Today's post comes from our regular contributing blogger ARC (A Radical Centrist).
Gasoline is over $4 per gallon and the push for ethanol is driving global food prices higher (no it’s not just the recession). What are we going to do about it?
That is the important point in any problem. What are we going to DO? We can keep talking about “energy independence” and alternative or renewable energy. We can keep hoping the market will fill the need. Or we can DO something.
The US Department of Energy has a great website, though I doubt it is oft visited. On that site you can find information on solar(1) and wind energy and even wind maps(2) indicating the areas best suited for wind farms. Elsewhere you can find maps indicating average solar intensity for use in generating power(3). The market is barely starting to turn to these sources AFTER we have entered a real decline in oil availability(4) and a spiking of prices. But the “market” is not geared for long term thinking. It is a short term system based on filling an existing need and profiting off of it. So this image of going green is more PR than substance. Often the market actor who anticipates a trend or need looses out on market share. Just look at BetaMax, Apple (particularly in the 90s) Computers, or the Tucker automobile. And frankly that is just how the market should be, profit driven. So as long as these alternatives remain more expensive (and more inconvenient for industry) than traditional generation methods they will not go mainstream.
But government is different, government should be solution driven, forward thinking, forcing the market to respond to conditions that improve our standard of living and our society as a whole. Government should protect us, the market should enrich us. Much like scientific and religious views of creation both should be taught in school, just not in the same classroom, these two systems are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact they can each benefit from the other. Government enacted safety regulations for automobiles were anticipated in the Tucker (seat belts, safety windshields), but the industry did not adopt them ‘til they were forced to. When they were made to do “the right thing” they still managed to make money.
In what may be a bad example, the auto industry took off on two pillars in the 1950s. First the market drove auto and oil companies to buy up commuter rail systems and shut them down all over the country (more than 5000 miles in Los Angeles alone) in order to force people to use cars(5). Second, and to my point, the Federal government, under first Franklin Roosevelt and, to a greater extent later, Dwight D. Eisenhower, started building the national highway system(6). That highway system promoted the use of cars, and increased interstate commerce. If we had built the highway system based on “market” actors taking the initiative we would be driving around on 2 lane highways and paying tolls for the privilege.
I know highways are a pedestrian example to use here, but it gets straight to the point. Government can and should set the conditions to steer the market to our benefit not just our short term profit. Energy is the biggest problem we face right now, driving up prices, driving up our cost of living, making us more dependent on others. Stop incentivizing the market status quo with oil company tax breaks. Create competition and force them to change their business paradigm.
A solar farm, using existing photo-voltaic cell technology, measuring 100 miles by 100 miles (that is a lot I know, 10,000 square miles) placed in the desert southwest would more than meet the peak electrical demand for the entire United States during daylight hours(7). A farm only 10 miles by 10 miles would meet more than 1% of our demand. It does not sound like a lot, but it would be a BIG start. Expensive, probably, but if the government does it, they don’t need to make profit, they need only charge the national average per kw/h in order to give the market a push, and start getting us off fossil fuels. Any financial return on the investment could be reinvested into sustaining the system and developing newer solutions. If it pays for itself great! If not, it is still cheaper than the alternative of doing nothing.
An average 1 MW wind turbine can provide power day and night, year round (as long as the wind is blowing) for over 200 homes(8). Again, not a lot, but if each subdivision had one, wow, what an impact that could have.
I could go on and on and on. And that is part of the problem. We could TALK about hydro power, thermal energy, even new technology nuclear power, or hydrogen. Then we could TALK some more about bird strikes on wind turbines, the cost of solar cells, how ethanol is driving corn (and indirectly wheat) prices up, the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear waste, or how we are running out of water so making hydrogen is foolish. Meanwhile oil gets scarcer, the climate gets warmer (which will kill a LOT more birds than any wind turbines) the market gurus get richer, and the average American gets poorer.
To paraphrase a once popular and altogether kitschy television show, “We have the technology; we can make it better…” We just need to do something. So what do Senators Obama and McCain propose we do?
ARC
(1) http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/
(2) http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/wind_maps.asp
(3) http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/solarenergy.html
(4) http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
(5) http://www.urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=508
(6) http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/interstate.cfm
(7) http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2004/renew-energy-batt/Stirling.html
(8) http://www.citizensenergy.com/english/pages/28/about-wind-energy
9 comments:
One small quibble, though not really about your overall point. I don't really like to see Apple lumped together with Tucker and Betamax. I have to defend my OS of choice, as it were, and point out that Apple has nearly tripled its market share in the last 5 years, in terms of overall computing. Not only are they selling more computers than ever, but they are also the number one retailer of music, surpassing Walmart and Amazon. I could go on to discuss the iPod and iPhone phenomenon, but I know that I have seriously strayed off your real point, and for that I apologize.
