[note - I moved this to its own thread, because I felt bad about kidnapping the economist one]

I really appreciate this response. I am not as informed as I would like to be, partly because I don't have the time to track down scholarly books and research on the matter, and I tend to ignore most of the stuff put out by political groups.

I have only a few comments on what you wrote, and then at the bottom I have pasted some excerpts from Lester Brown's book, available at

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/PB3ch12_ss2.htm

I am not at all claiming to buy in to his plans, merely that I find them to be a compelling argument, if they are correctly represented.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Emmie, won't repeat the post in the interest of brevity.

I would describe your thoughts about energy as somewhat ill-informed, but as usual, agree or disagree, you do a good job of presenting your points without being objectionable, and in that spirit I'd like to try to add some perspective that may help you understand the issues better.

Looking at the numbers is the best way to understand that we need alternatives AND we need drill here, drill now, AND we need conservation. Probably about equal parts of all three, at least that would be a good way to start out, and adjust from there as we gain experience.

We use 20 million barrels of oil per day, of which we import 13 million barrels, the latter number being similar to the amount of that oil we use for transportation.

Good to know the numbers. I'm now wondering how we translate barrels of oil into megawatts? Obviously as you pointed out, that would require a shift to electric or hybrid cars, since transportation uses so much energy for a country that's mostly empty space.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  In addition to the foregoing, any alternative currently under consideration suffers from at least one of the following deficiencies:
1. Scale -- the source simply isn't, and cannot be, big enough to displace enough oil to matter
2. Infrastructure -- the source itself may be there, and may even be ready to go, but the necessary infrastructure to get it to flow easily in the stream of commerce isn't there, and isn't going to be there any time soon
3. Price -- the source is much more expensive than oil

I agree these are all current impediments, and I think one problem with waiting for "the market" to find an alternative solution is that no company (rightly so) can afford the investment of thinking that long-term.

Specifically,

1. Scale - I found Brown's numbers (see below) to make a compelling case for wind being a big producer. Which was interesting, because I had always been more interested, myself, in solar (I'm an astrophysicist - you can power all the world for a year on something like 10 minutes of solar irradiation just over the earth). So you might not be able to get rid of oil completely (I don't think anyone expects that for a long, long while) but perhaps we can make a sizeable dent - IF we make the necessary investments? I realize the cars thing is a big part of that IF.

2. This kind of goes in hand with 1. Of course we don't have it NOW, but if the government invested in it ala the Go to the Moon mandate in the 60s, I think we're technologically capable.

3. True, thus I expect we'll only get somewhere with government taking the charge, sorry to say.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Wind, and most other alternatives addressed in the current Obama proposals, are not substitutes for oil. This is why I say that Obama's plan will have us importing more oil in 2015 than we do today; it's alternatives won't displace current oil consumption nearly as fast as its prohibitions on drilling will cause domestic production to decline, leaving a wider gap then than now. Wind makes electricity; we currently get less than 3% of our electricity from oil.

Wow, that is a lot lower than I would have expected. But consider that oil is not the only thing to be replaced - I mean all non-renewables are at issue, aren't they?

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  The way that wind could impact oil consumption is widespread adoption of electric cars. [...] We need way more than a million electric cars on the road, but that will have to wait for two developments:

1. Enough electric generation capacity, and enough transmission capacity, that when people go home at night and plug in their cars to charge, it won't black out the country. This means we need wind and solar and nuclear. A big problem with wind and solar is that they aren't "on demand" sources; if we get a spike in demand on a cloudy day (or at night) and the wind isn't blowing, wind and solar can't fill that need. Nuclear can, as can natural gas (and to a lesser degree coal and oil fired plants, which require more warmup time).

There are some interesting thoughts on "base" power from renewables out there. I think a lot of people have been thinking about the ways to get storage working - i.e., an on-demand system is what causes a lot of our problems. This is a useful idea regardless of where energy production goes, and I hope there is a tech solution out there. Again, addressed below I believe.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  2. Improved batteries to store electricity more effectively and efficiently, so that the range of electric cars can be expanded. Proponents like to point out that the current range is about 50 miles, and the average commute is about 25 miles, so the present situation is "perfect." It's anything but [...]

