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.
The appliances in that list will work with solar power, but they require much wattage and rather large systems to run them.
In California you have relatively good weather and predictable weather for generating solar power. It will never amount to more than a couple percent of demand simply because there is not much energy captured that way (about 25% of the sum's energy at best). Contrast that with well-placed windows that can capture 90% of the sun's energy and turn it into interior heat.
OTOH, you can also benefit in SoCal from using solar for A/C. In the desert SW that is probably the most cost effective use of solar. That doesn't work very well here in the east.
I do not tie my solar to the grid in any way nor have any plans to.
BTW, components like PV modules (solar panels larger than 100 watts), controllers and inverters are priced very low now, for anyone who does much shopping for components. Installers, on the other hand, are terribly high priced.
They’re hurting from the failure of the Bright Source plant.
It is currently importing half of the energy that keeps it on line.
(but it kills birds in rather unique fashion)
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Well then.....how are we going to make money selling you sunlight and wind...???
NEXT thing you know you will be trying make your OWN electricity with that small creek that runs thru YOUR property......NIX FOR YOU!!! :)
I don’t think that’s a bad suggestion.
I’m 63. I was born a mile from here. I’ve lived in different parts of the U. S., and been to many others, but this is home for me.
I like Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Florida, parts of the New England states and other parts of the nation.
California is a unique place. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t want to live somewhere else. And for what, to have that place turn out just like California in twenty years, as it relates to this problem?
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I understand your ties to place. But in 20 or so years we will all be dead, so going where the quality of life is better for the remaining years, is a good thing, IMHO. but many people stay in the old neighborhood. Best to you.
I wasn’t talking about farmers.
Farming is an unnatural economy. It is an early example of making more of less when overpopulation reduces the supply of free wild game and produce.
And I’m not so sure 30 years old was old to them.
There were (and maybe still are) hunter gatherers in their 40s and 50s more fit than fat modern man.
Thor Hyderdahl, for example, spoke of a native Polynesian who was still climbing cocoanut trees late in life.
Columbus was astonished by the fit bodies of the natives he encountered.
Average lifespans of hunter gatherers seem low until you factor-out the death rate of children: once reaching adulthood, many lived vigorous lives into their 60s. I remember reading that the average lifespan of adult African Bushmen in the 1950s was as long as that of the average American in the same period.
So they're giving away ocean front property because there's so much of it?
And we can go back to burning autumn leaves and removing pollution controls from cars because there's so much fresh air?
Shall I go on?
Do you really need much, if any, electricity at home?
Has anyone studied what it does to the airborne bacteria, pollen, spores, and insects passing through? Most CO2 actually comes from bacteria output, so sterilizing large areas might be a way to dramatically reduce CO2. Having a personal Bright Source micro-array could eliminate the need for backyard chemical insecticides and pesticides. The killer app for solar might actually be microbe killer.
Nuclear power from Thorium reactors has been untouched, there are likely enormous stores of Helium III on the Moon, just the resources in this solar system will take thousands of years to exploit.
Air pollution is considerably less than it was 50 years ago. Yes, we are adding C02, but it make the plants grow faster.
You are limiting your thinking to this planet when there are unlimited resources off of it and we are only scratching the surface of what we have. Shall I go on?
Yes, that sounds correct. Deltona or Debary in Florida north of Orlando, IIRC.
Coal, nuclear, natural gas, and oil.
Anything else is pixie dust.
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Hopefully google will fund one of the 5-6 msr lftr portable nuclear reactor companies out there that run on cheap thorium and nuclear waste.
This technology will deliver the baseload electric power at prices that are 1/4-1/10 of current cheapest coal
If the government is to spend money on research, it should be on nuclear and fusion. Those can supply us with energy for thousands of years.
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agree with the fusion research. There are now about 5-6 small fusion companies in the USA. There’s also a canadian fusion company that already has funding from the canadian government.
As for fission, the best route is through the msr lftr portable reactors that use thorium or waste nuclear fuel. These promise to deliver base volumes of electricity at prices 1/4-1/10 current cheapest coal. The canadians already have a government funded program going on this. The chinese came over to the USA 4 years ago and took all the lftr msr thorium reactor plans that were developed from the late 60’s from working lftr reactors. The US DOE helped them to the info and continue to give them support. Now the Chinese have the most advanced lftr msr program in the world.
shesh. It makes me sick to think about this.
The chinese have basically done one better than the russians did during the US nuclear bomb program in WWII.
The russians stole US nuclear plans as they were being developed.
The Chinese have stolen US nuclear plans before they were fully developed. These plans have not been developed because of civilization loss of confidence. A terrible terrible thing.
The only way it will ever work is individual house/buildings but even then it would be limited to the amount of energy used in the house/building.
Windmills kill too many birds to be practical. We really do need birds.
Solar. Maybe in the desert, but what could live under the panels. You create a complete dead zone. Even solar panels on the top of buildings wont produce enough power for a large building so you have to get power from somewhere else.
Waves. One good hurricane and there goes your power.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone living off grid using solar, wind, and even water to generate electric power but only water is practical for large scale.
Sadly, I'm old enough to have laughed at that.
MSR are pushing ahead initially for process heat/ steam using once-thru LWR “depleted” fuel which retains about 96% untapped energy. Stockpiles of spent rods housed in cooling ponds retain currently 100 plus years electrical generation potential utilizing MSR’s 95% plus fuel burn.
The 1st generation will be straight burners, enhanced breeding to be designed in later. The first priority is complete burning of side products which degrade LWR fuel and account for excess radiation in the LWR “waste”.
Canadians may be first to deploy, gaining 20% more oil-sands profit by not extracting the bitumen with petroleum gas fired heaters. Also, heat extraction in-situ for the overburden-buried deep strata.
Thanks for the comments Palmer. I appreciate the perspective on these matters.
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