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229 comments on Floating Offshore Wind Power
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Cue obligatory comments by the naysayers that this can't work, won't happen, and won't "save" us, therefore we must ignore it, not even try, and just go back willingly to the stone age.
Very informative Gav...thanks. The 50 m water depth really isn't a problem with current offshore platform technology. Over 15 years ago a simple, and relatively cheap, structure was designed to develop small Gulf of Mexico fields. One system was named Seahorse. A simple vertical steel column built in the shipyard and floated intact to the location. There it would be flooded until upright and driven into the seafloor. It was then anchored to the seafloor by a series of guide wires. The system was engineered to operate in water depths of at least 150 m. Just a guess but I suspect this system would be considerably cheaper then a floating spar. This system would seem to also eliminate the problems developed by a moving base. Perhaps even a more important factor is reducing installation costs. The equipment (cranes, support facilities) rented to install offshore structures is typically very expensive. These systems would probably have to be mobilized from a distant resource. The high mob and demob costs could be mitigated by installing numerous towers in a single phase. In addition to the Seahorse-like structures being installed in something akin to an assembly line, the turbines could also be mounted in a similar manner.
Such plans may already have been engineered, or are at least in the process. Earlier this year the state of Texas awarded a number of wind farm tracts of its southern shore line. I don't now the details but am fairly certain the water depths are at least as great as the one you mention for offshore Maine. I'll dig for some details on this project.
Driving something into the bottom is a problem because it requires mobile equipment which may be in short supply; the advantage of the spars is that they leave port complete. But whatever works....
True E-P. But these structures aren't much more than 36" or 42" rolled steel pipes. A whole lot cheaper than building a spar (which also needs surface support vessels to be anchored). When you figure a commercial wind farm might need 50 to 100 such installations it could add up to a big cost differential.
Spar or Seahorse, I wonder what the risk from iceburgs moght be up there. I know that was a big factor in the design of the Hibernia platform of Canada many years ago.
AGCC seems to be taking care of that...
I suspect a tethered platform would be more survivable than a fixed one. If an iceberg ran over the top of it and broke the tethers, it would just float off (assuming bouyancy wasn't compromised). If the platform had an EPIRB (or similar) it could be tracked and recovered.
Cue obligatory comments by innumerate fools who think expensive, intermittent power backed by jaw dropping amounts of natural gas and a spiderweb of HVDC lines spanning the entire continent is all the rage.
Oh, let me guess: you propose nuclear absolutism as a solution.
Same old, same old. What a horrible cliche you are. And quite unreasonable.
If you have the continent-wide network of HVDC, you don't need the natural gas (or coal, or nukes).
That's the whole point of supergrids - eliminating the intermittency issue for individual renewable plants entirely.
Can you point me to some detailed analysis which demonstrates this assertion? A super grid would undoubtedly help to provide a better match of intermittent electricity supply to demand, but could it really provide the same level of voltage regulation on a year round basis as today's power mix with its extremely heavy dependence on coal and natural gas?
See paper by Archer & Jacobson:
"The array consequently behaves more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power.
In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the midwestern United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind turbines, greater than 6.9 m s1 (class 3 or greater). It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power."
There are plenty of applications (like charging electric cars) that don't need steady base-load, just some number of hours of power sometime overnight, which is good wind time.
Jacobson is a Stanford Professor who does a lot of interesting work, see
his web page, including testimony for Congress.
Thanks for the link, but I have already read the Archer and Jacobsen paper. It is pretty clear that their 19 interconnected wind farms are not really the equivalent of a coal fired powered base load power plant even at 33% of total output level. They use a criterion of 85% percent availability as typical of dedicated coal fired baseload power plants. However, this 85% availability for coal fired plants does not mean that the lights go out 15% of the time. Most down time for coal fired plants is scheduled and back up power is provided. Real power system reliability is better than 15%. Some kind of dispatachable backup is required if the wind system is going to provide reliable baseload power.
Furthermore the study only addresses the issue of baseload power. If the other two thirds of the available energy is not well matched with demand, then the need for additional dispatchable backup may be required. Charging electric cars from the grid will be a completely new demand. Such charging may be an effective way to use wind to power part of our transportation system, but without vehicle to grid capability it does nothing to address the issue of load matching within the current electric power demand structure.
Don't get me wrong. I am not doubting that a super grid will improve the ability of renewable energy to match demand, but I do doubt Big Gav's claim that it will completely eliminate the need for dispatchable generation.
"Charging electric cars from the grid will be a completely new demand. Such charging may be an effective way to use wind to power part of our transportation system, but without vehicle to grid capability it does nothing to address the issue of load matching within the current electric power demand structure."
Not really. EV's and plug-ins have flexibility to charge when the grid has extra supply, so they can buffer supply variance. This is probably much more important than V2G. OTOH, there's no reason to believe V2G won't work, and provide another very cheap and effective support for grid resiliency.
I would note that a continent wide grid is likely to have many more windfarms than used in this study; solar is negatively correlated with wind, and so will reduce overall variance; pumped storage is pretty cheap; and newer utility scale batteries at $200/KWH and very high cycle life are also pretty cheap.
All that said, I don't see a problem with keeping some coal or natural gas plants around, if they're only used 5% of the time.
Unfortunately, that is exactly the problem with their paper, and the reason I was so disappointed with it (and surprised it was accepted, actually).
A better figure of merit is how often a power plant is schedulable, meaning able to be relied on given prior notice. If power plant A needs to be shut down for maintenance next week and power plant B is scheduled to take over from it, then power plant B is 95% schedulable if there's a 95% chance it will be able to successfully provide the power block assigned to it.
Based on what I've been able to find, coal plants are schedulable about 95% of the time, and pure wind can provide very little power with 95% reliability. The data in A&J's paper (or the equivalent data available from Ontario Hydro's website) shows this very clearly; in 2007, there were 16 days where all of Ontario Hydro's wind installations production 0 power for 1 or more hours during that day, meaning that the 95% schedulability of wind in the province is roughly zero. (Mean generation was 120MW, so this is not a trivial sample size.)
Geographic distribution is not enough to make pure wind a reliable resource.
It won't; fortunately, it doesn't take all that much pumped storage to fix the problem.
Based on modelling I've done with hourly wind and solar data for 2007, as well as price estimates from the same period, a wind/solar/pumped combo can give rock-steady power for 97% of the year, with multi-hour warnings in advance of shutdown, for about twice the current US price of electricity (20c/kWh) and with fairly modest pumped storage requirements (~48 hours, which is less than the amount already in hydro installations in the US, although more turbines would have to be installed).
Pure wind is not a solution beyond 20-30% penetration, but it doesn't need to be. Wind and solar have strong seasonal complementarity (winter vs. summer peaks), and pumped storage allows any short-term irregularities to be smoothed out.
