<Daddy, will the lights be on at Christmas?The Oil Drum

119 comments on The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007

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Nick on December 22, 2007 - 12:29am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"I think that it is impossible to replace sunlight stored for 100 to 500 million years ( oil ) with sunlight stored during the course of one year. Powering down seems to be vital. "

It's important to realize that the process by which oil was created and stored for our eventual consumption was incredibly inefficient, perhaps .000000000001% efficient.

The world is bathed in 100,000TW of sunshine every second, and we only use the equivalent about 4TW.

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tirwin on December 22, 2007 - 11:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

¨It's important to realize that the process by which oil was created and stored for our eventual consumption was incredibly inefficient, perhaps .000000000001% efficient.¨

Interesting number. Since no one was around back when oil formed speculating on efficiency is kind of risky.

We might get 100,000 TW of sunshine every second but until someone can figure out how to harness and store it better than plants with less embedded energy than solar panels we still have a problem.

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Nick on December 22, 2007 - 4:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

" Since no one was around back when oil formed speculating on efficiency is kind of risky."

Well, it's pretty straightforward. If all of our analysis on TOD is to trusted, we have a pretty good idea how much reoverable oil is in the ground. Just divide the energy in the sunshine that fell over millions of years into the energy in the oil, and you have your number. And, it's a pretty low number.

" until someone can figure out how to harness and store it better than plants with less embedded energy than solar panels we still have a problem."

Not really. Even the most energy-intensive silicon panels pay back their embedded energy in a year or two, and the CIGS panels like Nanosolar's pay back in a few months.

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tirwin on December 24, 2007 - 12:01am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

So it is now possible to make silicon panels with energy not derived from fossil fuel. That is something I was not aware of.

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Dan Browne on December 26, 2007 - 9:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Man is it ever tiresome to continually have to refute this argument.

How do you make solar panels (or any other kind of equipment) without energy derived from fossil fuels?

Do it in Quebec or Iceland or Brasil or any of the other places that get a significant chunk of their electric power from renewable non-fossil sources.

This won't just STOP even if we run out of fossil fuel tomorrow.
Jay Hansen is WRONG.

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