Reflections on "The Prize"
Posted by Heading Out on December 2, 2006 - 3:01pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: daniel yergin, oil industry history [list all tags]
The final episode dwelt much more on the impact of the oil economy on the environment than on the history of the industry, which was the original point of the book and the focus of the earlier seven episodes. A somewhat younger Jeremy Leggett discussed the threats that oil and the pollution that it caused held for the future of the world. (The burning oilfields of Kuwait provided a dramatic emphasis). White Knights was the only Western Oil Company drilling in Siberia, to help the Former Soviet Union bring back it's oil industry, one that was in truly bad shape. (And the cooperation of the native tribes of the Yamal Peninsula could be had for the price of 10 snow-mobiles. How times have changed !) And the then Chairman of Shell, the largest oil company at the time, promised that they would be around for a long time into the future. There was just one, almost missed, reference to the fact that, as American oil had peaked, so would world oil production. It came from the past President of ARCO, and was given no real emphasis in the program.
In terms of vision the impacts of China were largely missing, and the growing economy of India got hardly a mention. I remember those discussions. The video captured them, the conjectural impact of Chinese demand for cars, and the subsequent increase in their use of oil. It had an air of unreality in the discussions we had, and the tape scarcely gave it more credibility, and yet, here we are, now facing the reality of that growth in demand.
We have, I suspect, largely forgotten the problems that we had back in the `70's when oil supplies were limited and the President of the United States made a point of addressing the nation while wearing a sweater. Certainly, listening to Daniel Yergin, who provided some of the commentary, discussing the collapse of the oil prices and the cyclic nature of the industry, one gets some inkling of where CERA gets some of its motivation. It is reflective of the industry itself, one that has seen boom and bust come time and again.
But the frontiers are running out, the saviors of the North Sea and the North Slope are now reaching exhaustion. So far the Eastern Siberian promise, held out at the end of the tapes, has not proven to be there for oil, although certainly there is gas out there to be had (though still not yet fully developed).
The chill breeze down our backs that reminds us that it was the 20th Century that was the time of oil, not this one, was not blowing then. Since the series is now rather hard to find (I got mine as a used copy via a store affiliated with Amazon) and rather expensive, I have to say that I will keep it as a historic souvenir. It contains a number of interviews with people of the time that present a picture of the thinking of the period. But the book is much more informative, if a little dense in information to make it, for me anyway, an easy read. But it has much more value and I do recommend it, if you haven't got a copy.
How 'bout writing more than once a month, and answering questions from your audience.
The funny thing is, I always used to think you were Kunstler. Now he shows up here more than you.
I can guarrantee you from my small group of friends that you are appreciated(even if we give you shit) - we respect you. You're like the Tony Montana of Oil and Energy.
Chilly Chill Chill.
Sincerely (and Merry Xmas),
Frosty the Snowman
Of course, ten years later, and an Exxon Valdez in the long ago past (you know, the 80s), and with the 'market' poised to replace misguided government regulations concerning emissions, it would be no problem for a book about the oil industry to glide right past that subject.
What still strikes me is how many Americans seem to be rediscovering the commonplaces of 1981, from environmental truths to energy realities. For the briefest of moments, there really was a feel in the air that the American Dream would be finally replaced by something better. Unfortunately, that feeling was completely deceptive, and a sign of anti-Americanism to boot, as so well demonstrated by a former GE spokesman proving that anyone could be president while saying "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981. Thankfully for America, the number of trees has been reduced in most residential areas, while the number of cars has grown. Driving your way to cleaner air - who knew?
A part of me, (which I'm not at all proud of, since as an older person, I have some idea of the scale of the suffering which is likely) is just waiting to see how the American Dream will survive this time, now that it will take a bit more than a second rate actor and some 24/7 propaganda to bring it back. And that is an interesting note itself - if you had told an American of 1976 that by 2006, 24/7 would be considered a mark of pride of the strength and success of the American Dream, they would have likely asked politely about where did all the free time go, then? They would also likely have considered 'consumer' an insulting way to refer to a citizen such as themselves, but that is a detour.
Them dumb Iraqi's don't know how to play the game of Texas Cowboys and Indians the right way. Don't they know that invading white man always wins? It's time to get up on our high horse, declare victory and go home Tonto. Hio Silver.