"power plant B is 95% schedulable if there's a 95% chance it will be able to successfully provide the power block assigned to it...in 2007, there were 16 days where all of Ontario Hydro's wind installations production 0 power for 1 or more hours during that day, meaning that the 95% schedulability of wind in the province is roughly zero. "
I'm not quite clear on this. If there were 16 days, and there was zero power for 1 hour each day, that's only 16/8,760, or .2% downtime/.998% uptime - 5 hours each day would give 99% uptime. That's quite a bit better than 95%. Also, don't you have to compare the same time each day, rather than simply choosing days on which a zero output hour occurred at some point during the day?
Are you sure this is the right way to use the "95% schedulable" metric?
I see that Ontario Hydro only covers about half of Ontario. 120MW isn't tiny, but it doesn't seem that big to me. How big is the geographical span of Ontario Hydro's wind resource (that you also used for your simulation)? Wouldn't a much larger/continental grid have a greatly reduced variance of wind output?
Zero power for one or more hours in each of those 16 days. If the planning quantum is 1 day, then the wind plant was unable to reliably provide more than zero power for 4.4% of those quanta.
I chose 1 day as the planning increment to illustrate how reliability over contiguous blocks of time is of value in planning. To take an extreme example, a power plant that had a 5% chance of shutting down for any given hour would have 95% hourly uptime, but obviously would be extremely unreliable for planning purposes. This unreliability is highlighted by longer planning increments - there's only a 30% chance that the plant would be active over an entire day.
Pure wind is (unfortunately) much closer to this extreme than traditional fuel-burning plants are.
The choice of a 24-hour planning increment is somewhat arbitrary; it would be better to use either actual planning increments, or the typical length of a maintenance shutdown. The precise choice of planning increment, though, isn't really relevant - the key point is that reliability over longer periods of time is valuable, and highly variable power sources have great difficulty providing that.
Whether or not 24 hours is the best increment, it's certainly better than 1 hour, which is what the A&J paper effectively used. A 1-hour planning increment risks heavy cycling of thermal plants, which increases maintenance (especially for coal and nuclear), and which substantially increases the risk of a power outage (if too little dispatchable power is on hand to compensate for a sudden dip in volatile power).
A proper analysis would take into account the maintenance profiles (in terms of typical downtime and of vulnerability to cycling) of other power plants in the mix, as well as efficiency considerations stemming from cycling and running at sub-optimal output levels. Based on analyses I've seen (for Ireland, IIRC; available online), those are significant concerns for unbuffered wind.
No idea, although it's worth noting that Ontario is about the size of 8 US Midwestern states.
Substantial reduction, but not a vast one. The A&J paper showed how there are diminishing returns from adding more and more locations. (That part of their analysis I have no problem with; it's just their 1-hour planning increments that I find unreasonable.)
Even if the different regions had completely uncorrelated weather - which they don't - then probabilistically we would expect fairly significant deviations from the mean. If it's technically and economically easy to prevent that reliance on luck - and it is - it seems only prudent to do so.
"the wind plant was unable to reliably provide more than zero power for 4.4% of those quanta."
Even with that assumption, that gives better than 95% uptime, yes?
"The choice of a 24-hour planning increment is somewhat arbitrary; it would be better to use either actual planning increments"
I'm pretty sure that 24 hours is too long. My observation of the ISO bidding process is that it proceeds in 1 hour blocks - I believe cycling problems are up to the producer to worry about (though I'm not sure - anyone know more?).
I believe that there are two relevant planning processes: the planning of generation mix, and the daily 1-hour block bidding process. The generation planning process will look at a statistical analysis, probably the mean output during the peak period (usually later afternoon in summer, though it can be winter in the evening - perhaps a 4-6 hour period), minus roughly 2.5 standard deviations, to calculate a level above which output will be 95% of the time. This will give the capacity credit. These credits range from 10% of average to 90%+, but I've never seen one that was zero, even in a conservative environment like Texas. Northern states like Minnesota and NY state have assigned much higher peak capacity credits to wind, in the range of 90% of average.
The daily planning process will look at wind forecasts, and if the bidded generation fails to materialize, the producer is charged a penalty. Note that a power source doesn't have to be dispatchable to be forecastable, and it could have a low average capacity factor, and still be able to successfully bid on days when it is available.
"Ontario is about the size of 8 US Midwestern states."
Well, Ontario is only about 5% of the US and Canada; Ontario Hydro only covers about half of Ontario; and that doesn't tell us how widely spaced the wind generation is: it could all come from a single windfarm, for all we know. 120 MW really isn't very much - it's the size of a single medium to medium small wind farm.
"Even if the different regions had completely uncorrelated weather - which they don't - then probabilistically we would expect fairly significant deviations from the mean. "
Actually, there's a very good chance that different areas will have negative correlation - it's common in Europe. And, if not, the law of large numbers means that variance as % of the mean will fall in a mathematically predictable manner with size.
You've probably read it already, but the DeCarolis and Keith study did a greenfield model on the cost of wind to serve a large portion of US electric requirements. Allowing for learning curve advancements gave an average cost of 6-7 cents/kWh for serving half of US electric demand. While a rather arbitrary exercise, their methodology does include all intermittency and variability costs. They did not include pumped hydro, however, using the common misunderstanding that there is not enough of it. Although there is some development uncertainty left, an AACAES or underground pumped hydro system would be a useful addition to their model.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/papers/65.Decarolis.2006.EconomicsOfWind.e...
Thanks, that's a good study.
Yes, pumped storage would be a helpful addition to the analysis. Also, they note the potential value of demand management, but leave it out. That's understandable (you can't do everything...), but it's still a big omission, and getting bigger: plugin hybrids and EV's will add an enormous and extremely cheap tool for managing wind supply intermittency, primarily through charge management, but also through V2G.
Yes, it's a big omission to leave out DSM. Do you know of any quantification of these benefits? G2V, V2G, and demand side thermal (cold/warm) storage should make for a rather big contribution. I'd like to see these advantages quantified with real grid load serving data and economical analysis, for different power sources (variable wind and solar, constant nuclear would benefit a lot). There doesn't appear to be a lot of study on this.
It's only been very recently that it has become obvious that G2V and V2G will be very, very important, so it makes sense that there's been no thorough analysis.
A back of the napkin analysis takes us a long way: 210M vehicles, running 12K miles, at .25KWH/mile, would need an average of 72GW (an addition of about 16% over the US's current level of 450GW). That's 72GW of demand that you can turn off and on extremely quickly. You can put most of it at night - and have roughly 200GW of demand to solve wind's night-time surplus power problem (which is actually wind's main problem). You can use it to absorb spikes in wind power essentially any time of day.
V2G: with 210M vehicles and, say, 4KW peak output per vehicle, you have the potential for 840GW of instantaneous peak backup power, and 210GW that could be sustained for several hours!
