<Drumbeat: April 30, 2009 The Oil Drum Drumbeat: May 1, 2009>

147 comments on A North American Wind Energy Scenario

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ROCKMAN on April 30, 2009 - 11:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Gail/Will -- I'll take a chance on being perceived as rude and jump into the middle of your debate. Gail, I think you should immediately prepare a full apology to Will. Have it at the ready so you can post it just as soon as we start seeing someone actually start spending the many 10’s of billions of dollars to significantly expand wind energy in the US. You can ignore the little gains as their net effect is lost as we sink deeper into PO. I know you are an honorable person Gail and will accept my proposal.

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Will Stewart on April 30, 2009 - 11:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Rockman,

I have tremendous respect for your knowledge of petroleum exploration, discovery, and development. On a different matter, what are your preferred solutions with respect to the electrical generation and transmission infrastructure? On Powerdown overall?

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ROCKMAN on April 30, 2009 - 3:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Will -- I don't really have a background that would allow such analysis. I depend on folks like you here to generate those ideas. Beleive me: I don't find fault with you're analysis of what might be technical solutions. Just lately I'm on a tear about the apparent inability of society to apply such solutions. I know my comment sounded a little catty but that just represents my frustration with our inability to act in a sound and moral way. You just happened to present an opening for a little rant on my part...nothing personal. I do appreciate the thoughts and efforts of folks like you here to devise answers. So many interesting ideas which will never be tested IMO. In a way, the valid concepts I read here only create greater angst since they appear to be missed opportunties that our gov't/society will just pay lip service until we reach the point where the only ready solution will be a true resource war. Been there...done that...and wouldn't wish it on our youth.

And besides, I always like sucking up to Gail. I have no idea other then she may represent the mother figure I've lacked in my life.

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Gail the Actuary on April 30, 2009 - 12:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Rockman,

I think you have hit the nail on the head.

If we had infinite money to spend, and were willing to spend it, these proposals would be great. As it is, money for new infrastructure is a huge obstacle. It doesn't seem like more "printed" money will do it either--it needs to be real money.

I will be happy to issue Will an apology, once I see the $10s of billions (probably more than that) start getting spent on new proposals, to actually get things going along these lines.

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Arthur Robey on April 30, 2009 - 12:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Green Grid.
There is an excelent article in the New Scientist 14th March on long distance DC power transfers across Europe, North Africa and Asia.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/12/plans-for-a-...

One of the studies was sponsored by the Club of Rome.

The numbers look daunting:the project would cost more than E1.5 trillion.....To put this into context the IEA forecasts that the global power industry will have to invest $13.6 trillion on fossil based power generation by 2030

I guess it is inevitable, given civilisation survives.

Super cooled conductors.

Satarou Yamaguchi said... new cable design... store up to 4 Megajoules of energy per kilometer....act as a giant battery

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Kiashu on April 30, 2009 - 7:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I really don't understand how any person living in the United States in 2008-9 could raise money as an objection to any large project, whether it be renewables, a Mars landing, or whatever. The economic crisis has shown that when pushed, the elites can find trillions.

The only question is whether they decide to do it. And that's politics. What is "politics"? "The process by which groups of people make decisions." How is that done in the West? By elections, by letters to representatives and candidates, by lobby groups, by bribes and threats, and so on.

No amount of money could get Bernie Madoff elected; no spending of money was required to get Nixon to resign, nor to get US troops to withdraw from Vietnam, or block new nuclear after Three Mile Island. The voice of the people will be heard, but only if they bother speaking.

So if you say, "politics stops it", what you really mean is "the people don't really want it." I happen to believe in democracy, so if the people don't want it, it shouldn't happen. But part of democracy is also some people trying to persuade others that it should happen.

This takes time and effort. Segregation didn't end the day after the first march against it. If you want change, make it known to the world. "Politics" is not some abstract unarguable force like gravity, only the sum of everyone's voices and silence.

You want change, make a noise about it.

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Gail the Actuary on April 30, 2009 - 10:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The problem is that they are not really finding trillions. I think when all is said and done, they are printing trillions.

You need real concrete and steel and other materials to make wind turbines. As far as I know, you can't print these. We are quite a bit poorer now than we were before, but this has not yet sunk in to TPTB.

I have serious misgivings on where the financial situation is headed.

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Kiashu on May 1, 2009 - 3:38am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Have you withdrawn all your money from the bank to turn it into non-perishable assets yet? If not, why not? You say the currency is worthless, yet you still trust it, which means you don't really believe it's worthless. You have faith in the currency's value.

When you see your bank balance at the ATM, you have faith in the value of the money there. When it comes time to spend that money on building renewable energy, suddenly you don't believe in the currency anymore, it's worthless. Why the difference?

This is what was being said to you just the other day - as soon as any positive plan is mentioned, suddenly you have a different point of view about everything. The money which has value when you buy lunch suddenly loses its value when it buys a wind turbine maker's lunch. Why?

Double standards and a mutable set of ideas, so as to keep a doomerish worldview. "The world will continue with Business As Usual, and Nothing Can Be Done, it's hopeless." Maybe so - but we won't be worse off if we try.

To say "they're just printing money" is meaningless in itself; what matters is whether people still accept the currency as being worth something.

As the US currency has not collapsed into hyperinflation, people obviously still have faith in it. If they have faith in it when it's part of the assets for the fractional reserve of a dodgy bank, they'll have faith in it when it pays someone for putting up a wind turbine or building an oil refinery or whatever you like.

If the US suffers a run on the banks or hyperinflation, then we can talk about the currency being worthless.

