Posted on 07/25/2015 8:42:31 AM PDT by ckilmer
On the surface, energy seems like a pretty stagnant industry these days. Oil has dominated transportation for most of the last century while natural gas and coal provide a vast majority of the electricity we consume. That's not all that different than the way things were at the turn of the 20th century.
But if you look at the overall energy mix over more than two centuries there's a lot more change in energy than you might expect. The question is: Could another shift be afoot within just the next generation or two?
The energy evolution timescale
You can see in the chart below that the U.S. was once a country that got nearly all of its energy from wood. The energy source was plentiful and cheap as far as fuels went at the time. But since 1850 wood has almost entirely been replaced by coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric energy.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
What's surprising about this chart is how quickly energy sources can be replaced. Over the course of 50 years wood went from a main source of energy to a has-been compared to coal. In turn, coal's domination of the market has fallen from nearly 80% in 1900 to below 20% today, driven by the rise of petroleum and natural gas.
But keep in mind that market share and unit consumption aren't the same thing. Coal's market share has dropped since 1900 but we're using so much more energy today that its consumption on an annual basis is still up over that time.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
This began the question: What's next for the energy industry? We know that energy sources don't stay dominant forever and disruption can happen relatively quickly. But is that disruption already here?
I'll point you to the first chart and the green sliver showing up at the top right corner and then the second chart and the green line that doesn't even show up until about the year 2000. Doesn't renewable energy's trajectory look a lot like coal in 1850 or petroleum in 1900? Maybe it's time to consider renewable energy's disruptive potential rather than dismiss it as its market share grows.
Most forms of energy, food, fresh water come from Republican voting areas and are shipped long distances into Democrat voting areas. Democrats couldn't survive 3 days if Republicans ever stopped working.
Poppa used to say, “Intrigue only begat intrigue.”
For so many people there is a conspiracy behind every tree when their utopian dreams are challenged. Conspiracy can be the only reason because they can never be wrong.
I hope it starts out as better than bunker grade crude or we could never have light oil!
The writer forgot buffalo chips.
This is true but it glosses over some important points. We were using so much wood in the 1800s, especially when railroads came about, that railroad people and others were projecting that by the beginning of the twentieth century that the US would run out of trees. This prompted the development of coal, and better usage of wood resources by the railroads. After the switch to coal, the forests recovered, and we now have as many trees as we have ever had.
Washington has been talking about one of those since the Arab Embargo of 1973. It has not happen so far.
And I agree With some modifications.
LiFTR reactors for primary energy. Couple this with power cells instead of a massive grid for transmission efficiency. Single point failures in the power cells is now less vulnerable than the multi-dependency based grid we now have.
Petroleum for transportation applications and chemicals.
Electric for inner city transportation with supplemental rail tag on / tag along electric for high traffic corridors.
Geothermal process for much of heating and cooling in all but concentrated areas such as multi-story / high density cities... it just makes too much sense to avoid. I do wonder though if in the fullness of time we will not be able to destroy the natural heat and cool of the earth we are using as a heat sink.
Solar collectors and water for storage of heat for some applications (I am amazed how effective just a few solar collectors and a big water heat sink with a very small water pump can be for heating a green house or porch)
Coal left in storage for supplement to petroleum but only after some long time or never... something will replace petroleum. Some means of high enough energy density storage will come along.
And we woudl be a happy place.
I agree with your long term plans. Implemented today, you could do that in the next 25 years. I was looking at the technology and infrastructure of 25 years ago, and what was then available and readily adaptable.
If batteries improve significantly and will also outlast the life of the car, that could overcome one of the biggest disadvantages of solar and wind, i.e., it’s intermittent nature that requires a full base load of conventional power to be on standby at all times.
It strikes me that the nation’s fleet of cars is an ideal storage mechanism for wind and solar generated power, especially if all were eventually plugged in to smart meters so that the car owners could specify a price they’d pay for a recharge.
Cars sit idle 90-95% of the day. If they were plugged into a smart grid then utilities could feed any surplus power from wind and solar to the cars by simply lowering the price of power at such times. Say the rate is 15 cents a kwh when the base load is up and running, then the wind picks up. Instead of cutting the base load in response (or turning of the wind mills, as is done now), just cut the price to the smart meters instead, thereby feeding the power to the smart meters set to turn on at, say, the 14 cent price. If that doesn’t absorb the excess power, cut it some more. The lesser-used cars would be sitting there waiting to absorb power at, say, a nickel or so. That is, those meters would only feed power if the utility dropped the rate to a nickel, and only for so long as the rate remained there. To allow everyone to charge that way, the meters could be programmed by the car owner to raise the acceptable price as the next drive time approached, so that the car would be fully charged by then.
