Renewables

[xsampa]

Here's what could have happened had the US decided to transition to 100% renewables in the 70s:

The steps necessary to make that transition were discussed during that time in any number of periodicals, some of them surprisingly mainstream. The United States would have had to step back from its self-appointed role as global policeman; it would have had to pass on a fair share of the cost of deterring the Soviet Union to its comparatively more prosperous allies in western Europe and the west Pacific, and accept a less expansive notion of its own national interests. Government subsidies for nuclear power and other nonrenewable energy sources would have been phased out, and the money – along with savings from a less gargantuan military – shifted into grants for conservation, renewable energy retrofits, and research programs aimed at repositioning American industry to lead the world in green energy technologies.

Changes in tax policy, zoning regulations and building codes would reshape the built environment to decrease energy use, while funds formerly wasted on highways would go instead to build high-speed rail between urban cores and rapid transit systems that would make commuting by car all but obsolete. All this would have cost plenty, and would have required Americans to tighten their belts and accept a diminished standard of living and some formal or informal rationing for a time. Down the road a quarter century or so, though, a prosperous nation getting by comfortably on a fraction of its previous energy needs, and thus able to ignore the Middle East as an irrelevance, would have the lion’s share of global trade in new energy technologies, high-speed rail, and a dozen other fields, while other nations burdened with high energy costs were left scrambling to catch up.

Could the transition occur now if the US chose to buckle down, accept a lower standard of living for a while etc. even though oil either has peaked or will peak in a few decades and transitioning takes a decade or two?

[iancampbell]

Everything I'm about to say is relevant to near-future, not OA tech levels.

First of all, the most commonly talked about renewables (wind and ground solar) have very similar problems; the main ones are low power density and unreliability. (Wind power also has environmental implications as well; the turbines are quite good at killing birds and bats.) Energy storage would be a solution, but very little work is being done on this. One possible skeleton of a solution would be to use spare wind/solar energy to produce some fuel that can use atmospheric components as feedstock, the most obvious being hydrogen.

Interestingly enough, one approach just in the beginnings of being investigated is a semi-biological one. As it happens, one of the things that happens during photosynthesis is production of hydrogen with the release of oxygen; in natural systems the H2 is then used to reduce CO2 and eventually to produce carbohydrates, but decoupling of this process is possible and is being worked on.

Another approach to producing liquid fuel directly is the cultivation of blue-green algae, some of which contain remarkably large amounts of oils that don't need much processing to put them in a diesel engine for example. The process can be set up not to require anything except a small amount of water and (of course!) air, most of the water and all the trace minerals required being recycled.

Unconventional fusion methods are worth investigating, too.

FWIW, my opinion is that humanity is probably going to have to do something like fracking to tide us over while advanced renewable options are developed. (Methane produces much less CO2 per kilojoule of energy than any other fossil fuel, because of its very high hydrogen content.)

Lastly, nowhere near enough attention has been paid to energy efficiency. District heat and power is one of the most obvious; the cooling water from power stations is easily hot enough for space heating, but nearly all of that energy is currently being wasted. On a political note aimed at Americans, maybe it smacks too much of socialism for their taste.

[xsampa]

@ian: Fracking may not be worth it.
The issue is that to transition from a old energy source to a new one, you must have enough of the old one to keep society running for the time being until the new one gets its infrastructure, and the amount produced mustn't decrease. Unfortunately, oil either has peaked or will peak very soon, as evidenced by this table of projections from the Hirsch Report:

Projected Date

Source

2006–2007 Bakhtiari
2007–2009 Simmons
After 2007 Skrebowski
Before 2009 Deffeyes
Before 2010 Goodstein
Around 2010 Campbell
After 2010 World Energy Council
2010–2020 Laherrere
2016 EIA (Nominal)
After 2020 CERA
2025 or later Shell

And here are its conclusions:

Conclusions[edit]

The report came to the following conclusions:
World oil peaking is going to happen, and will likely be abrupt. World production of conventional oil will reach a maximum and decline thereafter.
Some forecasters project peaking within a decade; others contend it will occur later.
Peaking will happen, but the timing is uncertain.