So, yes, I feel it is appropriate to blame 'Texas'.
That's not a joke. Stewart wasn't kidding.
HO,
Good post, I see you and I have a vice in common, as I am sure do many TOD posters, and that is returning to "old" books, to get a bit of a longer range perspective. The other day, there was a discussion of good books, and I didn't join in. With rare exception, most books are forgotten in a matter of a few years, and have about as much long range perspective as a magazine article. There are a few exceptions, my only "peak" books are "Twilight" by Simmons, I'm glad I have it, and "High Noon For Natural Gas", a bit of a disappointment, (as much an anti-American spasm as anything else).
The rest I have seen are hysterical panic spreaders, reruns of what you can get on the web for free.
When I want to read an early overview of everything we talk about now, from 26 years ago, I go to "The Third Wave" by Alvin Toffler. He discussed depletion, re-localization, environmental, even the "techno-rebels", the variety of philosophies that would attack all technology not so much on technical or scientific basis, but on a "yearning for a new dark age" aesthetic and philosophical basis.
One more. "Arabia, the Gulf, and the West" by J.B. Kelly.
Published in the same year as Toffler's "Third Wave, 1980, it is a historical, cultural and political overview of the Persian Gulf. It can be gotten for (used) 5 bucks on Amason, and given the current catastrophic American failure in Iraq, it is priceless. Many reviewers seemed to miss the main point that Kelly was trying to make (why is this no surprise?) in 1980, being: American wealth and power had dwarfed European power and the Europeans, especially Britain (to a lesser extent, France) had been "evicted" from the Middle East by the Americans, at Suez, and even more so in 1967 and 1973, when the Americans began their "protection for oil" special arrangement with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, and the even more "special" arrangement with Qatar (headquarters for Centcom, the whole Middle East command) for natural gas.
Kelly makes the point that the Europeans can be expected to be of little assistance to the Americans, and possibly even a thorn in the side when it comes to Middle East policy, given their resentment of being "booted", and the lost oil and money (one can still hear the edge in the voice of the French Total executives when they speak of essentially being "legally" shoved aside and nationalized out of Iraqi oil. The Japanese will be no happier as they see Iranian natural gas slipping away from them.
Kelly stresses that if the Americans want to take Europe's colonial role in the Middle East, they will have to be willing to police their power, which means a standing army and essentially iron hand tactics, plus a "viceroyalty" type administration. Kelly was betting in 1980 that the Americans would NOT be willing or able to police the region in this way, and it would fall into chaos.
We are now at the point that Kelly predicted so long ago. Do we "do what it takes" to retain control in Iraq....if we have the will, can we retain the resources to do it, and at what point can we no longer stomach what it takes?
Kelly's view was that without some outside force, the region would descend into ethnic, religious, and warlord struggles, and any advanced culture would be impossible. The other alternative was an iron fist Ba'athist/Marxist single party style regime.....ala, Sadam Hussain. It is a fascinating reread so many years later given the current situation, and one wishes that some of the Bush regime had been familiar with it, or if they are, had understood it's implications.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I just ordered the book used from Amazon for $0.01, plus $3.49 shipping. I'll miss the internet and my private courier at UPS.
pete
And what about Deffeyes, for that matter?
PhilRelig,
I have nothing against Heinberg in particular, in fact, I have enjoyed some of his short speeches and articles I have read, but his decision against this culture long preceded any real discussion or concept of peak oil. I don't think he would be insulted to be considered a "deep green" or radical environmentalist. The peak oil thing just fell into his lap as a vehicle to achieve the long desired destruction of the hated imperialist/capitalist/modernist way. His fav' stomping ground, New College, was born in 71 with exactly that agenda. Again, I have nothing against him for that, it his right, and I myself have been known to "trend left" in many of my views, but I would not consider him an expert on energy, or in any way a first rank writer on the peak oil issue...I like his stuff better when he stays to "eco green" leftist philosophy, that's his strong suit. But I am looking for folks who are looking for solutions, not for folks hoping for the meltdown.
