Barely ten years ago, the idea of solar power was still mostly mocked as the limited energy purview of assorted "tree hugger", arugala-munching elites, but too expensive for the average person. Even the arugala-munching elites mainly used it for water heating. The expansion to utility power companies and multi-purpose uses had not yet occurred. Basically, thin -film photovoltaics (PV) had not yet emerged. Silicon had been the element of choice for solar panels, which was more efficient but expensive and difficult to mass -produce. Now that's changed.
Favorable economics for the PV thin-film panels have led to an explosion in solar energy potential most Americans are only dimly aware of. For example, most don't know that on February 9th a utility -scale solar power plant (run by "Desert Sunlight") was officially dedicated.
This occurred on 3,800 acres of land administered by the Bureau of Land Management - and most noteworthy - is now the 6th operational plant on federal property. (The gov't operates 250 million acres, mostly in the sunny, arid West, perfect for solar panels.)
The problem of utility scale solar plants poses an interesting conundrum. They need to be somewhere with year round sunlight, in a space vast enough to contain hundreds of thousands of solar modules, but close enough to civilization to easily connect to the grid. Fortuitously, Desert Sunlights plant meets all the criteria, situated just outside Desert Center - a tiny town southeast of Joshua Tree National Park.
The site features millions of 1.2m by 0.6m panels each covered by a thin film of glass that absorbs sunlight and captures elections creating an electric current that flows into wires in the rear of each module. This represents d.c. (direct current) power which is then converted into a.c. by inverters. The converted power is then transferred to the electrical grid via a nearby substation. Each panel generates 90 to 100 watts,
Other facts of the burgeoning solar power industry with which you may be unaware:
- Desert Sunlight's solar plant has 8 million solar panels in all.
- About 160,000 homes are solar-powered by Desert Sunlight
- Fifty two utility scale renewable energy projects have been approved since 2009, including 29 solar plants.
- Solar power is now a $15 billion a year business in the U.S., employing more people than coal mining
- In 2014 alone, solar energy accounted for 36 percent of the country's new (installed) energy capacity
- First Solar has plans to build a 750 MW plant in Riverside, CA, even bigger than Desert Sunlight's.
All these ought to give Americans reason to hope that we've turned the corner on solar energy and perhaps very soon we might be able to pull back a bit on fossil fuels, including fracked oil and natural gas. In any case we have to, there's no issue on it.
Bill McKibben's 2, 795 gigatons is perhaps the scariest number most people never heard of- but Americans need to drill into their craniums. . It represents the total stored reserves of carbon held by coal, gas and oil companies. It was first highlighted and brought to global attention by the Carbon Tracker Initiative - a group of London financial analysts and environmentalists. It is what the fossil fuel industry plans to exploit in the future by its whole spectrum of methods, whether deep sea drilling, oil shale fracking or natural gas fracking.
It is, in other words, five times more carbon than will already blow a gasket in our world and send it toward runaway greenhouse. It is a number we cannot afford to realize if we want to pass this planet on in any form to future generations.
And solar power may be the key to helping us avoid reaching it!
Showing posts with label solar energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solar energy. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2015
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Let's Cut This Kid Some Slack!
With my science fair project from March, 1964 (Miami Herald image). Note the "dual geometry" structure at right which was to have represented a dual matter-antimatter universe.
Aidan Dwyer (below) with his solar tree model which he has tried to show is superior to a flat solar panel to collect solar energy.
Well, it seems another Internet outburst has erupted, in the wake of a 13-year old's recent science project which purported to show that solar energy is much better collected using a model from nature, namely the arrangement of tree branches. Indeed, Aidan Dwyer won a national science competition this past summer by proposing the novel idea that solar panels arrayed like leaves on a tree colelct sunlight more efficiently than traditional setups.
Apparently the creative germ of the idea was launched when his parents acquainted him with the famous Fibonacci series. This is the series generated whereby the successive entries are just the sum of the preceding ones. For example: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.
