engineers who dont understand economics are a nuisance.

Lets say we want petrochemical X out of oil. Today we get refine the oil, get petrochemical X, and also get gasoline. If gasoline becomes a waste product, then at current prices for petrochemical X its no longer worthwhile to produce, transport and refine the oil just to get petrochemical X. Ergo the price for petrochemical X MUST increase. SOME uses of petrochemical X will cease to be viable at higher prices - either others substances will be substituted, end products will be modified, or end roducts will become more expensive and be consumed less.

The free market will respond to price, one way or the other - whether its an oil price increase driven by scarcity, or a carbon tax.

"Even at the most optimistic estimates, conservation doesn't actually reduce our consumption of oil. It just reduces the rate at which we increase our consumption of it."

which is what matters from a global warming standpoint. Reduce the GHG emissions toward a sustainable amount.

Actually, Steven makes exactly the same point, I just didn't cite it. One way or another, the cost of refining out the gasoline will be absorbed by consumers even if magically the demand for gasoline dropped to zero.

Good but

There are no alternatives available to us for the forseeable future which satisfy all five of those requirements, which is why we won't stop depending primarily on coal and oil for energy for a very long time (decades).

True, but I don't think that this is the point today.

You know, in the 19th century coal was the widest used energy source. Today is the second or third. I don't see new energy sources replacing oil, but making us less dependant on it.

For any energy source to be a plausible alternative to hydrocarbons, it has to be huge, reliable, highly concentrated, able to be utilized efficiently, and it has to be possible to utilize it without an unreasonable capital investment[...]

That's nuclear.

Even if fusion ever works

It works. Sooner or later we humans will tame plasma, and it will be wonderful.

the capital expense will make it unreasonable as a practical matter.

Who knows. Today's computers were not unreasonable but unthinkable in the early 1950's. It is probable that a breakthrough in superconductors reduce the cost of magnetic confinement fussion reactors. New thermonuclear reactions producing protons instead of neutrons might simplify the process of generating electricity...

There is enough energy for everyone if investment is carried out in the right places.

BTW the glass is filled at 50% of its capacity.

Uh, electrical storage is possible and desireable. If it was economical we could double our electrical transmission capacity without installing any more transmission lines.

In fact as a retired aerospace engineer (aircraft electrical systems) I have some ideas. Economic and profitable. Sadly, despite repeating this for at least two years, no one has contacted me. Should this time be different my e-mail address can be found on the sidebar at http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/ .

At this time I have no answer for the vehicle problem.

Oil refining yields certain proportions of each product, and they all emerge simultaneously in ratios which can to some extent be adjusted but not to the extent that many think.

AFAIK true, for a given facility.

Chemical engineers may not know much about economics, but they have invented these processes
for converting oil fractions.

Therefore you can change gasoline into aromatics, heavy fuel into gasoline, nafta into gasoline, etc. Of course, you need to carry out an important investment in reactors, catalysers and all that stuff, that is, the production cannot be neither easily not rapidly switched, but it can really be changed for great variations in the market.

Have a little faith in technology, please. Don't you remember the Ozone hole?

The glass has reserve capacity to respond to surges. Kind of like our electrical grid.

BTW SDB is/was a software engineer. He is very techincally savy, but gets the occasional physical detail wrong.

As to the scaling problem: the system we have today was built in a period of 50 to 75 years, starting from near zero. If we build the next system that way transition and scaling will not be a problem.

It also means that we will not know much about what the next system will look like since it will be responsible for very little energy output at this time.

In the 1880s coal gas was big for illumination. Electricity was too local and the energy to light conversion ratio was very low.

BTW the best production solar voltaics currently convert 15 to 20% of incoming radiation to electricity. And from a transition standpoint the energy produced is well matched to air conditioning loads. Places that are demand metered can use the current solar cells profitably to reduce peak loads.

Interestingly wind energy peaks in the winter when we would rather use natural gas for heating.

So we already have two transitional forms in operation.

Another nail in the 2%, think of the amount of manpower needed to erect such a system, not to mention to maintain it. The cost of which would make it unbearable.

The economics of current technological systems make them unviable for the forseeable future. Yeah its nice to have a discussion about it, but putting it into practice in a workable manner is something else.