On Deffeyes, I will not pick at him. I think that his age has caused him to say and write things he would not have when he was younger (the infamous "stone age by 2030" remark, picking peak dates one after the other, almost to the hour, etc.) He obviously has the geological pedigree, and has been very sharp in years gone by. I want people to treat me kindly as the years pile up, so I will do the same. And if he turns out to be right on the Dec last year date, I have to retract everything and say even though he is a contrary ole' fart, he wins hands down...(and he's just contrary enough to pull it off out of pure spite!)
The thinkers I hold in pretty high esteem on energy and peak/depletion issues (not that you asked, but that has never stopped me before) are:
Matthew Simmons-very sharp, has the contacts, decent writer. Simmons has brought a level of respect to the peak oil cause that it had not known before, brillian presentations to the rich and powerful, the real respected "voice" of the whole peak idea as it exists today.
Christophe de Margerie-French Total head of exploration-knows oil and facts "on the ground", understands "logistical peak" and very balanced in his thinking.
Jean Laharrere-good stats, all around researcher, willing to change mind if the facts don't back him up.
This ones a real problem for me:
Megan Quinn-On her, I go back and forth. She is VERY dark sometimes, and not so at others. She is very serious, and very humane. She sometimes seems to get "energy" and "oil" tangled together, but understands the need to ACT NOW as though the emergency is already upon us, and begin reducing fuel consuption now. All in all, I vote up for now, but that may just because I have a thing for smart women! ;-)
Lastly, some folks here, Westexas, Stuart, RR, Alan from the big easy....what can I say, these guys are as good as the best! :-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Didn't the British use gas against an Iraqi uprising in the 1920s?
Prodigal Son asks
"Didn't the British use gas against an Iraqi uprising in the 1920s?"
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/britishindex.htm
"In response to Iraqi resistance, including a country-wide uprising in 1920, British forces battled for over a decade to pacify the country, using airplanes, armored cars, firebombs and mustard gas."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/histindex.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iraq
"During the British occupation the Shiates and Kurds fought for independence. Britain used phosphorus bombs against Kurdish villagers in the revolt. Legal experts consider phosphorus bombs chemical weapons when used as an anti-personnel weapon."
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. I will only take Roger's take on Frank. Roger's the only one ever paid attention.
I love to look at Frank's buildings, but he REALLY PISSES ME OFF sometimes! :-)
For those interested in how we got in this car culture mess, read Frank Lloyd Wright's advice to the newly minted prosperous of Oak Park...
"Go as far out from the city as you believe is far enough and then go twice as far. No matter how far you go, it will not be far enough, the city will soon catch up to you. With modern transportation, there is no need to be packed into the city, but instead the free American should enjoy the bounties of the countryside, .....yada, yada, yada....Frank hated the city with every bone in his body, but loved to go to the city to chide the Euro trash that descended in as Hitler took control....Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gropius and the smaller fish, can you imagine how PISSED Frank was when Illinois and Armour meat packing through the old Armour Institute brought HIM, old van der Rohe himself right into the heartland! And Frank hated basements! I could never get over that....there he was, like me, born in tornado country, and told people they didn't need a damm basement!!
But then I see Fallingwater....or the Robie House, or Taliesin West, or the interior of the Unity Temple at Oak Park, or the MASTERPIECE, The Johnson Wax Building......
ALL IS FORGIVEN....I try to tell you guys, it's all about the aesthetics, the philosophy....
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
(note: I can't help parody on LBJs pronunciations of America)
Ahhhh yes, the American Dream. Well it was alive and well in my 'middle' years. The 70's.
But while rummaging in the attic a month ago I stumbled across a box full of old saved Mother Earth magazines. Reading thru them I was suprised to find many of the topics discussed on this website.
Lots of detail on windmills,solar energy,methane,ethanol and mostly a huge cry to 'Return to the Land' and 'Save the planet!'
Times have changed? I remember those times fondly. When hippiedom met the spoiling of the earth via the Murkan Dream. They were intent on remaking the Murkan Dream ..remaking it into a sustainable lifestyle and culture.
It is deja vu ...all over again Yogi! Only this time if we don't get it precisely right we all die.
The music(folk) is still to be found. The magazines and articles are still there.
WE aren't THERE.
Our youth of today are into buzz cuts ,tattoos and body metal. Their music I can't understand since it deems to be a foreign language and there is nothing one could 'slow dance' to(if anyone remembers what that was). Where did you go Dick Clark?