I don't disagree that this is less than perfect. But here's a more radical idea: stop using personal vehicles for commuting!! I am still very upset that lobbyists are so successful at killing high speed trains in this country. And our own inability as Americans to walk more than the distance from our cars to the grocery store. But I am a lefty hippie, I know.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  One problem with electric cars, and with CAFE standards (another favorite of the left) is that we only turn over about 7% of our national motor fleet every year. [...]
One thing that would get us over the hump is sugar cane ethanol. [...] Sugar cane has one huge advantage over corn--it is 4 times as efficient a source. [...] We can't produce enough sugar cane domestically to replicate Brasil's experience, but we can come pretty close by importing from Brasil and other Latin American countries.

I would worry about this causing the US to get involved in more dictatorships and cartels. I don't know if latin america is much better than the middle east. I am also not sold that sugar cane is a great solution. Maybe it is a good interim one, but I think there are issues beyond cost and production. Like land and water use, other environmental effects. I wish I knew more.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  [...]
As for drill here, drill now, it's probably not the long-term solution (although that's not absolutely certain, as I will explain), but it's an awfully important part of surviving the next few years. [...] Drill here, drill now would immediately reduce the pressure on the futures price, and that would in turn reduce the upward impact of speculation on the current price.

I think I agree with the other poster, though, that we don't necessarily want prices to stay low - though I understand high gas prices probably mess with our economic recovery, I don't know how far youll get in radically changing the energy industry without the public support. And high prices are one way to get their support.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Much is made of the fact that we only have enough worldwide oil and gas reserves for 10 years or so more production. That's not a geological fact, it's an economic fact. The economics of the industry are such that it doesn't make economic sense to have more than about 10 years of reserves at any point. So stuff doesn't get developed faster. As a result, we've had roughly 10 years worth of reserves at pretty much any point for the last 100 years, we've continued to produce at faster and faster rates, and we've never run out. We're very unlikely to run out, or even threaten to run out, any time soon. But that day will come someday, and it's not too early to start transitioning away from oil in anticipation.

Speaking of ANWR, I'd be in no hurry to develop it. Each year we wait brings us new discoveries of how to minimize environmental damage. At some point, it will make lots of sense to develop it, so I would never support a permanent ban. But I think it makes a lot of sense to keep it in our hip pocket, and don't play that card until the time is right. And my best guess is that the time will be right when the world truly starts to find the string of new discoveries running out.

Can't argue the economics here, as you obviously know much more than I. But I worry about complacency in regards to only thinking about the immediate environmental effects (spills and such) when there is also (and I am not a GW alarmist) at least the consideration of global climate effects, etc.

(07-22-2009 11:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Those are some thoughts. Consider them and perhaps we could explore some of them further.

As for the scenario you laid out. Yes, we could easily transition to making windmills for the next few years, and our automakers might be a good place to look for that, since they don't seem adept at making autos any more. But while it would be a good thing, it wouldn't really put a dent in our oil demand. And we need to be looking at reducing demand--and increasing supply--in that specific area.

I guess the big key is whether it's feasible to concomitantly change the transportation industry in America along with Energy - maybe that's too much for a nation focused on the here and now. I don't know what kind of investment it would take, but to get high-speed electric trains, subways/electric buses, electric cars all running on wind energy would be worth it, in my opinion.

Here is the relevant section of the book I mentioned, sorry for the length:

Plan B 3.0 pid=' Wrote:HARNESSING THE WIND

A worldwide survey of wind energy by the Stanford team of Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson concluded that harnessing one fifth of the earth’s available wind energy would provide seven times as much electricity as the world currently uses. For example, China—with vast wind-swept plains in the north and west, countless mountain ridges, and a long coastline, all rich with wind—has enough readily harnessable wind energy to easily double its current electrical generating capacity. 5

In 1991 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released a national wind resource inventory, noting that three wind-rich states— North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Advances in wind turbine design since then allow turbines to operate at lower wind speeds and to convert wind into electricity more efficiently. And because they are now 100 meters tall, instead of less than 40 meters, they harvest a far larger, stronger, and more reliable wind regime, generating 20 times as much electricity as the turbines installed in the early 1980s when modern wind power development began. With these new turbine technologies, the three states singled out by DOE could satisfy not only national electricity needs but national energy needs. 6