And all at extremely low cost, because the vehicle owner pays for the storage for his/her transportation needs.
This is game changing.
1 kW per vehicle is a rather low figure. 110 VAC 15 A is 1650 watts; any 220 V connection would probably be at 30 A minimum, for 6.6 kW per vehicle.
Yes, I was a little too conservative. I really had in mind a Volt, with an effective 8KWH available, providing power for 8 hours, so the limit was the battery, not the "pipe". You could also use 2 KW, and 4 hours.
OTOH, we're talking about maximum longrun potential here, so why not assume an effective 50KWH available? So, here's revised text:
V2G: with 210M vehicles, a 50 KWH battery and, say, 6.6KW peak output per vehicle (220V & 30A), you have the potential for 1,386GW of instantaneous backup power that could be sustained for 7.5 hours. That's 3 times the current average demand in the US, and 40% greater than overall current peak capacity!
Yes to all of that - nobody I know thinks wind (or any one thing) is an entire solution, and in any case, the solution mix inherently varies by geography.
1) Note that the Australian company Ausra recently fired up its first North American plant here in CA, and unlike solar PV, utility-scale solar thermal plants can be engineered to store some energy straightforwardly, which helps, although it's not a panacea either.
2) Of course, in places that have substantial large (dammed) hydro, like CA there is some flexibility in scheduling water release, and that helps also, even without pumped storage. Of course, it's even better in Washington, where hydro produces ~75% of the electricity. Of course, there are geographies that really don't have much chance for dispatchable hydro.
The CA mix of energy sources can be found here.
and more here.
We're a long way away from eliminating natural gas (45%), although we've made more progress on coal. Obviously, the coal is baseload and the gas baseload+peaker.
3) Even though we've done wind here in CA for a long time, I'd guess it's going to be a relatively small factor for us, especially given the hydro, sun, geothermal resources. On the other hand, it will likely be more relevant in the US-midwest, where wind turbines actually mesh relatively well with farmland.
I have already read the Archer and Jacobsen paper. It is pretty clear that their 19 interconnected wind farms are not really the equivalent of a coal fired powered base load power plant even at 33% of total output level.
In that situation, I have no doubt that you are correct. Think instead, however, of 120 interconnected land-based windfarms tied to the grid which itself is interconnected between regions and control areas via HVDC. Then add solar generating stations, geothermal power plants (dispatchable baseload), hydropower/storage (dispatchable baseload), offshore wind, etc. Employ demand side management to provide real-time pricing (with lookahead) read by smart appliances/HVAC. Keep some gas turbines, nukes, even some CCS coal plants to keep the transition steady. More comfortable now?
Also consider the above power sources within the context of Stuart Staniford's Powering Civilization to 2050. Your thoughts?
I think we'd need more long-term storage, like CAES. CAES combined with a carbon-free high-temperature heat source (e.g. molten-salt nuclear reactors) would offend the hard greens, but would certainly give better bang for the BTU and slash GHGs more.
Absolutely. You could also use lower temperature heat sources (geothermal, light/heavy water reactors, etc) as a heat source for such a diabatic CAES plant. Since gen4 is some time away, using low temperature geothermal and existing reactors could be more interesting.
One thing I'd like to see developed quickly is a large underground pumped hydro energy storage system. Preferably using an existing large deep underground abandoned mine complex, as that saves a big cost component (tunnelling). There was a project planned for Ohio, if memory serves it was the Norton limestone mine. For some reason it was abandoned and a CAES system was preferred (a really big one), I suspect due to lower investment cost of a diabatic CAES system and relatively affordable natural gas prices. But the pumped hydro system works better with higher natural gas prices as it doesn't use any.
The Norton CAES project does not have a nuclear powerplant nearby. The Oak Harbor nuclear plant is too far away. If Ohio wants another nuclear plant, near the Norton CAES project could be considered a prime location. It would be best to have dry cooling but that's easy in the Ohio climate.
According to Wikipedia, the MSRE was built in 4 years. I'm assuming that we know enough now to be able to build another one in much less time; I would bet that after a few initial units were done (5?) and shaken down for a few years, production could be accelerated greatly as most of the parts would be built in a factory.
That's probably true. Somewhere I read the official targets were 2020 (accelerated target) and 2030 (base case) for molten salt reactors and other advanced concepts to reach multi GWe levels. An LFTR crash program (maybe 1-2 billion) could conceivably speed things up. If 1 GWe is ready by 2020 and the tech is as good and manufacturable as claimed there could be very serious amounts in commercial operation by 2030. I wonder if Obama is aware of the LFTR?
I doubt Obama knows about the LFTR. I was unaware of it until recently, and I'm an energy geek; he's a "community organizer".
1 GWe is a rather small figure. If these units are built in sizes of 300-400 MWe (much less difficult to fit into the grid), that's barely 3 of them.
If I was the nuke czar I'd ask for a design by 2010, first unit on-line in 2012 with a production rate of 1/year until 2017, after which production of the finalized design would accelerate to at least 5/year. The initial fuel loads would be reprocessed Pu from spent PWR fuel, with the U (perfectly fissionable but not enrichable due to U-232) sold to Canada for their CANDUs if they wanted it. Further fuel would be thorium.
Taking the dry casks off of the sites of decommissioned reactors (or putting new, taxpaying reactors on those sites) would probably be popular with the locals. Having reactors which produce pre-packaged waste ready for disposal rather than casks of rods would prevent deferring that problem to another generation.
The problems are mostly regulatory; licensing and approving a design takes years in the current environment. Even the Hyperion design will take until 2013 or so, and that's a fairly well tested design. If engineering issues are found, though, the design has to be revised a bit and re-approved etc. Takes a lot of time. Even Kirk Sorensen thinks 10 years to commercial scale is going to be a very hard target for a crash program in the US.
Well if you're a czar things are easier than in a complicated democracy ;)
Comfortable in what sense?
Comfortable that we will not have to abandon every advantage of the industrial revolution and go back to weaving cloth by hand and using iron instead of steel? I have never believed this extreme doomer scenario.
Comfortable that 8 billion plus people can live like middle class Europeans, and that the stock market can go on growing for the rest of my life? Absolutely not.
I am well aware that there are more options for renewable energy than wind generation and a super grid. My remark was directed at the casual optimism of Big Gav's statement rather than an attempt to claim that renewables are useless. With respect to your proposed scenario here are some comments:
1. Geothermal for baseload. Are you including hot dry rock technology? If so I think that you are counting your chickens before they are hatched. I do not think anyone knows what the costs of power produced from this technology will be. Traditional geothermal based on heated natural acquifers can be expanded but I suspect it can provide only a small part of the baseload requirement for global middle class living at European standards.
2. Pumped Hydro Storage. I have concerns that if we become heavily dependent on this technology for base load power, then variations in rainfall may effect the grid reliability. During a drought pumping lots of water could short down river users. I am not claiming that the technology is useless, just that it too may have costs associated with inttermittency.