Oil peaking will adversely affect global economies, particularly the U.S. Over the past century, the U.S. economy has been shaped by the availability of low-cost oil.
The economic loss to the United States could be measured on a trillion-dollar scale.
Aggressive fuel efficiency and substitute fuel production could provide substantial mitigation.

Oil peaking presents a unique challenge. Without massive mitigation, the problem will be pervasive and long-term.
Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary.
Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.

The problem is liquid fuels for transportation. The lifetimes of transportation equipment are measured in decades.
Rapid changeover in transportation equipment is inherently impossible.
Motor vehicles, aircraft, trains, and ships have no ready alternative to liquid fuels.

Mitigation efforts will require substantial time. Waiting until production peaks would leave the world with a liquid fuel deficit for 20 years.
Initiating a crash program 10 years before peaking leaves a liquid fuels shortfall of a decade.
Initiating a crash program 20 years before peaking could avoid a world liquid fuels shortfall.

Both supply and demand will require attention. Sustained high oil prices will cause forced demand reduction (recession and unemployment).
Production of large amounts of substitute liquid fuels can and must be provided.
The production of substitute liquid fuels is technically and economically feasible.

It is a matter of risk management. The peaking of world oil production is a classic risk management problem.
Mitigation efforts earlier than required may be premature, if peaking is long delayed.
On the other hand, if peaking is soon, failure to initiate mitigation could be extremely damaging.

Government intervention will be required. The economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic.
Expediency may require major changes to existing administrative and regulatory procedures.

Economic upheaval is not inevitable. Without mitigation, the peaking of world oil production will cause major economic upheaval.
Given enough lead-time, the problems are soluble with existing technologies.
New technologies will help, but on a longer time scale.

More information is needed. Effective action to combat peaking requires better understanding of the issues.
Risks and possible benefits of possible mitigation actions need to be examined.

[Drashner1]

One of the more interesting ideas Freitas has is that a self-repping robot swarm might not find all the elements it needs, but could use fusion to create some of the rarer elements - I don't think we've ever considered the earliest colony missions as having that kind of small-scale fusion capability, although they all have fusion or catalysed fusion drives. Even the beam-propelled craft would need a fusion drive to decelerate to orbital speed. Certainly later colony missions could use fusion/transmutation to fill the gaps in the resource table, but I don't think this technology would be available for the earliest interstellar colonists.

No, we currently have fusion nucleosynthesis as not becoming available until some time after the founding of the First Federation. This as mentioned in the article on stellification engines.

I think it a fairly reasonable assumption that some amount of work would have been done and experience accumulated on both the elemental variances that can occur acorss a reasonable cross-section of star systems and on how to make best industrial use of different elemental abundances and combinations by the time we get to the point of sending out replicating probes. In terms of interstellar colonies, I would again think a good bit of survey and other background work would be done before any colony would be sent, at least prior to the Nanodiasaster.

On a somewhat related note - We seem to be diverging a good bit from the original focus of this thread. I would like to suggest that we spin off the conversation on interstellar colonization into its own thread and let this one continue on renewables.

I believe the forum should let us port the relevant posts from this thread over to a new one, if you agree.

Will give it a few hours for any objections to be raised and then see about setting that up.

Todd

[kch49er]

Thanks for the split, I had some thoughts both sides, but I waited to make it clearer.

Iceland is an interesting case study,they have a couple of advantages, geothermal energy is plentiful and 24/7 but mainly thermal and they are a smaller country, however with the salts mentioned earlier solar thermal is approching comparable levels.

