We have a new blog here: Next Generation Energy, a temporarily active blog discussing alternative energy. It’s a bit of an odd duck and an experiment, with a team of bloggers focused on this one issue and exploring it for a limited term, but check it out.
One concern I can predict: it’s sponsored by Shell Oil (what next? A blog on the virtues of vegetarianism sponsored by McDonalds?). To allay concerns a bit, we’ve been assured that Shell will not be imposing editorial constraints — although, of course, there is always the indirect pressure caused by the fact that displeasing your patron may mean they will not fund future ventures — and the blogging team they’ve put together has a history of independence on this subject. I also think that the commenters here can play a role in keeping the discussion honest, since Shell isn’t paying you.
I don’t have huge hopes for it, considering the biofuels post that’s there now. Even cellulosic biofuel isn’t going to be anything but a rather small part of any solution. Plug-in hybrids could do much more than ethanol of any source, although to help the environment the electricity needs to be heavily non-fossil fuel as soon as feasible.
More importantly, it seems that conservation ought to be part of any discussion of “next generation energy”. No doubt it will be discussed, but it would be better if it were part of the “mission” of the blog, not an afterthought. 2LoT means that it can only do so much, too, yet with houses and vehicles supersized in this country, it could do a lot.
That said, the blog might well add a meaningful contribution in the discussion of energy.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
This makes me think that Shell knows something we don’t. Like there’s not going to be a next generation. Can somebody find out if they’re run by an evil super villain?
Let’s hope it helps because we are certainly Shell-ing out enough money now for old-fashioned fossil fuels.
I am feeling optimistic. Maybe Shell figured out that diversifying into alt-energy might help them win out over other petroleum-based companies as combustion becomes less important (hopefully).
(Yeah, since when are corporations generally that forward thinking? I said a nice lunch, tea and a good day are making me an optimist.)
I think the problem with biofuel proposals is that current models are too high on the food chain. I think the use of algae with high fat content are the best candidates for biofuel production. Use waste streams (human and agricultural) as the culture media for the algae, collect any methane to use as a propane substitute… give me a couple of beers, and I’ll blather on for hours about this!
Of course, there is no “magic bullet” solution, but a lot of “magic birdshot” solutions acting in conjunction. A major component has to be improving efficiency- my bicycle weighs less than ten times my body weight, my car weighs more than ten times my body weight (and it’s a compact).
Let’s hope it helps because we are certainly Shell-ing out enough money now for old-fashioned fossil fuels.
What type of inflections were you using when you thought that up in your head. I need to know that if I’m to select the appropriate laugh response.
Sorry, I woke up on the stupid side of the bed this morning!
When I wrote “my bicycle weighs less than ten times my body weight”
I meant “I outweigh my bicycle by a factor of more than ten”.
Now, where did I leave that brain of mine? Now, THAT has a nice, high fat content!
I think this is awesome.
I am so fascinated by the area of energy research that I’d consider a career change, even though I’m now eligible for retirement from my employer.
This is actually sort of up your alley to an extent, too. Check out the number of “free energy” websites out there… Pendulums that have a net energy gain, perpetual motion machines, and so on. People who think they can grow a dozen ears of corn and use them to power their gigantic SUVs for a year…
Oh, yeah; there’s plenty of room for entertained skeptics when they hear the misconceptions of the easily fooled when it comes to energy.
For example, T Boone Pickens’ announcement yesterday… People don’t quite understand economics. Even Pickens. If the demand for oil in the US dropped by 20%, the price of a barrel of oil would drop by 60%, easily. That’s just how markets work. A 5% shortage of ANYTHING, whether it’s sugar, rice, or crude oil, will result in prices doubling. It works the other direction, too.
I hope this new blog takes the time to explain this.
We should get a pool going on the number of posts it will take them to insinuate or explicitly say that coal is an alternative energy source.
Well it is. If we’re being literal.
Bah. Carter told you what to do in the 80es. I seem to recall that just by getting down the mileage of the current average EU car would completely remove your dependency on foreign oil.
Technology can’t help without a change of attitude.
What makes you think that McMatter is even meat?
On topic: Go nuclear!
My bet: within 5 posts.
I’ll cut Shell some slack.
Maybe they’re waking up to the idea that much of their profitability is tied up in a rapidly depleting product. Sure, they are making billions now, but their only hope for the long term is to branch out into other energy-producing areas. If they invest now in new technologies, they will be ahead of the curve and can reap rewards in the future.
Surely they have oil fields and leases that can be adapted to wind power? Lots of oil fields aren’t good for anything but oil (not farming), and dropping some wind turbines could turn a wasteland into a valuable piece of real estate, at least for wind power.
Why wouldn’t Shell support alternative energy? They’re going to make a boatload of money on that, as well.