The ratios of the successive numbers can then be used to derive intriguing geometric arrangements, e.g. see:
http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/fibonac/
Aidan apparently had this in mind when he began his project, believing the outcome might allow for a 'tree-like' panel that could deliver solar energy to his parents' home which was otherwise too small, apart from the fact the roof wasn't suitable. He thereby ended up comparing two models: one with his spiralled, tree structure with panels like outstretched 'branches', the other the standard flat panel design.
To compare their solar energy use Aidan measured the voltage for each, but he ought to have been measuring power (P = IV) the product of voltage and current. Thus, if we imagine a water pipe, voltage is analogous to the water pressure, while the current determines the width of the pipe. Power is the flow out of the pipe as determined by both.
The uncovering of Aidan's error led to an uproar on the net which almost rivalled that marshalled against my brother, Pastor Mike, in August and September last year (after he posted the idea for an "atheist national registry"). As in the Pastor Mike case, Aidan had to watch as he was made a spectacle of from net commentators around the globe, who debated his intelligence and abilities and even went to so far as to designate him an "alien" (of the ET type) while others decried him as part of a vast global conspiracy (WSJ, today, p. A1) Blogs erupted with bombast labeling his project "bad science" and "impossible nonsense"- the sort of vitriol usually reserved for political blogs, or those like Pastor Mike's.
At the end of it all, we need to give the kid a break already! He elicited enough curiosity to arrive at a novel idea, which - maybe in another parallel universe- would have garnered him kudos and more appreciation for the effort. But alas, in this one, to use Aidan's parlance, he had to face "haters" who get off more on tearing down than building up. Well, so it is.
While most people berate his measurement of voltage instead of power, the more fundamental error is one any of us could commit, hell I've done it myself in a science fair project on the 'Structure of the universe' from 1964 (admittedly, before the microwave background radiation was discovered). That is, being so entranced by the beauty and elegance of an idea or concept that we overlook its possible flaws.
In the case of my own project, I postulated (and used math, physics to prove it) that the universe was equally divided between matter and anti-matter, and the then discovered quasars represented "breaches" through which anti-matter was entering our universe. I also posited the differing universes assumed different non-Euclidean shapes, with the matter universe Riemannian or spherical, and the anti-matter universe Lobachevskian or like a horse saddle shape. (If you look closely at the photo shown, from a March 31, 1964 Miami Herald piece, you can see on the right the latter shaped universe inserted into the spherical one for matter).
In truth then, I had been so mesmerized by the sheer beauty and symmetry of what I had proposed, I couldn't see coming anything that would knock it off my mental pedestal! But barely five months later, Val Fitch and James Cronin in landmark work, showed in what is called their CPT invariance experiments, that a slight asymmetry was built into the cosmos in terms of matter production being slightly favored over anti-matter yielding a universe preponderant in the former over time. Thus, no symmetrical bi-universe of both (in dynamical equilibrium) could possibly exist.
In a similar vein, I suggest Aidan became mesmerized by the beauty of the Fibonacci sequence and the relation to his solar stucture. He had mentally integrated the two to such an extent he couldn't see any other way viable. Moreover, even after he began measuring power, he has maintained that his tree "outperforms" his flat panel. But has he factored in everything? And what are his measurement errors? (Hint here: What are the sensitivities of his ammeters, voltmeters?)
A more authentic take is shown in the diagram, which he might do well to consider. That is, the key factor affecting available solar power and efficiency is the insolation. When solar energy is directly incident on a surface, such as via intensity I1 in the diagram with surface diameter d1 = 1 meter, then that represents the most power collected per unit surface area. When the angle is oblique, on the other hand, as shown with intensity beam I2, then a broader area is covered, i.e. in this case d2 = 2m, but per unit area the power is diminished as the sine of the angle (it may also be as the cosine, if there's a different orientation (e.g. angle taken from the meridian, vertical plumb line or zenith).