How far will the oldsters be able to take this world if we don't have its youth behind us? Apparently adulthood lost the youth long long ago to some mysterious vague world outlook that doesn't recognize what 'sustainable' means.
Why does my once favorite nephew look like a professional wrestler on steroids with a chunck of metal in his tongue and carrying 50 excess pounds of body fat? Why can't he even read? What is 'Splinter Cell'? Should I care? Will he be there when 'it isn't there' and how will he 'get there' even if he wanted to?
To him I am the weird, foreign entity. The unknowable. The unreachable. I think he is a product of The American Dream.
I can find nothing in todays youth that makes any sense.
And I wonder what kind of speechs are given now at High School Graduation ceremonies?
Not to sound too much like an old fart but an opportunity was lost when that era died and was co-opted. What I find iteresting is that people (including me) were willing to take chances and explore new ideas inspite of the potential risks involved. I don't see or sense that today to any extent. There was an openness that I miss.
Locally we started a food co-op and an erzatz "school" (The Yellow House school because it was at a yellow house.) for adults that offered "classes" in everything from massage and tai chi to psychic growth. And, everyone skinned dipped in the creek on weekends.
The change to the 24/7/365 mentality seems to me to be a bar to dealing with current resource and environmental issues because younger people cannot see that there are fulfilling alternative ways to live that don't involve destroying what's good to get a temporary "stuff" fix.
Enough rambling.
PS - we still listen to folk music from Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary to the Kingston Trio and lots inbetween.
Real Goods was a hippie store but they also gave a class now and then on how to build solar hot water collector panels. I got my first PV panels during one of their warehouse sales around 1980 (4-10 watt amorphous and 1-37 watt crystaline one - Ooh! Hot Stuff.)
And, the first true sine wave inverter from Trace amazed people. I thought it was neat because they used a clear plastic case so you could see the innards. My first inverter was a 500 watt square wave one. Then I got an 800 watt modified sine wave one. That was pretty neat since it could start our refrigerator. But, they are nothing compared to the 5k sine wave ones that we have now. These puppies are huge and weigh over 120 pounds each. How times change.
From your description, may know a couple of friends of mine- Michael Potts and Wayne Roberson. Do those names ring a bell?
Michael sounds familiar but that's it. Sorry.
Todd
http://solarnet.org/
I highly recommend his book.
Regarding Wayne, he was a sales manager for Solar Electric Specialties in Willits,who were the provider of PV for Real Goods, back in the day. He is now with Sunwize. Great fellow whom I did business with at one time and he is still a tremendous resource for the solar electric industry.
You can find Wayne here:
http://www.sunwize.com/
Mendocino County (California) was a real hot bed of AE all those years ago. At least the Solfest has survived.
You are lucky to live in an area that has people of such expertise. I know Willits seems to have an active "Peak Oil" community. I always wanted to go to one of the solar fests there but never made it.
ARCO had bought out Yerkes Electric Solar (YES) who were making panels from discarded cells for satellite applications. (Among the first markets were power for clandestine pot growing)
Apparently ARCO's management were aware of the limitations of oil production in the future and saw this as a good long term investment. ARCO Solar was ultimately sold to Siemens.
ARCO and Solarex (now BP Solar) also realized the applications for oil and gas, however and in the early years the applications were the bread and butter of the industry. Cathodic Protection, Navigational Aids (All of those platforms in the Gulf have had solar on them for a long time). I was involved on an early "total solar" platform that had telemetry, metering chromatographs and remote actuation of valves.
First of all, I think all TOD readers would be really interested in your PV involvement. One thing that is always lacking is a history of how the industry evolved. I go back to when there was no "retail" PV and it then became a hippie/back to the land thing but I don't know about the interrealationships between then and now.
My current PV system consists of 36 Astro Power, 75 watt panels (and, of course, Astro Power was bought out) plus another 12 Siemens 75 watt panels added a couple of years later to give a gross of 3.6kW (four racks of 12 each).
What I find interesting is that wineries here have become major installers of PV. Locally, it probably goes with the fact that 30% of wine grape growers in Mendocino County are organic. For those who care, McFadden Farms (they have a web site) has one of the biggest installations in the county...something like 50-100kW IIRC.
