<The Big Picture - What Have You Changed Your Mind About? The Oil Drum DrumBeat: May 25, 2009>

111 comments on Implications of the Ayres Warr Model of Economic Production: An Introduction

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DavidMDelaney on May 24, 2009 - 9:51am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Therefore many policies people are encouraging to limit energy use will raise the proportion of renewable energy( and possibly lower FF use, but not necessarily).

Necessarily not, in certain circumstances. It depends on the rate of decline of exergy availability and on the rate of exergy payback of the alternative exergy sources.

When the availability of exergy is declining, it would be a brave or tyrannical government that would deprive the rest of its economy of large amounts of it to make investments that will break even in exergy terms only after years.

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oxidatedgem on May 25, 2009 - 9:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

David, exactly. Given the large amount of upfront energy needed for an investment in wind and solar that would come anywhere near the energy we now consume, it is hard to imagine anything other than a tyrannical government as being able to appropriate that energy. If we were going to replace fossil fuels with alternatives it needed to happen when we had excess. It is not just the energy for the solar panels and windmills but also for the infrastructure to fix the grid and "tank" up electric vehicles. Even investing in more public transport will be a hard sell but I think that would be far more doable than a Manhattan project on solar panels and windmills.

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Neil1947 on May 25, 2009 - 7:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

oxidated,
Wind energy returns energy invested in months not years, allowing all energy for 50% growth in new wind to be derived from just those turbines installed 6 months ago. It's happening now, before we have the electric vehicles. Funding in the US budget for grid upgrades.

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111 comments on Implications of the Ayres Warr Model of Economic Production: An Introduction

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