Well, Sometimes “No” Means “Maybe”

As Joe notes below, Den Beste lays the smack down on those who suggest that we can conserve our way to energy independence.

If we went all-out, I imagine that we could (over twenty years or so) cut our energy needs by at least 25% and 50% isn’t out of the question. In the long run it would save us money and it wouldn’t hurt the environment any, either.

I’m afraid not. It is impossible to achieve that much gain solely through technological changes like that.

I don’t mean “infeasible” or “impractical”, I mean it is physically impossible. To get a 50% gain solely through technology improvements we’d have to revoke the laws of thermodynamics and figure out how to change the universal electrical constant. I don’t expect to see that happen in my lifetime.

He makes a good case, which is kind of depressing.

Fortunately, off the debating floor – in the real world – he’s wrong.If you define the question narrowly, to say that the sole change is fixing the technology underlying our economy, he may have a point (although I might be motivated enough to argue it at some point). But on my planet – Planet Reality – people change their technology and their behavior in response to scarcity. Have you noticed any new Excursions on your local Ford dealer’s lot lately? Notice the signs on the Expeditions? You know, those big SUV’s – they’re so 90’s.

Let look at some economic facts for fun. The folks at DOE have a wonderful site – www.eia.doe.gov – that’s just chock-full of buttery good data. One piece, an Excel file, has the gross energy consumption by country by year per dollar of GDP. Let’s go to the numbers…

In 1980, the US consumed 16,297 BTU per dollar of GDP. In 2002, we consumed 10,575.

In 1980, Sweden consumed 10,839, and in 2002 7,405.

The average energy consumption per dollar of GDP in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Japan is 5,593. Japan is an outlier, at 3,876 BTU per dollar, so let’s just look at the UK, Germany, and Italy – their average is 6,165.

Now, clearly, there are issues that make us different – our pattern of sprawl versus their more urbanized, transit-dependent lifestyle.

But we cut 35.1% out of our energy budget in 22 years. Our major industrial competitors are 47% more efficient than we are; the European Big 3 are 42% more efficient than we are.

Do you think that if paid some attention, we could have a significant impact here? And do you think it would change the nature of our relationship with the Middle East?

78 thoughts on “Well, Sometimes “No” Means “Maybe””

  1. In order: yes, and no.

    Yes, it would have an impact. No, it wouldn’t change things with the Middle East. Oil is a global commodity, and the low costs of extraction make the ME a key “reserve” area. As long as a large fraction of the economy is based on oil, the Middle East will continue to matter – and Saudi Arabia will continue to be especially important.

    I really wish we could just tell them all to go F#$% themselves… but it ain’t gonna happen. Sorry. Guess we’ll just have to do this Trent’s way.

    Pressing for energy efficiency is still a good thing, though. For reasons of competitiveness, and as steps that will help other nations meet their growing needs without causing massive dislocations. And if major dislocations do come to pass as nations like China and India ramp up their demand, countries that have pushed for efficiencies will find some cushioning from the shocks.

  2. Joe, I profoundly disagree here. One of the sises involved in dealing with the ME is the distorting effect of (aside from my fellow American Jews and our foolish attachment to a liberal and democratic Israel populated by living Jews) a) the money ME kleptocrats have wisely invested in our Washington leadership; and b) the very real and possibly catastropic impacts of an interruption of ME supply on our economy and Europe’s.

    Moving us down the efficiency path would help take care of b); if we were soaking up enough less oil, there’d be more to go around for Europe as well.

    It would help expose a) for what it is, because now they can hide behind the pious claim that ‘we can’t risk an energy catastrophe.’

    A.L.

  3. Thing is, even if the USA ups its efficiency to cut another 35%, oil is still a mainstay of the economy in many ways and many places. So a sharp rise in oil prices will still create major economic shocks – and not just in the USA, but in other parts of the world as well. Which eventually filters back to the USA in other ways.

    In other words, it’s still an energy catastrophe once the secondary & tertiary effects kick in. At best, you get a slightly smaller catastrophe.

    So no, we don’t get off the treadmill that easily. Alas. But there are other advantages to be had that make the effort worthwhile.

    As for ‘more to go around’… Europe should not even be remotely close to your biggest concern on that front.

  4. I don’t think much can be done about energy usage when the population density of the US is so much lower compared to the more “efficient” countries. Also I think that the types of economic activity in different countries plays a role too. I don’t expect too much energy intensive agriculture is going on in Sweden.

    Population density (people/Km2)
    Great Britain 245.1
    Germany 230.3
    Japan 336.0
    Sweden 19.8
    United States 29.5

    Probably what would be more revealing is the median local population density, which would be the median value for the number of people living within a square km of any given person. I suspect for the US this number will be very low given high home and land ownership.

  5. This subject pushes Den Beste’s button, I think. He had a long post on why alternative energy stuff won’t replace fossil fuels, and then (apparently) got so much email on the subject he made an announcement that he would no longer discuss it.

    Heh.

  6. There’s a lot more involved than simply looking at some aggregate number(s). For starters, let’s not ignore the fact that energy use per dollar of _inflation-adjusted_ GDP has risen over the period in question. And that currency fluctuations have a huge effect on such numbers. Re-adjust Japan’s numbers to take account of a 350 yen dollar in the early ’80s and their energy consumption/GDP is broadly the same as that in the US, on a much smaller piece of real estate. Europe’s has declined by about a third simply due to USD/EUR exchange factors. IOW, it’s not a particularly valuable or indicative number.

    There are (of course) hidden or externalised costs associated with energy consumption, amply discussed elsewhere. However, there are also such costs associated with _not_ consuming such energy. For example, persistent (as in _decades_) double-digit unemployment in Europe.

    More notably, 11,000 to 15,000 dead in the ’03 French heat wave because not only was there no air conditioning in people’s homes, there was no air conditioning in the _hospitals_ for crying out loud. During almost the identical period here in Kansas we had several weeks of steady 40-degree temperatures (well into triple digits Farenheit) and it never even made the national news. Nobody died. A few people (mostly people working physically out-of-doors) got heat exhaustion, but they were quickly taken to air-conditioning and that was pretty well the end of it.

    Even worse, a tremendous percentage of “alternate energy” schemes are either political boondoggles or simply ill-conceived. Just one example, ethanol. Heavily subsidised. Warm fuzzy alternative to oil for the Lefties — kick the towel-heads in the balls for the Farm Bureau types.

    There’s only one problem. Growing, harvesting, transporting, fermenting and refining corn into a US gallon of ethanol requires 130,000 btu of energy. The resulting gallon contains only 76,000 btu. Now _there’s_ a plan for energy independence.

    Pulling oil out of Alberta’s Tar Sands is decried as inefficient–it takes about 97 barrels of energy to extract 100 barrels of oil–but an efficiency of +3% beats the snot out of ethanol’s -71% efficiency.

    If we’re serious about energy independence in North America it’s pretty straightforward — continue conservation, sure, but also build coal-fired power plants, bring on nuclear power generation under the direct control of former US Navy nukies, and develop the absolutely massive deep reserves in the Gulf of Mexico.

    And guess what. Unless we want to blow off Europe and Japan entirely we will _still_ be directly involved in the Middle East because _they_ will remain absolutely-dependent on that oil. And let’s not forget that India is only a couple of years away from easily projecting significant force into the Middle Eastern oil fields.

    Simply put, alternate energy and conservation are functional zeroes in the geopolitics of the Middle East.

  7. I don’t think it would make nearly as much difference as one might think. I don’t think that the gains for energy efficiency would necessarily outweigh the costs imposed on other parts of the economy. The money to replace old equipment with new has to come from somewhere, which means it won’t be spent on more pressing issues or on investments that will have greater impact later. And since the newer stuff replaced in the last 30 years is already pretty good, it won’t be long til you start to hit the point of diminishing returns. Raising the GDP could also increase efficiency.

    I’m not sure how much good it would do to reduce our foreign oil consumption. It’s not like we’d be willing to let the Middle East nuke itself anyway. In any case, we already have the means to reduce our depenence on oil. Unfortunately the most practical alternative begins with “N” and ends with “uclear”. At that point the Atomic Moonbats descend and we all give up and go right back to what we were doing.