As you can tell from some of my posts, I work in the oil industry- specifically directional drilling services. Although some may be put off by this - I do have a parallel solar career that occurred simulataneously to my oil drilling career including a stint in power generation.
In 1981 I left the oil industry, before the peak of drilling, to obtain training in Denver in the design and installation of solar thermal systems. The future looked bright at the time for such systems and as a young man it seemed much more interesting and more family friendly than chasing rigs the rest of my life. I had not calculated however the effects of the recession that was cutting deeply into average persons life. Although there was a near 70% tax credit for solar at the time, most people feared for their jobs and although solar was interesting and made sense, the investment in such systems were tapering off rapidly. Although I was able to install a few systems I was not able to make a living at it.
I returned to South Louisiana and returned to the work offshore. During days off I worked with a small solar company that did PV systems for platforms such as navaids, cathodic protection as I discussed earlier. We also did solar thermal systems including active space heating. Our solar thermal system was the "Suncatcher" system designed by former Nasa engineers out of Huntsville, Alabama. The system used a pressurized silicon fluid as a heat exchange medium, and was unique at the time. These engineers had designed the heating and cooling system for mercury/apollo missions and the solar systems were bullet proof. They were not cheap however.
I designed the first industrial solar thermal system that was installed in Louisiana in 1983. The system was at the St. Johns Sugar Mill in St. Martinville. That is a long interesting story all by itself.
We also installed the thermosyphon Solarhart systems, and Fafco/Heliocol Pool heating systems which were both well suited to Louisiana's mild climate.
In 1986 with the collapse of oil prices that decimated both the oil industry and crushed the solar business- I entered the power generation industry. I worked with a manufacturer of "bus" conductors for almost every electrical power generation source conceivable- nuclear, coal, gas turbine, resource recovery (garbage), hydro - and among my favorite projects - the Solar Electric Generating Stations (SEGS) at Kramer Junction. SEGS 6 through 9 had my bus conductors on them. About 220 Megawatts of solar electrity. That is another long story... maybe I can tell you what it is like to climb to the top of the stack in the middle of the array field while the sun is setting - the mirrors move from west to east and as they pass below you the sky is reflected by one square mile of mirrors. Awesome.
Following this I tried to start up my own Solar company down south with no financing etc. I did manage to install a 3 kW system that has operated with almost no maintainence for the past 16 years. I stopped by to check on it earlier this month just to see if it survived Katrina- yep- turned the switch and the pump started right up. They used to have a photo of the system in the SES office in Willits.
My last solar activity was with Mark McCray of RMS Electric in Boulder, Colorado. Mark was known as "Dr. PV" and had a column in Solar Today. I basically volunteered my work with him and did learn some things during this time. Marks bread and butter however was UPS systems, rather than solar. He died of cancer a few years back and I just drifted away from activity in solar PV.
The crush of drilling activity over the last few years has been to the extent that having a life outside of it is almost impossible now. Although, I am in the oil industry I have much to offer in solar experience.
frontier,
Just out of curiousity, and you may remember this, being in the solar industry at the time....back in the solar days of the very late '70's, early '80's, there was a magazine published for the industry called "Solar Age". Most of it's focus was thermal solar and architecture, with several commercial buildings of some size using passive solar, daylighting, evaporative air conditions and other well designed systems by architects, technicians and solar firms. Do you remember this magazine, who edited or published it, and what ever became of it? It was well produced and high quality, and I just wondered where a person would get old copies (they woudl be fascinating now) and also possibly follow out what became of some of the buildings from that period, and how they faired in the last 25 years. Thanks for anything you know on this, Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I don't remember who the publisher was ( I am not at home, I could look it up otherwise) but the editor was Bruce Anderson. I believe he was author of The Solar Home Book.
Regarding success or failure of systems- I dont have much information on that. 10 years ago the Colorado Governors Office of Energy Conservation did a study and found a good percentage of solar systems still operational. This information may be online somewhere. There has been a support system in place and you could contact the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (COSEIA) for information. I don't know about other states.
