There is a good article on solar energy in the current issue of Mother Earth News. The theme is similar to my article The Future is Solar, and the author comes to similar conclusions:
I have been studying our energy options for more than 30 years, and I am absolutely convinced that our best and easiest option is solar energy, which is virtually inexhaustable. Most importantly, if we choose solar we don’t have to wait for a new technology to save us. We already have the technology and energy resources we need to build a sustainable, solar-electric economy that can cure our addiction to oil, stabilize the climate and maintain our standard of living, all at the same time. It is well past time to start seriously harnessing solar energy.
The author runs through the various options available to us, which leads to his conclusion that solar is where we should be putting our efforts. On biomass, he makes the point that I emphasized in my solar essay:
When you do the math, the overall efficiency of biomass used as transportation fuel, from sun to wheel, is about 0.01 percent to 0.05 percent. In contrast, the overall efficiency of using solar panels to charge electric vehicles from sun to wheel is 3 percent to 20 percent. This means that solar-charged electric vehicles are from 60 to 2,000 times more efficient than vehicles burning ethanol or biodiesel. Which solution makes more sense?
And then a bit on PHEVs:
Electric Vehicles & Plug-in Hybrids. Electric vehicle drivetrains are inherently five to 10 times more efficient than internal combustion engines and they produce no greenhouse gases at the tailpipe. Even if powered by fossil-fuel electricity, emissions at the power plant are much lower per mile traveled than with internal combustion engines. In addition, electric vehicles can be charged directly from renewable sources, thereby eliminating emissions altogether.
One of the main excuses the auto industry offers for the lack of electric vehicles is that “the batteries are not developed yet.” But consider how quickly cell phone batteries developed, transforming mobile phones from heavy, bulky, short-lived nuisances to amazingly light, small and long-lasting necessities. The oil companies are doing a good job of protecting the American consumer from “dangerous” batteries, but in parts of the world where oil companies have less control, large format battery development is progressing at rapid speeds.
Good article. Lots more there than what I posted. Check it out.
I think solar is PART of the answer, but not ALL of the answer.
While storage technology will continue to improve, solar makes for a poor baseload/nighttime source of energy.
I would prefer a more diversified portfolio consisting of nuke/geothermal baseload, wind/wave “semi-baseload” and solar peaking “portfolio.”
I find myself agreeing with Mr. Heckeroth. But he is hardly an unbiased observer: Steve Heckeroth bio
If Daniel Yergen of CERA had written a similar piece extolling fossil fuels, you can bet that people would point out his self-serving opinions.
I also take exception with characterizing imported natural gas (LNG) as almost as dirty as coal. This is a case of looking backwards at a technology and claiming similar results into the future. The first LNG plants captured flared gas – that was essentially “free”. These plants didn’t need to be efficient. Newer plants have made dramatic improvements in efficiency during liquefaction and storage.
Similarly, IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) coal plants lock up the metals and other contaminants as slag from the gasifiers. IGCCs are much more efficient than pulverized coal and IGCC exhaust gases are ready for sequestration.
Phone and computer batteries, weighing from a few hundred grams to a kg or two, is one thing. Gearing up to produce batteries for cars weighing hundreds of kilograms is another thing. The same for solar panels. Gearing up to make a difference will require massive investment in new solar capacity.
The reason mobile phones have become smaller and lighter is partly due to battery technology – NiMh is about a factor of 2 better by volume and Li-ion another factor of 2 by weight. But the main reason for the reduction in size/weight is the vastly improved efficiency of the electronics, which allows smaller capacity batteries to be used. This effect is masked, because modern mobiles have many more features. If you ditch the color screen and MP3 player, you can make a mobile phone the size and weight of a credit card.
Battery technology has not really developed that much, and definitely needs to improve further. It may be down to step wise improvements like “foam” batteries rather than great breakthroughs. I believe solar is one of the best solutions, but developing large scale storage will be an ongoing challenge.
The sun never sets on the photovoltaic empire. With a little investment, we can use solar for baseload/nighttime. Run an HVDC line accross the atlantic and pacific ocean and sign a net metering agreement with someone 8 timezones ahead and behind you.
