Thursday morning at Clean Tech 2007
Posted by Engineer-Poet on June 2, 2007 - 11:54am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: efficiency, venture capital [list all tags]
Apologies for the delay, but dinner with Stuart Staniford (great guy!) took up most of Thursday evening and there's little power and even less connectivity in Yosemite. (Great waterfalls and cool geology and other stuff, though.) Now that I'm landed in Kansas with a bit of connectivity for a couple days, I can give you more of what I saw!
8:30: Lawrence DuBois
The first session I caught was with Lawrence DuBois
of SRI International. SRI
is a contract R&D organization which has its fingers in many pies. This gives
them a great deal of expertise in many areas, some of which are applicable to energy.
DuBois noted that alternative energy systems use massive amounts of materials compared to at least some conventional systems (gravity dams excepted, I suppose). He cited some numbers I didn't write down fast enough. He then went on to other developments.
The first one he mentioned was... a Direct Carbon Fuel Cell (DCFC)! I was rather surprised to hear SRI claiming credit for this, but this matter was clarified later. The attraction of the DCFC is that the coal market has very different dynamics from oil and gas, and coal is still a great deal cheaper per BTU than the others. Coal is still a major energy source (as little as some of us like it) and forms a $150 billion/year market (I believe this is world-wide).
The SRI DCFC is a different technology from the Cooper unit, using a solid-oxide electrolyte and a carbon-liquid carbonate anode. This helps boost its current capacity to as much as 350 mA/cm², though efficiency isn't quite as good at 70%. One major virtue of the DCFC is that it produces nearly pure CO2. CO2 separation is the major cost in sequestration schemes, and eliminating this step improves both the economics and the energy return.
This cell shares with the Cooper technology the ability to use coal, petcoke or biomass (charcoal) for fuel. DuBois also mentioned tar as a fuel (presumably converted to coke), which would perhaps give coal some competition from tar sands and eliminate the need to upgrade the tar to syncrude.
SRI also has a CO2 capture system with improved characteristics over amine sorbent systems. It is well-suited for use with water-gas shift systems, and features:
- Relatively high-temperature operation: 350°C
- No sorbent or solvent
- Thermally stable for at least 300 hours
He then went into the economics of sequestration.
| Operation | Cost/tonne |
| Separation | $30-$50 |
| Compression | $8-$10 |
| Pipeline | $0.70-$4/100 km |
| Injection | $2-$8 |
| ----- | |
| TOTAL | $41-$70 |
The DOE's goal is $30/ton. With 5 billion tons/year of CO2 to deal with, this could be a $150 billion market. The transport sector is nearly as big as the electric sector (per my notes, but I'm no longer certain what this refers to or how significant it is).
DuBois then moved on to solar PV and particularly its silicon supply. The slicon PV industry has for years taken its feedstock from the scrap and excess of the semiconductor sector. With the recent explosive growth of PV and the revival of semiconductors, these supplies are no longer adequate. Fortunately, PV does not require the same level of purity as semiconductors and can use much cheaper grades of silicon; the problem ere now was that the market was too small to justify an industry just to supply it, but this has changed.
SRI's entry is a new chemical process using simple reactors to convert sodium fluorosilicate (Na2SiF6) to NaF and elemental silicon. This is done by reaction of the raw material with metallic sodium:
| Na2SiF6 -> | SiF4 + 2 NaF |
| SiF4 + 4 Na -> | Si + 4 NaF |
The sodium fluoride can be removed from the mixture by dissolving it in water, leaving silicon. This process was developed in the early 1980's, but the low price of energy made it uneconomical at the time. It has been waiting in the wings until the situation changed, and it has. This cheap process ought to put to rest the claims that PV doesn't pay back its invested energy.
Though my notes hint at fascinating things, I don't recall the details of the following Q&A well enough to write about them. This is a pity. I'll have to do audio recording next time.
10:30 Efficiency panel
The 10:30 session had a whole panel of speakers on efficiency issues. The list was long, so I'll link it rather than list it.
Ben Finkelor of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center performed the introductions and said a few things about his own work. The UCDavis EEC has an emphasis on commercialization. It is part of the business school (much better for getting managers to buy in than if it was part of engineering or sciences) and specializes in technology diffusion. If there's anything we need, it's for the available technologies to get diffused into the world as fast as we can.
John Kuhnart of American River Ventures was next. ARV is a venture-capital
firm. My notes on his presentation are limited to his observations that
efficiency (or lack thereof) is a big problem, and government involvment is
required to help address it. I get the feeling that this is in the form of
policy initiatives and incentives.