3. The Super Grid. If this grid is going to deliver the same energy as today's grid (and possibly significantly more if it also has to power our transportation system) then it will have to a lot stronger than today's grid. This implies extra capital and maintenance costs.
4. Oil subsidies of renewable energy technology. Some people maintain that any material transport, construction, or maintenance function powered by oil can be powered by electricity at a cost that will not significantly slow down economic growth. I remain unconvinced.
5. Fossil fuels are not the only resource depletion issue with which we are going to be faced. If other resource shortages (peak phosphorous anyone?) start affecting out productivity then coming up with the capital to fund an expensive new energy system will be that much more difficult.
My point is not that we should not pursue alternate energy technology, but that pursing it in the context of a wealth concentrating, sales volume driven economic system may prove to be impossible.
Comfortable that we will not have to abandon every advantage of the industrial revolution and go back to weaving cloth by hand and using iron instead of steel? I have never believed this extreme doomer scenario.
Neither Gav nor I said that. Later you mention Peak Everything, and hear you sound like a Cornucopian promoting the endless party. And later on down the page, you say;
As a species we need to grow up and find some other purpose in life than selling more stuff this year than we sold last year. We need to concentrate on creating long term community wealth rather than on amassing short term private fortunes. Adam Smith's cooperation of greed will not work well in a resource limited world. If alternate energy technology is oversold and people are encouraged to believe that the BAU growth economy can continue for the rest of their lives, then long term ecological thinking is discouraged.
So it's hard to integrate these seemingly disparate stances into one coherent set. Which is it; Powerdown, or Party on?
Comfortable that 8 billion plus people can live like middle class Europeans, and that the stock market can go on growing for the rest of my life? Absolutely not.
Gav did not say that, so you are creating your own strawman.
1. Geothermal for baseload. Are you including hot dry rock technology? If so I think that you are counting your chickens before they are hatched. I do not think anyone knows what the costs of power produced from this technology will be.
Nobody knows what the costs or the availability of any energy source is with certainty. See the projections by MIT in this study using data from EGS sites and well known drilling costs.
2. Pumped Hydro Storage. I have concerns that if we become heavily dependent on this technology for base load power, then variations in rainfall may effect the grid reliability. During a drought pumping lots of water could short down river users. I am not claiming that the technology is useless, just that it too may have costs associated with inttermittency.
Of course there are intermittency risks, even with pumped hydro. No power source is without its risks one way or the other. Demand side management is one other tool to help even out peaks and troughs.
3. The Super Grid. If this grid is going to deliver the same energy as today's grid (and possibly significantly more if it also has to power our transportation system) then it will have to a lot stronger than today's grid. This implies extra capital and maintenance costs.
Today's grid need overhauling anyway, just listen to the people who run it; the technology is WWII era and before. Yes, it will take money to do this; would you just let it fall apart otherwise?
4. Oil subsidies of renewable energy technology. Some people maintain that any material transport, construction, or maintenance function powered by oil can be powered by electricity at a cost that will not significantly slow down economic growth. I remain unconvinced.
With oil expected to decline permanently, we need to wise about the power we use now and in the future. The "anything goes" attitude of Cornucopia Land is history. Economic "growth" is another area that will see a change if we are to avoid the boom&bust cycle.
5. Fossil fuels are not the only resource depletion issue with which we are going to be faced. If other resource shortages (peak phosphorous anyone?) start affecting out productivity then coming up with the capital to fund an expensive new energy system will be that much more difficult.
Not a doomer, eh? Fooled me. So let me see if I can guess; you are either for continued coal, or for heavily increasing nuclear, which when I last checked, was pretty expensive itself. Which is it, or are you able to open up?
My point is not that we should not pursue alternate energy technology, but that pursing it in the context of a wealth concentrating, sales volume driven economic system may prove to be impossible.
The "wealth concentrating" bit may not go over well with the American public who are appalled at the effects of the efforts of people over the last 8 years who have been attempting to concentrate said wealth. And if this solution is a very large number of distributed, diffuse power stations, what does it matter if they do not "concentrate the wealth", as long as they provide the power?
Here is a quote from Big Gav from an exchange we had in July of this year:
With respect to big Gav, at least, there is no issue of strawman in my statement above.
I am neither a power down or a party-on person. I mentioned these two extreme cases precisely because I believe we need aim for something in between. I am glad to hear that you agree.
I am not a promoter of clean coal or of a massive nuclear buildup. I am a promoter of social and ecological intelligence. Our economic system is structurally designed to concentrate wealth and to require growth for proper functioning. Neither the stock market nor the banking system can function effectively without growth. We need to fix these structural features of our economic system. Social engineering is going to be at least as important and probably even more so than physical engineering. Overoptimistic estimates of the potential of renewable energy (I am accusing Big Gav of this offense, not you) discourages people from thinking about the social and political reforms that are required to create an economic system which is not obsessed with constantly increasing sales volumes.
It seems we have similar stances, though use different constructs to express them. I believe we need to resort to a lifestyle that is much less consuming of frivolous luxuries that impact our sustainability, which includes the natural habitat, though where does one draw the line? I believe in a form of powerdown, and you can see my approach on this newscast.
"Our economic system is structurally designed to concentrate wealth and to require growth for proper functioning. Neither the stock market nor the banking system can function effectively without growth. "
Could you elaborate on these two points? Perhaps indicate if this school of thought has a name, and a good analytical description somewhere? That's not consistent with any mainstream economic thinking I've seen. If you feel you have a source that overturns conventional wisdom, I think it needs a fair amount of evidence (the kind that TOD has spent so much time providing for PO, for instance).
The school of though I am referring to is called classical economics. Its chief proponent was a man named Adam Smith. He wrote a book you might have heard of called The Wealth of Nations. You should try reading it. He is orders of magnitude more intelligent and nuanced than the Chicago school of economics.
However, the need for growth in a system of private finance capitalism can be understood directly by the application of simple logic. If I give you money, which represents the right to consume economic output, and expect to receive in return an even larger right to consume economic output at some later date, then those excess consumption rights have to come from one of two places; Either total economic production increases, or I take consumption rights away from someone else. No third option exists. At least not in the universe which I inhabit.
If you are a games theory expert and you believe that you can prove that investment as a zero-sum, wealth preserving game will function well, please present your analysis.
"The school of though I am referring to is called classical economics."
The two propositions I'm questioning are:
1) Our economic system is structurally designed to concentrate wealth (by which I take it you mean the distribution of wealth) and
2) Our economic system cannot function effectively without growth.
I'm not familiar with anything in classical economics that supports these two propositions.
On growth: why can't loan interest rates go to very near zero (and deposit rates go to zero), and those relatively small interest payments support a small finance sector? Isn't Japan's recent no-growth experience a counter-example?