Solar power, also an intermittent source, could be handled the same way.
In this way, the base load would handle traditional electric demand, with wind and solar adding to it on hot or cold days if available, but any time the base load had to be reduced, just feed the power to car storage. And those who need power regularly every day for their cars would just recharge regularly at the full rate and become part of the base load.
I realize this is all contingent on cheaper sources of wind and solar power, and on better batteries, but it would seem to address the intermittence issue.
Any thoughts on this?
Solar seems to be very big here in MA. When I looked into the economics of it for my family what jumped out was that the pitch relied heavily on subsidies, tax credits, and taking on low-interest debt. My sense is that if you strip these artificial inducements away, few would opt for it. The technical limitations of solar haven’t changed much in 40 years. Yes, we can mass produce panels at lower cost, but there has not been the big breakthrough in conversion efficiency that would be necessary for this to make economic sense. I wonder if the entire house of cards would collapse if the subsidies suddenly vanished....
imho it won’t be a flux capacitor but rather small modular nuclear power plants based on thorium designs from the 1960’s.
The one relevant fact this guy ignores is that every time one source of energy was abandoned, it was replaced by an energy source that provided more energy at less cost.
Renewables or “green” energy does not do that.
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agree. that’s why I think this graph is misleading. It won’t be solar or wind that provide base load at much cheaper costs. Likely it will be some form of nuclear.
“Alternatives are doing so more for political motives than economics.”
Well, not really. The alternative sources are to reduce greenhouse gasses, radioactive messes and other pollutants.
I personally agree that nuclear is the main way forward. I also think coal is hopelessly dirty, but we can live well with a moderate amount of “dirt”.
Coal is clean when burned steady state. The issue is demand. Solution: run coal steady state, when demand drops use the excess to generate hydrogen. Store the hydrogen in coal by converting it to oil. The oil generated is chemical grade and can be used to make stuff, or used as fuel. Your choice.
For an example of not understanding energy production look at Denmark. Wind generation produces 18% of their energy. But there carbon footprint went up 36%. Since wind energy is generated mostly at night. They made there coal plants dirtier by reducing nighttime coal run electric plant load and longer run-ups to meet daytime energy demand.
I think you have some great ideas in this. Bidding for off peak power is a pretty efficient means to keep costs down... especially with storage perfected... if storage is perfected. I won’t get into the whole argument about electric cars, recharge rates and range limitations.
One other problem I see with solar and wind is dispersion of the power sources... it takes a large complex grid quite some distance from the point of use to provide this power.
Open markets for power here in Texas have so far kept the price down for consumers who shop. My last rate was about 10 cents / kwh for the last three years. I just renewed for two years at 8.2 cents / kwh... I have a 1,500 kwh/mo minimum threshold to meet to get that rate but for less it is still not bad. My home is total electric save for cook top and water heating which are both propane.
In Oklahoma I pay about 13 cents and it is going up. The Rural Electric Coop just can’t compete.
Power density of both solar and wind are too low to provide very much more power than they do now. Of the two wind is best but believe it or not there are limited locations for wind.
Sustainable base load needs to go to LiFTR type reactor technology. This could bridge into Fusion for a loooong time and that is what it will probably take for Fusion to become reality a loooong time. Even LiFTR is 25 years away in all probabiilty if it were to begin now. Every year we wait to start is another year it will take to finish. These are long term projects and trends. They will never get off the ground witout a national will and initiative such as the one Kennedy began with the space program. Such a program could not only change our future for the better and make us much more competitive it could also provide meaningful jobs and stir the national pride if we have any left at all.
Agree. Kerosene was Rockefeller’s bread and butter for a time. Gasoline was a byproduct of kerosene production that was dumped into the river. Until inventors figured out a way to use it.
It would collapse without subsidies. Without subsidies it isn’t even a wash to conventional. The only way to do it is a personal commitment for either the novelty of it or the “security” of it if you are that kind of fellow.
YES, YES, YES, YES!!!!!!
Agreed in the case of Denmark... wind is not base load capable and base load devices are not intermittent capable. It is impossible to have a wind and coal, clean and backup cake and eat it too.
What I disagree with though is the premise about coal.... it may possible for it to be clean to burn but it is inconvenient and unsightly to extract and clean up after. The ash alone is a large problem let alone the scrubbed particulates and how to dispose of them and their concentrated toxic components. Dispersed things like arsenic aren’t terrible but when you concentrate them in a particulate collector they become a problem dont’ they?
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