In addition, a 2005 DOE assessment of offshore wind energy concluded that U.S. offshore wind out to a distance of 50 miles alone is sufficient to meet 70 percent of national electricity needs. Europe is already tapping its offshore wind. A 2004 assessment by the Garrad Hassan wind energy consulting group concluded that if governments aggressively develop their vast offshore resources, wind could supply all of Europe’s residential electricity by 2020. 7

From 2000 to 2007, world wind generating capacity increased from 18,000 megawatts to an estimated 92,000 megawatts. In early 2008 it will pass the 100,000-megawatt milestone. Since 2000, capacity has been growing at 25 percent annually, doubling every three years. 8

The world leader in total capacity is Germany, followed by the United States, Spain, India, and Denmark. Measured by share of national electricity supplied by wind, Denmark is the leader, at 20 percent. Three north German states now get more than 30 percent of their electricity from wind. For Germany as a whole, it is 7 percent—and climbing. 9

Denmark is now looking to push the wind share of its electricity to 50 percent, with most of the additional power coming from offshore. In contemplating the prospect of wind becoming the leading source of electricity, Danish planners have turned energy policy upside down. They are looking at using wind as the mainstay of their electrical generating system and fossil-fuel-generated power to fill in when the wind ebbs. 10

For many years now, the top five countries—with roughly 70 percent of world wind generating capacity—have dominated growth in the industry, but this is now changing as the industry goes global, with 70 countries now harnessing their wind resources. Among the emerging wind powers are China, France, and Canada, each of which doubled its wind electric generation in 2006. 11

One of the early concerns with wind energy was the risk it posed to birds, but this can be overcome by conducting studies and careful siting to avoid risky areas for birds. The most recent research indicates that bird fatalities from wind farms are minuscule compared with deaths from flying into skyscrapers, colliding with cars, or being captured by cats. 12

Other critics are concerned about the visual effect. When some people see a wind farm they see a blight on the landscape. Others see a civilization-saving source of energy. Although there are NIMBY problems (“not in my backyard”), the PIMBY response (“put it in my backyard”) is much more pervasive. Within U.S. communities, for instance, among ranchers in Colorado or dairy farmers in upstate New York, the competition for wind farms is intense. This is not surprising, since a large, advanced design wind turbine can generate $300,000 worth of electricity in a year. Farmers, with no investment on their part, typically receive $3,000–10,000 a year in royalties for each wind turbine erected on their land. 13

One of wind’s attractions is that it requires so little land compared with other sources of renewable energy. For example, a corn farmer in northern Iowa can put a wind turbine on a quarter-acre of land that can produce $300,000 worth of electricity per year. This same quarter-acre would produce 40 bushels of corn that in turn could produce 120 gallons of ethanol worth $300. Since the turbines occupy less than 1 percent of the land in a wind farm, this technology lets farmers harvest both energy and crops from the same land. Thousands of ranchers in the wind-rich Great Plains will soon be earning more from wind royalties than from cattle sales. 14

At the moment, growth in wind electricity generation is primarily constrained by wind turbine manufacturing capacity. But the important question is how much of the world’s energy needs can wind power meet. To gain perspective, we look at what governments are planning, the size of wind farms under construction and proposed, and the transmission lines that are being planned. 15

The official U.S. goal of one day getting 20 percent of its electricity from wind means developing at least 300,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity. Since 1 megawatt of wind generating capacity can supply electricity to 300 U.S. homes, wind development on this scale would satisfy the needs of 90 million households. In France, a newcomer to wind energy, the government target is 14,000 megawatts of wind by 2010. Spain, which already has nearly 12,000 megawatts of capacity, is shooting for 20,000 megawatts by 2010. 16

At the local level, Texas, the state that long led the country in oil production, has taken the lead in wind generation as well. Governor Rick Perry assembled a number of wind farm developers and transmission line builders to link wind-rich west Texas and the Texas panhandle to the state’s population centers. This package could lead to the development of 23,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity, enough to satisfy the residential electricity needs of 7 million homes. 17