Glen D-
Cellulose ethanol is different. I know may are disillusioned by the disaster that is/was corn ethanol. It was our fine government at work; take a great idea, and apply to the Worst per-acre crop available.
Cellulose ethanol is interesting because its a hugely flexible process. There are tons of agg and industry waste being landfilled that can be used as a feedstock.
And while its not a long term solution, why should we not take our own garbage, turn it into fuel, and buy 1 less barrel of oil? Ideally, it could give us time until the future (hydrogen/batteries/super capacitors) catch up.
Yes. It turns out that the most optimistic projections of the growth in new energy from solar, wind, and nuclear are only modestly greater than the projected growth in demand. Without extensive conservation, we’ll still be mostly powered by coal.
Becca Stareyes writes:
(Yeah, since when are corporations generally that forward thinking?)
They always have been pretty forward thinking, or they don’t last. “The government will bail us out” is forward thinking, from a financial perspective. If a company can implicitly threaten the economy if it fails, it can just pay its execs big dividends and wait and see what happens. Also, don’t forget that it was forward thinking companies like Goodyear and Ford that bought up public transportation in cities like Baltimore and dismantled them, in order to drive up car ownership.
Companies do a pretty good job, generally, at what they do. The place people get confused is that they forget that a company’s job is not to solve their problems. Sure, that might happen as a side-effect – but companies exist to get your money. First, and last, and always.
Only if we can store the waste in your basement.
Shell shells out a lot of money in grants for research into alternative fuels. I knew a professor who got $50k from Shell to look into cold fusion–in 1992.
Have any of you seen this: (Amory Lovins on the energy endgame)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/amory_lovins_on_winning_the_oil_endgame.html
?? The guy seems to think he knows what he’s talking about, and his argument sounds good to me. I’m just not knowledgeable enough to tell if it’s complete BS or not. It’s very interesting, though!
H.H. writes:
Only if we can store the waste in your basement.
Classic NIMBY. Nuclear waste, CO2. Guess which is “better for the environment” in current conditions?
I’ve got 40 acres of old coal mine on my farm; I’d love some nuclear waste. Store all you like for $3million!!! I’ll have spent it all and I’ll be safely dead before it’s into the groundwater. :)
Oh yeah. One other thing. The coal will run out shortly after it finishes melting the Greenland Ice Sheet, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and perhaps more, resulting in about 40 feet of sea level rise. Bye Bye Florida, Bangladesh, New York, London, …
To llewelly@22
Billy Joel’s song “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” was a prediction!
New York won’t be a casualty, we’ll just have luverly gondalas poling between the skyscrapers!
AWESOME!
Ruh roh!
GONDOLAS! GONDOLAS!
…and I call myself a paisan!
I have just been dumb as a stump on this post… maybe a nice, strong Negroni will get my thoughts in order.
I think I got this link in today’s rss feed from SEED.
Feynman on the Value of Science.
http://alexpetrov.com/memes/sci/value.html
Quote from the article
“Of all its many values, the greatest
must be the freedom to doubt. “
I saw Shell’s CEO on Charlie Rose a few months ago. This is actually very much in keeping with his message. He agreed that man-made climate change is real and that alternative energy sources must replace fossil fuels. However, he asserted that this would have to be a gradual process to avoid doing harm to the economy; to this end, Shell still sells oil, but he made the point that Shell is an energy company and intends to be invested in whatever sources of energy supplant fossil fuels. To this end, he mentioned several research efforts in alternative energy being funded by Shell. He did note that solar energy is a tricky one for oil companies to invest in because the technology is improving too quickly to allow the oil companies to “pick a horse” so to speak; it’s simply not clear yet which solar technologies should be used as a standard upon which to build an industry.
So yes, it makes sense for Shell to fund this. The executives realize that fossil fuels are not going to be mankind’s energy source forever, and they don’t want Shell to lose out when some other energy source replaces them. It’s a completely pragmatic, profit-driven strategy (though clearly a little more forward-thinking than a lot of profit-driven strategies out there).
#18: “Only if we can store the waste in your basement.”
Sure thing. Encapsulate it in steel and concrete, and I’d be happy to store it in my basement. Particularly if it’s active enough to apply a bit of heat to the house. It gets *cold* here in the winter, and it could potentially make a significant impact in my fuel bills.
Health bills, too.
I’m willing to give Shell the benefit of the doubt in this case. They’re not acting out of altruism, of course, but that makes it all the more reasonable for them to act. If they get on the ground floor with an alternate fuel source they’ll have the facilities and infrastructure in place while their competition is scrambling to catch up. Who wouldn’t want to be the first one out the gate with the next big thing, especially when you can set the industry standards and reap the positive PR out of the whole process.