Next came Gerald Brady of Siemens. My notes only state that he said that energy was a $620 billion business.
Drew Clark of IBM Venture Capital had some surprises. First was that IBM even had a venture-capital unit, but he said that it was small. It works with entrepreneurs and looks for innovation. It has an energy and utility vertical unit, and a Big Green unit specializing in water management, supply chain management and energy analytics.
Jonathan Livingston of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) noted that California rewarded utilities for services performed, not just energy delivered. If PG&E can get the job done by boosting efficiency instead of delivering more kWh or BTU, then they can get paid more for actually using less. PG&E has a portfolio manager for each sector and administers funds on behalf of the ratepayers.
David Berokoff of Sempra Utilities (owned by San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas) talked about their modest VC program, run by a 15-man team. He spoke at greater length later.
Doug Lawson of Incuity Software spoke briefly. Incuity produces software serving mostly manufacturers for whom efficiency is not a core competency. Their product is essentially knowledge and the software to deliver it usably.
Jim Parks of Sacremento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) mentioned that his company served 550,000 customers with electric service.
After a brief note from Kuhnart on efficiency plays, Doug Lawson took the floor for an extended discsussion of one of Incuity's installations. This happened to be, not at a manufacturer, but at Rice University in Houston. Why discuss Rice? Because it was simple enough to cover more of the salient issues during his limited time, and give a more complete picture of what was accomplished and how.
Among the points he made:
- Big energy consumers are COMPLEX.
- Fixing efficiency issues requires understanding.
- Without understanding, there is often no improvement.
- Incuity serves about 100 customers per year [lots of room in that market! – EP].
- Reduced waste leads to greater efficiency and profit.
- Rice U. has a number of cooling and cogeneration plants, but needs to normalize the operation of these facilities for the weather and the usage of the buildings.
- The major questions are:
- How to operate the plants and buildings, and
- How are the buildings behaving?
- The people who actually run the physical plant (he used the term "knuckledraggers") tended to run things inefficiently. Without access to data, their modus operandi was to clock in and turn everything on full to be ready for whatever might happen that day. Of course, whatever wasn't actually needed was just burning money.
- Incuity's $300,000 software package wound up saving around $1 million/year in operating costs: a return of investment in just 3 months (spread unevenly across the calendar, I suppose).
- The benefits accrue from smarter operation of the system. Unused spaces can be left alone, while space required for activities can be pre-conditioned to minimize the cost of energy. Cogeneration can be employed to sell power if and only if the market price of electricity is favorable.
- The information system has had a radical effect on response time to problems. Formerly, an open door or window or stuck steam valve might not be detected and corrected for weeks. With the new software, the response time for such problems can be reduced to minutes. The less time energy-wasting problems continue, the less energy and money are lost to them.
Livingston mentioned that efficiency is now the cheapest play in the market, and PG&E has a 30-year history in the business.
The floor returned to Berokoff, who went into a case study of an investment that ARV made in ovens (of all things!). ARV had initially taken a look at TurboChef, but the due dilligence work didn't show a worthwhile investment and they held off. However, another opportunity turned up in a small company called GAT. GAT's inventor-entrepreneur head was working on a microwave-convection technology for ultra-speed cooking, and ARV put money into it. A little while later, the CEO's of GAT and Turbo Chef met by accident, and this led to Turbo Chef buying GAT. ARV cashed out with a 230% gain, and if you've recently enjoyed a toasted sandwich from Subway you've seen the results.
And that's the end of my notes from Wednesday morning at Clean Tech 2007, and my time for writing. The rest will have to wait until I'm back home.
Recently on this site, there has been some debunking of the economics of large-scale algae farming. Reading your description of carbon fuel cells, I wonder what the economics look like if you co-locate a fuel cell plant and an algae plant and get a $30 per ton subsidy on the CO2 absorbed?
I don't have enough background in business economics to say much, but the possibilities fascinate me. Capturing CO2 for $30/ton ($110/ton of carbon) is just 5.5¢/lb of carbon. A gallon of diesel contains roughly 6.6 pounds of carbon, for a cost of about 36¢/gallon; a gallon of ethanol contains about 5.9 pounds of carbon for a cost of 32¢/gallon. The value of the fuel product is far more than the cost of the carbon. How the other costs stack up is something I don't know, but I'd sure like to!
This is a great article, thanks for writing it EP. Together with Chris' article on UK solar we've been spoiled for solutions-oriented articles lately.