Further down the thread you wrote:
Economic growth is the least-harm option: look at what happened to Russian zoos and wildlife during their economic collapse, or what's happening to "bushmeat" in Africa, due to poverty. Economic growth is the best way to reduce population growth. If it's not sustainable...things will be much worse for both us and the planet than if it is.
Now you are saying No growth? What’s the problem?. You are not being very consistent.
Yes, small (but not zero) growth can support a small private financial sector. But not all investments are wealth increasing investments. What if a factory needs new machinery to go on producing the same thing it has been producing for years? Investments which preserve wealth (rather than increase it) are often worth making but private financiers will have not have any interest in making such investments. Furthermore, people whose rasion d’etre is to make money with doing any constructive labor naturally desire to obtain as much free money as possible. They look for reasons to believe that the future will be rosier than than the present (or just plain ignore the future) and before you know it you have collapsing bubbles all over the place. Far better to have public or community finance whose purpose is to make sure that useful production enterprises get capitalized. In a system of community investment the return on investment would be the goods and services produced and not extra consumption rights for people who have not done any contructive work to earn it.
"Now you are saying No growth? What’s the problem?. You are not being very consistent. "
Not at all. On the one hand, I think certain kinds of growth are extremely positive (at least for the reasonably foreseeable future, say the next 100 years), and that zero growth would result in much more environmental harm. On the other hand, I'm curious why you think that "Our economic system cannot function effectively without growth." .
"small (but not zero) growth can support a small private financial sector"
Why (again, according to your theoretical model) would growth be needed? The small financial sector would simply be a service provider, which would be paid by something now generally called "interest". You could call them money handling fees, if you want. It would be like many other service providers supported by the economy, such as weather forecasters, programmers, and barbers.
"private financiers will have not have any interest in making such investments"
Why not? They'd be paid their interest/fees, and make a living.
"before you know it you have collapsing bubbles all over the place..."
The arguments here, if I understand correctly, are that government/community based finance would be more stable, allocate investment funds more productively than a private sector, or be cheaper to maintain. All of those attributes would be desirable (if true), but they certainly don't rise to the level suggested by "Our economic system cannot function effectively without growth." I don't see a necessary connection between zero growth and the socialization of the lending function.
Further, while the socialization of the lending function would be a pretty big change, I don't see how it spells the end of our current economic system: you could still have most of the economy in private hands, functioning the way they do now.
People with good business acumen evaluating the potential for the sucess or failure of proposed capital investments and receiving salaries for services rendered is not private finance. The question of whether such a service represents public or private finance depends on who bears the risk if the investment has a poor return. These business evaluators, no matter how smart they may be, are not going to put their famlies's future welfare on the line every time that make an investment decision. If the risk is born by private investors then they will demand interest as compensation. If public, via taxes, bears the risk then there is no need to charge interest. Yes, we will take an occasional loss on a bad invesment, but we will also make many good investments which provide us with goods and services that we need.
"People with good business acumen evaluating the potential for the sucess or failure of proposed capital investments and receiving salaries for services rendered is not private finance. "
It's a pretty good description of the daily functioning of traditional community banks and S&L's.
"If the risk is born by private investors then they will demand interest as compensation."
Yes, but how much? I suppose you're making an argument for socialized banking, in part to prevent liquidity traps due to demands for excessive interest, in part to improve allocation of capital. Kind've what we're seeing lately, as a temporary measure, but definitely not part of classical economics.
And, this is very far from a "zero-growth spells the end of capitalism" argument.
Economic growth is the least-harm option: look at what happened to Russian zoos and wildlife during their economic collapse, or what's happening to "bushmeat" in Africa, due to poverty.
One is a economic collapse (not No-Growth) and the other is at poverty level, which would be a long descent from where we are today, so neither example is relevant here.
What if a factory needs new machinery to go on producing the same thing it has been producing for years?
It would finance it from the set-asides it had been making as a part of it's business plan. What, no set-asides? Bad management.
Far better to have public or community finance whose purpose is to make sure that useful production enterprises get capitalized.
That's taking place now in the US with bailouts. Not sure if it's for "useful production"
One company’s cash reserves is another company’s loan. For the economy as a whole the ony real savings are physical hoards of goods, just like a squirrel’s cache of nuts. While I agree that a more conservative style of investment is highly desirable, I am not convinced that letting any business that does not have the hard goods to pay for any needed infrastructure improvements go bankrupt is the best modus operandi for the economy. Also, even in an economy without composite growth startups will exist. With private investment and interest the barrier to success becomes higher than with interest free community investment.
I agree that US auto company bailouts may be a bad invesment. However, the auto companies, contruction comapanies, etc. have been making bad long term investments (in my view at least) for many years, so I don’t see any basis for making the twin proclamations private investment=good and public investment=bad. Also the bailout of investment firms is not an investment at all. It is pure give away of middle and lower class wealth to rich people.
" I don’t see any basis for making the twin proclamations private investment=good and public investment=bad. "
I haven't seen evidence for that either. OTOH, I don't think I've seen evidence the other way - have you?
It is mainstream classical economics that the capitalistic system does not target equity but explicitly growth. Growth is the target. Sounds strange when you think about it, since the word 'growth' implies a movement towards something rather than an end goal. Has to go wrong sooner or later. It must have made great sense a century ago though.
It's also pretty mainstream that debt-based systems require growth to function. It is obvious. If you have no growth the economy can't pay back it's loans as the future cost of paying them off becomes prohibitive. I think a (near) zero growth economy cannot be pivotted around debt at all.
This is all very conventional wisdom I think. Which is very very scary.
"Growth is the target."
Sure. That's not the same thing as "Our economic system cannot function effectively without growth."
"It's also pretty mainstream that debt-based systems require growth to function. It is obvious. If you have no growth the economy can't pay back it's loans as the future cost of paying them off becomes prohibitive."
As I said to Roger K, I'm not familiar with anything in classical economics that supports that proposition. Why can't loan interest rates go to very near zero (and deposit rates go to zero), and those relatively small interest payments support a small finance sector? Isn't Japan's recent no-growth experience a counter-example?
My point is that growth is a means to an end which we haven't decided/agreed upon, and perhaps therein lies the problem. Prisoners dillema thing, or whatever. It would be useful if we can decide what level of affluence we want, rather than pushing the limits into the next big crisis. In this I have to second Roger.
I don't know if Japan is a good example considering it's strong interaction with the rest of the world (that does have significant growth), and the no growth experience you refer to is too short to be an indication anyway.
The question is how the hegemonic heavily debt based financial system would fare under a prolonged zero growth rate, for the entire world (not just one country for a few months).