I wonder if any consideration will be given to thermal depolymerization. I don’t know if there’s anything to it, but it at least sounds promising. If its proponents are to be believed they’re going to be getting a similar energy payoff to the cellulose ethanol, only the end result is light crude that can be made into normal gasoline and they can make it from both biomass and old plastics.
I have to agree with Longtime Lurker about the ‘magic buckshot’ approach. One alternative energy source that can only supply 20% of our needs is a help, but five of them are a solution.
Just remember — Honda is making profit on hybrids, VW is going to pull in on diesels, while American corps are dying on SUVs.
Corporations can be forward thinking — it’s just the current climate in the US not to be.
“I’m willing to give Shell…”
I’m not. Earlier this year, a Shell executive said:
“I think biofuels could grow from a mere one percent of the world fuels mix today to as much as 7 or 10 percent over the next couple of decades.”
10% in 20 years is too little too late. I’ll be waiting for the first post to criticize Shell’s policies. I suspect I’ll be waiting a while.
I agree completely that demand reduction, via efficiency and behaviour/attitude change, is the most important topic – it’s simply absurd that it’s not included explicitly up front. I wonder if Shell’s sponsorship has any relevance here, since it’s an area it will be particularly hard for them to make money from. (Cries of “No, surely not! How could you be so cynical!)
Biggest problem with nuclear – it would just take too long to build enough stations to make a difference. Take a look at China and India: both thoroughly “pro-nuclear”, with government-backed programmes, but even in 20 years nuclear will still meet only a few percent of their energy needs. Second biggest is proliferation. There is no way to ramp up nuclear energy without making it easier to develop nuclear weapons: there are too many skills, technologies and materials in common. Third is probably constraints on supply: known reserves would last about 50 years at current rates of use IIRC. There will be undiscovered reserves, but they will mostly be more expensive to mine, in money and CO2 production. There are suggestions for how to get round this (breeder reactors, thorium cycle), but they rely on unproven technology. Waste is also a problem, but probably only fourth.
NG:
Here’s the problem — I just pulled up: http://earthtrends.wri.org/searchable_db/results.php?years=2003-2003&variable_ID=351&theme=6&cID=70,2,7,9,10,11,16,17,24,28,33,45,48,50,59,62,63,68,73,83,84,89,90,91,93,95,101,103,108,109,111,117,124,131,134,138,146,147,151,152,161,162,165,166,173,174,177,185,187,189,190,192,202,218&ccID=9
US Per-capita consumption of energy in kg of oil is about 7000. In Germany, Japan and France, about 4000. You really can’t argue a higher standard of living for Americans, and those countries themselves have large inefficiencies they can reduce.
The only country at the US level is Finland — probably partly driven by the fact that Finland is basically arctic.
So, the US could probably cut it’s energy consumption by 50% without altering the standard of living, if we stopped eating Big Macs, driving SUVs, and bombing the hell out of third world countries.
It’s not an energy problem — it’s a stupid, short-sighted, self-destructive greed problem.
frog,
No dispute from me – except you missed Canada (and Iceland, which really surprises me, with their use of geothermal). But a lot of climate scientists are saying we need a global reduction in net GHG production of 80-100% by 2050 to be reasonably confident of avoiding dangerous climate change (roughly speaking, staying under 2 degrees Celsius mean temperature increase from pre-industrial levels). So cutting out obvious inefficiency is by no means enough – but it’s the place to start. Looked at from this point of view, the rise in oil price is a thoroughly good thing – it’s already cut consumption significantly, and will encourage efficiency.
NG:
My point is that a net 50% reduction in the US is actually very easy — but the will is lacking. Probably an 80% reduction without negatively impacting peoples standard of living, since the EU seems to be doing a 25% cut back currently, and there’s no reason for me to think that is politically difficult.
Since the US uses such a bulk of the worlds energy resources, conservation should be first because it’s so damn easy. The only reason it’s not being done is because it would have massive effects on the distribution of power in the US — it would create a vast number of entrepeneurial holes. That’s the last thing that’s desired in the US – opportunities for small business to out-compete the big boys.
That often seems to be missed. The oil companies (“energy” companies) aren’t against alternative fuels or even conservation — there’s always a way to turn a profit. No, what they worry about is big change, fast change, that they’re unable to manipulate, thereby creating competitive opportunity for the rest of us. It’s about centralization, and not about profit.
Housing in the US tends to be much less dense than Europe, making public transport and combined power and heat less practical, and commutes tend to be longer. Changing that is not so easy. Some things could be easy: I understand that the US has little diesel infrastructure, and diesels still have a very poor brand image with recent (last 10-15 years) improvements in turbo diesels largely unknown.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Loremo, a four seat family car weighing 550kg (comparable with the famously light (and very spartan) Lotus/Caterham Seven) and claiming 120MP(US)G. The Sevens are a little quicker though. The automotive X Prize has a list of competitors, which I’m sure is fascinating.