Also, given the NIMBY attitude of even staunch 'renewable energy' propoents (aka the Kennedy Clan), no one can name a state that would want this stuff in its backyard.

people talk about the capital costs of alts, but neglect the capital costs of finding and developing new oil fields.

And let us applaud that the first new nuclear-power plant in, what, 30 years? - has been approved for the American southwest, New Mexico, I think. Better for it to be built in the northeast, but let us not scorn progress wherever found.

A nuclear enrichment plant has been approved in New Mexico, after it became apparent Hartsville, Tennessee didn't want it. (gentle poke to the author)

There are three nuclear power plants that are going through the permitting, one about an hour from me in Clinton, Illinois. I don't know enough about the other two (I believe in Virginia and Louisiana), but Clinton might be unique in that the plant had just finished the first reactor, laid the foundation for the second, when three-mile island struck and the plant was required to go back and make extremely expensive retrofits. Its the abandoned second reactor that they are now trying to get permits to build.

Two observations:

The politics are not what the used to be. More supporters of the plant showed up than opponents at last year's hearings. The community wants the jobs and are not going NIMBY on something already in their backyard. The pro-nuke side is well organized and wants the precedent of an efficient permitting process. Sen. Obama came to one of the hearings and said that we have to keep nuclear energy on the table.

Even if permitted, the plant may not be built. The permits give a 20 year window to build and the company has been coy about whether it will build. I think this is partly to put pressure on the government to keep the permitting process efficient. I think its also keeping options open in case energy costs go down (or don't rise as expected).

Interestingly, the area required for 10% efficient PV just about equals the area currently used for roofs, roads, and other human structures. Since 20% efficient PV is already available, putting PV on roofs and roads would just about meet US electrical demand. I noticed that the above article gave no real arguement that wind power is impractical (tell GE that their $2 billion a year business is not "credible {confession, I own GE stock}). Again, economic US wind resources would easily replace all US electrical consumption (see NREL studies, etc.). The current cost of Iraq war could have replaced 50% of US electrical generation with wind power and that expenditure has not bankrupted us (yet).
WASHINGTON - If all the highways, streets, buildings, parking lots and other solid structures in the 48 contiguous United States were pieced together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, they would almost cover the state of Ohio. That is the result of a study by Christopher Elvidge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who along with colleagues from several universities and agencies produced the first national map and inventory of impervious surface areas (ISA) in the United States.
As calculated by the researchers, the total impervious surface area of the 48 states and District of Columbia is approximately 112,610 square kilometers [43,480 square miles], and, for comparison, the total area of the state of Ohio is 116,534 square kilometers [44,994 square miles].

Gabriel,

You have a striking lack of transitional thinking. You have what i would call big-bang thinking. Very vast and fast transitions.

Suppose you thought of the solar panels as roofing material. Changes the equation re:labor.

#11 Tom,

Excellent.

My position: I'm a near term pesimist about alternative energy (i.e. niche only) and a long term optimist (we will do better over time).

Interesting article. Kennedy types "kill you" in all states. In reality, it is already well known that the U.S. Continental shelf has as much in potential oil reserves as have already been produced in the U.S.A.

The problem with getting it produced is Political. More "Flaky Kennedy" types in Florida, California, etc. (There are Republican enviro-nuts also, but they are very rare).

What political solutions do Democrats propose for global warming?

Besides massive taxes on gasoline?

For decades they've been blocking the only workable energy solution. They've been demogoguing solar and wind energy, which are attractive to them precisely because mass reliance on them is a total pipe dream. If the problem could be solved, they would no longer be able to exploit it politically.

For years they pushed ethanol, trying to convince farmers that it would make them all as rich as Arab oil ticks.

In fact, given the D's so-called energy policies for the last 30 years, somebody explain to me why this isn't all their fault. Maybe we should turn the Kennedy School of Government into a wind farm, if that's not redundant.

As I recall, SDB' objections to solar were:

1. size of collectors needed (and possible albedo effects causing climate problems)
2. intermittent nature of solar and storage problems

Since we seem to be getting closer via nano-tech to a space elevator, perhaps we could build some orbiting collectors in space (always in the sun w/o atmospheric interference) that could microwave collected energy (again no atmosphere to interfere with transmission) to stations at the end of space elevator ribbons that serve as transmission lines to the earth's grid?

The orbiting collectors could be photovoltaic or generate power by focusing heat for steam generators.