One of the disappointing things I found out in 1995 were realtors were recommending that working systems be dismantled due to the aesthetics of solar panels on roofs.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature_and_Environment/1978_July_August/The_Plowboy_Interview__Bruce_ Anderson_talks_about_solar_building_design_
frontier,
Thank you very much for the information, it gives something to run with on Google.
I had probably three years worth, but a former partner in business kept them at his place and moved, and took them with him. I regret having lost track of them, I really found them very useful and a great networking tool in the days before the internet (gee, did we really use magazines for communication in those days? Astounding. :-)
To the removal of solar systems for aesthetic reasons, yes, it happens. Also, if one small part breaks, conventional HVAC people will declare that "solar thing" unfixable, and recommend dismantling the whole system, especially in the 1990's when natural gas and electric rates were cheap. One of the larger thermal solar systems I had ever seen was dismantled by the former wife after a divorce, since it was her ex-husband that had the system installed and understood it, and another friend and partner (a building contractor) had a solar pool heating system disinstalled when propane prices went down, declaring solar "too much trouble" given that propane was almost givaway cheap, and was there sun or rain. It was experience in the 1980's that taught me the lesson: As long as fossil fuels are even reasonably affordable, people will burn them. Alternatives have a tough hill to climb. But, solars time may be coming, it is now almost more convenient, reliable, and as cheap or cheaper as fossil fuels.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I have both metal and rocks in my face, and my music would make most peoples' ears bleed even at low volume. I am also overweight. But my ecological footprint is smaller than the average European's (which is still way too high but a considerable victory given American semirural civic infrastructure). And I would almost certainly never attend a vegan-pot-luck + folk-music peak oil meeting because vegan-pot-luck + folk-music solutions are not the ones I can see working in the long term. Plus, I hate folk music and vegan food is gross.
Sustainability and relocalization do not require long hair and Bob Dylan bootlegs. If I could do anything, I would wrench relocalization from its countercultural baggage and put it out there for everyone.
Thanks for offering your true allies a nice slap in the face. We're the ones who have to deal with the messed up world that you left us. We're not the ones who caused it to become the way it is. It's you old guys who forgot what sustainable means, not the other way around.
My first introduction to Daniel Yergin was a book titled "Future Energy" . The book was published in the early 1980's and was a good review of almost all energy source, conventional as well as "alternative". The "renewable" moniker had not stuck yet. I still have the book in softcover as well as hard cover. I think most of the readers here would find it interesting, however it has been a long time since I read it and cannot provide details of the book.
It would be interesting to see what "Future Energy" said about the time frame that we are in now.
Energy Future: The Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School. New York: Random House, 1979. ISBN 0-394-50163-2. Reprints: Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-394-29349-5; Knopf, 3rd ed., 1982, ISBN 0-394-71063-0; Random House, new revised 3rd ed., 1990. [With Robert B. Stobaugh.]
I believe I have both the 1982 and 1990 versions.
What's ironic is that when I started watching the video series, I thought electricity came out of the wall and gasoline came out of the pump at the filling station. I had no idea at all who Daniel Yergin was.
Little did I know that 10 years down the road...
I think an important book is:
A golden thread: 2500 years of solar architecture and technology by Ken Butti
It is kind of like The Prize but it is from the Solar perspective. Rather than a history however, I think that it should be read as a future. There are some amazing things in that book. I have a copy of it as well that I can loan as it may not be available, even in used bookstores. You can try amazon I suppose.
While we're on the subject of solar,
http://grist.org/news/maindish/2006/11/30/roberts/index.html
Optimism warning: For those who cannot stomach the thought of any type of technology surviving, you may not want to go there.
RC known to you as ThatsItImout
This was energy intensity was recognized early on in the game by companies such as Solarex which built a "solar breeder" which powered much of the manufacturing equipment but did not produce the energy to provide the raw silicon. I am not an expert in this process but I understand that the silicon must be 99.999% pure and that electric resistance heating is used to melt the silicon which has a melting point I believe around 1900 deg F. Im sure that a calculation have been made on the energy inputs required to purify silicon in the quantities needed to have our society convert to solar pv. I think any honest assesment should consider these energy inputs.
One way of getting high temperatures and energy levels would be with solar furnaces similar to this:
http://www.imp.cnrs.fr/foursol/1000_en.shtml
There would certain be efficiency issues with using solar pv to generate such high temperatures with resistance heating.
