirely. A uniform carbon tax (each nation levies its own and collects and retains its own taxes)
A $100/ton tax on CO2 would come to about $1.00/gallon on gasoline and $370/ton on coal. Total annual revenue over 1.12 billion tons of coal and 20 million bbl/day of crude oil would be ~720 billion/year; rebated as a refundable payroll tax exemption over ~180 million wage earners it would come to about $4000/earner/year. Electricity from coal-fired steam plants would cost about another 15¢/kWh, from IGCC powerplants at 40% efficiency it would be another 12.6¢/kWh. Wind, solar and nuclear would cost the same. The average car driven perhaps 15,000 miles/year at 25 MPG would pay another $600, the average house using 1 kW average would pay as much as $1300 more per year in electric bills - way, way ahead. The inefficient Chinese and Indian economies would become much less competitive, and oil economies everywhere would start dying.
We'd be killers under such a regime. That's one reason why the carbon tax went nowhere internationally (as opposed to domestically); it plays to American strengths.
BTW, here's the NOAA list of greenhouse forcings by gas from 1980 to 2004.
E-P,
But to implement such a tax would require a worldwide treaty of the vast bulk of the world's nations. That has about a snowball's chance in hell.
Also, the treaty would be complicated. The tax would have to change from year to year depending on how much fossil fuel production declined. As fossil fuel production declined other taxes would have to be reinstituted to make up for the revenue loss.
There would be wealth transfers within nations though. Picture Congress faced with demagogues for poor people complaining about winter heating bills and transportation costs. That alone would prevent the treaty from being ratified in the first place.
The link to Climate Change Issues posted by Sensai Has enough scientific papers that prove that the 20th Century Climate is not remarkable, and that the whole basis for the current anthropogenic warming is flawed. If you read them, you will sleep better, and concentrate more on the answer to reliance on cheap oil, the real problem.
Depolymerization is working at a pilot plant. China is building large 'oil from coal' plants. There is a small community low temperature 'nuclear plant' unmanned, working in Alaska,, supplied by a Japanese company on a subsidised trial basis, even our short term policy polititions in Australia are finally going to mandate 10% ethanol in fuels shortly.
The 'Coming Ice Age' predicted in the 60's didn't materialise, neither will the catastrophic Global Warming, do the research. Thats my lot, goodbye, Julian