vanesch said:
The problem I have with that discourse, is that IN THE MEAN TIME, we don't do anything, and we STOP good solutions from being implemented, waiting for the "perfect" solution. We say that we should develop technologies, that will solve certain issues, and that in order to do so, we should invest in it. No matter how much money you would have given to someone in 1850, you would not have had color television in 1880. Of course we should develop new technologies (which will be the mature technologies future generations will choose from to implement on large scale), but we should not STOP mature technologies from providing solutions, because we THINK that we MAY develop better ones in the FUTURE.
There is no "single perfect" solution, since the energy future will most probably contain a very diverse mixture of several alternatives.
In the mean time we can ALREADY built those almost economical viable solar installations (CSP and those that are economically comparable) in many locations.
I think that are better alternatives then simply call for "more drillings/more refineries".
I really, really don't believe that. Study the Danish experience (it was not bad will, or subsidies that were missing). Grid balance is a technologically challenging problem, if you don't have steerable sources at your disposal - it is even a challenging problem when you have them ! Tripling the price of electricity is a serious economical problem, but is less of a difficulty than balancing the grid.
Well that is just the lesson to be learned. Before scaling up our renewables, we should investigate how they fit to varying demand/supply balances. So, best would be to spend some money on styding that.
And a likely outcome would be is that you can better use 2 or more independend renewable sources then just 1, as the likelihood that AND there is no solar AND there is no WIND and there is no <other> is off course less. Also, we need to investigate means for buffering energy and/or how conventional power units can be made economical even in cases where their only use is to meet peak demands.
Also spreading the risk by developing a more capable grid is some solution. If using DC electric power lines, you can distribute electricity over thousands of kilometers with little loss (~ 15%), which is of course better then dumping peak production for which there is no demand, and better then even the most efficient storage mechanisms. If there is a very wide grid, this will most certainly provide a more stable rate of production (for example in a range of some thousands kilometers, the change that there is no wind in the whole region is far less as in the case of a grid of only some hundred kilometers).
So there are a number of ways, and combinations of them to tackle this problem. Just create some large computer simulation on this (fed in with actual resource and demand data), use probabilistic scenario's,etc. to find an optimum solution to this, minimizing the risk of a major grid failure.
It is exactly this (IMO almost technologically almost unsolvable) problem that is missed by all alternative-energy enthusiasts.
That is why such features need to be studied more. So, the money should not just go to improving technologies to produce renewable energy, but also to make it a more reliable source. See my comments above.
I'm sorry but they are part of the price calculation. In fact, nuclear is the only technology where one takes into account the waste issue. One can argue that one doesn't count enough for it. I wonder if in the price of a park of wind turbines, one has included the price of dismantling them, cutting them to pieces, transporting this to a waste dump and so on.
A fair price comparission should include that also as well as the costs for buffering and having backup power units (which would be less efficient then when used continously).
In fact, this has been tried, and the problem is that it always includes some arbitrary cutoff, and then discussions turn over this cutoff. Current technologies are based upon a lot of different techniques, science, research, ... You can almost say that a modern nuclear power plant, or a modern wind turbine, needed 4 billion years of evolution to get there, and start calculating what was the cost of that. Do we have to include Tesla's salary into the costs of every electricity generator ? So you have to put a cutoff somewhere. For instance, people insist to include in "government subventions", the research in nuclear technology by research labs. Should we now also include in the price of wind energy, every laboratory that studies hydrodynamics ?
It would be just fair to say that any general study in new technologies which are not yet mature, should be places as general costs for the society as a whole, and only count specific studies of technologies in real economical applications as (more or less) direct costs for such technologies.
I very strongly object to that statement. We simply don't know how to do so. In as much as people in 1850 didn't know how to make a color TV set.
Well, there are of course a couple of technological challenges to be overcome. They need to be overcome one day. They existed for oil industry also, as well as for nuclear. I don't think it would be wise to keep avoiding the technological challenges, as that would keep us too much dependent on oil, gas and nuclear, and in the end, how longer we wait, the more difficult the transition would be (as meanwhile the population grows, and energy pro capita grows too). This would make the problem more difficult as it already is.
As I see it, a transition from (mostly) fossil and some nuclear and only marginally renewable to dominantly reneweable is not an issue of years, but will take several decades.
This makes it also urgent since for example oil production will be going to decline within a decade,at most two. To be able to meet the challege then, we better be prepared.
The whole issue is that postponing the inevitable is NOT a good strategy. Developing all the necessary technologies and difficulties that come with using renewables is not doable in some years.
Technological problems don't get solved by themselves. They need people and budgets and an economic/societal reason, and the latter are already fulfilled, we just need more people and budget working on it.
Is that an ideological statement, or is there a reason for it ? Fossil, I understand, in the optics of possible AGW. Nuclear, I don't know what the haste is about.