    Eric, in defense of SDB (like he needs me to defend him) I think his point was that people kept sending him slight variations on the same ideas over and over without reading his previous and extensive rebuttals of same. I can’t blame him for getting impatient.

  8. I don’t know what DSB is blathering about. Around 40% of US energy consumption is consumed by buildings.

    Now, here’s just one example of a high-performance green building:

    The Solaire at 20 River Terrace is a 27-story, 293-unit, glass-and-brick residential tower in Battery Park City, a planned residential and commercial neighborhood built on landfill bordering the west side of New York City’s financial district and directly adjacent to the site of the former World Trade Center. It is the first building designed in accordance with new environmental guidelines instituted in 2000 by the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), the government entity that has overseen the development of Battery Park City since 1969.

    Environmental Aspects

    20 River Terrace was designed to consume 35% less energy, reduce peak demand for electricity by 65%, and require 50% less potable water than a conventional, residential high-rise building. An integrated array of photovoltaic panels generates 5% of the building’s energy at peak loading.

    So that’s just buildings.

    Here’s another LEED-certified building right across the street from where I work. Now, I don’t know how much energy they’re going to be saving by the time they’re done with River Rouge, but I imagine it’s a considerable amount. Industrial users consume around 37% of electricity in the US.

    It’s obvious that our cars can trucks can be more efficient as well. Just ask the good folks at Toyota and Honda.

    This statement, then, is obviously false: “But in at least half of the areas where we use energy now, it’s already about as efficient as it practically can be.”

  9. A.L.,

    America will be fossil fuel dependent for the next 50 years at least.

    The fossil fuel market and particularly oil is a world wide market.

    It will require American global military hegemony to keep political upsets in that market from crashing the American economy.

    No amount of energy efficiency efforts in America will change those facts on the ground because China and India are industrializing and any saving America makes will be gobbled up by their growth in energy needs.

    Deal with it.

    You are sounding on this issue depressingly like Republican Gold Bugs do about putting the dollar back on the gold standard as an answer to inflation, economic boomb/bust cycles and the common cold.

  10. Minor correction:

    _Re-adjust Japan’s numbers to take account of a 350 yen dollar in the early ’80s_

    I just realised that JPY-USD was closer to 250 in 1980. The 350 number was almost another decade earlier. Doesn’t change the main point, however.

  11. Den Beste has some pretty bad misconceptions, including one that the area required for e.g. solar is impractically large (rebutted here). 
    His realistic objections to petroleum alternatives center around storage and transport; you have to be able to store energy over a long enough period to handle the variability of the supply, and you also have to be able to put that energy in a relatively lightweight and compact volume to be practical for running a vehicle. (He has claimed that there is no way to reduce our reliance on Arab petroleum because no alternative meets his five requirements.)

    I beg to differ, and I hope to be offering up an analytical piece on my blog sometime soon.

  12. Trent Telenko writes:

    America will be fossil fuel dependent for the next 50 years at least.

    The fossil fuel market and particularly oil is a world wide market.

    I’m not so sure.  There are trends sneaking up on us which may be able to replace huge amounts of fossil-fuel consumption at very reasonable prices.  Pure economic self-interest will push for replacement of fossil, and on top of this will be priorities such as pollution abatement.

    On top of this, all fossil fuel is not created equal.  There is a lot less international traffic in coal than there is in oil, it is cheaper and the Arabs have essentially none.  If we used coal as a bridge we could free ourselves from oil.  With the right choice of energy transport media this appears to be possible, and I will be analyzing this when I get time.

    No amount of energy efficiency efforts in America will change those facts on the ground because China and India are industrializing and any saving America makes will be gobbled up by their growth in energy needs.

    China is trying to become a military rival of the USA.  Freeing the USA from dependence on Arab oil would be a huge strategic advantage, because we could attack the economies of the financiers of terror by disrupting their ability to pump oil (either directly or by proxy, e.g. Shiite rebels in Saudi Arabia) and damage China’s war-making abilities without paying any price ourselves.  Well, aside from having less cheap stuff at Wal-Mart.

  13. Engineer-Poet:
    You make a good point, but I think SDB’s point was that there is no short-term way to get right off of oil. In the future, it may well be a more practical source of energy. (He directs his energy arguments over the point that they will have little to no effect on the War on Terror, I believe).

    Also, look at what the first commenter says about cost of photovoltaics- much higher than other energy sources.

    Between energy storage/cost problems, I don’t think it is very practical in the short term myself.

    I’m trying to think of how this would even be implemented. Too much of a knowledge gap there for me.

    I’m willing to change on that idea though. When you finish up that piece, feel free to send me an email on it, I’d be interested.

  14. I don’t see why the market for photovoltaics would function much differently than that of, say, TVs and computers. I think prices have the potential to come down quite rapidly as producers begin to squeeze and innovate.

  15. The problem with discussing this subject is that too many ideas are being conflated. The subjects include total energy use, fuel, politics, foreign policy, and economics. While inter-related these are not all the same thing.

    Coal, nuclear, solar, wind, geo-thermal, and bio-thermal are all important areas for discussion but are mostly significant in talking about total energy use. None of them will change the landscape of fuel for vehicle use much.

    The same is true of energy efficiency.

    I’m not saying we shouldn’t discuss these things or that they’re not important.

    In the short term we’re not going to replace the whole U. S. auto and truck fleet. We’re not going to change the entire distribution system from gasoline to some other economy. It doesn’t make a smidgeon of difference what the world political landscape is. It’s not going to happen. You just can’t turn the ocean liner that fast. The system we have took, what, 50 years to evolve. It won’t be replaced in 5 or 10 years no matter what we do.

    And, as I’ve mentioned in comments before, the shortest path to oil independence for the U. S. is annexing Alberta.

    The real discussion we need to have is how we should be spending our money. Should we subsidize dys-economic approaches for short term political or foreign policy goals? Tough question.

  16. I’m not an economist (IANAE??), but:

    A discussion with real-world application is going to center around the price and the reserves of the resource in question. Here, the resource is “energy,” with a particular focus on petroleum.

    — Saudi Arabia and surrounding countries have a stupendous quantity of oil; the Middle East contains most of the world’s reserves (though there is a lot elsewhere, too).

    — Middle East oil is very cheap to extract, so it can be profitably sold for a much lower price than is the case for most other oil, and for the equivalent price (per joule) of other energy sources.

    — There are a large number of actual and potential alternatives to ME oil–the subject of this and the earlier post. None are as cheap. None are remotely close to being as cheap.

    A barrel of oil currently costs around $44 on the world market; this is high compared to the past few years ($18 to $25 per bbl). If the cost of a barrel of oil on the world market was going to go up to $150 to $200 per bbl in constant dollars and stay there, then a range of alternatives would look very attractive to economically-rational energy consumers. If we want to encourage oil conservation and alternative-energy production, then raise the price of oil!

    Unfortunately…The US economy and the world economy as they are now structured depend on cheap energy. Which means cheap ME oil. Raise the price to $150/bbl (which OBL proposes to do, once he rules Arabia), and trigger the next worldwide Great Depression.

    This is the great dilemma. We want cheap energy to keep the economy humming, and we want the energy independence which will only result from making petroleum…expensive.

  17. The problem with alternative energy sources is the low energy density and input energy needed to construct them. Traditional photovoltaics are a good example. Even is sunny California it takes 10 years to recover the energy needed to manufacturer them. The printed photovoltaics show promise but investing in the traditional photovoltaics is foolish.

  18. A bunch of quick replies, then a longer one if I can scare up some time.

    Joe – The ME is a major world supplier, and clearly ME interruptions would impact Europe and Japan. But if we’re not soaking up all the available oil, that impact will be cushioned.

    ATM – Sweden, with it’s rustic ox-driven agriculture? Sweden is an advanced industrial nation, in a climate zone that requires a whole lot of seasonal energy. I’ll bet Swedish farmers (yes, they do exist) use tractors much like ours do (while noting that our industrialized agriculture is still massively energy-dependent). Note that their population density is lower than ours, and their energy use is as well.