As I understand from reading the professor (Glenn Reynolds) the space elevator/station is kinda like a small weight on a string attached to a spinning ball so as to remain geo-stationary.

If any of this works out, I would just like enough of a pension to go hiking and fishing for the rest of my life.

Glenn W.,

Actually within the next decade or so (as wind turbines get larger) the price of wind electricity will go below that of nuke or coal. Every doubling of wind turbine size reduces the electrical cost by 1/3. This BTW is the same scaling factor found in coal fired plants from about 1890 to 1950. For the same reason. Economies of scale and the ability of materials to support more KW per lb as facilities get larger. A 2KW transformer does not require 2X the amount of copper and steel that a 1 KW transformer needs. In addition the 2 KW job will probably be fractionally more efficient despite less material per KW.

#16,

Focusing light from space is not practical. Because of the wavelengths involved you run inot focal length limits (about 50 to 100 times the mirror diameter). At 22,500 miles above earth you would need a mirror 225 miles across accurate to 1/4 wavelength of light or better. We have no idea at this time how to produce such an object. Which is why conversion to microwaves is suggested.

Long term I think we will see solar and wind along with storage that is economical over a 24 or 48 hour period (we can do that with current technology) extending over time to seasonal storage (three to six months).

It's important to distinguish between energy for electrical power and energy for transportation. Very little oil is used for power generation; something like 3% of electricity is oil-derived. Probably most of those here are already aware of this point, but many people seem surprised by it.

Several good points are made although the author is far too gloomy.

The use of fossil fuel is not a supply problem or an environmental problem. It is an economic and political problem.

Simply stated: fossil fuels require importers (we are the biggest) to protect their sources. So will manufactured fuels such as ethanol to the extent they are imported.

Anyone who looks at the world today can see how many problems this causes.

Solar and nuclear are the way out. Add fusion if it can be done and compete on price.

Solar and/or nuclear can work almost anywhere. Huge tracts of well watered land, square miles of port and refinery facilites, oil tankers, and pipelines are not needed. And there is no reason for nations to scrap about the others resources or behavior.

When we stop thinking 'fossil' and 'carbon' only technical challenges face us. The impossible politics of land use for biomass and strip mining, of foreign supplies, and of greenhouse gas production depart.

It would seem hideously expensive at first. But how does our future look using carbon?

The objection that nuclear equals weapons is not valid. Numerous nations have nuclear weapone. Many more can easily create them. So how does more power generation make things worse?

I've never thought of solar as something that would be a mass production type of facility - although solar voltaic might be. For 20 years I have looked at solar as simply an energy reduction aid, not an energy replacement - hot water heaters, winter heat, etc. Most homes (at least those rooftops between a southeast to northwest face) can use solar for adjunct heating. While it's doesn't sound exciting (you can't really see it) it does help. Downside is that the payoff for the homeowner takes a while. And since we're so mobile now, most folks don't think of it as a plus - only a complication when it comes to selling the house.
By the way DS, great post. I always learn something here I didn't know. Thanks.

#17 M Simon,

Not talking about focusing the light from space to earth, more like:

The hydrogen is produced by large solar plants built in the desert, which use mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a central generation plant which disassociates water into hydrogen and oxygen.
From SDB

#21 jdwill,

About 1/2 the energy from electical disassociation goes into the production of oxygen which has aproximately zero value as an energy source. It does have some commercial value. Not near enough to make up for the 50% losses.

This makes such hydrogen generators uneconomical.

If the method used is thermal disassociation the energy balance is worse. Plus you have the problem of separating H2 from O2. Plus you have the explosion potential. Then the gasses need to be cooled. Then compressed (more cooling required and more energy lost).

BTW I read the SDB article. He says your idea isn't practical. I agree with him.

K,
I don't know if I have your last question right but I don't think of the nuclear power issue as weapons related. Nuke plants, of course, don't use weapons grade plutonium. The problem with nuclear power, aside from the Three Mile Island fiasco, is waste. Where do we put the stuff that wears out - though it still has a toxic half-life of 200,000 years or more?
I think the NRC has done a decent job of improving the safety issues but nuke plants have gone up in price tremendously because of that. So nuclear is semi-economical - but still a problem. What do we do with this stuff now? If we can figure that out, it might be a lot more attractive. Currently we are just leaving it to the next generation to fix. I hope they can.