RR, you must have loved this part:
The oil companies are doing a good job of protecting the American consumer from “dangerous” batteries, but in parts of the world where oil companies have less control, large format battery development is progressing at rapid speeds.
Sounds very objective, doesn’t it?
I’d love to know where the parts of the world are where oil companies have less control, and what news there is i.t.o. battery developments. But I guess the oil companies have so far “protected” me from that information…
The batteries are ready.
http://www.a123systems.com/
http://www.saftbatteries.com
The Chevy Volt will be here in 2010or 2011.
With the development of better techniques for finding geothermal sites, geothermal may be the better bet. Geothermal is likewise practically inexhaustible, and if the estimates are correct, the amount of geothermal energy that could be developed in the continental US is about 3,000 time our current use.
Geothermal has a smaller footprint, and is reliable 24/7, which ground based solar is not, and that means a significant load-leveling investment is required for solar.
Cell phones were a viable product with the batteries that were available at the time, this is still not true of electric cars. And current PHEVs require rather large packs of batteries, which not only take up a lot of space, but require lithium, which may present a serious resource constraint in scaling up PHEVs to be a major part of the vehicle fleet.
People are working on the problems (importantly, battery companies are working on the problems), but I don’t want to place my bets on PHEVs, let alone EVs, yet.
Not really such a good article. Same old, same old. The author has wet dreams about solar and mouths the usual brain-dead platitudes against nuclear power.
In reality, so-called nuclear waste is the result of a political decision not to reprocess, rather than a genuine technical issue. After all, we would normally call something that was emitting energy “fuel”, not “waste”.
Problem is — there are no easy answers when it comes to meeting future global energy needs. Pretending that solar technology is more advanced than it is (and ignoring the current technology gaps between solar electricity and economic 24/7 power or economic transportation fuels) is simply self-delusion.
With the technology we have today, expanded nuclear fission is the only practical large scale option for the next few decades or centuries. Technology advances, and solar’s day will eventually come. But for today, nuclear needs to be a big part of any realistic energy supply portfolio.
I find myself more and more in agreement with RR’s thesis that solar is the way to go. Surely, we can augment our power grids with solar, wind, geothermal, nukes and even clean coal.
It seems to me this is a prescription for a more-prosperous, cleaner world.
I don’t know why there is such doomsterism prevalent on energy sites.
By the way, we have not run out of oil yet. The price is falling. It likely will fall for a long, long time.
My concern is that oil will become so cheap again that PHEVs and other alternatives will be laughed at.
The author has wet dreams about solar and mouths the usual brain-dead platitudes against nuclear power.
Yes, I did have a couple of points of disagreement, and that was one. We are going to need nuclear going forward.
RR
Robert, I agree, only more so. I think engineers specializing in power generation or liquid fuel manufacturing may underestimate future technological changes in other areas.
Solar PV has decreased in price steadily with only modest production rates. As production increases and R&D spending goes up 10X, it is possible that the price reductions will accelerate, and of course all hell will break loose if grid parity is reached.
However, the real nonlinear effects will show up when low power lighting and appliances meet solar. Right now, it isn’t hard to get a laptop that draws 50W, a desktop with large monitor that draws 100W, (expensive) LED lighting that puts out 8X the light/W of incandescent, washing machines from Lowe’s that use under 200 Wh per load, and so on. In ten years time, the efficiency and cost will be even more impressive. Other small innovations, such as refrigerators that will demand shift by utilizing available power to freeze water so battery power is not required overnight will also reduce overall system cost. Propane can be used for cooking.
When you combine these low power devices with a solar system, the number of panels and the battery capacity requirements are both reduced, in a system that delivers the same utility as a present day grid connected setup. With lower costs, the savings in not connecting to the grid becomes more significant.
Of course it is impossible to know how things will really play out, everything depends on the costs of the alternatives at the time, but it may be that the transition to solar power will be much quicker than most people expect. (It actually depends more on the battery cost reduction than on PV cost reductions.)
