This is a guest post by Keith Henson.

Could Satellite Solar Power (SSP) solve worldwide energy problems and even sequester serious amounts of carbon dioxide? In this post, I look at SSP built with laser propulsion and a new Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) combination, since this approach seems to be lower cost than other approaches and still could produce a huge amount of electric power. If there is enough electric power, some of it might even be used to sequester carbon dioxide by converting it to synthetic oil.

In this post, I prepare a financial model (available as a spreadsheet in PDF form) of what this approach to SSP might cost. Based on my calculations, the total investment required would be $58 billion, spread over a little over eight years. The system would produce a huge amount of electricity, so that long-term, the cost per kWh would only be $ .02.

While this proposed approach may not come about, or could take 20 years, it does offer a way out, if it can be made to work. There have been two recent posts on SSP that may be of interest to readers - one by Darel Preble and another by Big Gav.

Part 1 can be found here. This series of posts will be co-authored by phoenix, who is an Engineer heavily involved in the energy sector. It will be based on a submission we made recently to the Australian Government. Obviously, projections of this type are difficult. This is an attempt to provide a model for this kind of projection. We then use the model to provide some insights into just how hard the conversion will be for Australia.

How Much Time Do We Have?

Since Australia has one of the largest per capita endowments of energy resources, it is easy to be lulled into a false security that this benefit will last forever. This impression is boosted by quoted production vs. demand figures exceeding 100 years. The reality of our energy security is not so rosy.

As discussed above, most production vs. resource figures are established by assuming a continuation of the current demand or extraction rate. While this may be a reasonable methodology for determination of the life of a mine or the value of the resource it is patently false for determination of our overall resource security. Demand rates for all of our energy resources are climbing year by year.

The paradigm of continually increasing growth driven by an increasing population and an expectation of improving standards of living demands a continuing increase in production of our natural resources. The following table shows Australia’s major non renewable energy resources together with their expected life calculated on this basis.

This series of posts will be co-authored by phoenix, who is an Engineer heavily involved in the energy sector. It will be based on a submission we made recently to the Australian Government.

INTRODUCTION

Energy is a gateway resource.

Given abundant energy, minerals can be refined from seawater if necessary. But in the absence of energy even the richest mineral deposits are inaccessible.

Similarly, given sufficient energy, a valuable energy resource such as oil can be made synthetically from virtually any organic input. In theory (given the right infrastructure and energy production) the production rate of synthetic oil would be limited only by the availability of sufficient energy.

In this series of posts we will attempt to do 7 things:

1. Discuss Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). Show that a net-zero EROEI for a resource does not necessarily mean that the energy resource has no utility - it simply means that the energy resource has become an energy carrier, not an energy source. The burden of energy production must be moved to a different energy source. If reduced energy returns exist in our future (as they clearly do – this is happening already) then an infrastructure for this alternate energy source (or sources) must logically be built before the energy available from fossil fuels approaches zero.
2. Discuss the lifespan of Australia’s endowment of fossil fuel (FF).
3. Present an order-of magnitude estimate for the amount of time necessary to build an alternate energy infrastructure.
4. Show that the lifespan of Australia’s current FF energy endowment is likely to be less than the time required to design and build an alternate energy infrastructure.
5. Show that the energy required to build the infrastructure is likely to be a substantial fraction of all the energy that we have available, leading to an inevitable impact on GDP and living standards.
6. Examine the same issues from a US/International perspective.
7. Discuss solutions.

This story has been edited to make it clearer that the analysis relates to US wind rather than European wind and to clarify the problem with excess generation at night. I also added an Item 10.

I think we think we know more about wind-power than we do. These are a few things that I have recently discovered about wind that make me think that plunging headlong into electricity is not necessarily a good idea. At this point, we don't seem to have a plan that does much more than address wind turbines themselves.

I should make it clear that this discussion relates to US wind power, not European wind power. Many of the issues directly or indirectly relate to the fact the US is facing a multi-faceted problem--lack of wind turbines, needed grid upgrades, and lack of electrical storage. In a time of financial problems, the price of such a big change makes it difficult to tackle all these problems on the necessary scale at once. If we only add wind turbines, and make minimal upgrades in storage and transmission, the change is still likely to still be expensive and will likely leave us with the need for large subsidies. Without extensive grid upgrades and electrical storage changes, wind generated electricity will continue to play only a supporting role, acting mostly as a fuel substitute.

Europe has been dealing with this issue longer and has better addressed the wind transmission and storage issue, so it is in better shape in this regard. Jerome Guillet has prepared a write-up focusing more on the European perspective.