Thus, for I2 the per unit insolation is 1360 W/m^2 (sin 30) = 1360 W/m^2 (0.5)= 680 W/m^2.
This suggests that if Aidan is obtaining superior power ratings from his solar "tree", he will need to check the angles at which the sunlight is incident on it, and also compare those with the angles of incidence on his flat panels. Only when he does this, and also takes into account the respective areas on which the sunlight is incident (since we are looking at power collected per unit area) will he be able to say for sure his "tree" represents a novel step forward in the solar energy sphere.
Apparently the creative germ of the idea was launched when his parents acquainted him with the famous Fibonacci series. This is the series generated whereby the successive entries are just the sum of the preceding ones. For example: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.
The ratios of the successive numbers can then be used to derive intriguing geometric arrangements, e.g. see:
http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/fibonac/
Aidan apparently had this in mind when he began his project, believing the outcome might allow for a 'tree-like' panel that could deliver solar energy to his parents' home which was otherwise too small, apart from the fact the roof wasn't suitable. He thereby ended up comparing two models: one with his spiralled, tree structure with panels like outstretched 'branches', the other the standard flat panel design.
To compare their solar energy use Aidan measured the voltage for each, but he ought to have been measuring power (P = IV) the product of voltage and current. Thus, if we imagine a water pipe, voltage is analogous to the water pressure, while the current determines the width of the pipe. Power is the flow out of the pipe as determined by both.
The uncovering of Aidan's error led to an uproar on the net which almost rivalled that marshalled against my brother, Pastor Mike, in August and September last year (after he posted the idea for an "atheist national registry"). As in the Pastor Mike case, Aidan had to watch as he was made a spectacle of from net commentators around the globe, who debated his intelligence and abilities and even went to so far as to designate him an "alien" (of the ET type) while others decried him as part of a vast global conspiracy (WSJ, today, p. A1) Blogs erupted with bombast labeling his project "bad science" and "impossible nonsense"- the sort of vitriol usually reserved for political blogs, or those like Pastor Mike's.
At the end of it all, we need to give the kid a break already! He elicited enough curiosity to arrive at a novel idea, which - maybe in another parallel universe- would have garnered him kudos and more appreciation for the effort. But alas, in this one, to use Aidan's parlance, he had to face "haters" who get off more on tearing down than building up. Well, so it is.
While most people berate his measurement of voltage instead of power, the more fundamental error is one any of us could commit, hell I've done it myself in a science fair project on the 'Structure of the universe' from 1964 (admittedly, before the microwave background radiation was discovered). That is, being so entranced by the beauty and elegance of an idea or concept that we overlook its possible flaws.
In the case of my own project, I postulated (and used math, physics to prove it) that the universe was equally divided between matter and anti-matter, and the then discovered quasars represented "breaches" through which anti-matter was entering our universe. I also posited the differing universes assumed different non-Euclidean shapes, with the matter universe Riemannian or spherical, and the anti-matter universe Lobachevskian or like a horse saddle shape. (If you look closely at the photo shown, from a March 31, 1964 Miami Herald piece, you can see on the right the latter shaped universe inserted into the spherical one for matter).
In truth then, I had been so mesmerized by the sheer beauty and symmetry of what I had proposed, I couldn't see coming anything that would knock it off my mental pedestal! But barely five months later, Val Fitch and James Cronin in landmark work, showed in what is called their CPT invariance experiments, that a slight asymmetry was built into the cosmos in terms of matter production being slightly favored over anti-matter yielding a universe preponderant in the former over time. Thus, no symmetrical bi-universe of both (in dynamical equilibrium) could possibly exist.
In a similar vein, I suggest Aidan became mesmerized by the beauty of the Fibonacci sequence and the relation to his solar stucture. He had mentally integrated the two to such an extent he couldn't see any other way viable. Moreover, even after he began measuring power, he has maintained that his tree "outperforms" his flat panel. But has he factored in everything? And what are his measurement errors? (Hint here: What are the sensitivities of his ammeters, voltmeters?)