These is no single solution. I keep saying this. And the solution has to be reasonably priced. For vehicle transportation, I still think plug in hybrids are the major solution for energy diversification. I still think nuclear is the major solution for cheaper/cleaner energy at home. Let the Europeans with ridiculous tax rates prop solar power development. Half the power that are claiming to want to go green arent going to be so green if their power bills double.
last comment:
half the ‘power’ was supposed to read ‘half the people’
==When you do the math, the overall efficiency of biomass used as transportation fuel, from sun to wheel, is about 0.01 percent to 0.05 percent.==
I wonder what that math looks like.
Some general stuff I’ve gleened looks something like this.
3-11% photosynthetically active radiation captured
32% energy left after fischer tropsch
88% energy left after transportation/distribution
40% energy left after a turbo charged diesel engine
The usual non-analysis of nuclear power, dismissing it because of the waste. Sheesh, do these guys have any idea how small the total amount of waste actually is after reprocessing?
Furthermore, why does solar have to automatically mean solar PV?
Especially when solar thermal can supply 6 hours of dispatchable power after the sun goes down.
As for baseload, I’m surprised geothermal, and interconnected wind energy don’t get mentioned.
_
As for nuclear, are you aware there’s an earthquake fault line running through Yucca Mountain?
http://www.grist.org/news/2007/09/25/yucca/index.html
Hell, if solar got as much R&D funds as Nuclear, I’m sure we could figure out a way to store it.
http://greyfalcon.net/energyresearch.png
Hell, the Nuclear industry is asking for more subsidized Federal loans than the entire energy industry combined, many times over. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/washington/31nuclear.html?ei=5090&en=a84a18d418eb04e8&ex=1343534400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
If renewables had that kind of money to toss around, then we wouldn’t even be talking about nuclear.
And thats not even considering the DOD overheard costs.
A little OT, but not entirely; RR must be relieved to hear the NIE report today to the effect Iran stopped nuclear bomb work years ago, in 2003. RR mentioned friends living in Iran.
I detest all despotic theocracies, and Iran is no exception. But I am relieved to know the Bush argument for bombs away has been undermined, and by relatively credible sources. I wish I knew how to convert despotic regimes into democracies, but evidently no one else does either. Unfortunately, it is backward thug states that control the world’s oil, with few exceptions.
The Iran cool-down is yet another salve on the oil markets. My guess is that $99 will be the all-time peak for a generation — interesting that $99 is very close to the $45 peak (adjusted ofr inflation of 1979-80.
We may see a similar decades-long slide in prices. I worry for the future of alternative fuels and technologies.
Hell, the Nuclear industry is asking for more subsidized Federal loans than the entire energy industry combined, many times over.
Well, the link is to the New York Times, so that information is probably wrong 🙂
More seriously, it would be a great idea if we could get rid of subsidies, mandates, preferential pricing and all the other games that politicians play with energy supplies. Basically, direct & indirect energy subsidies are not sustainable over the long term.
It would be better if politicians concentrated on removing the regulatory barriers they have built — just look at how difficult it is to install wind turbines offshore Senator Teddie Kennedy’s fiefdom. Instead, politicians could focus on supporting research & innovation, maybe via an energy supply analog of the space X-Prize.
==More seriously, it would be a great idea if we could get rid of subsidies, mandates, preferential pricing and all the other games that politicians play with energy supplies.==
Certainly it would be.
Remember what happened last time another country even had a hint of constituting a nuclear program?
I’d love to chalk that one up to the overhead costs.
http://greyfalcon.net/iraqvsenergy.png
greyflcn wrote:
“Remember what happened last time another country even had a hint of constituting a nuclear program?”
Red herring. Try engaging brain.
Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program (Check: Israeli air force, Iraq bombing runs; or IAEA inspectors, bum’s rush from Iraq). That is why Pres. Clinton interrupted some pressing personal matters to shoot off many millions of dollars worth of cruise missiles at various sites in Iraq. That is why Saddam ultimately had to be removed — at very high cost. But you knew that.