"growth is a means to an end which we haven't decided/agreed upon"
I think we're all agreed that we'd like a better life: more leisure for non-work pursuits; better health; more time for parenting; better care of the elderly; less poverty in developing nations. For all of these things we need to improve labor and resource productivity. That's conventionally called "growth" - call it what you will.
"It would be useful if we can decide what level of affluence we want"
It would be useful to find better priorities for the form of our growth.
"I don't know if Japan is a good example considering it's strong interaction with the rest of the world (that does have significant growth), and the no growth experience you refer to is too short to be an indication anyway."
Japananese institutions were living with zero, or near-zero rates for 10+ years. That seems like a pretty good test.
I will call that an incomplete and ill considered means and goal.
First, many of these things do not require growth per se, but systemic change and distribution. Growth does not bring better distribution; indeed, experience in the past has typically shown the opposite. The situation becomes more skewed with more growth. Even though the minimum for 'a better life' is also increased, that doesn't make growth an efficient tool to do this.
Second, when is enough enough? How many TVs per household, how many cars? Without a goal, we'll just keep growing to disaster. It is a stupid prisoners' dilemma which we have to collectively grow out of.
This is important, as you have not mentioned the other factor here - the environment. We are heavily straining it. Without too much growth, we'll need all the technology we can develop to reduce our environmental impact. I think we can manage this. With substantial global economic growth, I do not see how that is going to be enough. Then, we need to change the system and our own behaviour.
Not just growth. Distribution is not growth. Growth is not distribution. And if growth is still your goal, you still need a target. I think you are not aware of our environmental impact and the scale of our resource use.
Again, Japan is heavily interconnected to international economies. For example, it lacks many minerals which it has to import, it exports cars, has strong international financial ties, etc etc. Looking at Japan's economic performance like you do, in isolation to the rest of the world, is just silly in today's world. Japan would not exist as we know it without it's international ties, which is true for almost all countries.
"many of these things do not require growth per se, but systemic change and distribution."
I said "improved labor and resource productivity" . At least in the US, everyone's busy (and outside the US, no one wants to work longer hours). In order to provide more services, we need to be able to do more with the same hours in the day. And.....that's growth.
"when is enough enough? How many TVs per household, how many cars? "
As I noted elsewhere, I think if you look at goods production in the OECD, you'll see that most of it has plateaued. For instance, light vehicle production in the US has been flat for 30 years. I think you're attacking a non-problem.
"Without too much growth, we'll need all the technology we can develop to reduce our environmental impact. "
As I said, we need better priorities. Among other things, we need to direct our growth into work to reduce our environmental impact. That's much more sensible, and much more salable, than trying to simply not grow at all, as it will result in a much greater reduction of our impact than would the no-growth option.
And, yes, Japan is heavily interconnected. But, I don't see how that affects the argument that institutions can't live with zero interest rates. How do those connections support those institutions?
"Pumped Hydro Storage. I have concerns that if we become heavily dependent on this technology for base load power, then variations in rainfall may effect the grid reliability."
I think you're confusing this with modulation of conventional hydro. Pumped Hydro is a closed system, which doesn't use a river (it might use a large lake, or an ocean).
"The Super Grid. If this grid is going to deliver the same energy as today's grid (and possibly significantly more if it also has to power our transportation system) then it will have to a lot stronger than today's grid. This implies extra capital and maintenance costs."
Yes, but not an enormous amount. Long distance transmission is moderately expensive, but demand management is pretty cheap.
"Oil subsidies of renewable energy technology. Some people maintain that any material transport, construction, or maintenance function powered by oil can be powered by electricity at a cost that will not significantly slow down economic growth. I remain unconvinced. "
I'm baffled by this. Why do you not believe, for instance, that Prof Cutler Cleveland is competent, when he says that wind & solar have a high E-ROI? Further, why aren't you encouraged by the example of the Prius, which is cheaper than the average new vehicle, but uses half the fuel? It's partially electric, and it's cheaper to buy, cheaper to fuel, it's maintenance costs are lower...
Pumped hydro is not an entirely closed system, since there is some leakage and evaporation. It's not much, though, not enough for concerns by any reasonable standards. Perhaps Roger is thinking about retrofitting current hyro electric capacity with bigger resevoirs so they can serve as a hydroelectric - pumped storage hybrid?
Underground pumped hydro is something that has started to interest me greatly, due to it's low materials use, lower surface footprint, very high head potential (>1000 meters) and use of conventional off the shelf technology. Plus it's potentially cheap if a large abandoned mine complex is used as the lower resevoir. Mineralized water (salt or carbonated water) is also heavier so stores more energy per volume of resevoir, and it's easy to deal with the mineral depositing issues.
I think Roger is also a bit conservative on geothermal's prospects, considering he did not mention low temperature geothermal, strange since we had a thread on it recently. The equipment is off the shelf and proven, just reverse cycle refrigeration equipment. About 120 GWe in the US alone, because geothermal gets high capacity factor that's at least 20% of current use.
I do agree with Roger that we have to change the growth paradigm. Growth has become an end in itself, which is not a good thing. His idea to pick a certain level of wealth and grow (or shrink) to that level, sounds very reasonable to me.
I do not read every alternate energy post that appears on TOD. I am a busy man. I just looked at Big Gav’s story and he does not say much about low temperature geothermal other than than there is renewed ‘interest’ in it. My past reading about low tempertature heat engines claims that capital costs are high. What is the estimated cost of electricity produced from this source?
Raser has a power purchase agreement for 78 USD/MWh for their 10 MWe plant due to open soon. Cheap I think. The plant cost 5000/kWe but the high capacity factor makes the levelised cost reasonable. That's actually quite good for the first of a kind plant. Further plants, bigger plants, could well be cheaper. Since the tech involves off the shelf refrigeration equipment it should scale pretty fast.
Actually I pointed to a number of examples of plants that have been built and are being built in both the US and Germany, as well as noting an existing plant in Australia and describing renewed interest here.
Low temp geothermal is real and companies like Raser and Ormat seem to be running with it.
Of course, low temp geothermal is just one way of getting useful energy form geothermal, along with traditional (high temp) geothermal (which has been around for many decades), ground source heat pumps and the new wave of HFR / EGS geothermal developments being piloted in Australia and Europe.
"His idea to pick a certain level of wealth and grow (or shrink) to that level, sounds very reasonable to me."
Sure - the hard part is choosing that level.
Personally, I think the world as a whole needs to have about 2x it's current level of goods, and about 4x it's current level of services. The OECD probably has about as much goods as it needs, but the rest of the world surely doesn't. We need a whole lot better health care, education, and a host of other services.
I fully agree with you on healthcare, education and other services. It is goods and unlimited consumerism where the problem lies.
OECD countries have as much goods as they need but basically have infinite growth policy on material goods. Game theory thing, "if we choose not to grow, other countries will grow and we'll be left behind" and variations on that theme.