Keep 'em coming, they're a much needed relief from doomer articles which simply feed back into themselves. Go engineers! :)
I am surprised at the Jiminy Cricket, wish upon a star, mentality that many here seem to espouse. Wishful thinking does not produce energy. The best that can come from engineering is improved efficiency. That's it. Period. Engineering will not put more oil, coal, gas, or uranium in the ground.
WE WILL PEAK AND RUN OUT.
That's a fact. It is not "doomer" talk to point out the physical truth of a universe ruled by physics. No amount of cheerleading for the "engineers" will overthrow the physics of the universe. Won't happen.
My feeling is the cornucopians, which does include the engineers, are doomers, the worst kind. Rather than face up to the simple physics of a sphere in space, they prefer to blow air up the credulous's skirts, telling them they can keep growing the population, keep driving their bloatmobiles, and just ignore reality. By telling the hoi polloi these happy tales of plenty, the engineers, the true doomers, are setting people up for a really hard bitch slap from reality. The "doom" that people like myself shop around serves as warning, helps them, hopefully, to realize that fossil fuel is finite and that if they want to back out of the techno cul de sac and head down a more realistic road while the fuel is still cheap, now is the time.
The tech we need to be studying is complementary tech that works with nature rather than short-circuiting it. We should develop a heirarchy:
First level: pure nature. Just harvest from the most complex, well-researched machine we will ever see -- Earth.
Second level: guiding tech that shifts nature into a particular natural course. For example: Where non-native plants have disrupted the eco-system, remove them and reestablish as best as possible the pre-existing biome.
Third level: Tech that disrupts nature but will ultimately lead back to a stable natural environment.
This siimple ranking will prove helpful.
Hi Cherenkov,
Thanks for your comments.
1) re: "The tech we need to be studying is complementary tech that works with nature rather than short-circuiting it."
I'm interested in your example in "2". Could you possibly give examples for the other levels you mention?
Also, I'm wondering what you suggest, given:
A. The current infrastructure that exists today in the real world. How would you apply your principles here?
B. The current economic arrangements of money, debt, etc. Can you reconcile these with your three guidelines?
At first glance, it seems to me that simply doing things like "no more road, no more airport expansion", "more wind, solar, and research" are examples which fill the criteria of your major point, namely, "...if they want to back out of the techno cul de sac and head down a more realistic road while the fuel is still cheap, now is the time."
Still, not sure exactly how these would fit with current assumptions, so wondering how you see it.
2) re: "Just harvest from the most complex, well-researched machine we will ever see -- Earth."
How would you you incorporate avoidance of over-harvesting?
Unfortunately, virtually everyone in the engineer camp always seems to ask the same questions:
Given that we have invested in all of this infrastructure, how can we possibly abandon it?
Well. I can imagine a fellow on Easter Island looking up at the last tree, listening to the local doomer who wants the fool to preserve the tree in order to harvest the seeds and replant the island. That fool then looks about at all the really big heads and says, "How can we give all this up?" And he starts chopping.
Money and debt are created under a fiat system that presumes that population and energy aquisition will grow forever. This is, of course, bollocks. Complete economist spoo. But, as long as the oil can be found and the population run up, the pyramid scheme will work right up until it doesn't. Then what? Catastrophe, I expect. Runaway inflation. Lives ruined, businesses crushed, hopes dashed. You know, doom. That anyone would be concerned about money and debt when real actual work in the real actual world needs to be done speaks volumes about the human spirit. Think of all the people who have died trying to enrich themselves. The miners who die every day for a bit of yellow metal. Think about it!! Ahhhhhh. That's human idiocy hard at work there.
How will economics work in the future? Here. I have an orange. You have a tin whistle. Trade? See. That ain't so hard, darling.
As far as the current infrastructure, tear it down. I can't remember which economist suggested it, but he said we might as well bury money and pay people to dig it up. Money is conceptual. In a post-oil economy, especially a chaotic humongous clusterfuck of an economy, you want to employ people to do the work we need to do to restore the earth. Restore the wetlands. These are very, very important. Enrich the soils using techniques that do not stripmine nutrients and create deserts. Get people out on the farm.
If you really want to see what we need to do, go to Communitysolutions.org. They have a lovely film on what Cuba did when it went through peak oil. Now, if we follow in their footsteps, we may have a chance. But we cannot stop there. We need to devolve the tech world as much as possible. We need to relocalize.
You ask, "How would you incorporate avoidance of over-harvesting?"
As best you can. Unfortunately, nature already has a plan for that. It's called -- starvation. Works quite well. In no time we will reach a stable population, or at least a bouncy range, and lots of our problems will be solved.