There are political issues involved in going nuclear (like proliferation) and the general risk on any such limited resources that political conflicts may arise from them (not every country has uranium, and some countries see them being blocked access to such technologies, because of the risk that they may produce nuclear weapons).
This is correct. Now tell me, where is that region or country that lives on renewables alone ?
If it was so feasible, it would have been done already somewhere, right ?
Some countries DO have plans already to be practically independend of fossil fuels as soon as 2020 or so.
Given some time in technological advancement AND rising oil prices, will cause other countries to follow that example also, I guess.
Now, how does my steel factory run then, at a winter night, when there's no wind ?
Perhaps the steel factory should be placed where there is an abundance of available cheap renewable energy. For example there is a huge resource in geothermal energy, which has no problem in meeting the demand (in case of a steel factory the demand is near constant, and geothermal can easily be scaled up to meet a constand demand).
If that is not possible (or would not be economical feasible) and depending on what resource is available, there are diverse options. Like stated before, some solar technologies already can meet near constant energy production demand. For meeting peak loads you could have backup power units, fueled on bio fuels. And perhaps, if we can find methods to store hydrogen economically, this could be used for energy storage. That would be some breakthrough, as to produce hydrogen all you need is electricity (and water of course, but that is abundant), so wind farms and other renewable sources that produce electricity could store excess electricity in the form of hydrogen. But as hydrogen is the smallest atom.molecule it is very difficult to store it, or you would have to liquify it).
Apart from this you would want to look for ways of using waste heat from the steel factory for practical use.
Do you really think that people in the 18th century had to solve our energy problems ? That's what you are talking about when you talk about solving the energy crisis for future generations. We don't have to implement technologies that will last hundreds of years. We're not using 18th century technology to solve our problems, right ? People in the 23th century will not use our technologies, and that includes fossil fuels, nuclear fission energy or anything else.
The 18-th century did not bring an energy crisis, since they used considerable less energy as we, and almost all discoveries of large deposits of fossil fuels were in the 20-th century.
People in the 18-th century had a different perspective on the problems then we have now, for instance it was considered that Paris would be suffering from horse poop because of increasing traffic.
This was before the invention of the automobile.Of course that changed the whole problem all together.
The reason WE (this generation) needs to solve the energy problem is just because we are facing the depletion of the most common fuels. We are almost half-way the (calculated) oil , and although there will still be some deposits left undiscovered, the chances of still finding very large deposits are minimal. The oil discovery already peaked, and the only oil we find is more difficult to exploit (shale and deep sea oil mainly).
So, yes there is a reason to think NOW about how in the future we can replace those depleting energy resources, since we are nearing the depletion of some of the major energy resources already.
The situation in that respect is very difficult in that respect then that in the 18-th century.
Well, there's a logical fallacy here. Visibly you want our generation already to get away from the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. So these will then be "useless" energy ressources already now. If they are then already useless for our generation, they certainly will be for future generations. So we're not stealing anything from them, then, are we ?
Yes, we need to think about the energy future. Because we are certain that resources as sun,wind, geothermal, etc. are available for all future generations, and fossils only for couple of decades, century at maximum. Nuclear perhaps longer, depending on what kind of technology.
The point is off course the following: population AND energy demand pro capita is growing. So this will cause an increasing problem for any way of energy transition,which most likely must be thought of in periods of several decades instead of years.The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be.
The scenarion of depletion of conventional energy resources (fossil fuels) is that after they meet peak production there is a sharp raise of the price. This also meas: less economic means for technological advancement. It will simply put more stress on the already difficult issue, and less resources to solve it.
This means IMO we would be better off trying to solve those issues now, now we still have the resoources as doing that later, since a dramatic price increase of for example oil, will affect everything.
We KNOW that prices of many renewables can significantly drop in price, if they are scaled up (even aside of technological advancement which can even more reduce the price).
So a good strategy would then to already go and invest in that, so that near the time oil and price peaks we already have a scalable alternative.
As stated earlier, nuclear technology has a major disadvantage: although it can be available for many centuries, for sceurity reasons there is likely going to be some monopoly on the technique, which means that those companies/states that control the nuclear market effectively dominate whole humanity.
This is in fact already what is happening,and what will happen on a bigger scale in the future, if we place all our bets on nuclear technology.
To be stated simple: the (large scale) use of nuclear energy is not compatible with a democratic and equal-chance-of-development world society. In fact humanity would become hostage of those powers that control nuclear energy. And definitely large scale use of nuclear energy is going to become accompanied with rigorous forms of control or security, because breeder reactors can create the material nuclear explosives are made of.
Are you willing to give up democracy and freedom, just to have access to cheap energy?
I think the political price is simply to big for this.