Preventing the diversion of peaceful nuclear power programs into weapons development is a serious issue. If we would actually deal with it as a technical issue, we could probably resolve it pretty successfully.
But then there would still be the problem of Bad Guys — ones who bend or ignore the rules. Without the willingness to enforce international agreements, those “agreements” are absolutely meaningless. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is the real world in which you live.
Still, we have to keep the nuclear issue in perspective. Ever seen a gasoline tanker crash & burn? Ever seen an electric transformer blow? Ever seen a wind turbine collapse? If you are unfortunate enough to be close to any of those, you will recognize that any form of uncontrolled energy release is dangerous.
Kinuachdrach:
Make shit up much? How does Israel’s bombing attack in 1981 have anything to do with the Desert Fox attacks of 1998? Iraq was at war with Iran at the time.
The Desert Fox strikes were undertaken because the Chinese were installing long-range radar sites around Baghdad with fibre-optic links to the surface-to-air missile batteries located in or just outside the no-fly zones. The Iraqi air defence network would be able to take potshots at the USAF patrols while remaining immune to return fire from anti-radiation missiles.
I know that the article was slanted more for vehicles, but what about our electricity? A new company is attempting to take solar to the masses by installing a complete solar system on homes and collecting money that is alredy in their clients budget (I.E. thier current electricity bill). Here is the business model.
They intend to put a complete solar system on clients home. When the system produces electricity, it will lower the bill from the current utility provider. In most cases the savings from the lower bill will more than cover the rent fee that the company intends to charge. The company currently has no product available but intends to deploy in the middle of 2008. They are currently taking reservations and have 25,900 takers so far. I have written several articles on this company in my blog and even have a couple of videos that I have recorded at http://www.solarjoules.com. Feel free to take a look. I welcome comments. As in any start up business, a chance exists that they may never get off the ground and fulfill any preorders, but if this is the case – the potential client has not lost anything. If you cannot afford the upfront cost of solar today, this may turn out to be a great alternative.
This solution would mean that we could produce at least a little less pollution.
If anyone would like company information you can go to http://www.jointhesolution.com/razmataz.
Is the nuclear hardware on an aircraft carrier adaptable to land use. Would these reactors help speed up weaning off oil?
Mark Stroup
PS I am long of Apache and Valero
Make shit up much? How does Israel’s bombing attack in 1981 have anything to do with the Desert Fox attacks of 1998? Iraq was at war with Iran at the time.
What does Saddam Hussein’s attempted invasion of Iran have to do with the nuclear power topic being addressed? Unless you are in possession of earth-shattering new information, it would be best to stick with the view that Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor out of concern that Saddam was trying to build a bomb — not as an attempt to help the Iranians (if that is what you are suggesting?).
The Desert Fox strikes were undertaken because the Chinese were installing long-range radar sites around Baghdad …
That is one theory. There were reports at the time and later that among the many targets were Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction facilities. But since neither you nor I were in the control room launching the strikes, we are both relying on reported information — warts & all.
Anyway, you are taking us off topic, which is whether solar is the solution. Fact is — solar is not the solution today, and won’t be until a whole series of technological advances have been made. If you are concerned about alleged anthropogenic global warming, or if you are concerned about the finite nature of fossil fuels, nuclear fission has to be a big part of the solution for the coming decades at least, and probably far beyond.
Is the nuclear hardware on an aircraft carrier adaptable to land use. Would these reactors help speed up weaning off oil?
Nuclear reactors on submarines & ships were the forerunners of today’s (or rather, 40 years ago) nuclear power plants. At its root, a nuclear reactor is simply a source of heat, usually used to raise steam, which is then used to drive turbines.
Problem about replacing oil is that oil is mainly used as a transportation fuel and for mobile equipment. It is tough to put a nuclear reactor on anything smaller than a ship. Hence the interest in various flavors of electric vehicles. Or in a so-called “hydrogen economy”, where nuclear reactors are used to generate hydrogen which is used as a transportation fuel.
With today’s technology, the simplest approach to replacing a shortfall of oil with nuclear would be to:
(a) replace coal-fired power stations with nuclear plants, and,
(b) instead liquify the coal using nuclear power input to create a synthetic oil for transportation.