I used Apple only to illustrate how they (and perhaps it would bve better to say Xerox) pioneered the clickable use OS interface only to have Microsoft steal their thunder. Apple has definitely held its own (unlike my other examples) and that is tribute to the company and its innovation. I love my iPod!
But hey, emphasis on computers brings about another illustrative example. The internet. A DARPA funded program from the 70's and 80's, the internet is a perfect example of government programmatics leading to a new market paradigm. You need only be over 35 to understand how radical that shift was, and under 30 to probably never be able to imagine a world before that shift.
I suggest you refine your footnote URLs to zoom the reader in on the specific reference, not the general website; that's a pet peeve of mine, I'm running into it all the time.
If you are going to be anonymous, perhaps that does encourage a bit of sniping? Sorry!
The problem with alternative energy has primarily been the scale of these things. Somehow your examples are trying to make it seem like the lack of scale is a lack of imagination.
10,000 square miles is not just a lot, it is monumental, approximately the states of New Jersey and Delaware combined.
Putting a windmill in each subdivision makes it sound very do-able, but it hides the fact that it makes more sense to place them mostly together in zones for common construction and maintenance and best wind potential. And we're probably talking 10,000 square miles again. When I see these wind farms, BTW, I always notice some of the windmills aren't working.
And we are assuming the people writing these articles have their facts right, always something to be confirmed.
So why am I being such a stick in the mud? I'd like to see us get off our dependence on oil, too, but I don't believe it's going to happen the most environmentally friendly way. Coal is the energy source we have a lot of, and it eventually will probably fuel our cars in the future: that coal will be converted to oil when it is profitable to do so.
As far as your point about the government leading the way, well, for every example of doing so wisely I think you can find 20 examples of complete idiocy. How was the price of gas shooting up handled last time around? Price controls and the monstrous lines they created. All the ideas for alternative energy of those days got the subsidy rugs pulled out from under them, another neat little bit of wisdom of Big Brother.
I realize I'm painting a picture with a lot of problems. We'll probably accept more pollution in the future. We'll probably just accept global warming affects. We are very unlikely to ever embrace solar and wind unless we have run out of other options.
Here is a prediction: in 20 years we will look back at California and say 'wow, they showed us the way' or 'wow, they sure showed the stupidity of sticking your head in the environmentalist sand'. So far, California has refused to produce electricity from any traditional energy sources with the result that they are importing it from other states like crazy. Maybe we'll find that they solved the problems with the scale of the 'green' energy sources they are relying on. Meantime, Environmentalists, call your office.
For the record, I couldn't get the footnotes to come out right, so that was probably my fault. I do not know html and I could not get them to behave properly.
I'm happy to take pointers.
why not just use hyperlinks? toy around with your toolbar , with mouse-over it should indicate "link"
you have to use html? na, just the toolbar.
In particular I can't get linked right on footnote #7, which continues to give me fits, now its 'page not found'
The secret identity of ARC is the angry moderate?
No, the Angry Moderate is not ARC. I thought you had to use html to upload the pictures.
I am absolutely against using coal as an energy source. As Jon Stewart has said time and again, we need to declare an energy race, just like we had a space race. The Government needs to pull in scientists and make them work on it until it is done.
I wish we could use garbage as a fuel source. That would solve many problems all at once.
Marsha - there are a number of garbage to electricity systems out there, they all fall under an old term "pyrolysis".
carlw4514 - your points are well taken. My point about scale was that it is doable in an iterative way. As for wind turbines. Yes often in farms there are some not working, for maintenance, or based on the load needed for the grid. The same is true in traditional elctricity plants, they will surge when the capacity is needed.
In Europe you see both wind farms and individual turbines tied to industrial locations, farms, and housing clusters.
The idea of decentralized energy production has been around in a serious way for about 35 years. The advantages in terms of "grid" maintenance are well layed out. But like many of these ideas it is only part of the solution.
Finally it still comes down to action. We need action, not talk. The time for talk has passed. Will we make mistakes, absolutely. But to not do anything is a mistake that we cannot afford.
Getting to know your toolbar does the images too.
Garbage as fuel? Well, back in the last energy crisis I invested in a company that did just that. Lost my ass, too. If you investigate, you'll find tons of people made similarly bad investments trying to latch on to new ideas about alternative energy, and they lost bundles of money too. Many were quite intelligent people. William Simon comes to mind.
This has created a class of people I belong to who are now curmudgeonly-skeptical about anything that seems like a goof-ball energy crisis idea. Don't get me started on ethanol and other idiotic uses of corn [in my line of work, we are finding Dupont is trying to make carpet fiber out of corn. Greenwashing gone insane!]
You'll have to forgive me, the money I lost back was very dear, I had very little in those days. I made the mistake of putting all my eggs in one basket, so you can see I was a foolish young investor in more ways than one. This time around, any ideas I see have to pass the smell test. I hereby apologize to ARC if he thinks I went overboard: you see, there's a wounded class of people out there....
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