I belive there around 85% renewable energy mainly geothermal and hydro, the interesting part is they tend to use the heat directly for space heating or industrial process thus reducing the electricty demand and avoiding converting use. While hydro makes a good peaker power plant(I'll have to find it but I think it was also an Icelandic article I read about 'Hydro batttery' essentially using wind turbines to drive archimedie screws to raise water above a dam which can then be opened during demand to drive the dam turbines. Which would work with other renewables. A dam with electirc pumps or any other storage unit could also buy elecctricty off-peak and sell it off peak, essentially creating energy futures(I think it was in the Economist now I think of it. Allowing renwable companies to not worry about storage, something a goverment could build as a national storage faciltiy I suppose. I understand Iceland's big problem at the minute is transport though the smaller size and the higher local density is making electric cars more attractive to Iceland, they looking at at the moment I understand, though the whole finaical crisis messed that up.

The US
potentialy has large Geothermal reources and large soalr insulation,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...map_US.png
it looks to me if I'm right with the states like Arizona in particular and some of the area in nearby states are particualry good places for high temprature energy industry. E.g
aluminium recycling seems a good option,since it mostly determined by energy cost. Use solar thermal when availble and switch to geothermal when not, selling the excess perhaps, or just use geothermal all the time.

It's of course much easier to store work such as recycled aluminium cans than heat or electric energy so changing our system of delivery makes a lot of sense., Iceland imports bauxite and exports aluminium instead of exporting electricity which could be a viable strategy for the US between the 50 states.

Personally ammonia seems like a better solution than hydrogen for liqud fuel, especially if used in diseal generators rather than directly in vechicles.

I agree on district heat and industrial heat process too, though there is some inital small scale work (mainly hot water heating), at least this side of the pond, the Germans are major producers of this sort of system too on.


http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/07/s...ories.html is interesting.

Hwoever look at the Solar fire p32

The machine can deliver up to 15 kW and can reach a focal temperature of 700 °C (1,292 °F), enough to melt (and thus recycle) aluminum, the material that is used to make its reflectors. This means that you could use a Solar Fire P32 to make another Solar Fire P32. Or almost. The receiver and the supporting structure are made of steel, which requires a higher melting temperature to recycle. However, the structure could as well be made of wood, basketry or aluminum, and the steel receiver could easily be scavenged material.

http://www.gosol.org/Technology

Combine this with a salt storage system for interruptions and you get a renewable energy system that can produce more renewable energy systems. To create a suitable high temp reciver, you might use geothermal power or trough-type solar with heat exchangers I guess. Or possibly burn biomass, which should be able to fit into the steel making process being mostly carbon. As the article points out it could even be scavenged only a small amount is needed which means we can use the embodied already created perhaps when we were before peak energy.

After all reusing pre-made stones and bricks is nothing new.

I actually think this could be one of the drivers for colonisation of the oceans, it would be far cheaper, than space colonisation, international water near the equator has plenty of sunlight and room so low density is not a problem,nor is there a long dark winter for the resdients, air is freely availble. water is plentiful for low temp storage and reflectors can be made light enough to float. Room on a ship might at first seem crowded, however later on there are very large crruise ships of course and a fleet would be possibile, later floating structures and the like could make it seem much better,and there are people living happily on small islands) and of course oil platforms are very small yet people live there for long periods. A transalantic flight would be a lot cheaper than an orbital one

A suitably flagged fleet of ships fits into the law and allows nations to control them or companies to select the best.

Hydrogen is availble though I think Ammonia is better storage Nitrogen is availble from the air. and ammonia can be compressed, the natural gas industry's Experience with offshore refining would be important. Heavy goods such as salts can be carried across the ocean (other than finance the missing parts of the puzzle is probaly materials for a high temprature process and insulators for a molten salt storage that can still float. we tend to use the ground as an insulator for salt systems I belive) The ammonia can then be transported and used generators and for fertilisers.

