well said Gregor. I guess that is a point of this post - now is the time for the New Energy Deal. And given the constraints, we can't take baby steps. Obama, and all of us, have to be willing to take risks. I think he knows that, but the electorate doesn't understand how wide the structural problems are, and will probably cry at the first sign of pain...If one understands the Neurobiology of Dread, all we have to do to 'accept' short term pain, is make long term pain seem either higher or unavoidable (broadly speaking):

"Most people don't like waiting for an unpleasant outcome, and want to get it over with as soon as possible," explains Dr. Berns, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. "The only explanation for this is that the dread of having something hanging over your head is worse than the thing that you are dreading. It is a commonplace experience, but standard economic models of decision-making don't deal with this issue.

I have just calculated how much it would cost to produce 24 hour a day electricity in Texas using renewables.

I recently attempted to calculate how much 24 hour a day, 365 days a year renewable electricity would cost in texas. Dr. Ben Sovacool, a renewables advocate, recently offered the figure of $1700 per nameplate KW of wind generated electricity in discussions with me. That figure is probably low. I have reason to believe that the cost of a fully installed windmill in November 2008 is perhaps closer to $2500 per name plate KW, but the lower figure will serve to illustrate my point. If we assume that our project to replace Texas fossil fuel generating plants with renewables by 2030, as the Gore and Google plan would require, how much is it going to cost in Texas? Lets assume that we decide to go with a all renewables system, with wind base power. Assume that the same rate of inflation for electrical generating facilities that we have seen during the last 5 years. That would bring our wind facilities capital costs to $3400 per nameplate KW by the middle of the next decade, and lets assume the system is built then. A stanford study found that only 21% of wind nameplate capacity can be counted as base load electricity. In order to figure the cost of building base load electricity we have to divide the cost of a KW of of wind generating capacity by 21%. That gives a figure of something over $16,000 per KW. But hay, that is not the end of our cost, since the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas says that wind generated electricity cannot be relied on during summer days. So we are going to have to build some solar facilities in West Texas to provide day time solar back up to our wind facilities. Solar thermal facilities are now costing $4000 pre name plate KW in the Southwest. Assuming inflation the same inflation that will impact the cost of wind and nuclear facilities that cost will probably go up to $8000 per KW during the next decade. That gives us a cost of $24,000 per KW of semi-reliable wind and solar generated electricity. Semi-reliable because we know that there will be after dark hours of high electrical demand when our wind system will not be able to supply all the electrical Texas Air Conditioners demand on summer nights. So we have a system that is not 24 hours a day reliable. How much will it cost to give us some assurance that we can keep those Texas air conditioners running 24 hours a day? We could use sodium-sulfur batteries @ $350 per KWh capacity. 4 hours of battery back up brings out price to $25,400 for each 24 hour a day KW provided to Texas by a renewable system. Needless to say renewables advocates have not and will not perform this exercise.

In contrast, the $6000 to $8000 per kW for conventional nuclear power plants at during the next decade looks like a positive bargain, and the possibility that advanced technology reactors can be built at a lower price, perhaps a far lower price, should be intriguing to anyone who is interested in low cost electricity.

Gregor,

when Gail insightfully points out that an accelerated buildout of alt. energy might come under pressure to be accounted for on a cash, rather than on an accrual basis. . .

The result is that we need to ask the funders of both our debt, and our new investments, to give us time.

I would argue that ultimately, it is nature that is giving us a call on our profligate spending ways.

We are used to using accrual accounting, but nature uses only the equivalent of cash flow accounting. There is only so much oil pulled out of the ground each year, and part of it is used for producing the oil. We only have a certain amount left, and it is divided among particular uses. No matter how much we bargain, that is all there is. If we want to spend more oil on making wind turbines, we (the US, or someone somewhere else in the world) have to use less oil on something else.

I see long term debt as less and less of a solution. We know that with peak oil (and peak resources of all kinds and climate change), we will collectively have less and less resources to pay back the debt plus interest than we have now. The probability of default is very high. I see the big crisis that we will be facing now and in the years ahead is the end of long and medium term debt. Debt has allowed us to greatly ramp up demand over what it otherwise would be. We are now seeing the unwind of both debt and demand--hence the big drop in prices.

Gail, much though I respect you, I find some of your arguments for the failure of the grid somewhat circular and ill-defined.
They run somewhat on the nature that ' the grid cannot be maintained, because we do not have the finance.'
Why will we not have the finance?
'Because the grid cannot be maintained'
This is illustrative, of course, but serves to show the difficulty I have encountered in evaluating your arguments.

You may be correct, but the argument needs breaking into smaller pieces for sensible analysis.

For instance, in this post you mention 'we' may not be able to do this and that, but it is entirely unclear and important to consider who the 'we' under discussion is.
Does it refer to the US only?

The limiting cases of your argument are unclear, for instance, if a major obstacle is held to be the US budget deficit, and the financial melt-down, does this mean that China, which has budget surpluses until now and has just announced a $300 billion infrastructure investment, will be able to cope?

If the problem is held to be the switch to new fuels, does this mean that France, which gets most of it's electricity from nuclear power and has the relatively trivial task of making use of more heat pumps, solar power etc to make their non-fossil fuel uses more important still, should be able to cope?

I don not necessarily disagree with you, but am hoping that you can use some closer definitions and so on so we have something more specific to get our teeth into!

Gail,

You can move a solar panel 200 times before it ends up costing the same as moving and energy equivalent amount of coal. If areas are abandoned, the solar panels won't be unless they are super ubiquitous in other regions. You can't buy used panels these days at all. The market is really tight.