Thin films solve some issues but the silicon base material is still an issue. I had hoped by now that conductive polymers would have been developed that allow organic plastics to be used as solar electric material.
There is more to this energy problem than just choosing one source over another- upon looking behind the surface of the issue you find they are all interelated. Nothing new for the readers of this site, I'm sure.
Sadly, it all comes back to population.
The analogy with cellural phones is not quite adequate. In solar we don't have a number of small companies threatening the market share of the old giants. We are nowhere near that point. We are having an industry basically held alive by government subsidies with large corporations (like BP) being the biggest players. The biggest problem long term of course will be infrastructure - whatever we use as a storage medium (pumped storage, balancing power plants etc.) will need to be incorporated along with the solar plants in some centralised network. The grid is far from dead yet.
levinK and frontierenergy, first, don't blame me, I put an "Optimist Warning" right on the post!
On other thoughts, I am so sleepy I am about to fall out of the chair, just in from a late night at work, so I won't argue on what will soon be a dead thread, but I am going with the "confluence" on this one. Coal is becoming more of a burden than it's worth, between the costs and effort involved in moving it about
(great discussion of the issue of coal, and the problems transporting it, from a site referenced by another TOD poster
http://www.prosefights.org/coal/coal.htm#graf )
Natural gas, we know is a problem
same site, great charts about 2/3rds of the way down the page
http://www.prosefights.org/gas/gas.htm#davehughes
As far as the "grid not being dead yet", I personally don't want it "dead". The goal is a "smart grid" with decentralized power production, mini grids inside the giant grid, multiple power sources and types (not just solar, but wind, pumped hydro, hydroelectric, small piston and turbines running on sewer gas and landfill gas as well as bio mass of the type described here on TOD (not newly grown crops such as ethanol, but wood waste, animal and plant waste from agriculture, etc.) and a more grid based transport system (again, not completely completely grid based....the idea is "multiple option" not "either-or")
The solar advantage, like wind and certain biomass and waste gas methane production is that it reduces the amount of massive infrastructure that is required by coal, oil, natural gas (and much more so with LNG (liquified natural gas). We are nearing the point that the exploration, drilling costs will be bad enough, but the cost of carrying all this tonnage around will become unsustainable EVEN IF the oil and gas can be found out there in some obscure spot in large quantities. The materials issues with solar/wind are good and getting better, as we are talking about occasional resupply of spare parts and new collectors, not the 24/7 resupply needed by coal or oil.
Look at this stat:
"BNSF and Union Pacific jointly share a rail line coming out of the southern end of the Powder River Basin. With an average of about 61 coal trains a day traveling on the joint line, some 325 million tons of coal -about one-third of the nation's total coal production - was carried over the line Last year. The same line handled just 19 million tons of coal in 1985.
THINK about that: 61 coal trains A DAY. 325 MILLION TONS of coal. I love it when people say, "well, building solar will require materials (same for wind, the methane digesters for landfil and sewer gas, etc). Yes, but not EVERYDAY ALL DAY, 365 DAYS A YEAR. There is simply no comparison. In the Powder River Basin the coal is there and will be there for the rest of our lives. But how many rail tracks, locomotives, hopper cars, loading facilities etc, can we possibly afford to build, and at what speed? Soon, it will be a year round, all day all night construction site just to provide the transporation! It is becoming senseless. Think about a growth rate from 19 to 325 million tons per day in 21 years...can we carry a billion tons a day, 5 billion? To repeat, it's senseless if some way of producing power without daily movement of tons of material, which we must recall, most of will not be to make power but will be burdensome waste and tailings, given the low hydrogen content of coal. In other words, an easy 3/4 of those tons we will have carried for NO BENEFIT.
The EROEI of solar is climbing. The EROEI on coal is falling at a staggering rate, plus the greenhouse gas issues, creating another massive burden. If solar gains in efficiency and drops in price at even one third the pace that computer chips did in the last 2 decades, it's a done deal. Fossil fuels, even if they exist in abundance, will be seen as a pathetic choice for power in a decade or two, if not sooner.