A more authentic take is shown in the diagram, which he might do well to consider. That is, the key factor affecting available solar power and efficiency is the insolation. When solar energy is directly incident on a surface, such as via intensity I1 in the diagram with surface diameter d1 = 1 meter, then that represents the most power collected per unit surface area. When the angle is oblique, on the other hand, as shown with intensity beam I2, then a broader area is covered, i.e. in this case d2 = 2m, but per unit area the power is diminished as the sine of the angle (it may also be as the cosine, if there's a different orientation (e.g. angle taken from the meridian, vertical plumb line or zenith).
Thus, for I2 the per unit insolation is 1360 W/m^2 (sin 30) = 1360 W/m^2 (0.5)= 680 W/m^2.
This suggests that if Aidan is obtaining superior power ratings from his solar "tree", he will need to check the angles at which the sunlight is incident on it, and also compare those with the angles of incidence on his flat panels. Only when he does this, and also takes into account the respective areas on which the sunlight is incident (since we are looking at power collected per unit area) will he be able to say for sure his "tree" represents a novel step forward in the solar energy sphere.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Has Peak Oil Arrived? (III)
According to Robert Heinberg (‘The Party’s Over’) the first economic sign of Peak Oil will likely be gas at the price of $7 a gallon. This would mean oil is nearly $200 a barrel. However, that assumes no other supply factors are operating that maintains a price divorced from real supply and demand.
But let’s say this does transpire in the next year or so. What then? How do we cope, what can we expect?
IF Peak Oil really does arrive all aspects of life will become much more costly and difficult than they are now. Indeed, as per a Wall Street Journal article (‘If $$ Gas is Bad, Just Wait, May 23, p. C8) the Executive Vice-President of the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey quipped: “Maybe at $6 or $7 a gallon it become less attractive to go to work”
Well, perhaps, but at $10 a gallon it surely would! At that point, I can visualize the entire economy going into the tank unless employers permit massive telecommuting – much more so than now. In addition, governments will need to provide massive tax breaks or concessions to encourage more people to car pool.
The individual driver embedded in his own two tons of steel, will go the way of the dinosaur.
In terms of food, transport and fertilizer costs will go through the roof. One can imagine all these costs added to foods, making food conservation an imperative. No longer will Americans be able to afford food wastage of $7 billion a year.
It is quite possible the average middle income, middle class family will be reduced to eating sardines or tune with some rice five times a week, and maybe chicken or fish the other two days. Beef will become prohibitively expensive, as will pork. Actually, beef and pork will see prices much more common to lamb now.
Utility costs will escalate, perhaps to two to three times more than people are paying now.
Can alternative fuels solve the Peak Oil problem?
The cold, unvarnished and hard fact is that none of the usually touted "alternatives" has the energy density of oil and can replace oil to fuel and power any kind of industrial civilization. "Methane hydrates" ? Matt Savinar torpedoes that proposal easily in his 'Life After the Oil Crash'. Shale oil reserves? Jay Hanson et al. blast that poppycock to kingdom come on their excellent site:
www.dieoff.org.
In many cases, what Peak Oil deniers are doing is mistaking a technological advance for a genuine energy source alternative. In the end , it’s all very well to speculate and ruminate that future energy needs will be met, but the question remains: HOW? When one does the math, and in particular pays attention to the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the ‘net energy equation’, this just isn’t on.
Where will energy come from to support an industrial-energy intense and consumptive civilization? Alternative energy buffs can’t just say “new sources” and leave it at that. What new sources? Where? To what degree does the distribution, implementation, and use of these alternative sources demand massive retro-fitting of our industrial infrastructure? How much money, energy, and time will this retrofitting require? To what degree does the distribution, implementation, and use of this alternative require other resources that are in short supply? Do these other resources exist in quantities sufficient enough that the alternative is capable of being scaled up on a massive level?
Unless these questions are addressed as an integral part of any alternative view or proposal, the latter remains mere idle speculation or conjecture.