Won’t keep the global warming alarmists happy, but it will keep human beings alive.
With today’s technology, the simplest approach to replacing a shortfall of oil with nuclear would be to:
(a) replace coal-fired power stations with nuclear plants, and,
(b) instead liquify the coal using nuclear power input to create a synthetic oil for transportation.
A solid basic plan, but likely to be unpopular, doesn’t do enough to reduce GHG emissions, and won’t go the distance once the coal starts to run short. I would add:
(c) more solar thermal power to the electric grid up to the limit of grid stability
(d) lighter-weight vehicles and plug-in hybrid technology to reduce energy consumption at the vehicle and offload some of that demand onto nuclear and solar
In the longer term, replace the coal and oil with biodiesel.
A solid basic plan, but likely to be unpopular, doesn’t do enough to reduce GHG emissions, and won’t go the distance once the coal starts to run short.
Fair points. On the other hand, the whole alleged anthropogenic global warming edifice is built on a very shaky scientific foundation, and will drop out of favor once our politicians have wrung all they can out of it. After all, by far the most important Radiatively Active Gas (to avoid the physically-incorrect junk science term “Green House Gas”) is water vapor — whose concentration in the atmosphere is often about two orders of magnitude higher than CO2.
The argument for continuing to use liquid hydrocarbon fuels for transportation & mobile equipment (e.g. backhoes) is their high energy density and ease of handling. If coal supplies are inadequate in the long term to support liquefaction, synthetic oil can also be “mined” from tar sands & oil shales using energy from nuclear plants.
There is no technical problem with providing the human race with all the energy we need for centuries or millenia from nuclear & synthetic hydrocarbon fuels. That gives us lots of time to develop technologies like solar to the point where they take over because they are then cheaper & better. The real energy problems we face are political.
What kinuachrach said.
Oil Shale is now economical, Shell Oil rightly considers the big obstacle political.
Very little petroleum is used for electrical generation, from what I’ve read 2/3ds of our petroleum usage is in transportation.
Yet another defense of photovoltaics based on net efficiency. Efficiency is and has always been the wrong metric, the right metric is cost. There are innumerable examples of high-efficiency, high-cost processes which will never make economic sense. The question for PV is, are the required technology breakthroughs to bring cost down 10x plausible? Remember, just because PVs have silicon in them doesn’t mean they follow Moore’s law, there are no transistors to make smaller and faster, so you have to make the whole thing ten-fold cheaper. It’d be great if it happens, but it seems a little much to hope for.
Biomass, on the other hand, just requires land to grow. Coal (aka buried sunshine) has already grown, and is very cheap, despite astronomically tiny sun-to-power efficiencies. The costs are all processing. Compare cost, not efficiencies.
Efficiency itself doesn’t matter, what it implies does. That is, a huge land requirement – in itself bad, obviously – but leading to food vs fuel issues as well.
Now one could argue “we could use non food competitive waste biomass”. That’s true, but three little caveats are due here:
1. Using waste biomass doesn’t automatically mean that there will not be implications on food supply/prices. A lot of ‘waste’ biomass is being used as co-feed or for other useful products, and is thus not really waste at all.
2. Impacts on soil condition: is a high yield sustainble over decades?
3. Limitation in supply. As with most win-win situations, waste biomass to liquids is limited by supply, especially if you consider the contraints above (nr 1 and 2). This is rather likely to be amplified by the fact that demand will increase as well in the future, despite improvements in vehicle mileage because the latter will be marginal (unless we all decide to drive tiny cars – how likely is this?)
A lot of ifs and buts here. Suffice it to say, without electricity taking over most of the miles driven, waste biomass fuels aren’t going to be enough to get us where we want to go.
First law of ecology? There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Hi anonymous,
I’m all for electric miles for the short warm-weather commutes where they make sense. Unfortunately, where I live, electric means coal, which makes the GHG emissions gain for a pure electric vehicle kind of marginal. Nuclear would help, as would cheap PV of course.