It may be very hard to get any agreement on the level of affluence, but it is vital for a sustainable future. Contrary to what some might say, new technology can sometimes 'save us' in some ways. But with the current growth attitude (let's call it that even though it is implicit) technology will only be used as an excuse to push the limits further, only to encounter them again later on, and the effects will be more grievous and the problem bigger to manage.
" infinite growth policy on material goods"
I think if you look at goods production in the OECD, you'll see that a lot of it has plateaued. For instance, light vehicle production in the US has been flat for 30 years. I think you're attacking a non-problem.
The major growth in resource consumption is coming from non-OECD countries. Here, there are much better solutions than trying to encourage voluntary poverty: reducing the resource used per good ("resource productivity"); reducing accidental and unnecessary pollution (CO2 from FF's); and eliminating unnecessary resource consumption (e.g., traditional medicine in China uses body parts of rare animal species, something which in fact has no medicinal value).
No I am not. I was responding to Pitt’s comment that the amount of storage was required was already available in current U.S. hydro capacity, very little of which is pure pumped hydro of the type which you describe. Building all new capacity will be substantially more expensive than piggybacking on existing hydro. Of course using sea water obviates this concern. The question if there are enough good sites for sea water based hydro.
The question is how much of it are we going to need? A moderate unit cost times a large number of capacity miles is big cost. Also I am worried that all of the ‘moderate’ extra costs which keep popping up all over the place are going to add up to something signifcant, particularly if our economy has to grow all of the time in order to maintain adequate levels of employment and financial security.
I am not worried about EROEI. Im worried about the cost of batteries. The Prius is more expensive than a ICE car with equivalent cargo room and performance, and it still requires fossisl fuel. And there is the issue of scalability. If the whole world is going to live at European standards a lot of heavy duty batteries are going to be required and material scarcity may well drive up costs. Again, I am not doubting the ability of electric transportation to contribute to future human welfare. I am just doubting its abililty to support decades more of BAU economic growth.
You'd need a large elevation near the coast. Relatively rare geografy. Japan has such a pumped seawater system using the sea as lower resevoir. Seawater is a bit heavier than freshwater which gives a small energy storage bonus. In the case of Europe, Norway could build many such seawater pumped hydro storage plants to act as battery for other EU countries. They are already doing this to a lesser but increasing extent with conventional hydro-electric.
There should also be enough deep excavated places (large abandoned mines) to act as a low cost lower resevoir for loads and loads of pumped storage systems. The more minerals we mine from deep underground, the more capacity will become available.
I fully agree that BAU growth for many more decades is not sustainable and likely disastrous.
"I was responding to Pitt’s comment that the amount of storage was required was already available in current U.S. hydro capacity"
Hmm - I think we're having trouble keeping track of the back and forth. In any case, what you're talking about isn't referred to as "pumped hydro". I believe Will Stewart and Pitt were talking about potential (not existing) pumped storage, though certainly dam-type hydro will help.
" The question if there are enough good sites for sea water based hydro. "
As others note, we're not dependent on seawater sites. We can use mines, we can use the Great Lakes (see Ludington, MI) - there's a fair number of possibilities. OTOH, PHEV/EV demand management will probably be much more important, and almost free - see my note elsewere today about G2V and V2G.
"The question is how much of it (long distance transmission) are we going to need?"
A "medium" amount - nothing like Stuart's world-girdling proposal. It wouldn't be something greatly disproportionate to current transmission investment levels. Take a look at the current CA and TX projects to support wind generation: Typically they add about $.25/W, or about 12%, to wind project costs, where needed.
"Im worried about the cost of batteries"
Ah. You can stop worrying. Even with a substantially larger battery, a plug-in Prius would still be cheaper than the average light vehicle, so at worst we'd have to drive fewer SUV's.
"a lot of heavy duty batteries are going to be required and material scarcity may well drive up costs"
There's really quite a lot of lithium and lead in the world - more than enough (I'll try to find sources for you).
I am referring to the amount required for a continent spanning wind/solar supergrid that frees us from fossil fuel dependence. That was the context in which this dicsussion started. I am a long term thinker. I am not particular interested in discussing the requirements for keeping the stock market "healthy" for the next five to to ten years.
Please do. And keep in mind that to me 'enough' means enough to support the entire global population at European levels of wealth.
"I am referring to the amount required for a continent spanning wind/solar supergrid that frees us from fossil fuel dependence. "
I was too. My point was: such a grid isn't necessary. More long-distance transmission would be helpful, but it would be a big mistake to try to use just one solution (geographical diversity/long-distance transmission). Actually, as I noted in another comment, demand management management (DSM) will be at least as important. Also, what's wrong with FF backup, if it's only used a very small % of the time? It wouldn't make a significant difference to climate change, and the supply would last a very long time (long enough that we would have a whole new set of cost-effective options from which to choose).
"I'll try to find sources for you). Please do. And keep in mind that to me 'enough' means enough to support the entire global population at European levels of wealth."
Here's one for lithium (there are many other battery chemistries that would work as well, including lead and zinc): http://www.worldlithium.com/An_Abundance_of_Lithium_1.html . It was discussed here: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4724 (search for "lithium"). I invite anyone else interested in this to chime in, too.
BTW, here's the quick description of the potential of just one form of DSM I wrote elsewhere on the thread:
Charge buffering (G2V): 210M US vehicles, running 12K miles, at .25KWH/mile, would need an average of 72GW (an addition of about 16% over the US's current level of 450GW). That's 72GW of demand that you can turn off and on extremely quickly. You can put most of it at night - and have roughly 200GW of demand to solve wind's night-time surplus power problem (which is actually wind's main problem). You can use it to absorb spikes in wind power essentially any time of day.
Vehicle to Grid (V2G): with 210M vehicles and, say, 4KW peak output per vehicle, you have the potential for 840GW of instantaneous peak backup power, and 210GW that could be sustained for 8 hours (with an effective 8KWH battery)!
In the beginning, it doesn't really have to. Just keep the gas-fired generators around as fast-start backup.
I understand that storage and super grids are not needed while intermittent renewables are a small percentage of total generation, and while natural gas supplies are adequate. However, my thinking about energy supplies and economic production in general is focused heavily on the long term. I think we have had quite enough of the "eat, drink, and consume in the present and trust that the earth and human ingenuity will provide without limit in the future" attitude.
As a species we need to grow up and find some other purpose in life than selling more stuff this year than we sold last year. We need to concentrate on creating long term community wealth rather than on amassing short term private fortunes. Adam Smith's cooperation of greed will not work well in a resource limited world. If alternate energy technology is oversold and people are encouraged to believe that the BAU growth economy can continue for the rest of their lives, then long term ecological thinking is discouraged. Why not build a big house and drive thousands of kilometers per year in your private automobile if scads of cheap, clean energy are just a decade or so away?