I do not expect any engineer to want to participate in the deevolution of the tech paradigm. That would go against his or her character. It just saddens me to see people who make some sort of claim for rational thinking make such boneheaded, magical-thinking mistakes as the lot here seems to make on a daily basis.
I understand why. They compartmentalize. The man who invented asbestos never stopped to think, "Is this healthy for humans?" No, that was not his problem. His job was to make a good fireproofing material. The man who financed it did not worry about the health problems associated with it. Nor did the marketer, the salesperson, the architect who used it, the boilermakers who loved it. No. It was another scientist, specializing in health, who realized, "Wait a minute. This crap is highly toxic." Of course by then, it was too late. Many people died extremely horrible deaths by the time it was banned. Thousands of buildings were contaminated, school children put at risk.
Why? Because engineers have tunnel vision. They do not think holistically. While at Cessna, I never once heard an engineer wonder about the toxicity of methyl ethyl ketone. Nor wonder about the effect of contrails on the upper atmosphere. Nor about their contribution to global warming. They could give a damn about sealer poisoning those who sealed the wings. No. They worried about this or that screw, or whether a mis-drilled hole would result in the scrapping of a wing.
Until engineers stop thinking they can fix things with more half-assed, non-holistic, measures that end up causing more problems than they fix, we are screwed.
I think chimps make great engineers. They take a part of nature, a stick, and use it to fish termites from termite mounds. Once sated, the chimp drops the stick and goes off for a nice nap. No harm, no foul.
That is some primo engineering there.
Thanks, Cherenkov.
I thought the mean IQ was a little too high here at TOD also, so your intelligent comments certainly helped in the regression while broadening the sigma. But that's just some dumb-ass chimp,..I mean...Ph.D. physicist, talking. Didn't you mention something about physics?
BTW, what's with this chimp stuff?
Thanks, John Macklin.
More irony at work here. Never seems to stop. You take a swipe at my intelligence and then reveal you fail to understand what I say.
Primo irony. Thanks. I needed the laugh.
Love to take the time to talk you off the bridge you mounted, but been there and the reception's poor. Hey, let's thank the dumb-ass ee's who created this web thing so we can commune and, as we said in the seventies, express ourseves.
And what's with the chimp thing?
I see you still fail to understand. After a bit, such irony is no longer fun. It's just sad.
Yes, let's thank the people at Cern who invented this thing.
Let us pray:
Our scientist, who art in the lab, hallowed by thy name. Let us not challenge him lest he make fun or feel responsible for bad things. Let us not ask questions that are not technical in nature, lest he grow angry and start throwing around sharp jargon. Let us not enter into his sacred sanctuary, THE INTERNET, ommmmm, lest he brand us as hypocrites.
Oh, great scientist, who paves over eden, please forgive us our sins. Give us this day our daily carcinogen, that we may partake and know of your creation.
Oh, great scientist please do not smite us when we challenge your godhood. Please let us gather at your feet and shout hosannahs for all you have done for us. You deserve our worship. For without you we would be lost in the wilderness.
"Um, what is wilderness?"
"Shut up, Jimmy. Don't question the priest. He might smite you and make you quit using THE INTERNET, oommmmmmm. You know how sensitive they are when you challenge their almighty authority."
"Yes, mommy."
Amen.
Hmmm. I like that prayer. Pretty creative, Cherenkov. BTW, john macklin is my name, and you can google, pubmed, or any other search engine to see where I've been and what I do. Would you like to bare your soul, no, name, so we're at some parity.
I still want to discuss this chimp thing.
Thanks.
Why do people argue with credentials rather than with actual words aimed at the argument?
Kinda like Pons and Fleischmann telling their detractors to go google their creds as if that somehow legitimates cold-fusion.
No. I'm not even going to bother checking your creds. You want to impress me? Argue my points. Do so logically, answering my concerns about the long-term future of a technological society in light of finite resources, global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages. Present a good argument that is not filled with wishful thinking, and I will gain respect for you.
No free lunch. Not even for Phd. scientists.
Cherenkov asked another poster,
"You want to impress me? Argue my points. Do so logically, answering my concerns about the long-term future of a technological society in light of finite resources, global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages. Present a good argument that is not filled with wishful thinking, and I will gain respect for you."
