Posted on 11/22/2014 11:38:11 AM PST by Vince Ferrer
A research effort by Google corporation to make renewable energy viable has been a complete failure, according to the scientists who led the programme. After 4 years of effort, their conclusion is that renewable energy “simply won’t work”.
“At the start of RE < C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope … Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
There is simply no getout clause for renewables supporters. The people who ran the study are very much committed to the belief that CO2 is dangerous – they are supporters of James Hansen. Their sincere goal was not to simply install a few solar cells, but to find a way to fundamentally transform the economics of energy production – to make renewable energy cheaper than coal. To this end, the study considered exotic innovations barely on the drawing board, such as self erecting wind turbines, using robotic technology to create new wind farms without human intervention. The result however was total failure – even these exotic possibilities couldn’t deliver the necessary economic model.
The key problem appears to be that the cost of manufacturing the components of the renewable power facilities is far too close to the total recoverable energy – the facilities never, or just barely, produce enough energy to balance the budget of what was consumed in their construction. This leads to a runaway cycle of constructing more and more renewable plants simply to produce the energy required to manufacture and maintain renewable energy plants – an obvious practical absurdity.
According to the IEEE article;
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
I must say I’m personally surprised at the conclusion of this study. I genuinely thought that we were maybe a few solar innovations and battery technology breakthroughs away from truly viable solar power. But if this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy.
One more liberal myth blows up in their faces
You’re average Joe knew that 6 years ago. Guess Google engineers aren’t all that good.
This should come to no surprise to anyone who knows basic physics. To be usable, energy cannot be accumulated, it must be unleashed.
Looks like it is fusion or nothing.
Solar is viable only on a personal basis when used with passive solar sun etc. When you get into those huge solar plants without engineers or solar experts to take care of what is being collected, it goes belly up. The wind turbines seem okay in small areas, but aren’t substantial for a whole grid to run off of.
Now, this was tried forty years ago and didn’t work either. Is it those who try to run it, or is it that it was meant for the private person, who can implement for personal use and has time to correct any ongoing issues?
Look at billions wasted by taxpayers on those solar companies now closed....of course the democrats got their donations from our money first.
Solar and such are compromises that are suitable for individuals off grid and military operations for the field, remote sites etc. and all kinds of better than nothings, but not for nations and cities.
Well, you know the old saying........
“Horsepower is work, but torque is one of The MONKEES.”
Fusion or fission. The cost of permitting and the length of time to build facilities, leading to unacceptable IDC costs, are also problematic. There will be a day though, maybe not in our lifetimes.
Anything else is pixie dust.
They started with the wrong idea: to provide *most* energy with renewable resources. The truth is that *some* renewable energy is fine and dandy, but only for *marginal* uses.
Most of the time, marginal uses are less valuable, because primary energy provision is more than adequate, and does a great job at low cost.
However, when there are *peaks* of energy consumption, renewable resources are quite handy. Oddly enough, mostly by making primary energy provision more efficient.
As an M.E., I’ve been saying for decades that widespread wind and solar are pipedreams. Sure, they have their niche, when ready or reliable infrastructure is unavailable. But the physical plant (both space and materials) to extract a low density energy source makes it highly impractical on a large scale.
Solar energy. Our fair-weather friend.
Humans have largely abandoned wind energy except for recreational fun over the last few centuries.
You pretty much covered it.
There’s a place for it but not large scale.
A 2012 comprehensive life-cycle analysis in Journal of Industrial Ecology shows that almost half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially the battery. The mining of lithium, for instance, is a less than green activity. By contrast, the manufacture of a gas-powered car accounts for 17% of its lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions. When an electric car rolls off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car: 14,000 pounds.
The production of the electric car results in sizeable emissions —the equivalent of 80,000 miles of travel in a typical gasoline powered vehicle.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472
Batteries have severely underperformed for the last 100 years or so.
PV is cool modern tech though.
Well, the glib answer is it’s too early to tell.
The real answer is just the name ‘renewable energy’ is a con. The law of thermodynamics tells us that no matter what, it’s going to cost you somewhere, and there will be waste in the form of heat, and as noted in the past, the mere construction of batteries, power conversion equipment are expensive and energy intensive themselves.
We are entering the phase of mass robotification. Very early mind you, but I can’t envision how much acceleration is behind that technology. Asteroid mining and orbital energy collectors have a lot of conceptual pressure, meaning at some point there will be breakout technology. It may be 10 years or 100 years but it will happen if we haven’t destroyed ourselves beforehand or neutered ourselves into a dead end society with socialism/communism. That breakthrough that propels us forward will undoubtedly be in energy generation/collecting.
That's what happens when drinking Kool-Aid is mistaken for thought.
Just blinded by faith.
Also hydro. But then that resource is by definition limited and much of it has already been developed.
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