peak fossil fuels by 2017

aquitaine

Solar has other more fundemental problems that prevent it from becoming a primary source of baseline power. For example, it doesn't work at night.

JaWiB

Why should the subsidies be reduced or eliminated? Subsidies for fossil fuels are still around.

JaWiB

Which is why people are looking into energy storage solutions like hydrogen. It isn't an insurmountable problem

brainstorm

I was in the middle of a detailed response message when the power went out and I lost my work. Ironic that it happened while I was posting about energy developments! Anyway, the main issue, imo, is that people can't expect that current consumption patterns are going to magically cause solar power, fossil fuel supply, or any other aspect of energy resourcing to behave in ways they expect it to. People act as if the energy sources have to meet their cultural expectations instead of the other way around. If solar doesn't work it night, it may be that people are going to have to adapt their cultural patterns to go without electricity at night. It may not be necessary to do this right away or all at once, but it makes more sense to me that if you estimate that eventually it will be inevitable that you would rather transition slowly than wait for the sh*t to hit the fan, so to speak.

Currently, I believe the political-mechanical issue is whether free-markets are suited to adapt to energy production and consumption needs for the future. Presumable with valid knowledge about the future they would be, but the problem is that market interests themselves exert influence on future-knowledge in a way that suits short-term profit-motives and consumer-habits. In short, consumers are willing to pay to be told what they want to believe, even if that means making the disaster worse in the long run. Many people simply don't believe there's any disaster even coming - that it is just a trick on the part of people who want to generate cultural change.

The biggest question is whether government should allow solar developments to get priced out of the market, or whether some combination of subsidies and business-model intervention could push the solar-energy industry in the direction of making technologies more accessible, affordable, and therefore widespread. Of course, if existing energy-interests decide that growth of solar is going to interfere with their ability to maintain infrastructure with a narrower customer base, they will probably focus on preventing solar from gaining market share, just because they need the money to continue funding their operations, which they have a stake in maintaining.

talk2glenn

There is no "disaster". This is a political myth promoted by interested parties who regard petroleum and other carbon fuels as "bad", and so-called alternatves as "good". If there were any impending threat of a collapse in global oil supplies, the price of oil (which reflects both current supply/demand and anticipated future supply/demand, through the futures markets) would be significantly higher than it is currently. Even with recent inflation, which is a product of market distortion through public policy (war, energy subsidy, etcetera) and not fundamental changes in supply/demand (the increased demand from China is more than offset by increased production), refined oil remains extremely cheap, relatively speaking. This is because it is extremely plentiful.

Global proved oil reserves have grown every year since they began collecting the data using current methodology at the turn of the century. This means that we are finding new, economically exploitable oil (at current price and technology levels) faster than we are drilling it up. Or, another way of putting it is to say that the amount of oil we know of in the earth TODAY is NO LESS THAN it was at the BEGINNING of the industrial cycle in the late 1800's.

Despite arguments to its "unsustainability", the engineering trends suggest that the rate of technology and productivity growth is more than enough to offset the drainage of known fields, with the effect being that oil is practically an inexhaustible resource, even if that is not theoretically accurate.


It is never the case that public subsidy causes an industry, any industry, to become more "affordable". It may be true that public subsidy increases accessibility in the short term, but this is at the expense of the long term (the short term increase in demand must ultimately be met by a long term reduction in that demand, to achieve balance of payments equilibrium - the debt government accrused today through subsidy must be paid tomorrow through tax, if you will, though this is a crude and not always accurate metaphorical explanation). To exercise this point, consider the recent cash for clunkers program. The program subsidized the purchase of cars in the short term, but everyone acknowledge that this would mean a later-term decline in car sales, once the subsidies were eliminated (in effect, people who would have otherwise purchased their vehicle in a month purchased it today; net sales were unaffected, just the rate of sales). Subsidy advocates argue that, due to unforeseen market conditions, it is worth moving future demand to present demand, for political reasons.