I tend to agree with SDB also, and I am no engineer, but I don't think you are correctly reading what I said originally. I have no problem if you want to say that won't work, but you are saying that something different from what I described won't work. Which is fine, but at least take another look at #16 and tell me what you think of that.

#12:

I'd rather have my own Sterling Solar Engine and just power my own home with it and take the house off the grid completely. I would still probably have to buy big ass batteries as well, and that creates yet another problem.

As for homeowners roofs, I'm not sure that local zoning would allow for it, but that could change. Still, there is maintenance, and access issues involved with using private residences as a source of power generation.

So while we may have the roof capacity for such a project, the costs are still there. And lets face it, most guys hate mowing the lawn, do you really think they are going to maintained their solar roof?

As an aside, why no talk of geothermal?

Actually within the next decade or so (as wind turbines get larger) the price of wind electricity will go below that of nuke or coal.

The cost is barely the issue; the enormous infrastructure and bulk of wind and solar is. Making it even bigger is not the reassurance we're looking for.

All that stuff has significant environmental impact. If the left ever got their way with wind and solar, they'd promptly forget that they asked for it and start telling everybody that it was a Republican plot to destroy the earth all along. At least until the first winter, after which they'd all freeze to death.

Col. Sensing,

Far, far, far too defeatist.

First, if I recall from the film - go see it! there were quite a number of things that could be done NOW, that do not rely on any "hard problems".

Second, it IS a moral issue. Up to 100 million people live in areas that will be swamped, if something isn't changed. Can you imagine that displacement challenge?

Third, Gore has seen the facts of the situation have been confirmed, more and more, for the last 30 years he has paid attention to this (this, as with so much else, Gore has been right. Be it one of the leaders in allocating funding for the modern internet, the labeling of rock lyrics by his wife, his vote in FAVOR of Gulf War I, his alliance with Clinton in producing the 1st budget surplus in - what - 50 years?, his outspokenness AGAINST this Iraq War. It is a tragedy, that this guy, who probably has been more correct than any other political guy in the last 30 years, can't be elected because of an irritating speaking style.)

Fourth, he still insinuates that there is a "small minority" who believe that there are two sides to this.

That is clearly false, and shows that his engaging in techno-hackery, not sound policy.

#23. Your view is widely held. It is not my view. I do not believe there is a nuclear waste problem. There is a political problem with nuclear waste.

Nothing will ever be good enough.

Again. Nothing can ever be good enough.

A mindset that some will maintain forever.

Yucca Mountain will do the job and it would have done the job fine if it had been built for half the cost. But we may never use it.

We have moved atomic and hydrogen bombs all around the earth for 50 years. But politically we cannot get low level waste on rail cars that have been designed, built, and tested over 30 years at the cost of millions, perhaps billions.

The uranium and plutonium that France, China, and Japan move around the world in quantity for their plants seems to arrive safely. And where does their waste go? It goes into carefully designed storage just like ours should.

Good storage isn't cheap. But we do know how and there are many good sites. There is also progress in reducing the volume drastically.

there were quite a number of things that could be done NOW, that do not rely on any "hard problems".

Uh huh. Gas taxes that will grind rural and poor Americans right into the dirt, and when that fails to reduce use to Kyoto levels, rationing.

Already I can feel the electorate getting cooler.

And of course, continued opposition to nuclear power and ANWAR. Same stuff they were against in 1970, when a new Ice Age was right around the corner.

But let's look at Gore's "Global Marshall Plan" in toto:

1. Stabilizing of world population
2. The rapid development of environmentally appropriate technologies
3. A comprehensive change in the economic “rules of the road” by which we measure the impact of our decisions on the environment
4. Negotiation & approval of a new generation of international agreements
5. A cooperative plan for educating the world’s citizens about our global environment.

I can summarize that one sentence: Journey to the Emerald City and ask the wizard for help. In fact, the Emerald City might be an appropriate symbol for Gore's twisted dream of a Green Theocracy.

#26 Glenn,

What exactly do you mean by bulk.

Currently the best place for wind turbines is farm country where they take up about 1/2% of the farmed area and provide the farmer with an income of about $2,000 a year per turbine. If the 1/2% is the kind of bulk you are speaking of, it is not significant.