In California, the electric utility Southern California Edison is planning a 4,500-megawatt wind project in the southern end of the state. In east central South Dakota, Clipper Windpower has purchased wind rights on enough land to develop 3,000 megawatts of generating capacity. At the national level, wind farm proposals in late 2007 exceeded an estimated 100,000 megawatts, nearly 10 times existing capacity. 18

In Canada, Katabatic Power and Deutsche Bank are planning a 3,000-megawatt wind farm in British Columbia, which would produce enough electricity to supply some 900,000 homes. The United Kingdom has a 1,000-megawatt offshore wind farm, the London Array, under construction in the Severn Estuary and a 1,500-megawatt wind farm, the Atlantic Array, off the coast of Devon, in the planning stage. Germany is planning several offshore wind farms of a similar size. And China has several 1,000-megawatt wind farms on the drawing board. 19

Another clue to the scale of future wind farm development can be seen in transmission lines under construction and being planned. Legislatures in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Minnesota in the United States combined their support for huge wind farm complexes with the construction of transmission lines to ensure that the two move forward together, avoiding the chicken-and-egg problem. 20

A number of interstate transmission lines are also being built and discussed. In the north central United States, wind farms in eastern North Dakota and South Dakota are being linked to load centers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A group of operators is proposing a transmission line that would link the vast wind resources of Kansas and Oklahoma with the southeastern United States, carrying electricity from proposed wind farms with 13,000 megawatts of generating capacity. Another group in the upper Midwest is looking at transmission lines that will link the wind resource riches of the Dakotas with the densely populated East Coast. In the West, the governors of California, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming have agreed to build a “Frontier Line” that would link the low-cost wind resources of Wyoming with Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and power-hungry California. 21

In Europe, Airtricity, an Irish development firm with wind farms in several countries, and ABB, a leader in building energy infrastructure, have proposed an offshore super-grid for Europe stretching from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea and southward to the coast of Spain. This grid would not only aid in realizing Europe’s huge offshore wind potential, it would link national grids with each other, thus facilitating more-efficient electricity use throughout the continent. To begin, the companies propose a 10,000-megawatt wind farm project in the North Sea between Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands that would supply 6 million homes with electricity. 22

Wind is the centerpiece of the Plan B energy economy. It is abundant, low cost, and widely distributed; it scales up easily and can be developed quickly. Oil wells go dry and coal seams run out, but the earth’s wind resources cannot be depleted.

Plan B involves a crash program to develop 3 million megawatts of wind generating capacity by 2020. This will require a near doubling of capacity every two years, up from the doubling every three years for the last decade. It will mean 1 megawatt for every 2,500 of the world’s projected 2020 population of 7.5 billion people. Denmark—with 1 megawatt for every 1,700 people—is already well beyond this goal. Spain will likely exceed this per capita goal before 2010 and Germany shortly thereafter. 23

This climate-stabilizing initiative would require the installation of 1.5 million 2-megawatt wind turbines. Manufacturing such a huge number of wind turbines over the next 12 years sounds intimidating until the initiative is compared with the 65 million cars the world produces each year. At $3 million per installed turbine, this would involve investing $4.5 trillion over the next dozen years, or $375 billion per year. This compares with world oil and gas capital expenditures that are projected to reach $1 trillion per year by 2016. 24

Wind turbines can be mass-produced on assembly lines. Indeed, the idled capacity in the U.S. automobile industry is sufficient to produce the wind turbines to reach the Plan B global goal. 25

Not only do the idle plants exist, but there are skilled workers in these communities eager to return to work. The state of Michigan, for example, in the heart of the wind-rich Great Lakes region, has more than its share of idled auto assembly plants. The Spanish firm Gamesa, a leading wind turbine manufacturer, recently set up operations in an abandoned U.S. Steel plant in Pennsylvania. 26

(07-23-2009 08:57 AM)emmiesix Wrote:  1. Scale - I found Brown's numbers (see below) to make a compelling case for wind being a big producer. Which was interesting, because I had always been more interested, myself, in solar (I'm an astrophysicist - you can power all the world for a year on something like 10 minutes of solar irradiation just over the earth). So you might not be able to get rid of oil completely (I don't think anyone expects that for a long, long while) but perhaps we can make a sizeable dent - IF we make the necessary investments? I realize the cars thing is a big part of that IF.
2. [Infrastructure] This kind of goes in hand with 1. Of course we don't have it NOW, but if the government invested in it ala the Go to the Moon mandate in the 60s, I think we're technologically capable.
3. [Price] True, thus I expect we'll only get somewhere with government taking the charge, sorry to say.