    Bart – the numbers are corrected to 1995 dollars (take a look at the source). We have, in fact, become far more efficient in our energy use in the last 20 years. And yes, aggregate economic figures aren’t the sole thing one should base policy decision on – but neither are hand-waving pronouncements about the difficulty of doing something, unencumbered by data. The heat-related deaths in France were a consequence of the collapse of their centralized public-health system. There are lots of air-conditioned buildings in France, and – as I’m aware they’ve done in the Midwest – it would have been perfectly possible to move the elderly and frail to one of them for the day, had anyone been around to make decisions. The only ‘alternate energy’ scheme I’m discussing is ‘negawatts’ – energy conservation through greater efficiency. Last time I checked, a BTU from ethanol was a BTU that counted against the energy/GDP ratios.

    Trent – Yes, we will be fossil fuel dependent for the foreseeable future – but whose fuel; that’s the question. Go back and look at this post of mine.

    Dave – No one is suggesting that we’ll replace the whole fleet in five years; but we’ve done it once in twenty years, and will do it again in the next twenty. This is a decades-long project; we’ve had policies in place for a hundred years that encouraged oil exploration and consumption. Now we just need to put policies in place that encourage exploration and conservation.

    A.L.

  19. It’s immaterial what we do. China is just starting to industrialize and the prices for commodities like oil and metals has gone through the roof (or what we thought was the roof). Over the next 20 years, everything we try to do to conserve will be dwarfed by China. Alternate sources of energy wont long be a luxury, they will be a necessity. When people get tired of 10 bucks a gallon, something else will be developed.

  20. Sweden is actually fairly densely populated where it matters. Much of the north is inhabited mainly by reindeer and the Lapplanders who love them, but the south is as densely populated as the rest of Europe.

  21. Engineer-Poet

    The key concepts here are energy density and energy transmissibility.

    Solar is to diffuse a power source for photovoltaic power to be a net energy source rather than a net energy drain from the power costs to build them and remediate the environmental effects of their production.

    The real use of photovoltaic technology is to enable small electronic devices to operate away from the power grid. This is a net increase in power use rather than power efficiency.

    The reason oil is the preferred fuel for vehicles is that liquid hydrocarbons are the most efficient and cost effective way to transport and store power. There is no power storage technology available or on the horizon that matches liquid hydrocarbons. This is most especially the case when you look at things like installed distribution base and other infrastructure issues for the transportation industry.

    Talk all you will about decreased costs per unit GDP or per person. Both America’s population and GDP are going up and so is the net energy use of the USA, despite increases in energy efficiency.

    “Energy independence” is a Ghost Dance for American Isolationists of the left and right. Those preaching it should be taken no more seriously on issues of energy policy than ‘gold bugs’ are in the sphere of monetary policy.

  22. I love the back and forth on a post like this, as energy independence is a subject near and dear to my heart.

    I agree that there is no short-term fix to oil dependency. But as Mark Buehner suggests, with China’s needs growing and growing, there simply is no oil.

    Relevant link here

    So, I agree that we won’t really have much choice to develop alternatives. And anything that can be done to cushion the shock, should be done.

    The only thing I can add to the discussion, is I see that the discussion keeps revolving around “cheap” oil – or cheap sources of energy.

    No on has really brought up the “ancillary” costs. For example, over 100 billion and counting so far in Iraq – which we wouldn’t be doing if there were energy independence. So there are a lot of ancillary costs that never seem to get weighed in.

    The economic system is such that these costs will most likely never get weighed in, but it is a data point to keep in mind.

  23. >Trent – Yes, we will be fossil fuel dependent
    >for the foreseeable future – but whose fuel;
    >that’s the question. Go back and look at this >post of mine.

    A.L.

    You are going fantasy ideological on us again.

    Repeat after me — “_There is one world energy market and we cannot escape it._”

    What you are advocating is *_economic autarky._* This fascist solution to modern economics has failed everyplace it has been tried.

    Why do you want America to follow the economic policies of Nazi Germany, apartheid era South Africa and North Korea for our energy needs is beyond me.

  24. Trent –

    And you’re beating your chest as you march off the cliff into foolishness and your typical namecalling in lieu of argument.

    Yes, I’m very aware that world energy markets are (loosely to tightly, it varies by the energy source) integrated. I’m also aware that market sensitivities to decreases in supply depend a great deal on how close the aggregate demand is to that available supply. As the largest energy consumer in the world, any increase in energy efficency on our part will ahve a substantial impact on energy markets…among other things, it will make them more resilient to interruptions in supply. That ought to be obvious…

    A.L.

  25. Holy Jimmy Carter’s Cardigan Sweater, Batman!

    Sweden and Europe generally are NOT “more efficient” in using energy. They’re doing a different job.

    They’re not air conditioning everything. They’re not TRUCKING stuff across their continent — door to door by FedEx (they don’t do as much intra-continental trade and what they do is more rail based than what we do.) They’re not cleaning up every year from floods, hurricanes, tornados, and forest fires.

    This sprawling continent has more people in fatally colder places (compare Chicago, Buffalo, Boston etc to Stockholm) and more people in fatally HOT places (Houston, Miami, Flagstaff.) Taming North America is like practice for terraforming freakin’ MARS!

    (Taming Africa would be like terraforming Venus…)

    Compare US energy usage to Canada if you like. They, at least, have some the same issues.

    So do the Mexicans. But they aren’t running as many dishwashers/freezers/big screen TVs per capita as US consumers, either. Does that make them more “efficient” ?

    There are efficiencies we COULD acheive. Everybody in the northeast who burns diesel/fuel oil to heat with COULD put an engine and generator into the system and produce both heat AND electricy. That’s be efficent. Are the Swedes doing that? I don’t think so.

    We could build electric powerplants right downtown in major cities and use the “cooling” water downstream from the steam turbines as heat and hot water sources in our buildings and apartments. That’s efficient. But do the Europeans do it, either? (Uhm… not counting on US military bases in Europe, anyhow?)

  26. A.L.,

    Mr. DB and I have our differences re: technology from time to time (ask him about power JFETs. Better yet. Don’t.). This is not one of those times.

    We have cherry picked the easy gains.

    My guess is that at best we can pick up a 25% improvement in liquid fuel efficiency. In 20 to 30 years. There is a lot we can do with cars. Load bearing equipment (trucking) is another matter.

    What we need is a transition to an all wind/electric economy. And in fact it is on the way. And will take about 75 years to complete with the bulk of the roll out done in the last 10 to 15 years.

    Assuming we can do it twice as fast I don’t think we can wait 25 to 30 years for results.

    The deal is big systems have lots of inertia.

    Add in that China is becoming a big player in the oil market and even if we cut back to zero our oil use the world economy would still depend on it for decades to come.

    There is a lot of capital tied up in the way things are currently done. Without gains of 10X to 20X or more it is inefficient to replace the capital eqpt much before end of life.

    =============================================

    In any case the price rises send the correct signal. People will start buying more efficiency. Demand will decline. Prices will spike in the other direction. Been happening this way on about a ten year cycle for the last 100 years.

    At these prices tar sands are quite economically feasible. There is lots of it out there.

    Thing is: all this is good stuff. As Mr. DB says: it will have aproximately zero effect on the war.

    ============================================

    Wind delivers about 10X to 15X the energy cost to build the machine over its life. ie a machine that costs 1 KWh to make would deliver 15 KWh over its life.

    Solar delivers 2X to 3X.

    Which is why wind is in the economic zone and solar is special purpose. Economic technology has energy gains in the 10X to 20X range or better.

    ===========================================

    Did I mention the gains that can be had from improving the housing stock? That takes 75 years to replace.

    ===========================================

    BTW are you suggesting we starve the Iraqis because of Saddam? Are you suggesting we starve the ME because of terrorists?

    War actually seems the more liberal option. But it could just be me.

  27. JC says there is no oil.

    That is interesting. Maybe true.

    America and Canada together have 1.5 to 3X Saudi Arabia’s reserves in tar sands.