Can't say I want to impress you, and your respect is not going to put any potatos on my plate, but you did throw down such an interesting line of reasoning (of a sort).....why does it follow that a "technological society" must lead to "global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages."? That's a clever rhetorical trick, by the way, showing you may not retain amateur status at this ;-), to group into a congeries "finite resources (a given, if you leave out solar), global climate change (a given, it happens anyway {though man could have a serious effect}, the oceans dying {the whole ocean? Did I miss my Greenpeace newsletter for one month too many?!), population growth {always a problem, and technical society seems to have the opposite effect, the technically advanced nations driving down birthrate) plus provides the only tools outside of chastity, infanticide, or abortion to deal with it}, and fresh water shortages {again, maybe a given, maybe not, and caused by...(which? Population growth, {obviously}, climate change (depending}, the oceans dying (that's salt water, hard to clearly make the connection}, finite resources (well, yeah, fresh water!}...
We could go on and on, but why waste the time. What we see is a rhetorical device, in which a "congeries" of catastrophe is treated as a "catagory".
The idea of grouping a "catagory" is that they have some clearly definitional characteristics and interrelationships in common. Otherwise, there is little point in grouping "technical society" into a congeries with a laundry list of "bad bad things", some related to "technical society", some in a negative way, some in a positive way, and some not at all, and treating it as catagory, unless....your trying to fool somebody that does not know better ;-)
In which case the question would be" Why?
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Roger Conner says, "why does it follow that a "technological society" must lead to "global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages."? That's a clever rhetorical trick, by the way."
Well, once again, poor reading skills rears its ugly head. I asked about technology in light of these disasters. Though the IPCC has clearly found we are responsible for global warming, I did not say so. What I am asking is what are the knock-on consequences of tech? This requires very deep thought, inquiry, and an open-mind (something often lacking on this site.)
This is not a rhetorical trick. These concerns actually exist. These are problems which affect technological decisions right down to the decision to go ahead with a technology. If you fail to consider technology without considering the world around you, you are a fool.
Your attempts at caging my argument through your semi-intelligent understanding of the rhetorical arts is amusing, but ultimately does not argue the point.
The question remains. What is the long-term future of a technological society in light of finite resources, global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages?
Cherenkov,
Now feeling all warm and fuzzy with a boost of confidence by you evaluation of my post as evidence of a "semi-intelligent understanding of the rhetorical arts" that is at least amusing, I could not resist a reply, and one to say that I found in your reply post evidence that I do agree with you a bit more than you may think (I would not dare say that "we agree" knowing that saying you agree with anyone would be presumption on my part).
I agree absolutely with your sentence, "If you fail to consider technology without considering the world around you, you are a fool."
Exactly true.
The inverse of it is also true by the way: "If you fail to consider the world around you without considering technology, you are a fool."
Because if technology can be used, someone, somewhere WILL try to use it, and thus the effects of their technology will have to be calculated into the effects on your world. You or I alone do not get to make the decision as to "whether or not" to go ahead with a technology. Isn't it fun sharing a planet?
"What is the long-term future of a technological society in light of finite resources, global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages?"
Cherenkov, you must see why I viewed the question as rhetorical: If you make a list of five bad items, then ask, "what is the sum?", there is only one answer isn't there? bad X 5=bad. The structure of the question gives no other possible answer. It is the nature of a rhetorical question that the question itself provides the answer.
But if we take each point individually, and allow for more items to be added to the list, or some to be discounted for the moment while we deal with the ones we can have the greatest effect on, we have not a dead end rhetorical argument, but possible improvements in the situation, at least for a foreseeable amount of time, and by the way, we have to put a time frame on things. I do not know if you can, but I cannot deal with the variables 500 years from now, the conditions will almost certainly be too far removed from any reality I can know (Columbus did not spend a great amount of time thinking about the effect of traffic jams on North America when he found it!)
Just to play around though, and assuming you intended the question to be real and not rhetorical, let's look at "the question" remaining:
"What is the long-term future of a technological society in light of finite resources, global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages?"
Let's look at the next century, out to about 2107, that being about the end of lifetime for even a baby boomers grandchildren, easily midlife for his or her great grandchildren.
Now we have some tough questions on the issues you describe:
Finite resources-This is a given. But we don't know how finite. Should we attempt to find out? We don't know where they are? Should we stay hard at work on international arrangements to find out and fairly distribute resources? Notice that both of these questions sound rhetorical! The answer seems to be yes to both, at least to most people. But both would require at least some degree of technology, for communications and Earth science monitoring, wouldn't they? Recycling to avoid waste? One would think so. Alternative methods of construction and production to reduce consumption of resources to do the same job? One would think so. But again, we are into some elegant technological solutions if we can find them.
The Earth's rescources are indeed limited. However, we do recieve a major outside source of energy from the sun. Can it be used to help us? One would think so. Can solar energy can be used in combination with Earth bound resources? One would think so. Would it be possible to do at all if we dismantle anything similiar to a technical society? Not on any scale to make life decent for billions of people.