All countries and all people have in principle same access rights to energy and other resources, and renewables are in this respect very democratic and very distributed. Nobody can monopolize wind or sun energy.
Yes. We should develop them. It will take time. In the MEAN TIME, let us use those resources that we know work already. Our great grand children will not use our technology, in the same way as we don't use horse and cart as our main transportation system right now.
What you seem to miss entirely is that we currently don't have economically competitive and technically feasible energy sources that are renewable. That's green propaganda against nuclear, but since the 30 years that they are saying this, they never managed to put it in action. That lie has nevertheless managed to stop nuclear, but where they do so (like in Germany), they replace it with... coal.
Hydro energy and wind energy are fairly competive I might say. Some forms of solar are pretty near competetive.
The problem for wind for instance is not that placing more wind turbines is not economical, but that government regulations limit the places were they can be built. That is why for example in the Netherlands they are going to be built off-shore (spin off from oil technology!).
Fission materials are NOT scarce. In fact, the current "waste" still contains about 99% of its nuclear energy, which can be made available with fast breeder reactors. The reason is that current thermal reactors only use (mainly) the U-235 isotope, which represents only 0.7% of the natural uranium, and most of the 99.3% of U-238 is untouched. But in a fast breeder, that can be fissioned too. So if we run already 30 years on nuclear, in the waste there is still the potential to run for 3000 years more on the same rate, or 600 years at 5 times more power, which would be the entire world energy consumption. Read this again: the current nuclear "waste" can still be used during 600 years for total electricity production. Now, we won't be doing that for 600 years, because I guess by then we've found much better techniques. But for sure, it isn't a scarce resource, it is the "waste" people want to get rid off ! Fast breeder reactors have already been demonstrated since several decades, but are not yet commercially exploitable. It are the famous "generation 4" reactors.
Yes, but whoever has access to breeding technology has access to nuclear weapons, and last time I checked, we do not want everybody to have access to nuclear weapons.
I think this issue IS important, and is also the reason we don't want our energy future dependend on nuclear.
There is too big a political price for that.
I think that is a bit naive. I'm also for developing new technologies, but you can't count on a technology that still has to be developed, and it is simply not true that by throwing a lot of money on a problem, you solve it quickly. Wind and solar have a fundamental, unsolved problem: intermittency. Price is only secondary - although it is also a problem.
Then there is another problem: industrial availability. One of the arguments against nuclear energy is that the industry, at this point, is not capable of delivering, say, 200 power plants in the next 10-15 years. First of all, I'm not sure about that. France, on its own, built 58 reactors in 20 years time. But let's take that. Now, do you think that the industry is capable of building, say, for 300 GW of solar and wind power plants in the next 10-15 years ?
Do you think if we wait another 20 years, and we need then not 300GW but 500GW, that it would be easier then?
I mean, postponing that, will not make the problem go away, but make it bigger instead.
The problem of those wanting inexistent technology (but convinced that it "can" be done, and it is just bad will or politics that stops them) do a lot of harm by stopping technology that IS available and DOES work.
All technology I so far have talked about are EXISTING technologies. They just have the problem that they don't scale well or don't fit well with varying demand/supply. So there we face some problems that need to be attacked.
Unless we WANT to solve them, we will FIND a solution, I'm sure. In fact they are pretty low level technological stuff, much less complicated as let's say, nuclear technology or rocket science.
We don't have to solve the problems of the 22nd century, we have to solve the problems of the beginning of the 21st century, without putting up those of the 22nd century with extra problems. But those of next century will not use OUR technologies, OUR resources, or anything. They will do THEIR thing, with THEIR technology and THEIR resources. In the mean time, don't stop people NOW from solving problems NOW with technology that exists NOW.
And where is the spirit of the moon landing? There was NOT ONE economic (and only very limited scientific) reason to land a man on the moon, but budgetting sufficient economic resources to that project made it possible to overcome ALL the technological difficulties that came with it. And it was by no means an EASY challenge, as everyone knows.
Let's say that is proof of my statement, that given enough economic priority, all technological difficulties of even the most ambitious project can be overcome. Scaling our economic infrastructure to be based on renewable resources only, is a major challenge, and needs to be solved.
I am sure that if we have the same ambition of developing large scale infrastructure for energy based on (mainly) renewable, this will be possible too. The tecnological problems are not that hard compared to what we already done, just different.
Why not taking up this challenge, instead of being dependent on existing technology, and playing ourselves into the hand of a few monopolists? You want to give freedom and democracy away?
If we want a future in which every human being now and in the future has access to a reasonable standard of living, I think renewable energy will fit in the best.
This comes only at the price that we have to put out of our mind that exponential growth is sustaoable given limited resources. Which we need to confront us with sooner or later.
Better doing that NOW then letting those problems (resource wars) dominate and plague future generations.