If you tax oil up to where alternatives are competitive, you go a long way to address 3. You have to offset that, at least in large part, by tax cuts elsewhere, or else you maim the economy horrendously. Cap-and-trade is one way to accomplish the first part (maybe not the best way, but one way), but the current proposal doesn't address the second part. The offset has to be done, or else C&T simply turns us into a third-world country--seriously. With the residual revenues you make the kinds of infrastructure improvements you have described--high-speed rail, mass transit, improved electric grid, etc. When those things are in place, expanding the scale of whatever alternatives have proved to bear fruit can then take place.

Quote:I would worry about this causing the US to get involved in more dictatorships and cartels. I don't know if latin america is much better than the middle east. I am also not sold that sugar cane is a great solution. Maybe it is a good interim one, but I think there are issues beyond cost and production. Like land and water use, other environmental effects. I wish I knew more.

The big problem with Latin America is that their economies don't work. This leaves masses of uneducated poor people who are easily swayed, leading to widespread instability. This is a very different problem from the ideological instability and incompatibility in the middle east.

Improving their economies would ease things immensely. This would improve their economies. Worst case, I think Latin America is much more reasonably within the US sphere of influence that Iraq or Afghanistan.

Quote:I think I agree with the other poster, though, that we don't necessarily want prices to stay low - though I understand high gas prices probably mess with our economic recovery, I don't know how far youll get in radically changing the energy industry without the public support. And high prices are one way to get their support.

Again, I don't see low consumer prices as a good thing. We need to tax energy up to where consumers are paying realistic prices that reflect social as well as economic prices. We just have to offset somewhere else so that we don't kill our economy in the process.

Quote:I worry about complacency in regards to only thinking about the immediate environmental effects (spills and such) when there is also (and I am not a GW alarmist) at least the consideration of global climate effects, etc.

I'm a GW skeptic, but I can't imagine that we can alter the earth's atmosphere materially without producing harm somewhere. We need to get to alternatives ASAP. But we also need to be realistic. We're not going to get there tomorrow. And we need to manage the process to limit the immediate economic and other harms during the transition, else the "me first" American population will with draw support and the effort will die. Then one day we will drive off the cliff, and that will be catastrophic.

Quote:I don't know what kind of investment it would take, but to get high-speed electric trains, subways/electric buses, electric cars all running on wind energy would be worth it, in my opinion.

We need all of the above, although the link you are trying to make is not exactly realistic. But if it helps you to dream that way, more power to you, it won't lead you far astray.

What we have right now is a bunch of people throwing things up on the wall to see what sticks. What we need is a coherent plan.

Here's how I'd approach it. We use 20 million barrels of oil a day, and we import 13 million barrels of oil a day. The target is to make that 13 million barrels of imported oil go to zero. We do that and we'll be better off in terms of our economy and our national security and our environment. Split it up 1/3-1/3-1/3 among conservation, alternatives, and additional production from conventional sources. You conservationists, find 4-1/2 million barrels a day of savings. You advocates of alternatives, find 4-1/2 million barrels a day of alternative energy. You drill here, drill now crowd, find 4-1/2 million more barrels a day from domestic oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. First one to hit your target, you're in charge of energy policy going forward. Instead of spending all your time telling me why the other guys are wrong, prove to me that you are right.

(07-23-2009 10:36 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Here's how I'd approach it. We use 20 million barrels of oil a day, and we import 13 million barrels of oil a day. The target is to make that 13 million barrels of imported oil go to zero. We do that and we'll be better off in terms of our economy and our national security and our environment. Split it up 1/3-1/3-1/3 among conservation, alternatives, and additional production from conventional sources. You conservationists, find 4-1/2 million barrels a day of savings. You advocates of alternatives, find 4-1/2 million barrels a day of alternative energy. You drill here, drill now crowd, find 4-1/2 million more barrels a day from domestic oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. First one to hit your target, you're in charge of energy policy going forward. Instead of spending all your time telling me why the other guys are wrong, prove to me that you are right.

Amen to that.