Climate change: We play the same game out: The climate changes with or without human activity, science tells us this, but human activity can make it worse and exceed what the Earth can adjust to. But does it have to? If technology can be developed that is for the most part (it will never be perfect) carbon neutral, would it be acceptable, or would it be renounced on philosophical grounds that it is, in fact, technology?
Population growth: Is it a given? It is always interesting that Malthusian intellectuals show a graph, something like "population growth since the discovery of oil", and sure enough, up it goes. However, medical and chemical birth control was born only in the 1960's (!). Population growth is a RISK, but not a given over the long haul. What will the populatin growth curve look like as real and modern birth control makes it's way throughout the world for the first time in human history (!)? Who knows.
Ocean's dying and fresh water shortages: I have grouped these together for one reason: Most of the damage to fresh water and oceans seems to be as much a problem of bad or lacking technology, not technology in general, and most have been caused by stupidity and greed. There is no real indication yet that these are not easily technically managable if we want to make the effort. We may not do it. We may choose, as we have done up to now, to treat oceans and freshwater sources as dumps. That is not a technical problem, it is an issue of choices made by humans for political and economic reasons.
_____
Note that I have not went off on any "Buck Rogers" fantasies. But space is still out there. Humans have proven they can go. The deep oceans are still out there. Humans are proving they can go. Fusion does work in nature. Can humans harness it? Who knows, and it may not happen quick enough to be of real help, inside our 2017 window.
But as you can see Cherenkov, we have enough "homework" assignments to keep us busy for the weekend! Or, do we want to act the role of the child, and throw the work on bunk bed, and go do something more fun, like tow the boat to the lake and water ski, or jet over to the islands to chase some skirts (as if there are not plenty of bored and lonely gals in our own hometowns), do we want to say as a society, like the child says to homework, "This is tooooo HARD!" "This isn't going to do any good!!" "This is a waste of time, it won't help!"
"Why do I have to learn this crap, I'm not going to do this for a living, let somebody else learn it!"
The modern societies may try to dress up their love of neo-primitivism and anarcho deep green primitivism in intellectual and rhetorical arguments.
But the truth is, it is really the philosophy of the pouting child. "I CAN'T"!"
As as the old guys used to say, "Can't never did shiit."
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom.
Yes it is. It is a question that you yourself cannot even begin to answer, and it alone makes a mockery of your use of Cerenkov's name. And the implicit claim of "catastrophe" is trivially refuted because I can point to an existence proof to the contrary.
That existence proof is photosynthesis, a "technology" (in the same sense that evolution is "intelligent" as it generates options and selects the superior ones). It's been around for the better part of a billion years now, and shows no signs of losing its usefulness. Some of humanity's best courses of action involve optimizing our use of existing photosynthetic organisms and creating new ones.
Photosynthesis isn't the end. We can already beat the 10% efficiency of algae with 27% efficient silicon PV cells, and if we can't use quantum dots to break the 50% barrier in PV maybe we can learn enough about the quantum behavior of chlorophyll to turn it into an electric converter instead of a chemical one. The photonic energy conversion efficiency of human devices is already well above that of higher plants, will soon exceed that of single-celled plants, and may boost the planetary product of captured solar energy far beyond what Nature managed to do for herself.
One product of the last three centuries of unsustainable industrial revolution was a huge amount of an undepletable resource: knowledge. Knowledge cannot be used up, and its usefulness increases more rapidly than it accumulates. On the one hand, we learn to capture more and more renewable energy (algae, PV, photochemistry); on the other hand, we learn to do more with the energy we have. Eventually we'll reach another plateau like photosynthesis more or less topped out before, but it'll be at a substantially higher level and it'll all be ours.
I have to quote Roger here:
Truer words were never written.
Fresh water is not a finite resource. It is part of a cycle of evaporation, condensation, precipitation and percolation. The fresh water problem is one of people not being where the fresh water is and the miserly, militaristic attitudes of the very wealthy. Aquifers could be recharged during periods of heavy rain and stored for use during droughts years later. Fresh water could be manufactured from the ocean and saline aquifers via desalination and recycled from sewage using similar processes. Fresh water can be extracted from even desert air. It is just a matter of capital investment and compassion for the poor. Fresh water can also be used more efficiently especially by agriculture. Hydroponics could greatly improve the efficiency of water used in food production as well as producing more food closer to the point of use.