Glen D #1:
Screw hybrids! Pure electric vehicles all the way!
Mind you, battery capacity is still lacking, so PHEVs are probably what we’ll get medium term. But there’s no reason the combustion engine they use shouldn’t be designed to run well on ethanol…
The problem is, there are millions of cars on the road and right now, and they aren’t just going to go away. I don’t think the entire transport fleet of the world can be replaced quickly enough to limit the damage done by burning petroleum.
I’m not at all in favour of the current regime of ethanol, but if cellulosic biofuels can be made to work it sounds like a useful step. (It should theoretically be producable from waste plant material & grasslands, rather than food plantations, and shouldn’t require any further land clearing.)
Here’s my Grand Energy Plan That I Just Came Up With:
– Use cellulosic ethanol as a supplement, and ultimately replacement, for petroleum. Subsidise any required modifications needed for existing cars to run on ethanol fuels. Set stringent vehicle testing and increasing fees based on vehicle age. Phase out the current car fleet over time.
– New vehicles should be plugin hybrid, with an eye towards becoming pure electric as soon as is practical. Use electric mode wherever possible with fuel only as a fallback.
– All new power stations should be renewable if possible, “clean” at a minimum, nuclear if necessary. No new dirty power plants. Don’t just plan for future capacity, but also plan to decommission and replace existing dirty plants.
– And of course at every step, conserve as much as you can. This doesn’t even need to be sacrificial, just don’t be wasteful.
Disclaimer: The GEPTIJCUW is not based on hard science or in fact anything much at all., but it seems sensible to me.
I’ve begun to suspect that the oil companies are spending more money on advertising that they are looking into alt-energy than they are on actual R&D.
Schlumberger, a company you probably never heard of, spends a billion dollars a year on R&D in the field of oil exploration.
Shell advertised that they were spending a half billion over some number of years.
amk: Housing in the US tends to be much less dense than Europe, making public transport and combined power and heat less practical, and commutes tend to be longer. Changing that is not so easy.
Change the zoning laws. The long commutes and low-density — almost everything that is wrong in the US — is due to zoning laws intended to reserve huge swaths for residential use; aka, reduce the value of land except to housing developers, who can then turn a massive profit.
Most everything in the US can be reduced to this simple problem that was produced right after WWII — criminal zoning laws that destroy communities, produce massive economic waste, disrupt the political process and dismember families. All to create the constant creation of new housing and therefore profits for a small segment of the population.
That’s a bit vague. Renewable energy often has the major drawback of producing inconsistent and unpredictable output and grid energy storage is currently very inefficient. Tidal power and solar updraft towers don’t have this problem: the former is predictable (on a sine wave) and as tide times vary over distance can produce a fairly constant output and the latter stores energy as heat, converting it at a fairly constant rate.
Combined power and heating (using waste heat from power plants to heat buildings) is a big win (heating uses a lot of energy), but is only viable in high density areas and with low-pollution plants, i.e. gas. I’ll give a cookie to anyone prepared to do it with nuclear.
Yes, but that’d take time to have an effect. There may be social pressures too. Most of the English-speaking world has seen an exodus from the cities, but not continental Europe. It’s always a little jarring to hear French concerns of under-developed and impoverished suburban areas.
Only if we can store the waste in your basement.
Silly rabbit. You recycle it instead. Ask the French how it’s done. Actually, *we* know how, but we can’t because it’s banned here (USA). And *only* here as far as I can tell. The nuclear waste “problem” is almost entirely political. And there’s several research projects under way to figure how how to recycle it even better. There’s breeder reactors and pebble bed designs. And on and on.
Honestly, some of you people have your nuke knowledge mired in the Carter era. Nuclear energy technology has marched onward despite the fact that most folks in the US got their perception of nuke power from The Simpsons.
amk: Yes, but that’d take time to have an effect. There may be social pressures too.
I think it would be surprising. The commercial use of land for shops, etc, could really very quickly create shops and such in current suburban wildernesses. But it will be fought tooth and nails — I read that just last month Seattle (I think) tried to cut the zoning laws, and the developers went nuts — not folks in general, but developers.
The social pressures are a deeper problem. At least in the US, the suburban midget lawn is a sign of being middle-class — and we all are “middle-class”, at least conceptually. It’s like the SUV — it’s not supposed to be functional, but symbolic; it works best as a symbol when it’s not functional.
What a crazy, crazy world I live in.
But the midget lawn is not necessarily a problem in terms of zoning. If you look at old towns in the US that are left, and towns in other countries, you can have your midget lawn and local commercial zones in close contact. The problem we have is the roads — too many large arteries and not enough capillaries. That’s the real practical problem. You can’t walk safely five minutes from your home because you immediately run into a six lane highway (not expressway).