Chris

That is where the rubber will hit the road with respect to Obama and energy. Being from the second largest corn growing state, it will be politically difficult for him to do the right thing, (which is not scale corn ethanol and be not 'bet on the come' in a huge way on second generation biofuels.

Politics vs. reality. We'll see. (of course politics IS reality)

George.Mobus -

When you say that the energy required to make the trucks that deliver wind turbines to the site must be accounted for, I have to ask: for what purpose?

If one is doing this sort of energy accounting for the purpose of comparing one energy scheme with a competing energy scheme, then one level of detail is called for. But if one is embarking on some sort of society-wide energy analysis, then another level of detail is appropriate.

The further upstream one goes with this energy accounting, the more one gets into an allocation game that is fraught with assumptions and value judgements. As such, I would maintain that as long as one is reasonable confident that say 85 to 90% of the total energy input has been captured, then going any further only muddies up the analysis.

Accordingly, unless the construction of a wind turbine causes more trucks to be built (which is highly doubtful), I see little need to include the energy input associated with manufacturing the truck, as the truck has a certain operating life and could just as easily spend it hauling steel to build a high-rise office building. I can see including the fuel used for getting the wind turbine to the construction site, but not the energy content of the truck itself. (I mean where do you stop with this sort of thing: with the energy that went into the bacon and eggs the truck driver ate for breakfast the day he delivered the wind turbine?)

A lot of power sources seem to be assessed according to what people wish they were, not for what they are.
Wind power in the States can be built relatively quickly, would soak up some of the capacity being laid off in Detroit, and could supplement the energy production in the States and some other areas in a low-carbon way.

It is though difficult to go above around 20% of electricity production using it, and it's distributed nature means that you have to build lots of access roads, power lines etc.

The EROI is also low enough when coupled with concerns about it's distributed nature to raise concerns that it would, if not powerfully assisted by other means, not be capable of keeping society together.

Although there is some hope that a considerable part of the 'powerful assistance' may come from solar energy, that is by no means in the bag at reasonable cost, and at any latitude greater than about 15 degrees from the equator annual variability in solar incidence means that in practise considerable natural gas has to be burnt to make up for the shorter days and less powerful sunshine.
I do not share concerns about the EROI of solar power, as thin film technologies, including importantly silicon thin-film which is not so dependent on rare earths, have very comfortable EROI.

Now in many areas hot rock geothermal provides hope that at some point in the future it may become possible.
That is not though the case currently.

The realistic options to provide most of our base load power are what they have been for years, coal (non-clean) and nuclear.

That may change in the future, but that is the state of play, and we should not delude ourselves about that.

As a last point, point 5) regarding the use of oil in plastics etc is a serious concern but not, in my view, a game changer, as it forms a relatively small part of use, and could be made from coal, oil sands, etc, albeit with more expense.

Nate,

You make good points.

Grid costs in particular are a problem. A proper accounting would include both the cost of electrical storage, to smooth out the supply, and the costs of transmission wires to users. No one thinks that we can just attach more of these to the grid, without problems. See today's New York Times article.

I also think we are kidding ourselves regarding planned lifetimes for wind and any other grid connected electricity. We have lived in a world where we could put a coal or gas fired plant in place, and could expect it to operate for 40 years. In a post peak world, where climate change is likely to be a problem, the world will be a lot less stable. If we can't do routine maintenance on the wind turbines and transmission lines, life expectancy is likely to be much lower. If people have to move to a new locations because there is not enough water, the cost of building transmission to the abandoned area will be of no long-term benefit. We should perhaps be thinking ten year amortization of costs for wind turbines.

It seems to me that there are two ways we can spend our dollars:

1. Trying to protect BAU, for a little longer.
2. Trying to give ourselves a somewhat livable world for the long run.

It is easy to kid ourselves that lots of investment to protect BAU is worthwhile. I would argue that we need to be looking at what we need for the long run - perhaps nails and paper and printing presses, and building truly sustainable production for these (that is, not dependent on oil or electricity). We should be spending our efforts on researching what skills people need, and teaching these skills to them. The more we spend on trying to keep BAU going, the less we will spend on keeping up our long-term living standards.

Nate,
A comment on your several(important) points:
1)No EROI calculations of any energy sources are including costs to transport to specific customers because they can be next door or 10,000 km away. High EROI sources such as hydro are being transported several thousands of km( Northern Canada to US). High EROI wind resources also justify long transmission.
2)Wind power will be a very small drain on liquid fuels( most energy for steel and cement) but within one year give a positive return on ALL energy expended. Thus a growth rate of 50% will require no net energy.
3)Wind power is high EROI, so would be worth investing in EV to replace liquid fuel ICE vehicles in 10-15 years
4)With a large capacity of NG powered electricity, wind when available can displace most NG, keeping NG for peak demand or when less wind power is available. Wind power is much less compatible with coal fired electricity. Nuclear power or solar power would be better to displace coal fired electricity. At present, new capacity is NG or wind(and a small amount of solar). As NG becomes less available other uses such as heating, will have to be replaced by renewable or nuclear generated electricity.
5)Non-energy uses of oil are not relevant to "future energy". They are relevant to future chemical and mineral resources. NG is probably more relevant, "bio-chemical" crops such as rubber, soybean, linseed have all been used in the past, will probably need to be rationed after peak oil( or peak NG). We won't run out of paints, rubber, plastics.
It only makes sense to have wind located in medium and high wind locations(13% of land area). This could give 72TW( about 7 times total world energy use), and even the remotest high wind locations should be worth connecting to long distance HVDC or used locally for aluminium refining. This means that most regions are not good locations for wind power, for example most tropical and sub-tropical countries, but they often have good solar resources.