...and we could genetically alter the human head so that it would be flat and would give standing room for people with that increased carrying capacity of this shuddering world. Water is not a finite resource? Have you ever thought of talking to Rube Goldberg? You might just catch him there in his box of infinite time. But then does time have an end (another finite resource?) in an infinite universe, or is the universe warped and blowing smoke up it's derriere (allusion courtesy of J Kunstler) and finite as well? Oh mystery upon mystery. What fun.
Of course the Earth is finite but the the moon still has time to orbit the Earth another 60,000,000,000 times. Fresh water has gone through billions of cycles in the lifetime of the world and will go through billions of more cycles. Some of that H2O will be split by photosynthesis to make sugar and free oxygen. Later respiration will
oxydize that sugar and recombined water will be released.
Rube Goldberg has been dead for many years and I missed meeting that very imaginitive man in person. Problems need solutions and solutions come from imagination and scientific analysis of those imaginings.
No they don't.
They come, if at all, from first defining the problem.
Dear John,
Chimp thing? Seems simple enough, maybe this is not what Cherenkov means, it is what was brought to my mind. In a finite system there is no solution to over-use of that system to be made though making the 'stick' ever more complex.
Engineering makes the simple complicated, that is the beast's nature. To make life easy engineering produces complexities that make the likelihood of life on the planet impossible. Worse we can't put the stick down. We don't stop digging.
As far as this net thing, Phoo I would rather talk person to person but we have been engineered into a hermit style of life that separates and destroys any civil life. Why are you here john macklin, if engineering makes all so lovely why aren't you doing things with your wife and friends,, your tribe, instead of stuck here on this engineered box of half life? Same as me I think. The tribe has been dissolved, all much too busy sucking on individual ding dongs of tech. No wonder Western birthrate drops.
Money and debt assumes no such thing. Money has no fixed relation to population or energy, or anything else.
I'd be interested to know why you think otherwise?
Post move down.
Cherenkov, I would like to add my two cents' worth to your perspective.
As a nod to the technophiles, I would be delighted to see our "leaders" actually lead, and put the kind of money being squandered on a military response to PO into renewables. Wind and tidal electricity utilized by electric rail are probably worth a try as stopgap measures. However, IMO these would still be at best a way to ease humanity's transtion to a truly sustainable future.
I concur that a sustainable future must utilize the "well-researched machine" that has been perfected over a billion years or so:
1) human population must come WAY down,
2) humans need to learn to be satisfied with the production from the self-repairing, self-replicating, no-non-biodegradeable-waste solar collection system the planet has already perfected - photosynthetic plants.
PLAN, PLANt, PLANet
Errol in Miami
Does it ever occur to you to wonder, as an English professor, how well positioned you are to lecture engineers and physicists on the implications of, well, physics and engineering? If I were in your position, I might display a little bit less certainty that I surely knew much more than the people who had actually spent some time studying those disciplines..
As a physicist, you should consider our friend "irony." He is hard at work here. I know it is an "English" term, but it would describe the delicious fun we are having quite well.
For, you see, that an English instructor has a better grip on physics than the lot here does, that's irony.
There is no free lunch. I believe I've heard many a physicist say that. Am I incorrect? Energy is not the sole problem on a finite sphere in space, am I correct? Let's name a few things that engineers and physicists cannot pull out of their collective wazoos. Land. Water. Aluminum. Iron. Tantulum. Iridium. Uranium. Fish. Bio-diversity. As you can imagine, on a sphere in space, the list of things that are finite on said sphere must, now correct my grasp of physics here if I am off, necessarily include EVERYTHING. So, if we run out of Iron, we can't just run to the lab and whip some up, can we? So, let's say we do find that magical energy bullet. We will call it, Nukcoabiowinshalidium. Having applied the bullet, we now have plenty of energy to use up the rest of the necessary ingredients to life. Land, who needs it!! We can just boil up some algae!! Clean drinking water? Bah, we'll just desalinate the oceans! (Never mind the effects on the biota there.) Out of copper? Why we'll just use plastic for our pipes!!
These overarching issues never seem to figure in the conversations held here. No one ever runs the problem out to its logical conclusion or examine everything that said "solution" will affect and how. The holistic view of reality seems to escape the engineer tribe. You see, I do not need to know any formulae, or how to use a graphing calculator, or how close we are to finding the Higgs particle. That is your tunnel vision at work. That is the scientist/priest mentality hard at work. It is the presumption that knowing how to put on the blinders in order to achieve tunnel vision is somehow a good thing. All I need to know is the fundamentals. Sphere. Finite.
I guess the real question is: What is your endgame, Stuart?
How many people? 6.8 billion? 10 billion? 1 trillion?