[xsampa]

@kch49er: I agree that all these technologies are viable in a post-peak-oil universe. However, since oil either has peaked or will do so w/in a decade, as evidenced by this table
:

Quoterojected Date

Source

2006–2007 Bakhtiari
2007–2009 Simmons
After 2007 Skrebowski
Before 2009 Deffeyes
Before 2010 Goodstein
Around 2010 Campbell
After 2010 World Energy Council
2010–2020 Laherrere
2016 EIA (Nominal)
After 2020 CERA
2025 or later Shell

This creates a problem: It is very late in the day; as the Hirsch Report pointed out five years ago ;adapting to peak oil without drastic social disruptions requires major changes to begin twenty years before the peak. We missed that chance, and so there are going to be drastic social disruptions. Said disruptions will make moves to sustain industrial civilization on renewables impossible and thus cause drastically reduced living standards. This combined with mass migrations etc. will cause a centuries-long societal collapse with its accompanying dark age until someone figures out how to use the tech you described.
NOTE: Oil and gas companies have reached dangerous debt levels
NOTE: The EROEI of an energy source is the ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource. The EROEI for any source usable by an industrial civilization is 10. The EROEI of various resources are indicated in this table.

[kch49er]

@kch49er: I agree that all these technologies are viable in a post-peak-oil universe. However, since oil either has peaked or will do so w/in a decade, as evidenced by the table I posted above, this creates a problem: It is very late in the day; as the Hirsch Report pointed out five years ago ;adapting to peak oil without drastic social disruptions requires major changes to begin twenty years before the peak. We missed that chance, and so there are going to be drastic social disruptions. Said disruptions will make moves to sustain industrial civilization on renewables impossible and thus cause drastically reduced living standards. This combined with mass migrations etc. will cause a centuries-long societal collapse.

I agree our current society is unsutainable on renwables, but I dont follow that an industrial civilisation is unsustainable or that the massive social disruption which is inevetiable would lead to drastically reduced living standards, a shift sure but does that reduce living standards?

Is mass migrations a bad thing? Sure unplanned,uncontrallable ones, but the US has ghost mining towns, maybe some current towns should be abandoned as unstainable. There is no cost/benefit anaylsis it's just assumed it's better to stay.

I've only had a chance to briefly glance at that report but a couple of things glare out at me.
There's no suggestion of something like Le Shuttle roll on/off lorries via an electric lineas a way of shifting freight to the rail, electrification,trams and trolleycars,canal freight and journey shifting is suprisingly left out, is this becuase the US has a much wider network, and population so loses a lot of the benefit to electrifcation or becuase it smacks too much of socialism. Even if not viable I'd of thought there would be consideration.

The UK managed £800 million for more railway electrifcation in the middile of the recession,if there was more renwable electric availble there would probably be a greater demand for it.

Why not abandon the five day week? Shifting to a seven day week (especially for industry) and working in line with the sun would be a major social change but needen't worsen the standard of living you could work the same hours and make solar power more attractive for industrial process as well as reducing bills, if business was only open during daylight, they wouldn't need as much on lighting bills for a start Sure hospitals and others would be an exception but they have to work at midnight now when most things are cosed,we'd get used to it in the way we get use to that. I guess the reason is there doesn't seem to be enough of a demand for the social change, though when fossil fuel availbilty is at the level of the three day week we might consider it.

If we are past the point that its possibile why is Iceland in the psotion it is in? Early enough investment? Fortunate geography/population density? Or did I miss something?

A lot of the African areas might be better placed to weather this out than werk are, walking and cycling is more common, the smaller scale redues transit,less energy is needed,solar insolation is better,,more use to intermittent energy and so forth, I guess the critical thing is the food. I'm reminded of the view of the dark ages despite the east flourishing

[xsampa]

@kch49er:

If we are past the point that its possibile why is Iceland in the psotion it is in? Early enough investment? Fortunate geography/population density? Or did I miss something?

Most likely,it's the fact that Iceland's sitting on a volcanic hotspot, combined with smart decision-making on how to use the geothermal energy that was made before conventional oil peaked in 2005.