Another way of thinking of bulk is to turn the idea on its head and think "distributed". This reduces the attractiveness of a single point attack.

What exactly is the big environmental impact of wind turbines in MW size? 1 - 2 bird kills a year? Tall buildings are worse. Cats are much worse.

BTW Glenn, utilities are rushing into wind these days because they understand learning curves. Investment brings operating capability and lowers costs.

I do agree with you. Everthing you say is true. At least it was 20 years ago. Not any more.

As to enormus infrastructure. The build out will not be done in one year or even ten. More like 20 or 30 years.

jd,

The space elevator is a long way from practicality. The ribbon used has to be able to produce a strength that is something like 95% to 99% of the ultimate strength of the best material for such use known to man. Carbon fibers. Currently the available strength is on the order of 1 to 2% of ultimate. Not even close.

Thermal plants (steam generators) have serious issues when the gravity available is small. Condensers depend on gravity for the separation of condensate from vapor.

As to royalties from your ideas: the devil is in the details. I'd say your engineering background is inadequate for a defendable patent.

The problem with geothermal is location. The best spots are at the edges of continental plates. Where water is underground and hot. Such water tends to be very corrosive (sulphides mainly). We currently do not know how to fracture large volumes of underground rock to get the heat transfer capability required. So if you don't already have geysers a site is not promising.

The sterling engine has low thermal efficiency because the source and sink are not well separated (see the regenerator section of the engine). Plus unless you can run such an engine totally sealed, you have a maintenance problem. Think of your automobile whose engine is designed to run 2,000 to 3,000 hours. Then consider that there are about 3,000 to 4,000 hours of useable daylight in a year.

Solar voltaics have comparable efficiency and are very low maintenance. Plus you do not need a tracking collector and all the problems that entails. Wind for instance.

I think the points Donald makes are very relevant and I have been making them here for a number of years. We are going to be an oil (fossil fuel) dependent economy for many decades to come. At least for transportation.

#28,

Quite correct. An operatining nuke plant has a low enough radiation signature after 10 days that operators can do maintenance in the reactor room. It is not near the long term hazard that detractors make it out to be as long as the stuff can be sealed away for about 100 years.

Plutonium proliferation is a significant problem though.

In addition uranium is not a renewable resource.

I'm a former Naval Nuke so I do understand the technical issues. In case any one was wondering.

#30 Glenn,

Issue #1 is not an issue. Population growth is slowing due to economics (rich - relatively - people would rather spend their money on vacations than kids). The transition point is about $3K to $4k per capita. By 2100 population will be declining.

As to the other points you make you are right (without sarcasm). A visit with the man behind the curtain is in order.

All the things Gore wants will come to pass. Just not in the time frame he envisions.

Excellent and very timely piece Don. And I am delighted to see the denBeste energy reality check roll in.

That said there dozens, indeed hundreds, of ways to reduce consuption which has the same economic effect as increasing supply. Just a couple: single home wind, geothermal and solar passive design. These three well understood techniques can take a home's energy consumption down by 40-60%.

In transportation how about reducing the weight of cars by, say, 60%. Take a look at http://www.thesmart.ca/index.cfm?ID=4720 (Not available in the US...yet). Replace commuter jets with commuter rail. Take a serious look at improving engine performance in IC cars and at supplementing it with flywheel energy recapture.

None of this is the magic bullet. But it is an incremental process for reducing energy consumption.

And here is the best part: it requires no governmental regulation at all. Just steady $70-$100 a barrel oil. A couple of years of that will create real market demand for more efficient home and transportation energy solutions.

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.

Kyoto-style 'international' agreements are a trade war (Europe vs. America) disguised as a moral crusade. Gore is crusading for the other side.

I haven't seen the movie, for the same reason I didn't see Michael Moore's F9/11 - I don't want to give these bums my money. But I was wondering, did Gore offer any real, verifiable proof that we can reverse or even slow the effects of global warming? Because, as far as I know, nobody can prove that we can stop or slow it. Even if every evil capitalist on the face of the planet abandoned all technology, lived like a medieval peasant, had no children and repented, repented for their sin and greed, there is no proof that the globe would stop warming.

Nor is there any proof that repenting for our sins would have any effect on the global warming that's affecting Mars..