    There will be no oil crunch per the oil peak guys. Given the right price we have plenty of oil. All we are short of is oil at the current price. That is not a very serious problem.

    By the time oil is any where near its economic capacity we will be well on the way to a wind economy.

    If a doubling of price produced 5X the current estimates that ought to be more than enough to get us through the transition.

  28. Praktike,

    The building stock in America takes 75 years to replace. If we only built the kind of buildings you suggest and if the gains are real and that is the only kind of dwelling we allow people it will take about 35 years to reap 50% of the gain.

    The reason we have not built such buildings before (we have had the ability for quite a while) is that they do not make economic sense.

    It is not just the ability to do something. It is the price.

    We can afford to send a few men to the moon. Right now sending a million is way beyond our means.

    Same goes for “energy efficient” buildings. If they made economic (rather than political or R&D) sense every one would be doing it. Drug prohibition shows us that profit is irresistable. Use it.

  29. This sprawling continent has more people in fatally colder places (compare Chicago, Buffalo, Boston etc to Stockholm) and more people in fatally HOT places (Houston, Miami, Flagstaff.) Taming North America is like practice for terraforming freakin’ MARS!

    Not to mention fatally cold and fatally hot places (Chicago, which frequently has winter temperatures below -10F and summer temperatures above 100F).

    Add in that China is becoming a big player in the oil market and even if we cut back to zero our oil use the world economy would still depend on it for decades to come.

    China’s growing importance in the energy market is one of the many reasons why exempting China from the provisions of Kyoto makes it a non-starter.

  30. Engineer-Poet,

    The scientific socialist of China have plenty of coal. They have decided oil is the way to go.

    Why?

  31. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA),

    As much as I admire Naval Nukes (I’m one and so is my brother in law) it was a Naval Nuke on watch when TMI went down (so I have been told).

    The civilians get more disaster drill now though than they did then.

    It is not just the quality of the people. It is the quality of the organizations.

  32. praktike,

    I used my first solar cell in an electronic project in 1962. There have been 40+ years of innovation with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Big time.

    Perhaps the reason what you want is not being done today is because it is not possible today. Economically.

    In effect you are saying: “We can send men to the moon. So where are the moon villages?”

  33. “What we need is a transition to an all wind/electric economy.”

    The intermittent nature of wind will ensure that this will never happen. The practical limit appears to be about a 10% share. Around that point the stability of the grid starts getting out of hand.

  34. It’s a pretty safe bet that when someone says SDB is wrong on a technical issue that they are the ones who are wrong. Still seems a safe bet.

  35. M. Simon hit on the key point: when an activity becomes economically worthwhile, people will start doing it on their own. Conversely, there will always be special cases of people doing things that don’t make economic sense, but that’s not the horse to bet on if we are talking about long-term transformations of society.

    Case in point: I live in a 1950s-vintage house in the Mid-Atlantic; almost no insulation. I won’t be investing the thousands of dollars needed to bring it somewhat close to current best practices, because the penalty of not doing so works out to about $200 a year in fuel. This bothers my conscience more than my pocketbook. Multiply that decision by a few million, factor in the 75-year housing stock life, and then compare to the effect of a hundred or a thousand new Green buildings. Public policies, consciousness-raising, and technical advances will lead to changes in energy use, but the effects are likely to be slow.

  36. In reference to the XLS that the Armed one talked about in the original post comparing Energy use to GDP, there is another one on that site comparing Energy use to population. Energy per person in each country. I think both could be considered and both are revealing.
    You will notice that the US uses about twice as much energy per person than say Italy or Germany, but not nearly as much as Norway, Canada, or smaller countries like Luxembourg or the Virgin Islands.
    I’m not saying that we can’t improve our energy use, but I’m saying that I can’t see America using energy as sparsely as Italy or France, nor will getting down that far solve our dependence on oil.

  37. M. Simon hit on the key point: when an activity becomes economically worthwhile, people will start doing it on their own.

    And there’s another follow-up point. When you subsidize an activity in order to make it economically worthwhile, it comes at the expense of other activities. If the gasoline tax is raised, or subsidies given to say, wind power, less money is spent on health care or education or to purchase houses or computers.

    Now where is my copy of Economics in One Lesson?

  38. >…As the largest energy consumer in the world,
    >any increase in energy efficency on our part
    >will ahve a substantial impact on energy
    >markets…among other things, it will make them
    >more resilient to interruptions in supply. That
    >ought to be obvious…

    A.L.,

    You are being thwacked because you are being utterly silly.

    America is roughly 5% of the world population, 20-25% of the world’s energy use and approaching 35% of world GDP. A 50% increase in American energy efficiency won’t mean beans in terms of the global energy budget as China and India industrialize.

    We are talking _280 million_ Americans versus *2.5 billion* Chinese and Indians. Orders of magnitude mean things and that is literally what is in play here. You want to insist that America being ‘Green’ and energy efficient will mean beans here.

    It won’t. Deal with it or be made a fool by refusing to do so.

    There is no such thing as energy indepedence.

    There is no such thing has “having our own sources of oil” independent of political upset the oil economy brings. There is only one energy market for the most vital component of the American energy economy — transportation — and it is called oil.

  39. *Bart*
    bq. _”Unless we want to blow off Europe and Japan entirely we will still be directly involved in the Middle East because they will remain absolutely-dependent on that oil. And let’s not forget that India is only a couple of years away from easily projecting significant force into the Middle Eastern oil fields.”_

    Well said there are many places on this earth that are reliant on oil imports. Many of which have no choice simply because of resource distribution. Fortunately here in the USA we can make a commitment to decrease our imported oil dependency. Of course several hurdles need to be overcome on both the political and business case sides.

    *Bryan*
    bq. _The money to replace old equipment with new has to come from somewhere, which means it won’t be spent on more pressing issues or on investments that will have greater impact later._

    Where do you think this money is coming from? Please explain. Last I looked US oil companies were independently owned. Are you suggesting independent business should change modus operandus based on government dictate?

    On final note one has to consider the statistics concerning fuel and energy efficiency. Statistics are based on an _as compared_ to what? It’s easy to mix apples and oranges and come to any statistic that supports a claim. Personally I think any home in Grandview USA is more energy efficient in the area of heating when compared to an igloo.

    At any rate *OIL* will be the fuel of choice for a long time to come. Can we do better with our thirst for oil? Yes. Will we eliminate the need for OIL in my life time, my children’s lifetime, my grand children’s lifetime? No. It won’t be done for many, many generations to come. Is the price of OIL based strictly on US consumption? No. It’s based on global demand. Even if we were to become more efficient that alone has nothing to do with the need and the price of OIL.

  40. Amac has made the most sense to date. Energy efficiency and alternative fuels are thoroughly price-sensitive.

    Trent is quite correct that energy independence does not exist. Energy is too fungible due to low transportation costs, though transportation costs themselves are sensitive to energy prices.

    Much could still be done if failures of imagination are overcome. I went round and round with the general counsel for Pacific Gas & Electric 30 years ago about coal-fired magnethydrodynamic plants. He was familiar with the principle and said it would almost certainly work in practice, but felt that only government intervention could overcome utility and engineering inertia.

    Once energy prices rise significantly, though, coal and oil fired MHD plants would become more attractive.

    FYI, an MHD plant works like this. A “slurry” of specially prepared coal or most any fuel oil is burned at a really high temperature – enough to turn it into a plasma (electrically charged gas). Basically the temperature is made high enough that not merely do the fuel molecules dissolve into atoms, but the atoms themselves have a lot, or most, of their electron shells stripped. This makes the gas (plasma) electrically conductive.

    The plasma is run through magnetic/ionic separators to draw out the impurities which might foul the electric generating process. These separators would produce financially viable amounts of pure forms of those impurities. As an example, the separators would precipitate out the sulphur from coal and oil.

    Then the purified plasma is run through a magnetic coil just as steam turbines fired by normal coal, natural gas or oil fuel spin magnetically conductive cylinders inside electric generators.

    At some point the plasma will cool enough that it becomes a mere superhot, albeit purified, gas which can drive conventional gas turbines.