What about solar? Can that work:? Weisz (Physics Today, op. cit. (I)) notes that the solar total access for the U.S. currently amounts to 22Q per year per 4000 square kilometers. A maximal output of 20Q (about one fifth the current U.S. demand) could be achieved in terms of electricity generation provided a collector area is available from two to four times the area of the state of Massachusetts.
Calculations show that solar cells currently consume twice as much sej as they produce, so they are no bargain. Worse an entirely solar civilization would most likely have to exist at the power output and potential (relative to electric grid capacity) of about one half where we are now. Plus, the collector area would have to expand to around that of the states of Colorado and Nevada combined.
Will you still be able to run your personal computer (even a creaking old Windows 98 like I have) in that low energy environment? Very doubtful unless you have your own nuclear powered or other generator!
Some have asked me if it isn’t at all feasible that solar can be the SOLE potential answer to energy problems – given the Sun is so powerful, etc.
Well, maybe- provided several things occur:
1) We cut population drastically from right now, since each increase in numbers add to the energy burden required to sustain it. There is no "free energy" and each human body is a net energy user. A “solar” world cannot exist, in my opinion, with numbers beyond 3 billion – 2 billion is probably more realistic
2) We allocate an area equal to roughly 500,000 sq. miles for solar collection and conversion, using the most efficient cells, devices available (efficiencies running at 45% minimum.
3) People are encouraged to make their own solar energy collection devices or get their homes re-strrructured to it - soonest.
4) People retreat from their high consumption ethic and develop a de-localized mentality - with no more aspirations for concentrated energy generators, or distant travel. Solar energy- especially in cars, vehicles, simple cannot support it. Nor can it support even remotely the energy-intense military-industrial complex now being run off cheap oil.
Thus, making the switch to solar or a solar built society - the most likely to replace oil to the greatest extent- requires the de-localization of energy resources. Preferably, tiny communities each living off their own solar collectors, growing their own hydroponic or other crops. and foregoing all visions of distant travel - since there will never ever be solar-powered jetliners or cargo ships. Ain't gonna happen.In effect, "globalization" and world trade will have to come to a dead stop. It can't be sustained once the cheap oil is gone, and the net energy of recovery of new sources dips below zero. And the new sources in toto force a massive overhauling of the underpinning infrastructure. (Let’s also bear in mind the bulk of petroleum reserves will have to go into food production, transport, fertilizers etc.)
H.T. Odum's solar "eMergy" (eMbodied energy) measures all of the energy (adjusted for quality) that goes into the production of a product. Odum's calculations show that the only forms of alternative energy that can survive the exhaustion of fossil fuel are: muscle, burning biomass (wood, animal dung, or peat), hydroelectric, geothermal in volcanic areas, and some wind electrical generation. Nuclear power could be viable if one could overcome the shortage of fuel. No other alternatives (e.g., solar voltaic) produce a large enough net sej to be sustainable. In short, there is no way out.
As Jay Hanson pointedly notes:
“The fact that our society can‘t survive on alternative energy should come as no surprise, because only an idiot would believe that windmills and solar panels can run bulldozers, elevators, steel mills, glass factories, electric heat, air conditioning, aircraft, automobiles, etc., AND still have enough energy left over to support a corrupt political system, armies, etc.
Envision a world where freezing, starving people burn everything combustible -- everything from forests (releasing CO2; destroying topsoil and species); to garbage dumps (releasing dioxins, PCBs, and heavy metals); to people (by waging nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional war); and you have seen the future”
My take? I personally don't believe Americans have the will or moxie to do what is required to live in a radically downsized (diffuse as opposed to concentrated) energy environment. I may be wrong, but I just can't see it. It would require too many sacrifices on their part. And while the current high oil –gas prices have forced some alterations of life style from the sheer economic pain- I cannot imagine it might be permanent. Look how we all lapsed after the OPEC – gas rationing of the 1970s ended!