As to affordability, a subsidy has the effect of maintaining an immediate market price level that is below the clearing, equilibrium price (through cash rebates to consumers or producers; the price paid by the consumer is less than the actual price, which includes the subsidy). This means that consumer demand will exceed producer supply, in the short, subsidized term. In response, producers will ALWAYS raise prices. In effect, subsidies have the effect of RAISING the short term price. This is economic reality. Again, subsidy advocates will argue this is a politically desirable outcome; they cannot argue that this will not happen. Again to exercise this point, consider college tuition rates. Do to heavy subsidy through the DOE guaranteed loans programs, demand for a college education outpaces supply, and the price of tuition increases much more rapidly than inflation.

apeiron

Have you read the study that is the subject of this thread and can you please explain how it is an inaccurate summary of actual known reserves and consumption trends?

You say:

Can you please supply the references for that statement?

Proton Soup

there is a huge amount of methane hydrate ice at the bottom of the sea. i find it hard to believe that we won't find a way to harvest it as soon as that becomes profitable. of course, that is not infinite, either (despite being continually produced biologically), but it would certainly buy more time.

apeiron

If you want to talk about subsidies and free markets, you might want to consider this first...

mheslep

Also, unless the residential solar is heavily cleaned up by batteries, the power quality is lousy (large variation on a time scale of seconds). As more and more solar comes online, this is likely to become a problem for the utilities.

mheslep

Clearly approaches like solar thermal 'work' technically at night. The economics of the storage are the question.

Argentum Vulpes

Solar Thermal is one possibility for night time power, hydrogen is another way to store excess power from solar power production for night time usage. The big problem that I see with that line of thought or any other "we need to develop technology" cures to make solar more in line with the western worlds expectations with the current power system is there is a tonn of "if" coming off of these plans.

Also solar panels require rare earth materials to do their thing, so do all semi conductors in consumer electronics. China is the worlds suppler of these materials and they have announced a cut back in global exports, due to rising internal needs. Because of laws of supply and demand the cost of these panels will rise, and so will other consumer electronics. Solar if brought to large scale will not drop in price but rise, and so will anything else with a semi conductor.

It is incredibly disappointing that so many people on this thread have discounted Nuclear power as the solution to the problem. It all but displaced oil as a power source in the USA (approximately 20% of current grid power). It replaced oil/diesel on subs and aircraft carriers in the USA navy, and replaced oil in the Russian ice breaker fleet. All cases where nuclear power has clearly demonstrated a clear path for displacing fossil fuel sources.

As for having a plan that has some "if" coming off of it, that will succeed. Replace coal boilers with nuclear tea kettles, and use the excessive heat to run a coal to liquid plant. Looking at USA reserves of coal that gives approximately 344 billion barrels of oil just inside of the USA borders. Sounds like a good reserve to me, and no one will loose their job, heck might even create some more.

aquitaine

Adding extra expense. Even with a storage solution you'd need to build over projected demand to compensate for the extra load, which feeds the other problem: fundemental inefficiency. The fundemental efficiency limit is the amount of solar energy per square meter, 27 watts if I recall correctly (though feel free to correct me). Now, in order to generate the gigawatts needed to power a city, you'd need huge amounts of land turned into solar farms, many may hectares worth. Instead of doing that, why not just go with the sensible solution and use nuclear? After all, many power plants have several reactors allowing them to get 3+ GW at just one site or more. Or do we really want to use MORE land, destroy more habitat than we already are? Land usage matters.

mheslep

No, rare earth elements are not required in traditional PV crystal panels. Chemically they are simple P-N junctions, and the typical dopants for silicon are listed here.

Solar PV panels are now produced at a rate of several gigawatts worth of panels per year, the price has continually dropped over time, dramatically so in the last two years. See, e.g.

http://www.1366tech.com/v2/
The main cost in crystalline panels is the highly purified silicon required; methods of producing the silicon wafers have become increasingly efficient over time.

Argentum Vulpes

Now lets stop being disingenuous here. Yes the old generation one PV moncrystalline panels require no rare earth elements. However those panels are lucky to get 20% efficiency. Have to be in large heavy sheet configurations. Have to track the sun, and the hotter they get the efficacy of the panels drop off. There is a reason they are generation one panels, and labs are barking up the generation four tree.