    Then these superhot gases cool too lot to drive gas turbines, but are still hot enough to boil water for common steam turbines. And then the gases cool enough to pass through ordinary heat exchangers to convert still more heat energy into electricity.

    The purpose of this whole process is greater efficiency in during the potential old pent-up solar energy in the fossil fuels into electricity.

    Ordinary steam turbine electric power plants turn about 25% of the potential heat energy of fossil fuels into electricity. Gas turbine plants (using natural gas) turn about 33% of the potential heat energy of the gas into electricity.

    MHD plants would easily turn 60%+ of the heat energy of even “dirty” coal into electricity. Engineers believed thirty years ago that they could get this up to 80% efficiency.

    This means a doubling or tripling of the energy efficiency of existing fossil fuel power plants, with comparable reductions in environmentally unfriendly emissions. As an example, MHD power plants would emit much less CO2 per unit of energy as much of the C for carbon would be precipitated out of the initial plasma into pure carbon, which has immensely valuable industrial uses.

    But fossil fuel costs have been so low for the past thirty years that there just isn’t a market willingness to invest in new power plant designs. It’s taken them all this time just to get gas turbine plants operational in numbers.

    PG&E’s chief counsel was spot on about this.

    But we can do better, and should.

  41. Trent –

    Good God, you’re right … if we took 20% off of the 25% of the world energy that we use, we’d only save … 5% of the world energy supply!! And God Knows (because you certainly don’t seem to) that might just have an impact on the price curves we’re facing…

    I know it’s more fun to plan the invasion and occupation of Saudi Arabia, but the boring hard work here at home is going to have the real impact. And, I’ll point out, as I’ve said before, help convince the rest of the world that we aren’t in the Middle east just to slake our thirst for cheap oil.

    A.L.

  42. bq. “I went round and round with the general counsel for Pacific Gas & Electric 30 years ago about coal-fired magnethydrodynamic plants.”

    Can I take general consel as in he was a lawyer?

    bq. “Engineers believed thirty years ago that they could get this up to 80% efficiency.”

    Can you point to some literature to support this claim?

  43. 2 points, first, we are remarkably spoiled by the ridiculously low cost of fossil fuels. A gallon of gasoline costs 1.90$, a gallon of water costs maybe half that, and a gallon of milk costs more. Think about that. There arent many things in the world you can by at that price density.

    Secondly, at some point nuclear power is going to come back in a big way and there is no two ways about it. All the other alternative energies are nice little ideas that at best will help on a very small scale. The big elephant in the living room is that hydrogen cells and electric cars all take electricity to produce, and wind and solar arent going to power a quarter billion automobiles, ever. We should be designing new nuke plants and get ahead of the curve as well as upgrading our electricity infastructure. Needless to say this wont happen until a crisis is imminent.

  44. Using BTU/GDP to measure energy efficiency is bogus because the nature of the output is much different. We do less metal bending and more chip making – that’s where most of the ‘savings’ have come from. The subject is best left to the professionals – engineers like SDB.

  45. A.L.

    5% of the current global energy supply is a real but marginal impact now. Look at the demand growth forecasts and the orders of magnitude in play, and it becomes more marginal. Sorry, but Trent is right. Energy independence is a mirage, transportation will continue to use large amounts of oil, and (hat tip to M. Simon and Praktike both) it’s going to take a long time to replace the building stock.

    bq. JK ASIDE: In my personal fantasy world, we would gradually replace the building stock with energy-efficient buildings, AND begin to undo many of the urban design mistakes that have turned our cities into anti-community wastelands, all at the same time. Hey, a guy can dream.

    That said, I find myself in general agreement with JC – which will probably scare him. I’ll add that there are advantages to pushing the envelope on efficient technologies that go beyond America. It’s just that they aren’t where A.L. thinks they are. Consider:

    * As China & India industrialize, the demand shocks created will make efficient designs important to them too. This will have its own impact on restraining demand growth, and if the cards are played right it will create an export industry.

    * Consider, too, the benefits for 3rd-world countries in the “zone of instability” – esp. Africa & Latin America.

    bq.. As global demand forces energy prices up, imagine a combination of alternative technologies that let them take advantage of their own natural assets (incl. sun & wind) locally, and also use energy efficient designs in their own grids that let them serve their needs at a more affordable price (depends on how high prices go, of course, to know if there’s an economic case). This would pay a lot of dividends to both their development and our long term security goals.

    The wild card will be the ability of their institutions to maintain those efficient (and usually advanced/finicky) designs.

    p. Etc.

    So, to sum up… will energy savings in America alone matter much? Not really. Cushion the demand shocks? Very marginally. Solve its problems with the Middle East and need to be engaged there? Not a chance in hell – I think A.L.’s term for that kind of thinking is “bong-hit-driven view of reality.”

    But examples like the ones above show how some investment in “green” technologies now – something BOTH Bush and Kerry have announced support for – may indeed provide some important cushions and levers/tools that would be useful to the West in future. Keeping in mind Dave Schuler’s point about “Economics In One Lesson”, some subsidies may not be a bad thing.

    Meanwhile, we still have unbelievably huge oil reserves locked up in Canada’s tar sands out west, so high oil prices are extremely good news to us. As a famous man once said, “bring it on!”

  46. I am going to limit my comments here to motor fuel.  Roughly 3/4 of all US petroleum consumption goes to transportation use (gasoline and distillate oil which appears to mostly mean diesel), so the impact on transport fuel demand is the crucial measure of a change vis a vis Arab oil income.

    praktike writes:

    Around 40% of US energy consumption is consumed by buildings.

    Unless that energy is from petroleum, or the energy saved can be used to replace petroleum (a very under-appreciated point) it doesn’t matter.

    Rob writes (numbered list format mine):

    1. SDB’s point was that there is no short-term way to get right off of oil.
    2. look at what the first commenter says about cost of photovoltaics- much higher than other energy sources.
    3. Between energy storage/cost problems, I don’t think it is very practical in the short term myself.

    1. SDB hasn’t done the numbers and found that the actual point-of-use energy consumption in vehicles is quite a bit smaller than our electric consumption; the distinction is obscured by the abysmal efficiency of automotive engines and transmissions.  If we built only plug-in hybrids which could run 20 miles on batteries before having to use petroleum, we could reduce our transport fuel requirements by 75% or more.  A solution which could supply as little as 10% of the remainder (turkey guts and trash into oil?) would combine to slash total demand by 5/6.  Could we do this in 5 years?  No, we replace the vehicle fleet too slowly… but we could be well on our way by then.
    2. Who cares what photovoltaics cost?  (they are already cheap enough at current prices to rival the cost of gasoline, but…) The price is due for a huge drop as new technologies come to the fore.  Wind power is down to USD 0.05/KWH, and we’ve got plenty of coal to burn.  The problem which needs to be solved to put any of these to the wheels of a car is storage.  I think there are at least two ways to attack that.
    3. In the short term we can do three things:  move all vehicles to hybrid powertrains (preferably with plug-in capability), do our utmost to reduce energy needs of vehicles (semi-trucks could have their drag cut in half without too much effort), and move all possible non-transport use of petroleum (e.g. for heat) to other fuels.

    Dave Schuler writes:

    In the short term we’re not going to replace the whole U. S. auto and truck fleet. We’re not going to change the entire distribution system from gasoline to some other economy.

    The first is true, the second is half-true.  We are not going to abandon vehicles which still run and still cost less than buying new, BUT:  we already have alternative distribution systems for energy, specifically natural gas and electricity.  Of the two, electricity has both the spare capacity and the flexibility to replace most of the energy supplied by petroleum motor fuels; it is designed for a peak load that is seldom seen, and this unused capacity is a powerful asset.

    The USA still produces roughly 40% of its own petroleum consumption.  If 50% of the vehicles sold in 2008 were plug-in hybrids which ran 2/3 of their mileage on electricity and got 50% better economy on the remainder, we could be looking at the end of dependence on imported oil; each vehicle would reduce fuel consumption by 78% over the one it replaced, so motor fuel demand would be falling by almost 4% per year; if the fraction was 100% by 2012, the rate of decrease would be 8% per year (and imports would fall much faster).  I suspect that this would cause the oil dictatorships to pump their oil as fast as they could, to help reduce the pace of PIH introduction and sell their oil while they still could.  The resulting drop in world oil prices would benefit the world economy and reduce the funds available to Islamic terrorists.