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the corporate owned gov't to do squat either. They haven't up to now - look at the execrable earlier (1990s) provision in the income tax to confer tax breaks on SUV owners! Look at the other energy -squandering legislation, the unwillingness to even remotely consider conservation.
As A. Bartlett emphasizes (Physics Today, July, 2004, ibid):
"Our national goal must be to reduce the total annual consumption of nonrenewable energy for many coming years."
This solution must mean not only severe conservation – much less driving and energy use overall- but also a concerted effort to cut population (which fuels demand). A first start can be made in ceasing all per-child tax credits and breaks, and even (indeed) placing a child tax on couple that insist on having more than one child.
No solution is palatable, but the consequences of inaction will be a million times worse.
But let’s say this does transpire in the next year or so. What then? How do we cope, what can we expect?
IF Peak Oil really does arrive all aspects of life will become much more costly and difficult than they are now. Indeed, as per a Wall Street Journal article (‘If $$ Gas is Bad, Just Wait, May 23, p. C8) the Executive Vice-President of the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey quipped: “Maybe at $6 or $7 a gallon it become less attractive to go to work”
Well, perhaps, but at $10 a gallon it surely would! At that point, I can visualize the entire economy going into the tank unless employers permit massive telecommuting – much more so than now. In addition, governments will need to provide massive tax breaks or concessions to encourage more people to car pool.
The individual driver embedded in his own two tons of steel, will go the way of the dinosaur.
In terms of food, transport and fertilizer costs will go through the roof. One can imagine all these costs added to foods, making food conservation an imperative. No longer will Americans be able to afford food wastage of $7 billion a year.
It is quite possible the average middle income, middle class family will be reduced to eating sardines or tune with some rice five times a week, and maybe chicken or fish the other two days. Beef will become prohibitively expensive, as will pork. Actually, beef and pork will see prices much more common to lamb now.
Utility costs will escalate, perhaps to two to three times more than people are paying now.
Can alternative fuels solve the Peak Oil problem?
The cold, unvarnished and hard fact is that none of the usually touted "alternatives" has the energy density of oil and can replace oil to fuel and power any kind of industrial civilization. "Methane hydrates" ? Matt Savinar torpedoes that proposal easily in his 'Life After the Oil Crash'. Shale oil reserves? Jay Hanson et al. blast that poppycock to kingdom come on their excellent site:
www.dieoff.org.
In many cases, what Peak Oil deniers are doing is mistaking a technological advance for a genuine energy source alternative. In the end , it’s all very well to speculate and ruminate that future energy needs will be met, but the question remains: HOW? When one does the math, and in particular pays attention to the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the ‘net energy equation’, this just isn’t on.
Where will energy come from to support an industrial-energy intense and consumptive civilization? Alternative energy buffs can’t just say “new sources” and leave it at that. What new sources? Where? To what degree does the distribution, implementation, and use of these alternative sources demand massive retro-fitting of our industrial infrastructure? How much money, energy, and time will this retrofitting require? To what degree does the distribution, implementation, and use of this alternative require other resources that are in short supply? Do these other resources exist in quantities sufficient enough that the alternative is capable of being scaled up on a massive level?
Unless these questions are addressed as an integral part of any alternative view or proposal, the latter remains mere idle speculation or conjecture.
What about solar? Can that work:? Weisz (Physics Today, op. cit. (I)) notes that the solar total access for the U.S. currently amounts to 22Q per year per 4000 square kilometers. A maximal output of 20Q (about one fifth the current U.S. demand) could be achieved in terms of electricity generation provided a collector area is available from two to four times the area of the state of Massachusetts.
Calculations show that solar cells currently consume twice as much sej as they produce, so they are no bargain. Worse an entirely solar civilization would most likely have to exist at the power output and potential (relative to electric grid capacity) of about one half where we are now. Plus, the collector area would have to expand to around that of the states of Colorado and Nevada combined.