Of course the cost of the panels are going to go down if it is artificially brought down by government subsidies. Also per your graph for the line to remain true there must be a 35% growth in solar power generation, and only 18% of that growth go into new based technologies. Also the production facilities must have an 18% capacity factor (CF) and rely on a 7% government subsidy. Sounds like a lot of restrictions to keep that graph true.

And for kicks and giggles lets look at how efficiently the largest large scale solar project vs largest nuclear power uses land. DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center with a peak power output of 25 MW on 140 acres of land with a CF of 19.1%. So there is approximately 178 kW of electricity per acre 19.1% of the year. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station has a peak power output of 3,875 MW on 4,000 acres of land with a CF of 86%. So there is 800 kW of electricity per acre 86% of the year. So nuclear uses land 4.5 times more efficiently and dose it 4.5 times as long.

Nuclear power is hands down the most efficient way to produce power with current technologies. Solar is a nice idea that needs a tonn more research. In its current form solar power can not provide base load power now or in the foreseeable future.

mheslep

Exactly, I'm attempting to stop you from continuing to do so. You made a claim about rare earth elements limiting the supply of PV panels:
Provide a valid reference showing how mass produced PV (i.e. panels) require rare earth elements in amounts sufficient to drive up PV panel costs or retract the claim and move on. Hint: You're confusing thin film solar, some of which does use rare earth, and polycrystalline silicon panels, which does not, even the modern ones.
No, panels prior to 2000 yielded ~10-15%. Now, most panels mass produced panels hit ~18%, with a few at 20-22%.
Sun angle and temperature still impact the output of 2010 PV mass produced crystalline cells; for that matter, temperature impacts the performance of any P-N junction semiconductor.

Capacity factor is not germane to PV manufacturing, but refers to the percentage of online operation time of a power source; for solar power this refers to the amount of time the PV produces equivalent rated power which depends of course on sunlight received, typically 1/5 to 1/6 of a 24 hr day, ie. 18%. The 7% figure is not a government subsidy, but the assumed interest rate on borrowed money, i.e. the discounted rate of future cash flows.

Regarding nuclear power, I haven't seen anyone dismiss it in this thread. Instead there has been discussion of how much nuclear could be built in a given time.

JaWiB

You already have to build over projected demand, regardless of the energy source...
I think average insolation is in the hundreds of W/m^2

True, you would need a lot of surface area. But there also seems to be a lot of land available in various places. Solar farms aside, we also have plenty of parking lots and rooftops. It's hard to say how much infrastructure could cost, but I still think solar is one of the best options in the long-term.

As for nuclear, I'm not against it, but I've heard conflicting reports about the availability of fuel, overall costs (one speaker cited some project in France that went ridiculously over budget and wasn't completed on time), and it has the typical disadvantage that it uses up a lot of water.

apeiron

A complete costing of nuclear is more complicated. For example, the waste has to go somewhere, which will do something to your land useage calculations.

But anyway, I think it is easily agreed that there needs to be a baseload system and other stuff slots in on top.

The major thing we are not yet set up to do is capture free energy at any scale which is most convenient. The public utility/private monopoly model distorts the market by favouring large scale energy projects. It is obviously better if, for example, the electricity grid was a two-way network that could function as a battery. So if I tiled my roof with PV panels, the excess would feed into the grid - where it might even be stored by pumping water back up into a hydrodam - and then I could take that electricity back at a later date at a similar rate.

Nuclear would have to be the big utility model of course. PV would be the consumer level probably. And wind could span the range.

The economic calculations are complex, but counting the cost of plugging new technology into old financial models of infrastructure is dumb. It is the new infrastructure that we are trying to imagine.

And the point of the OP is that we have less time than many imagine to get imagining and acting. If we wait for market forces, it will be too late as oil is not accurately priced as a commodity!

Scarce goods should have higher prices, but fossil fuels have been treated as a free lunch (where I would not automatically disagree that nuclear has been over-priced by the market in terms of its dangers and capital costs - I am just wary because the industry has been in large part justified by a desire for bombs).