But like I said, it's too late to argue it tonight...:-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
The Powder River Basin is already a 24/7 mining operation. I drive through the Basin on the way to where I am now. The mines are to the east of Wyoming highway 59. During the day the full extent of the mines are hard to see. At night you can get a better idea as you drive along for an hour or so and see lights to the east. The workers are shipped in by bus- with weird destination signs on the front of the buses. Most of the passing traffic such as pickup trucks have extended orange flags to alert the drivers of the large mine trucks. Occaisonally pick up trucks are flattened with the drivers inside because operators could not see them.
Those coal trains are already quite impressive. Much longer than trains I've seen anywhere else- miles and miles long. Sometimes when the wyoming wind is blowing from the west it blows dense coal dust from the cars and it looks like a black cloud alongside the train. As you drive through the cloud the coal dust is almost sandblasting your vehicle.
Once you start looking at the effects of what would happen in regards to replacing conventional oil with coal or shale oil and the surface infrastructure needed- it is staggering.
Although Solar PV gets the glory when talking about alternatives, the best bang for the buck is with Passive Solar and Solar Thermal- not PV. Solar Thermal systems are capables of efficiencies of 50 to to 90% percent conversion of solar radiation to heat. These efficiencies are far beyond that of PV. Passive Solar's strong point is that the home itself is the energy system- there is no maintainence other than a normal home and no "parasitic" energy losses for pumping etc.
I am not criticizing solar PV nor discounting it's ability to succeed. There is meaning to the term "appropriate technology", however. Electric resistance heating with PV would not bw appropriate. A realistic assessment of PV's ability to contribute must be looked at however. Solar PV I believe, will power a significant part of society in the future- its just that the society that it is powering will be much different than it is today. Hydrocarbons have allowed a "brute force" of overcoming inefficiencies in design and construction. Solar does not have this ability.
What saddens me is that a good chunk of our total energy loss is through something as simple as leaking ductwork. So we dig tons and tons of coal, only to have the energy lost to the outside into "thin air"
frontierenergy says,
"Hydrocarbons have allowed a "brute force" of overcoming inefficiencies in design and construction. Solar does not have this ability.
What saddens me is that a good chunk of our total energy loss is through something as simple as leaking ductwork. So we dig tons and tons of coal, only to have the energy lost to the outside into "thin air"
All I can say there is AMEN. The waste, and by waste I don't mean living well or comfortably, I mean waste that creates no wealth, no increased comfort or prosperity, but only loss in American natural gas consumption is INCREDIBLE.
On the thermal solar, hey, as you say, each in it's place...I have nothing against thermal solar...I am the guy who bought a parabolic mirror from Edmunds Scientific when I was 11 years old or so, and nearly set the bedroom curtains on fire (after that, I read the instructions that came with it that said IT MUST stay in the cardboard sleeve it came in or it could torch something!)
Passive solar: My many posts endorsing earthbermed houses on the north wall with passive windows on the south have all fallen on deaf ears. GOOD DESIGN could save America billions of feet of natural gas. I saw a house several years ago, and all the guy did was put the garage around on the north wall, covering that whole wall with it, and put all the windows and entrys on the south, with the door to the garage being sheltered in the garage of course, and he had an almost free ride, as far as heat/air conditioning (by ground coupled heat pump) except for, you guessed it, the electricity. That's why I still hold out hope for solar PV, and reduced waste:
http://www.energystar.gov/
RC known to you as ThatsItImout
I will give you an example that involved a geothermal heat pump...I did an analysis on a home that the owner had invested almost $25k on the closed loop earth coupled system including the two wells that had been drilled. Unfortunately, the highest temperature that he could raise the home to in January in Colorado was about 40 degrees. The company that installed it was at a loss as to what the problem was.
I did a blower door test on the home and discovered that there was no return air from the building to the heat pump. The contractor had placed the return air with the intention of using the stud walls as a duct. Unfortunately this home had perforated steel studs and the heat pump was pulling in ambient air. The contractors standard practice did not take into account the construction of the home with disastrous results. The problem was fixed but the system never performed to its potential.
An efficient passive solar home doesn't have to look that much out of the ordinary. And what you call a solar home looks different in the southern US versus one in the North. Unfortunately we will have the current stock of housing for many years to come and retrofitting to passive solar is not necessarily an easy task or even possible.