    AMac writes:

    The US economy and the world economy as they are now structured depend on cheap energy. Which means cheap ME oil.

    Yes and no.  Parts of the US economy (electric) are relatively insensitive to oil prices, though they are affected by factors such as rainfall.  Transportation is uniquely affected by the price of oil, but we can probably decrease this dependency if we take the levers we already have and lean on them.

    I’m out of writing time tonight, sorry.

  47. I’m forced to rebut Tom Holsinger:

    Current coal-fired steam plants are roughly 33% efficient, IGCC gets to roughly 40%, gas-fired combined-cycle beats 50%.  Nothing that burns coal is going to get anywhere close to 80%; the entropy produced by the conversion of the fuel to gases is going to force much more than 20% of the energy to be released as waste heat.

    MHD was the concept when it looked like we had a broad “energy crisis” and needed to conserve everything.  Right now we have some difficulties with the suppliers of our petroleum and likely the disposition of CO2, but there is no broad “energy shortage”.  On top of this, the difficulty of MHD turned out to be far higher than was appreciated; we’d be better off using fuel cells (my comments on efficiency here).

  48. Greg F.,

    The guy was PG&E’s chief attorney. And maybe it was 25 years ago, not 30. Certainly it was in the period 1974-79.

    I relied on Jim Baen’s book on the subject published about 30-35 years ago when he was editor of Analog. His current email address is:

    jimbaen@baen.com

    I’m sure things have improved since them. You can also try:

    jerry@jerrypournelle.com

    I know Jerry has kept up on the subject.

  49. Engineer-Poet,

    Thanks for your comments. My MHD knowledge is 25-30 years old.

    Fuel cells do not produce energy. They are merely a form of distributing energy produced elsewhere – just like batteries do.

    MHD is at most a form of producing electric energy at a big sucker power plant.

    You confuse apples with oranges by comparing MHD generators to fuel cells. MHD power plants, like any other power plant, could produce the electric power to crack the fuel for fuel cells, or the hydrogen for some other sort of hydrogen-powered engine.

    We could do much to reduce the adverse environmental effects of fossil fuels used for vehicle transportation, and increase energy efficiency in use of fossil fuels, by moving to some means of vehicle motive power which relies on electric power generated by big power plants fired by nuclear power, IGCC, co-do and whatever. That would run, however, into the immense existing capital investment in gasoline and diesel distribution and production infrastructure vs. the probably equal new investment in the alternative infrastructure.

    In addition to the problems PG&E’s general counsel pointed out.

    I.e., it won’t happen until the financial trade-offs make it happen.

  50. USMC, sorry, I probably wasn’t clear. That’s what I get for dashing off posts when I should be working. 🙂

    I think we agree. People (esp businesses) aren’t going to toss out working equipment to replace it with more energy efficient equipment unless there’s an economic advantage involved. Eventually things will be more efficient, at least a little, but hurrying things along doesn’t usually work.

    Mandates are crude tools that could do more harm than good as usually applied. If BigShippingCo Inc. must spend $10 million to make their corporate HQ and their fleet of trucks slightly more efficient right now, then that’s $10 million that they won’t have available to revamp their shipping procedures to reduce the number of trucks they have on the road and increase profits. And that means that in five years they won’t be buying as many of those brand new diesel-hybrid trucks.

    Or like some coal burning plants, they could be forced to change nothing at all and gain no efficiency lest they be required to change everything at once and spend much more than it’s worth. As others have said far more eloquently, energy efficiency is just one variable in a very complicated equation. This is a good discussion.

  51. Thanks to most posters for damping the wishful-thinking aspects of their favored approaches. Each solution will be maddeningly partial, and incomplete. Each lies at the boundary of outside-the-box thinking (gag), and the limits imposed by physics, economics, and human behavior.

    Each will have significant implementation costs. People, and societies, do stupid and self-destructive things, but people aren’t stupid. The hive-mind collective isn’t stupid. There are reasons why X isn’t already being done, and we have to understand these drawbacks in order to see whether a solution really lies in that direction.

  52. >I know it’s more fun to plan the invasion and
    >occupation of Saudi Arabia, but the boring hard
    >work here at home is going to have the real
    >impact. And, I’ll point out, as I’ve said
    >before, help convince the rest of the world
    >that we aren’t in the Middle east just to slake
    >our thirst for cheap oil.
    >
    >A.L.

    A-Hah! Now we reach the real crux point driving your irrational insistence about “Virtuous American Energy Efficiency” as the solution to everything. It is how you are trying to resolve your cognitive dissonance over what is coming next in the war.

    A.L., it is *irrelevant* how much or how little America uses Middle Eastern oil.

    *_Someone will._*

    The issue was and remains how Middle Eastern cultures, particularly the highly dysfunctional by Arab standards Saudi Arabian culture, _uses that unearned oil income._

    The Pakistani A-Bomb was funded by Saudi oil money. As are the Jihadi Madrassas factories around the world.

    Iraq’s nuclear and other WMD programs were funded by oil money.

    Libya’s nuclear program was funded by oil money.

    Iran’s nuclear program is funded by oil money.

    For America to be safe from WMD attacks at home, America needs to take control of that oil income stream. _There are no other choices._

    Hegemony in self-defense is not empire. You don’t want to go there because you are afraid of America falling to the temptations of empire.

    America’s greatness is not dependent on its political class or military accomplishments. It is based on the goodness of the American people. America has been there and done that when it comes to imperial temptations. The Philippines are not an American administered territory. None of the places we will occupy in the Middle East will remain so, in the long term, either.

    Americans are not wired that way, even if you fear differently.

  53. No, there are non-economic impediments to green buliding.

    The major one is that few developers and contractors are familiar with the tricks of the trade, the possibilities, etc.

    Another is that few financial mechanisms have arisen to take best advantage of energy conservation. Fannie Mae has an energy-efficient mortgage, but few people are aware of it.

    Green buildings can be economic over the long term, but people tend to have high discount rates as well. This is a behavioral problem, not an economic one per se.

  54. praktike,

    PG&E’s chief counsel mentioned all those concerning MHD plants – “not invented here syndrome”, herd mentality, investor nervousness towards wholly new power plant designs as opposed to incremental improvements in existing ones, etc.

  55. Tom Holsinger writes:

    Fuel cells do not produce energy. They are merely a form of distributing energy produced elsewhere – just like batteries do.

    No, fuel cells are chemical->electrical energy conversion devices; some can use primary energy sources.  Had you followed the first link I posted you would have seen how far behind the curve you are.  Both molten-carbonate fuel cells and solid-oxide fuel cells have the capability of burning gaseous fuels (in this case, coal-derived syngas) and converting it to electricity.

    MHD is just a way of converting the kinetic energy of a very hot, fast-moving stream of gas into work.  In this it is not very different from a turbine, and gas-turbine technology has advanced by leaps and bounds while MHD has lain neglected.  High-temperature fuel cells such as MCFC’s or SOFC’s can operate as a topping cycle before a gas turbine, which allows three levels of energy recovery before disposal as heat:

    1. Fuel cell, generating high-temperature gas.
    2. Gas turbine, capturing some of the energy from the gas as shaft work.
    3. Steam turbine, capturing some of the heat energy of the gas-turbine exhaust.

    This has potential for use at the level of individual buidlings.  If the fuel cell is 60% efficient and the gas turbine is 26% efficient (assuming a small turbine as a commercial building might use), the total system efficiency would be ~70%.  If you feed this from a coal gasifier with a chemical efficiency of 76%, your net output is about 53% of the fuel value of the input.  Clever use of the waste heat could increase the effective efficiency to well over 70%, to supply space heat or drive absorption refrigeration systems to give one example.  Such use would displace the energy formerly used to provide those goods, effectively increasing our total energy supply without using any additional fuel.

    People don’t push for these things because they don’t know that they’re possible.  I’m trying to change that.