There's no doubt that we need to find alternatives to oil. Kuwait and Yemen are running low, and the we've been relying on the Saudis to tell us how much oil they have. Have they ever lied to us before? Every time they open their mouths.

Plus there's the fact that oil from the middle east has been funding nearly every terrorist attack that has occurred worldwide in the past few decades. We're appeasing and paying for the terrorism we're supposed to be fighting.

Even Exxon admits that we may run out of oil in a few decades, and it will take decades to develop and distribute real alternatives. We need to start taking action now, we need to solve these engineering problems as soon as possible, but not for the reasons Gore gives us.

Re: geothermal, there is actually a vast amount of geothermal energy available. The trick is not location, per se. Rather, it's the cost to develop it. Most of the low-hanging fruit--those that generate power using in situ steam, or geothermal fluids flashed to steam--have been picked (Calif: Geysers, Imperial Valley, Coso; Nev: Steamboat Hills, Dixie Valley; Utah: Roosevelt Hot Springs, Cove Fort; Hi: Puna).

The industry is now developing the next tier of resources that have lower temperatures so that heat is best harvested using binary-fluid heat exchange, or those hotter resources with no obvious surface expression, and so require an extensive exploration program to define.

Vast reserves beyond these are available through the concept of "Enhanced Geothrmal Systems," where the periphery of known geothermal resources are artificially fractured to allow heat mining from a new portion, or through the fracturing of new rock that is hot, but neither porous (void-filled) or permeable (pathways in the rock that allow fluid movement). Most parts of the country can develop geothermal this way, not just the west

The U.S. Department of Energy is sponsoring a study that will lay out how much new geothermal power can be generated, and for what price, from the now-affordable, to the pricey, to the absurd. It will be based on a survey of know geothermal resources, as well as recent maps of heat flow in the U.S.

The study will also show how the price can be lowered through various technology improvements.

Whether the more expensive resources are worth developing depends on the price of the cheapest alternative. Coalbed methane was once derided as "moon gas," too expensive to develop when all around us was ridiculously cheap, traditionally developed natural gas. That worm has turned, and there's now a CBM boom in Wyoming. Same story with oil, or tar, sands, in Alberta, which have petroleum deposits that are expensive to extract, but nonetheless profitable these days.

The study should be out later this year, or early next year.

#34 Rick,

I think my point was the same as yours just stated differently i.e. the need to fracture rock and pump water into the holes in order to get steam out.

The thing that so many with energy ideas forget is that is always easy to make a small fortune if you start with a large one.

Geothermal is viable any where in the country if you don't care what the cost is.

BTW thanks for the technical details. The outlook has improved since I last looked.

#29 Glen,

Actually, M Simon and Jay, are addressing your concerns, so I don't have to - at least regarding reducing consumption without lowering the quality of life, and the now coming competitiveness of solar and wind.

You also forget, that we were able to address the hole in the ozone by - get ready - legislation! Regulation!

Using the government for good!

I tell you what - we certainly could have funded a hell of a lot of projects for the 300 billion we have now sunk into Iraq, couldn't we?

Especially since the experts agree that the war in Iraq has had a negative impact on the War on Terror.

Glen, glen, glen. It must be a burden to be wrong so often.

Donald Sensing:
But there's no substantial natural source of hydrogen which we can tap

Actually not true. There is plenty of naturally occurring Hydrogen. More than we could could use in a millennium by any reasonable increase in usage. Admittedly there would be some very significant initial investment in 'mining' technologies, but once developed should reduce extraction costs dramatically.

The real issue is logistics. The supply is already existing and already liquid; the major energy expenditure is moving it from Point A to Point B. However, logistics is an issue we've tackled time and again over the last couple of centuries. We could tackle it again if we focused on it.

Earth is a box. Lets start thinking outside of it.

StargazerA5

Using the government for good!

Replacing democracy and economic freedom with an eco-priesthood that deliberately creates scarce and expensive energy, the better to sacrifice the human race to Gaia (or whatever ignorant-ass pagan entity they worship) is not my idea of good, I can tell you.

Take the most bigoted primitivist superstition imaginable, throw in some Soviet proletarian pseudoscience, and garnish with white upper middle class pig-headedness and you've got Goulash a la Gore. If you don't like that, report me to the suede-denim secret police.