Will you still be able to run your personal computer (even a creaking old Windows 98 like I have) in that low energy environment? Very doubtful unless you have your own nuclear powered or other generator!
Some have asked me if it isn’t at all feasible that solar can be the SOLE potential answer to energy problems – given the Sun is so powerful, etc.
Well, maybe- provided several things occur:
1) We cut population drastically from right now, since each increase in numbers add to the energy burden required to sustain it. There is no "free energy" and each human body is a net energy user. A “solar” world cannot exist, in my opinion, with numbers beyond 3 billion – 2 billion is probably more realistic
2) We allocate an area equal to roughly 500,000 sq. miles for solar collection and conversion, using the most efficient cells, devices available (efficiencies running at 45% minimum.
3) People are encouraged to make their own solar energy collection devices or get their homes re-strrructured to it - soonest.
4) People retreat from their high consumption ethic and develop a de-localized mentality - with no more aspirations for concentrated energy generators, or distant travel. Solar energy- especially in cars, vehicles, simple cannot support it. Nor can it support even remotely the energy-intense military-industrial complex now being run off cheap oil.
Thus, making the switch to solar or a solar built society - the most likely to replace oil to the greatest extent- requires the de-localization of energy resources. Preferably, tiny communities each living off their own solar collectors, growing their own hydroponic or other crops. and foregoing all visions of distant travel - since there will never ever be solar-powered jetliners or cargo ships. Ain't gonna happen.In effect, "globalization" and world trade will have to come to a dead stop. It can't be sustained once the cheap oil is gone, and the net energy of recovery of new sources dips below zero. And the new sources in toto force a massive overhauling of the underpinning infrastructure. (Let’s also bear in mind the bulk of petroleum reserves will have to go into food production, transport, fertilizers etc.)
H.T. Odum's solar "eMergy" (eMbodied energy) measures all of the energy (adjusted for quality) that goes into the production of a product. Odum's calculations show that the only forms of alternative energy that can survive the exhaustion of fossil fuel are: muscle, burning biomass (wood, animal dung, or peat), hydroelectric, geothermal in volcanic areas, and some wind electrical generation. Nuclear power could be viable if one could overcome the shortage of fuel. No other alternatives (e.g., solar voltaic) produce a large enough net sej to be sustainable. In short, there is no way out.
As Jay Hanson pointedly notes:
“The fact that our society can‘t survive on alternative energy should come as no surprise, because only an idiot would believe that windmills and solar panels can run bulldozers, elevators, steel mills, glass factories, electric heat, air conditioning, aircraft, automobiles, etc., AND still have enough energy left over to support a corrupt political system, armies, etc.
Envision a world where freezing, starving people burn everything combustible -- everything from forests (releasing CO2; destroying topsoil and species); to garbage dumps (releasing dioxins, PCBs, and heavy metals); to people (by waging nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional war); and you have seen the future”
My take? I personally don't believe Americans have the will or moxie to do what is required to live in a radically downsized (diffuse as opposed to concentrated) energy environment. I may be wrong, but I just can't see it. It would require too many sacrifices on their part. And while the current high oil –gas prices have forced some alterations of life style from the sheer economic pain- I cannot imagine it might be permanent. Look how we all lapsed after the OPEC – gas rationing of the 1970s ended!
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the corporate owned gov't to do squat either. They haven't up to now - look at the execrable earlier (1990s) provision in the income tax to confer tax breaks on SUV owners! Look at the other energy -squandering legislation, the unwillingness to even remotely consider conservation.
As A. Bartlett emphasizes (Physics Today, July, 2004, ibid):
"Our national goal must be to reduce the total annual consumption of nonrenewable energy for many coming years."
This solution must mean not only severe conservation – much less driving and energy use overall- but also a concerted effort to cut population (which fuels demand). A first start can be made in ceasing all per-child tax credits and breaks, and even (indeed) placing a child tax on couple that insist on having more than one child.
No solution is palatable, but the consequences of inaction will be a million times worse.
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