  56. Re: oil sands.

    I would view the $8 extraction costs with a degree of skepticism. Does it include the whole proess, or just the part where the gouge the heck of the earth? Aren’t refining costs much higher as well?

    Now think about this: they don’t even claim they reach above 550,000 bpd until 2012.

    The Saudis estimate they’ll be well over 10 million by then.

    Heck, little old Qatar is currently doing 900K.

    Just to put things in context.

  57. Suncor…they announced quarterly earnings of $200MM (Canadian), and their return on equity runs around 25%, so it seems to me that oil extraction from the tar sands is clearly a viable business.

    I’m not sure why the production isn’t being expanded faster…I’m guessing it may have something to do with long-term oil prices. Rightly or wrongly, most of the industry seems to think that prices will fall back down to the $30/bbl level or so, which clearly influences the economics for major capital projects.

  58. As China & India industrialize, the demand shocks created will make efficient designs important to them too. This will have its own impact on restraining demand growth, and if the cards are played right it will create an export industry.

    Not if it doesn’t make financial sense for them to do so. Again, for me that’s the problem with Kyoto.

  59. WHAT high gas prices …?

    I bought gas yesterday here at US$1.80 per gallon. In 1970 dollars that is exactly 37.9 cents per gallon. Jump up to $2.00 and it works out to 41.9 cents per gallon — the most common price I paid back in the “Good Old Days” of “cheap oil.”

    The long and the short of it is that for the same constant-dollar money I can go twice as far today as I could in 1970, in a much more comfortable, reliable vehicle.

    If capitalism is ‘inefficient’ and oil is ‘scarce,’ you’ve got an agenda.

  60. If you count the roughly half of pre-9/11 defense spending which went to protection of Middle East shipping against the price of fuel, and the additional 80-odd billion that it has cost us to pry loose some of that oil revenue from a very dangerous regime in just the last year (one down, two to go), that gas doesn’t look so cheap any more.  It only seems cheap because most of the price isn’t paid at the pump.

  61. Engineer-Poet,

    If you’re going to add indirect costs to that side of the balance sheet, I think it’s only fair to include some of the indirect benefits on the reverse side–i.e. stuff beyond the actual oil purchased. This line of reasoning isn’t productive for your case.

  62. I’m quite willing to account for indirect costs of all things; it is the only way to make a decision based on hard data rather than guesswork or wishful thinking.  If you can come up with indirect costs for other sources which come close to the $1.60/gallon in annually recurring costs + $.70/gallon in 2003-4 Iraq-related costs we’re currently paying for oil, I’d love to know what they’re from and how much they are.

    At $4.00/gallon for imported motor fuel we are probably better off making methanol from coal syngas .  That price is probably high enough to drive lots of users to hybrid and even electric vehicles.  The subsidy of oil consumption (and oil-dictatorship income) by the income taxes of Americans has to be counted as a contributing cause of one of the biggest market failures in history.  I propose that we stop it and let the chips fall where they may.

  63. I do not understand why so many people assume that energy technology is going to advance so slowly.

    Does anyone seriously believe that methods to develop cheap photovoltaics will not be found within 10 or at most 20 years? How are nanotech advances not going to enable orders of magnitude declines in photovoltaic costs? Venture capitalists have decided that nanotech photovoltaic breakthroughts are within reach and a number of nanotech photovoltaics start-ups are pursuing cost breakthroughs in photovoltaics.

    Does anyone seriously believe that battery technology will not advance by leaps and bounds? Why aren’t batteries going to become an order of magnitude more energy dense? We already know that there are materials capable of that sort of performance. We just do not yet know how to manufacture them. Donald Sadoway of MIT says lithium polymer batteries an order of magnitude more energy dense than lead acid batteries will make pure electric cars feasible.

    Assuming a mere 10% conversion efficiency for photovoltaics the whole world could be powered with current levels of energy consumption by covering a 300 by 300 mile area with photovoltaics. Given that LANL and LBNL scientists are pursuing approaches that boost efficiency to 50% and even greater efficiency will eventually be achieved I do not see surface space as a problem.

    Also, Den Beste fans: read my exchange with Den Beste on surface area needed for photovoltaics and be sure to read my post on how human structures in the United States cover an area equal to Ohio. Well, we need to cover double that area to provide enough electric power for all the human race at current consumption rates assuming a mere 10% conversion efficiency.

    The rate of technological advance is accelerating. Better instrumentation, faster computers, faster communiucations, a greater foundation of knowledge to work from, and more scientists and engineers employed are all accelerating the rate of technological advance.

    We could accelerate the rate of energy technology advance even faster if we were to start treating energy technology as the national security issue that it so clearly is. There is no alternative approach to the problems we face with the Middle East that can solve those problems quickly. Democratization is no magical cure-all and it is a much longer term project than energy tech development. Yet democratization gets more lip service than energy policy. This is a huge mistake on the level of grand strategy. Better energy policy and accelerated energy tech development could improve national security in the medium to long term. That is more than the democratization pipe dream can hope to accomplish.

  64. Randal Parker gets everything right except logistics.

    Oh, yea. Solar cells have been coming down in price for 40 years in the commercial market. Another 20 years to be cost competitive and then another 20 years to roll out the technology.

    Wind is here (or very close) now.

    The thing is the problems are at the physics and materials science level, that is they are somewhat fundamental.

    People keep believing that if I can make a 30% efficient solar cell today I can cover the roofs of America with them tomorrow.

    Cargo cult technology.

    Everybody with a light switch is an energy expert.

    ======================

    We could accelerate the rate of energy technology advance even faster if we were to start treating energy technology as the national security issue that it so clearly is.

    Nope.

    There are big profits out there for anyone who can figure out how to shave .01% off the nation’s energy bill.

    Doubtful the government can do better today than the people looking for profit.

    The whole idea is nutz.

    I have been doing alternative energy since 1962.

    There ain’t no magic bullet. No hiden research. No secret carburator.

    I suppose if you knowledge of a subject is incomplete the gaps can be filled in with belief.

  65. BTW Randal,

    Solar cells are not going to stop people from wanting to kill us.

    Democratization just might.

    This whole discussion is a fools hope that by avoiding the use of oil we can keep our enemies at bay. You believe that?

    Even better by reducing our oil useage by 25% over a period of 25 to 50 years we can significantly increase our security. This is crazy.

    Win without war.

    Go Kerry.

  66. Battery technology is not going to advance by leaps and bounds because there are physical limits on what can be done.

    We are already using the most reactive chemical we can manage (lithium) for one electrode. Even if we could handle Flourine for the other it is not going to do enough for the wh/lb.

    A protype in the lab is not a produceable, saleable, profitable system.

    ======================================

    You know I think a lot of the craziness in evidence comes from believing in science rather than understanding it.

  67. EP,

    Until we get the world off petrolium we will need to protect world oil supplies even if we don’t use them. Otherwise we run out of customers.

    If that is the case we might as well use the oil too.

    This is the typical progressive humanitarian trick.

    Rather than have a war that kills a few thousand a year we will quit using their oil and they all can starve. By the tens of millions.

    Kill without war. And way more too. How progressive.

    ==========================================

    I really got to ask. How do people who claim everthing is connected learn this disconnected mode of thinking?

    Must be the progressive public school system controlled by the progressive teachers union.

  68. EP,

    Steam systems are maintenance intensive compared to the normal home heating unit. Same for gas turbines.

    Your typical auto engine is designed to run for about 3,000 hours these days. That is about one or two heating seasons before replacement is required. It also (every 100 hours) requires maintenance (oil changes etc).

    BTW re: electric hybrids and fuel savings. Where are you going to get the Twatts that your plan requires.

    I notice you are doing a lot of IFing.

    I can tell you this. If horses were cows then it is possible that pigs are flies. Or something like that.

    I’ll tell you what. If what you want could be done overnight at no cost every one would have one tomorrow and we could starve those Arabs into submission. Right away.

  69. MHD plants,

    No one has yet built a channel that lasts for more than a few tens of hours. The gases produced are corrosive and abrasive.

    The reason the utility guy never went for it? The odds of making it work at reasonable cost was low. Then you have the problem of recycling the alkilai metals.