Liquid fuels will always win for some applications, though, so figuring out how to make them cheaply and sustainably will remain an important problem. Food vs fuel is a real issue. The way I think about it is, there’s a fixed amount of land. How many people do you want to sustain? And what kind of lifestyles are they going to live? How much meat do they eat? How much do they drive, and how much do their vehicles weigh? The answers to these questions determine where the food/fuel line gets drawn. And yep, there are no free lunches. Even if all transportation is by bicycle, the human energy conversion is only about 30% efficient, about the same as a IC engine, so you’ll still need to grow the fuel you need.
Thanks for your response Tfox, I feel the same way.
Most of the miles driven are short trips so plugin technology would go a long way there. These new phosphate/nano batteries are amazing. Even if it’s all coal powered propulsion, and GHG emissions reductions will be marginal, there still are the very important energy security gains and less funding towards unstable governments. Not to mention a likely increase in domestic revenue. And less noisy cars, important in the city.
Growing food for 10 billion people shouldn’t be difficult in terms of total food quantity. Even though humans are only 30% efficient (wasn’t it even less than 30%?) they don’t consume a lot of energy in transportation, mostly because of the low weight – imagine the mileage cars would get if they all weighed 200 pounds or less…
Growing fuel for 1 billion ICE cars AND 10 billion people, on the other hand, would be quite a challenge with terrestrial crops. No cheating with cutting down rainforests please.
Need more work on algae…
Or synthetic food maybe? 😉
Land, Water and Energy Versus The Ideal U.S. Population
(emphasis in the original)
Instead of relying on the finite supplies of fossil energy, new research should be focused on practical ways to convert solar energy into usable energy for society. Many solar energy technologies already exist, and should be made more efficient. These include energy from biomass, photovoltaics, solar thermal receivers, wind power, and hydropower.
Based on using combinations of these technologies in suitable geographic regions, an estimated 46 quads of solar energy (mostly as electricity) could be produced each year (Pimentel et al, 2002b). Note, 46 quads is slightly less than half of the 100 quads of fossil energy currently consumed in the U.S. each year (USBC, 2003). Furthermore to produce the 46 quads of solar energy would require the use of a U.S. land area that is nearly equal to total U.S. cropland now in production.
The estimated land area required to produce just the electricity used by each American each year ranges from 0.01 ha (0.03 acre) for wind power, parabolic troughs, and photovoltaics to 2 ha (5 acres) for forest biomass. Sustainable forest biomass only collects 0.1% to 0.2% of the solar energy reaching the forest, in contrast to 10% to 20% collected by photovaltaics (Pimentel et al., 2002b).
If the present population of Americans were to rely fully on the 46 quads of solar energy, each person’s energy consumption would have to be reduced by one-half. Could this be accomplished and still provide a relatively high standard of living? The answer is yes, based on the fact that Europeans enjoy a high standard of living, even though they consume about half the energy of Americans per capita.
And they’re pro solar!
Fantastic comments Larr D. I don’t know where you ulled those stats from. I have herd that it would only take 100 square miles to supply all electricity needed. I don’t know whse stats are correct but the idea is the same. This is why I believe in the solar rental model that I reffered to in my earlier comment so heavily. Image solar for nothing more than what the customer is already paying! Go to http://www.solarjoules.com for more info.
Furthermore to produce the 46 quads of solar energy would require the use of a U.S. land area that is nearly equal to total U.S. cropland now in production.
This number is off by two orders of magnitude. I suspect the author inadvertantly equated hectares with sq km somewhere along the line.
US cropland in 2002 was 442m acres or 1.8 million sq km. Land area needed to displace 46 quads of fossil fuel is roughly 15 thousand sq km (calculations below). That’s a factor of 100 less than total cropland and in the ballpark of total US roof area.
——————————-
Good locations receive 2000 kwh of annual solar insolation per sq meter, at 15% efficiency that’s 300 kWh/sqm. At a 10,000 BTU heat rate, 46 quads equates to 4.6e12 kWh.
4.6e12 kWh / 300 kWh/sqm = 1.5e10 sqm
= 15,333 sq km
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