Ive always thought that volcanic activity at sea floor level would be a good location to attempt to harness the geothermal energies. Heck, Hawaii has a great active flow that is seemingly constant, how about tapping some of that.

I admit I know little or nothing about geothermal so I may be totaly off base on this.

Doesn't Brazil operate purely on E85 for cars, though? The noise in the US is from the fact that Brazil has already achieved a situation where all cars run on E85..

#36,

The experts agree that the war in Iraq has been bad for the war on terror. I refer of course to the experts of al Queda.

They say that winning in Iraq is/was do or die and that they are losing. (I'll post a link as soon as i find one).

In any case covering the country with wind mills will do nothing to solve our liquid fuel for transportation problem.

From Osama's lips to your ears:

“Stay steadfast and don’t leave Baghdad, otherwise all the capitals in the region will fall to the crusaders,” said the message.

Iraq is the key to the region.

BTW I might mention that we defeated the Libyan WMD program by deposing Saddam. Evidently, living in a sewer is not Kdaffy's idea of a good time.

#40,

The problem with E85 is that a bad crop will cripple the transportation system.

I might mention that small wind turbines are not economical except where there is no grid.

And then you need storage etc.

Scientific American had an article a few months ago about Fast Neutron Reactors. The idea has been around forever, but basically you get more energy and much less waste.

Draconian measures, or Gore's utopian dreams, are not going to work here. Yes, if we could build 500 FNRs in the U.S. we'd be free of the Saudis -- at least for oil. We'd still need petrochemicals, though. And the rest of the world would still be fighting over crude. And the terrorists would still be getting rich by digging holes in the ground. So much of the geopolitical situation would not change.

I think if you had to take political action, a ramped tax on fuels that paid for nuclear reactors seems to make sense. Using the market demand for one energy source to pay for the development of another. But in general, I think the system is fixing itself. Crude will continue to rise, and market forces will handle the transition quite nicely over the next hundred or so years.

Personally, none of this greatly concerns me. Despite all the red tape the government and enviros have managed, its really the market that has produced our current dynamic. The truth is despite the fact that petroleum has to be located, sucked out of the ground, shipped all over the world safely, refined, shipped again, stuck into tanks without poisoning the neighborhood, and the vended on every street corner, once you factor out tax gasoline is still cheaper than milk by volume. Cheaper than bottled water. That is an astonishing testament to the economy of scale.

Now the government may not be able to solve this dilemna, but it sure can muck things up- for instance the tariffs on imported ethanol. Agriculture subsidies and import protections cost Americans billions and have set back energy independence as much as anything. The beauty of ethanol is that it is interchangeable with gasoline in modern cars- so the bad crop theory isnt really a danger. Certainly not anymore than the danger of Iran turning the Straights of Hormuz into a warzone.

If we can get the government out of the way, we will have modern nuclear plants running on recyclable fuel and cars running largely on ethanol, and thats all within a decade. Beyond that the market will decide if wind, geo, and solar are going to be cost effective (although slapping solar panels on the top of longhaul trucks has been one of my pet ideas for a while).

The economics of Ethanol in Brazil have been hashed out already. Brazil has a large sugarcane crop capacity and doesn’t rely on maize (corn) for its biofuels like the US.

The big joke about ethanol is that its far more polluting, and you get less MPG so you need more of it (roughly 1.5 gallons of ethanol to 1 gallon of gas). Since ethanol is heavily subsidized, the price is per gallon is hard to determine correctly, but And the price of ethanol has shot up from roughly 1.10 a gallon to close to 4 per gallon right now. Ethanol is most certainly not the answer, in fact its the wrong path altogether and pushing it is a very big mistake. Especially when you take into account how heavily subsidized the Ethanol and Corn industry is in the US, this ends up being yet another boondoggle for big business.

The thing I find most amazing is how ignorant the MSM is regarding the costs of ethanol, and just how deceptive the marketing campaign has become for it. If people really knew that ethanol would be costing them closer to 5.50 a gallon, and roughly 7.50 per gallon to go the same distance as a single gallon of gasoline, I don't think GM would be selling any of those cars.

If people really knew how much of what is paid at the gas station goes into the pocket of dictators, mobsters, religious extremists, Latin Fascists... politicians...

#48

Much of the ME would look like most of Africa if there was no oil there.