I guess the critical thing is the food. I'm reminded of the view of the dark ages despite the east flourishing

Most of the peripheries will indeed flourish during the next dark age, using the tech you've described and then some.

social disruption which is inevetiable would lead to drastically reduced living standards, a shift sure but does that reduce living standards?

I misphrased. Actually, it's going to be the general decrease in energy consumption due to increased prices due to the decreased amt. of fossil fuels produced that'll drive living standards down in today's industrialized countries. This will result in less use of electricity and less use of cars.

but I dont follow that an industrial civilisation is unsustainable

They're unsustainable because :
1. They convert resources into waste (turning raw materials into goods that are eventually disposed)
2. They work against natural processes (e.g feeding cows corn)
3. They require complex tech and processes (e.g industrial agriculture's dependence on the Haber-Bosch process to produce nitrogen fertilizer)
4.They pollute the environment in which they live, that is: In a finite environment, the more of a nonrenewable resource you extract, the more energy and raw materials you have to invest in order to extract the remaining resource, and the more of a persistent pollutant you dump into the environment, the more energy and raw materials you have to invest in order to keep the pollutant from interfering with economic activities.

[Drashner1]

This creates a problem: It is very late in the day; as the Hirsch Report pointed out five years ago ;adapting to peak oil without drastic social disruptions requires major changes to begin twenty years before the peak. We missed that chance, and so there are going to be drastic social disruptions. Said disruptions will make moves to sustain industrial civilization on renewables impossible and thus cause drastically reduced living standards. This combined with mass migrations etc. will cause a centuries-long societal collapse with its accompanying dark age until someone figures out how to use the tech you described.

Sorry, but I'm not seeing any evidence for much of what you're saying here, certainly not from the link to the Hirsch report you cite. They talk about some potential for societal disruption and shortfalls measured in decades. That 's a big jump to go from there to 'centuries-long societal collapse and its accompanying dark age'.

Frankly, this reminds me a lot of the Limits to Growth report that came out decades ago and predicted that society would have fallen into a centuries long dark ago some decades ago. Notably, it didn't.

Dealing with peak oil and energy and environmental issues is certainly a serious issue and one that may involve some societal pain along the way. But it seems to me that you're being more than a little melodramatic here.

You seem to be operating on the theory that the only possible response to societal stress is for society to fall apart. Historically, that isn't want happens. Society changes, it adapts, and it also innovates and looks for ways to meet the problem. While it certainly isn't a given that this will happen, neither is it a given that the only possible response is to just throw our hands up in the air and wait for civilization to die.

Todd

[kch49er]

I think im following you now.

I've not heard of the peripheries in relation to world countries, intresting only Russia is peripheries and the other BRICs are semi-periphry.

I guess the major things we need to confront are population

None of the enviromental groups seem to point out less people means less population pressure and more resources to go around. Replacement population growth would be good,and China's one child policy reduce dthe potential population.

We have this economic idea of increasing gains forever, growing less than last quarter is seen as bad rather than a good progression towards a steady state. We don't need more food than last year once we have enough and maybe a little stockpile that's ok, why is more GDP needed?

I cant be reading that table right. It's hard to see but wind is 20 and gas and nuclear are below 10 does that mean they are unusable for industrial civilisation or does it mean on their own? Is it suggesting that with enough storage and windy locales we could manage a renwables civilisation? It is very telling it looks mainly at electricty. How absurd is it to burn fuel to run steam through turbines to generate electricty (with attendant losses) only to convert back to a wire.

Which is why I guess natural gas is used as heating so much

Solar thermal is missing from the table. What's the EROI of a Solar Thermal P32? Which can also produce the reflectors for another one..


I think one of the important points missing is no PV or wind turbine factory manufacters new PV or wind turbines using their own PV or wind turbines, if they did then wouldn't any EROI above one be ok, since you could simply build as many as needed?