"As a species we need to grow up and find some other purpose in life than selling more stuff this year than we sold last year. "
I agree - see Maslow's hierarchy of needs. OTOH, fear of poverty doesn't really concentrate the mind on self-actualization and spiritual development - fear degrades thinking. So, I don't think resource limits are a great way of selling the idea of a less materialism-oriented lifestyle.
Further, "scads of (reasonably) cheap, clean energy" really are available - we just have a capex lag, transitional problem. You don't want to base your sales presentation on false info, especially when it's not essential.
Why do you make the equation end of growth = more poverty? It is precisely this equation and the fear that follows from it that has us locked in the cycle of endlessly increasing consumption. In the OECD nations poverty is an issue of wealth distribution, not absolute productivity. Our focus should be on long term wealth maintenance with maximum resource efficiencty, without concern for sales volumes. This change in economic focus is going to take place only if people recognize that there are real long term limitations to human economic activity.
I may not be much a people motivator, but I do know how to solve problems. The starting point for solving problems is acknowledging reality. If you want to build a long lasting bridge but you are 'uncomfortable' with acknowledging the limitations placed on you by the law of gravity and the properties of materials, then your chances of building a safe, long lasting bridge are approximately zero.
Either resource limitations place a limit human economic activity or they don't. If you believe that some combination of resource switching and dematerialization can allow effective exponential growth to continue for many decades into the future without significant damage to the biosphere, then your claim to agree with me that our economic focus should move beyond sales volumes would appear to be nonsense. If on the other hand real limitations on human economic activity exist, then any effective action to mitigate or prevent the negative consequences of ignoring those limits must begin by acknowledging their existence.
"Why do you make the equation end of growth = more poverty? "
The end of growth may not be the end of the world, but it's definitely, in itself, going to make life much, much harder than it would be otherwise.
"It is precisely this equation and the fear that follows from it that has us locked in the cycle of endlessly increasing consumption."
It's a combination of bad priorities (not getting off the first rung of the Maslow hierarchy), with a real need for improvement in the world.
"In the OECD nations poverty is an issue of wealth distribution, not absolute productivity. "
True, but the OECD nations aren't on an island.
"This change in economic focus is going to take place only if people recognize that there are real long term limitations to human economic activity."
My mistake - I thought your main priority was improved quality of emotional life, rather than coping with long term limits.
"Either resource limitations place a limit human economic activity or they don't. "
It's not an either/or - there are many shades of gray. Further, I don't think energy has any serious limits - it's a matter of investment lag. In particular, I think AGW is much more serious than PO.
" If you believe that some combination of resource switching and dematerialization can allow effective exponential growth to continue for many decades into the future without significant damage to the biosphere"
No, I don't. That doesn't mean we can't get away with it, for better or worse. The current massive wave of extinctions is an enormous tragedy. Will it cause serious harm humans in a concrete way? That's speculative. Now, AGW will harm humanity, but I think the path of economic growth is actually our best bet to find the resources to cope with it, and possibly also find the resources to start reducing CO2, and sequestering CO2 already in the air. Economic growth is the best bet to reducing coal consumption: we're much less likely to do so when under extreme economic pressure.
Economic growth is the least-harm option: look at what happened to Russian zoos and wildlife during their economic collapse, or what's happening to "bushmeat" in Africa, due to poverty. Economic growth is the best way to reduce population growth. If it's not sustainable...things will be much worse for both us and the planet than if it is.
"your claim to agree with me that our economic focus should move beyond sales volumes would appear to be nonsense. "
Well, I think we should change our priorities even if we don't face limits.
A few years ago somebody said the Japanese could not build an artificial island for Kansai airport. They did it. Why can't governments build some spoil islands offshore instead of putting waste in landfills? Obviously, the islands would be the perfect spot for windmills.
Hello Sci,
As an average bloke still still trying to get his head around all this, I'm not sure putting a hand up to ask a few questions is necessarily naysaying.
Such as, "What's the shelf-life on these things?" / "Will the components be economically recycleable when the time comes to replace?" / "How many of these things do we really need over the next hundred years" / "How much more of Earth's resources will be spent keeping these projects global?" / "Is wind power really the best way to go?"
No doubt I'll continue to cross my fingers that technology will save the day - perhaps with a healthy dose of common sense - but I'm still not convinced that expensive metal structures in a harsh, salty environment is the direction we should be heading.
How much energy do we really need anyway?
Regards, Matt B
All very valid points.
No guarantees this will work. But why not try? We have some who would eschew even trying, and even call the rest of us fools for thinking it might possibly work. That's what I was getting at.
Conservation, or negawatts, is definitely a necessary part of the mix. We haven't even begun to do what is possible in that area.
A mix of conservation, wind, solar, geothermal, possibly nuclear (I hope it's not necessary, but may be), etc. should be enough to supply our basic needs, just looking at the technical possibilities. Whether we have the foresight to move in the right direction while there's still time, is the real question.
Not to belittle wind power per se, but to believe that this sort of thing might happen on any appreciable scale one also has to believe:
1) That the oil supply will continue to grow for some time into the future; no incrementally new oil production, no further sustained economic growth.
2) That business as usual, relying on said economic growth, also continues its onwards march, and that if a fatally weakened global financial system is unable to fund new energy investment (as is increasingly the case now with both oil and renewable projects), that government printing presses will.
3) That the environment is able to support yet another round of global economic expansion.
I don't see any particularly good reason why these are prerequisites. Growth is not necessary; proper prioritization of resources is. BAU is not necessary; again, see prioritization. Third point, again, growth/expansion is not necessary.
As far as I can tell, long-term growth is over. We have a limited energy budget (from fossil fuels) to work with. That is a constraint, but not necessarily a fatal one. If we learn to conserve quickly enough, and prioritize investment in renewable energy, we can eventually find some sustainable balance of energy use and clean production. That equilibrium won't be on a continuous growth path; it won't be at current BAU levels; it won't allow extravagant lifestyles for so many as we have today; it may not allow for the current population levels, etc. It is possible, but of course not guaranteed to happen.
@ scientastic
You say that growth is not necessary, but not for our economy system, which is the only game around. A command or steady state replacement, if it ever arises, will have to wait until after the collapse of the old system. No empire, not even the "empire of consumption", ever voted itself out of existence. We have the perfect example of cultural inertia with regard to global warming. The problem is well know, the scientific consensus is in, and governments have had 10 years to change the trajectory of green house gas emissions, yet have done nothing.
We have a limited budget of fossil fuels it's true, but we rely on this limited budget to run our existing way of life. Where will the extra resources come from?
"If we learn" you say, but this is entirely the human predicament. We act first rationalise later, and in the struggle over the hump of Hubbert's Peak the gloves will be off amongst the world's actors, so to speak. Observe, for they are already squaring off...
You are correct that BAU will not persist, come what may, and that a low energy lifestyle awaits what remains of the human race in the future.