Perhaps there would be less of a problem to solve if Americans started growing up, and stopped demanding ridiculously large and fuel-inefficient vehicles.

The average weight of a car in the UK is probably about half that in the US, and MPG is proibably at least 50% better; do you really think that we are suffering thereby?

Lets say you replace the entire roof of your house with solar panels. A normal home would have around 1600 square feet of roof, for (rule-of-thumb-math) about 160 square meters. At 150W/m2 average flux, 6% efficiency and 50% for weather, that's 720 Watts, which is about enough to run a refrigerator or a small microwave, but not both at the same time. Extremely large banks of batteries would have to be maintained in order to store energy overnight and for periods of rain & storms. Power lines would continue to provde the other 17,900 Watts required to heat, cool and light the average house as well as everything else we use electricity for. Again, I'm using 6% efficient a-Si panels because they have a finite energy payoff time, and are one of the most inexpensive. "inexpensive" being a relative term, as 160 square meters would cost about $36,000 for the silicon alone, and probably about that much again for mounting, installation and the batteries. To be able to run a refrigerator. Which would have been GREAT when Hurricane Isabel knocked out my power for 8 days, but it's not really worth $72,000.

Perhaps there would be less of a problem to solve if Americans started growing up, and stopped demanding ridiculously large and fuel-inefficient vehicles.

#51,

Rule of thumb for solar insolation (during daylight) is 1 KW/m^2. So your 150 W figure is probably a 24 hr Average. A little low (300 W is more like it). But then we might say that the 150 W average is worst case for a sunny climate in winter. My guess is that the 150W figure already includes weather. That puts you a factor of 2X low on the input side.

The 6% figure for solar cells is also low. Amorphous cells (the lowest cost) now run about 10 to 12% efficiency.

T.J. Rogers of Cypress Semiconductors is investing in a new process which should up the efficiency (by about 3X over the example given - 18 to 20%) and lower the cost.

If you eliminate air conditioning 1KW will support a house at minimum levels. If you figure a mistake of 2X in the calculation and a 2X gain for summer plus a 3X efficiency gain you come up with about 8.5KW on a 24 hour basis. Air conditioning should not be a problem. A ground source heat pump should handle it no sweat.

However, like everything technological prices are coming down over time. Eventually solar cells will cost about what glass does plus the cost of reduction (removing the O2 from the Si). If integrated the reduction might not cost much more than the cost of heating the glass.

We are a long way from that. So it will come. It just might take another 30 to 50 years.

In the mean time there are enough wind resources to supply 3X or more of current grid load if fully exploited. Wind and solar are complimentary. Wind peaks in winter, solar in summer.

So you need storage. Storage could be done for $2K per KWH (at low production volumes) declining to $1K per KWH with production volumes in the 10s of MWHs. Which gives a cost of roughly $400K installed to deliver 8.5KW for 24 hours at low volume production. High volume would bring that down to $200K. If you are grid tied, storage might be limited to minimum loads (refrigerator, computer, microwave, furnace fan, 100w of flourescent lighting) of about 1KW average over 24Hrs reducing storage costs to about $10 to $15K (assuming high volume production).

#45 Daniel Markham,

You left out the magic part. How do you make an acceptable (range, acceleration, cost) vehicle run on electricity?

Fast neutron reactors are very hard to control. Thermal variations in the moderating ability of H2O in current reactors plus a few other technical details make current reactors aproximately self regulating over time spans of a few minutes once they are above about a few percent of maximum rated output (at rated temperature).

Since control systems for reactor reactivity are mechanical, response times are on the order of 100s of milliseconds (except for scrams which are designed for about 5X faster response). Human response times in emergencys are on the order of a few seconds. Fast reactors cannot have humans in the loop. They are way too slow. Automatic controls are barely fast enough. i.e. not much safety margin. Automatic controls for thermal neutron reactors are currently more than adequate.

It is noted that fast neutron reactors also have thermal feedback. However, such feed back is much slower than similar feed back in water moderated reactors and the rate of change of neutron flux is much faster. Not a good combination.

I wouldn't want to live within 100 miles of one of those suckers.

The devil (as usual) is in the details.

BTW the wiki bit was a puff piece. No indication of the problems.

#46 Mark says:

If we can get the government out of the way, we will have modern nuclear plants running on recyclable fuel and cars running largely on ethanol, and thats all within a decade.