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phil harris on May 1, 2009 - 6:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

To use Orlov's boxing metaphor, nobody really knows why the Soviet Union "took a dive". Some bits, surprisingly continued to work. Whither now the USA? Hyperinflation as you rightly point out is a specter for western world, but meanwhile we can arrange our money. Here in the UK I anticipated both the end of 'our' housing bubble and a 'Peak Oil perception moment' and we withdrew in-time our remaining personal saving from the stock market. We intend to spend most of this, by our standards, considerable 'electronic sum' on a 'legacy' reconstruction of our house that will reduce to zero our dependence on heating oil and lower our demand for electricity by 40-50%, (with potential for going much lower). We hope that the house might provide for 2 families who can live low-cost and if necessary grow >80% of basic calories and protein plus surplus of high nutritional value fruit and vegetables on adjoining 2 acres. The materials are easily maintained and stretch to a legacy of direct value over centuries. We will not be self-sufficient, but this 'spend' we hope is better than the extended waste of resources in a 'Care Home' that is the conventional expectation (for sure) over our next (with luck remaining) 20 years. We hope the youngsters who build the facility will learn and enjoy while they are supported by the wages they earn during construction. I would like to secure a sufficient electrical power source of high future reliability - and that means that we hope for sufficient technological assets available from a surrounding functioning 'society', whether in the case of electricity we derive it from a grid or from local supply, and the assets had better be 90% renewable.

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Consumer on May 2, 2009 - 1:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Kiashu nailed it.

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Neil1947 on May 1, 2009 - 6:08am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Gail,
"You need real concrete and steel and other materials to make wind turbines. As far as I know, you can't print these."

Any idle steel mills or cement works in the US would be happy to start up with a down-payment of $US paper. You may have a case if US currency some time in the future is not accepted by a Chinese or European supplier.
If we return to a fully operating economy, then printing money will be limited by it's inflationary impact. Is that what you are concerned about, full employment and a shortage of steel and concrete? Building 20,000 x 3MW turbines per year will employ a lot of people.

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jeppen on May 1, 2009 - 6:47am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Building 20,000 x 3MW turbines per year will employ a lot of people.

That is bad, all else being equal. Devoting more work for less gain is not what has made us rich.

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Gail the Actuary on May 1, 2009 - 9:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We understand where we are now, and the first steps of the project may be doable. The longer-term is more uncertain.

If I were doing the project, I would make certain that the as much as possible, the initial increments would be usable in themselves. Transmission would need to be added at or ahead of new wind turbines.

Later steps would depend on how much the economy could really support, and whether there really are electric vehicles and other equipment needing the electrical supply.

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jeppen on May 1, 2009 - 9:48am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Well, only the transmission backbone is something that should/could be a (centrally planned) project. The rest should be done by market players without subsidies or intervention.

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ROCKMAN on May 1, 2009 - 6:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I agree with you 100%. What will happen depends entirely on the voice of our collective electorate. And they are saying "Hell no!" to the question of spending billions of $'s on wind expansion. We here exist in a very rarified atmosphere. Our chats on very illuminating. But those thoughts don't exist in the minds of the great unwashed majority IMO. We are not the public. I cross paths with the common denominators of the electorate on a regular basis. I here their comments when they think no one unlike them is listening (I'm very good at camoflaging my real nature... necessary for my job.)

As I've mentioned elsewhere I'm beginning to avoid the chats re: solutions to our current mess. Not that I don't hear good ideas but because there are so many valid thoughts floating around which I believe have very little chance of being implimented. I don't consider myself a doomer per se. But until I see clear evidence that our society has committed to taking appropriate actions (and not just cheer leading about fixing our problems) I'll stick with my realistic view (IMO) of the future.

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gregvp on May 1, 2009 - 7:59am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"I don't consider myself a doomer per se."

I don't like the label either. But if you believe, as I do, that the political problems make any solution highly unlikely to be implemented, then, de facto, you and I are going to be labelled "doomers." Aargh! How about "realists"?

The hard problems have always been the political ones. So in one sense Neil is solving the wrong problem. But in another, he's putting the pressure back where it belongs.

My reaction to Neil's estimate was "heck, it's only two and a half trillion. That's nothing. Why aren't they doing it already?" If only more people felt the same way.

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Gail the Actuary on May 1, 2009 - 9:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The catch is that it is not just $2.5 trillion. Even if you got all of this infrastructure going, you would also need the new electric vehicles of all types (including semi's or electric railroad), and you would have to figure out substitutes for a lot of other things that are in short supply, like asphalt and roofing material and fertilizer.

These things don't come for free. If international trade is suffering, developing all these things on our own may be difficult. Where will the material for batteries come from?

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Will Stewart on May 1, 2009 - 10:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

There are many challenges to mitigating PO; in one sense we can ask "where is the material for anything coming from and how do we pay for it?"

As has been mentioned before, hydrogen and ammonia can be fuels produced using electricity, so semi's and trains don't have to be electric. Note, though, that adoption (proactively or reactively) of relocalization means that BAU transportation of goods will not be anywhere near the level we have now, so a signficant drop in the number of semi miles is a pretty sure bet.

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Pitt the Elder on April 30, 2009 - 2:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

as soon as we start seeing someone actually start spending the many 10’s of billions of dollars to significantly expand wind energy in the US.

How many is many? Wind turbine investment last year was about 2 10's, vs. the roughly 10 10's we'd need to see as an average over the next 20 years. Keep in mind, the article does not appear to be arguing that the proposed expansion is happening, but that it could happen, if we wanted it to, so "it isn't happening yet" is not a reasonable criticism.

It's worth noting, moreover, that it's no longer possible to argue that wind power is not expanding significantly in the US, as last year wind accounted for more new generating capacity (after adjusting for capacity factor) than any other power source. It's also worth noting that, despite concerns about the effect of the economy on growth, nearly 3GW of wind were installed in 2009Q1, double the rate of 2008Q1.

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147 comments on A North American Wind Energy Scenario

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