Will this be a mobile society traveling around the planet in planes and trains and automobiles? Will we all be hooked up to our crackberries sending text messages to each other about our wonderful lives now that there is no drinking water? That the oceans are dead? That we live in a runaway greenhouse effect? Will we be living close to the land? If so, how did we get there? Do you see a world with bio-diversity, or are we shooting for pure dominance -- to become the ONLY species on the planet?
My guess is, like so many of this tribe, your thinking extends only about as far as ten years from now. Maybe twenty. After that, what do you care?
Have you ever heard of the Heechee?
Hmmmmm. I think, Houston, we have a problem.
For an English instructor to believe he has a better grip on physics than the lot here does, that's self-delusion.
Fictional creatures in the "Gateway" series of novels by Frederik Pohl (I read them avidly). Fiction is something I would expect you to know about, but telling the difference between technology and balonium isn't... and so far your substitution of handwaving for calculation makes my bets look pretty good.
I agree totally with Stuart about mitigating PO on both the supply and the demand side, and that the doomers are plain wrong. Dooming (PO & GW) is a mood. Perhaps it’s a displaced emotion from the growing sense of mortality of the 60’s kids (of which I’m one). From boomer to doomer...
Remember 20% of oil is still used for electricity production which gives a big cushion. On the supply side sunlight dwarfs all other energy sources and this industry is only getting started. The solar industry is charging scarcity prices at the moment because of the shortage of silicon. Costs will come way down when the volume gets serious. A solar farm is a machine that turns capital into cash flow; get the numbers right and literally trillions of dollars will come your way.
On the demand side the scope for energy savings is vast. All the technology exists for zero net energy buildings. We don’t need 200hp moving 2 tons of steel for transport. It’s just something you do at a particular 'price of oil/price of time'.
Let’s take a look at one aspect of oil demand.
The following table shows oil production, consumption and imports in millions of barrels per day and the population for North America. The last column is daily consumption * 365 / population giving barrels per person per year. Obviously Mexico has some catching up to do.
Source: Oil, BP Statistical Review 2005 data; Population, Wikipedia 2005 data. Values are rounded.
Now let’s look at the comparable figures for Western Europe. I’ve deliberately left out the countries in Eastern Europe to arrive at the worst case in both regions.
Source: Oil, BP Statistical Review 2005 data; Population, Wikipedia 2005 data. Values are rounded.
Notice the wide variability of oil consumption in both regions. A few points:
1. Belgium and Luxembourg consume more oil per person than the US. I would love to hear Washington using these numbers back at Belgium the next time the eurocrats harangue the US about oil and global warming.
2. You can still drive your 1001hp Bugatti Veyron at 250mph on the German autobahns so it’s not all micro cars over there (here for me). Think of all those 400hp BMWs, Mercedes and Porsches, not the mention the 600hp Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Of course these are ‘top’ cars for ‘top’ people so that’s ok.
3. There is similar degree days. Norway, Finland Sweden and Central Europe in winter, Italy, Greece and Spain in summer.
4. I believe we do comparable miles but haven't found any figures.
Now let’s see what happens if we give the whole of North America the same oil consumption per person as Western Europe. We are going to be really generous to Mexico by giving them the same consumption as Canada and the US. I’m sure they could handle it.
The following table shows North American consumption at European rates and the resulting imports. The consumption column is EU barrels/person/year * population / 365 giving millions of barrels per day.
This leaves net oil imports of 1.741 million barrels per day. Ethanol and biodiesel can cover that easily. Obviously Mexican production is down since 2005 but Canada is up.
What we are looking at is major US policy failure. That may be because the lobbyists are producers who equate oil with revenues. Consumers, who equate oil with cost, are not nearly as well organized. And someone should be treating oil imports as a cost to the economy but trade deficits aren’t fashionable subjects on Wall Street at the moment.
Peak oil will not be the end of the world so get over it. Just let the price mechanism and the engineers do their stuff!
A very interesting post.
Thanks Andy. I just see so much that can be done. A few more recent examples:
1. The Melbourne city government has just built an office block that uses 85% less energy.
2. 8% of UK electricity consumption is running electronic stuff on standby. Why don't they fit a battery, solenoid and a bit of circuitry so the remote actually turns the thing on and off?
3. I saw the Vectrix electric motorbike in London a couple of weeks ago. Recharges cost 3 pounds ($6) for 1000miles. A bit pricey at 7000+ pounds for the bike but cheaper than a petrol scooter after 3 years. Electric vehicles are exempt from road tax, congestion charge and parking fees in London.
It just goes on and on. There is enough existing technology to see us through the next 30 years. The really big risk is reduced food production from climate change but that's a different story.