    Why does every one believe that those ignorant of the problems are best qualified to direct the use of resources? That the people actually invoved in an area are so corrupt that they will not do what is in their interest (make more money from efficiency)?

    It is crazy think.

  70. M. Simon,

    Your argument amounts to the assertion that the rate of technological advance is going to be slow.

    You have been watching alternative energy technologies since 1962. So what. In 1962 people used mechanical typewriters and phonograph records.

    Look at what is happening in the electronic industry with Moore’s Law for microprocessor speed and memory density along with similar phenomena driving increases in hard disk density and optics bandwidth. The electronics industry is accelerating the rate of advance of biotechnology by orders of magnitude by allowing scientific instruments to be built which would otherwise be infeasible and by automating analysis of data and simulation of systems. For example, DNA sequencing machines have been sped up by many orders of magnitude over the last couple of decades while costs have fallen by orders of magnitude.

    The electronics revolution is driving the development of technologies on the nano scale. Those technologies are going to enable the development of many new methods of fabricating batteries, photovoltaics, artificial photosynthesis systems, superconductive materials, and other energy technologies. Those technologies will lower costs by orders of magnitude.

  71. Randall Parker,

    I do not assume a slow rate of technological advance. I’m assuming the technology is here now at an affordable price.

    What I’m arguing is that it takes time to tool up. And that time is a lot longer than you think.

    People have been fooling “civilians” with prototypes for a very long time.

    BTW dude I’m not unaware of the progress of the micro revolution I was excited when Poptronics did the Altair in Jan’75. By April I had my hands on one. By 78 or so I had designed the I/O board that went into the world’s first BBS. Randy and Ward were friends.

    I’m actually basing my thinking on that experience and about 40+ years in the energy business including Nuc Reactor operator and design and test of aircraft elecrical systems, generator controls for same, and a whole list of other stuff too numerous to mention.

    BTW how is your differential calculus? Because this is a differential rate of change problem. In the aggregate. At the micro level things come in chunks. We have no idea how to make the chunks let alone make them in mass quantities at affordable prices.

    Do an energy balance on producing alcohol using the best bug you can possibly make. What is the best we can do? After you have done that please advise on how we get there. Or close. Economically.

    If you can’t run the numbers you are blowing smoke.

    For instance suppose we made the stuff in steel vats. What is the marginal capacity of the world economy for high quality steel vats? How soon can it be ramped up? Where is the excess chromium coming from? At what price? etc.

    I’m sorry to tell you the bad news.

    Clueless.

    I’m not saying that it will not be done. Just that you have no idea on what is required to make the change happen.

    Everybody understands R&D. Make one.

    Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, few understand production and what it takes to retool not just an industry but an economy.

    BTW before we go further. I need to know if you know Carnot. A short explanation will do. Same for Maxwell’s demon.

    The next guy will be asked different questions.

    Did I mention the easiest way to speed all this up if you want to? Buy and install some eqpt.

    Or go to work in a DNA lab.

    Get some practical experience not just what you read in the tabloid science section of the newspaper or what Dan Rather can explain to you.

    If you knew my business as well as I did, I might accept from you that I don’t know my business. It is evident the reverse is the case.

    One of anything can be done in isolation. Watts, marbles, even grains of sand. But when the requirement goes up to trillions or trillions of trillions it gets way way more difficult.

    I mean really. I’d never followed the microchip revolution and was unaware of micro and nano technology. And I never thought of that stuff in relationship to energy technology. Fourty years in the business and still a narrow ignorant fool like all those pro business people. Never learned nothing new in his whole life. Feh.

    Let me give you the short answer. It ain’t going to come any faster by your screaming about it. It might come faster if you actually did some work on the project.

  72. In other words. Stop waving your hands and telling me what is possible.

    Get to work on the project. Contribute something besides your mouth.

    Just do it.

  73. Simon: “For instance suppose we made the stuff in steel vats.”

    Or maybe someone will grow algae in salt lakes in the desert to produce biodiesel.

    http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

    “Stop waving your hands and telling me what is possible.
    Get to work on the project. Contribute something besides your mouth.”

    Simon, I agree with many of your statements regarding the difficulty of lowering our dependence on oil. But your last comments are way out of line.

    I read blogs to share information and engage in healthy debate. That is a worthwhile exercise and can be more effective at changing the world than working in a lab. Many people are working in the lab and creating the answers to our energy problems. Other people are making certain that the world hears about their work.

    In your last comments you made personal attacks and claimed special expertise. If you have the expertise then use it to argue your case. Don’t use it to shut down debate.

    I also worked in a high tech industry that was very capital intensive and very complex. I know first hand how difficult it can be for companies to adapt to new technologies. The communications industry adapted from mechanical relays to computer switches, from electrical transmission lines to fiber optics, from analog signals to data packets. When disruptive technology arrives, companies adjust or die.

    Disruptive technologies for energy production are being developed in the labs today and people are going to keep telling you about them whether you want to hear or not.

    My personal opinion is that new energy developments will have little impact on the WoT. However, I know I could be wrong. Many industry experts were wrong about how quickly the telecommunications industry would change.

  74. M. Simon,

    I second the response by Fly.  Your tone is way out of line, and you would never accept the tactics you are using if they were used against you.  What credibility you had is going down the sewer.  If you will not clean up your own act, you will receive no more responses from me beyond pointers to some of your “Big Lie” tactics and a solid refutation or two.

    For my part, I’m going to refute the express and implied claims in your post.

    Steam systems are maintenance intensive compared to the normal home heating unit.

    Steam turbines are tertiary recovery after a fuel cell/gas turbine system.  They would only be cost-effective in very large installations.  Comparing them against home installations is misleading because you’d never install one in a home (though you may install one in a downtown co-generation plant and distribute the spent steam for space heat).

    Same for gas turbines.

    Not so.  Would you believe no fluid changes (because no fluids) and the only maintenance required after 8000 hours is a filter change?  The 30 KWe Capstone unit is about 10x too big for a home, but it wouldn’t take much of a discount store or strip mall to employ several of them.

    Your typical auto engine is designed to run for about 3,000 hours these days.

    3,000 hours is 100,000 miles or so to a car.  Auto engines are designed to get past the warranty interval, which is why they don’t have pre-oilers and the like.

    An internal-combustion co-generation unit intended for home use would have different design criteria and doubtless a longer lifespan.  This should be very easy to do, because a cogenerator could have the bulk and weight of an auto engine but only needs to produce 3-5 KW.  If the unit operates at an average duty cycle of 35% over a 180-day heating season, it would need to run for about 1500 hours/year.  If it is built for the same 20,000 hour top-overhaul interval of low-speed engines, it would not need service for about 13 years.

    13 years is probably a good spec for such a unit, because the state of the art in 2020 will probably be some kind of fuel cell and it would be time to upgrade from a 30-40% efficient unit to 60%.

    Where are you going to get the Twatts that your plan requires.

    Terawatts?  That’s a Big Lie.  From the EIA figures for 2002, transportation consumed 2.5 million barrels/day of distillate oil (diesel) and 8.7 mmbd of gasoline.  At 44 gal/bbl, 130,000 BTU/gal and 35% conversion efficiency for diesel and 115,000 BTU/gal and 20% conversion efficiency for gasoline, there is only 170 GW of output; the raw fuel input only amounts to 720 GW.

    Total US generation capacity amounts to roughly 1 TW.  Using some of that capacity to charge partially-electric vehicles in the off hours would not exercise the distribution system and would allow better cost recovery on base-load plants.

    If what you want could be done overnight at no cost…

    You should break off your love affair with straw men.

    If a full accounting of the cost of gasoline (defense and pollution as well as the market price of crude) puts it at $4.00/gallon, we’d pay considerably less to run on electricity than we do for petroleum.  At $.10/KWH and 340 WH/mile (EPRI figure) electricity costs half or less what gasoline costs even at current prices; the full price would add to both sides, but electricity would be a much bigger winner.  Even so, the environmentalist’s holy grail of solar-powered transport might already be competitive with gasoline, if just barely.

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