Where Should We Draw the Line on Fossil Fuels?

In reviewing this blog’s history of Posts I am aware that some will see a contradiction between my strong support for a renewable energy future and my acceptance of the inevitability of fracking for shale gas and oil (see ‘Fracking: The Promise And The Problems’) and my reluctant support for building the Keystone XL pipeline (see ‘Keystone XL Pipeline: A Memorandum To The President’). Here is a bit more of the thinking that has gone into those positions, which make sense at least to me.

In an ideal world I would move as rapidly as possible to an energy system based largely on renewable energy in all it’s various forms (solar, wind, biomass, …..) and reduce our current dependence on carbon-rich fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas). Unfortunately, renewable energy is not yet ready to assume such a role, which will take money and time. We also cannot deprive people of access to energy during the transition period. Today’s global energy system is largely dependent upon fossil fuels (coal and natural gas for electricity, oil for transportation) and changing this picture with its in-place infrastructure and vested interests will not be easy or quick. This puts me in the class of ‘pragmatic’ renewable energy advocates, but one who believes that we can move much more rapidly toward that future with appropriate national energy policies in place. I have commented on the need for such a policy in earlier blogs (see ‘The Beginnings of a U.S. Energy Policy’ and ‘We Need A Carbon Tax’).

One final thought: as I think about this apparent ‘conflict’ in my views I am aware of my strong feeling that, ultimately, the real villain in this piece is ourselves with our insatiable and ever-growing demand for energy services. Some people lack even minimal access to such services and deserve more. Many of us have easy access to such services and need to use that access more wisely. Reducing demand growth and even overall demand would reduce the pressure for new fossil fuel and electricity resources, reduce international tensions, and allow a more stable and rapid transition to the inevitable and highly desired renewable energy future. I hope many others will comment on these complex issues as well.

An Energy Grand Bargain: Something to Consider?

In recent years the term ‘Grand Bargain’ has been used to refer to the possibility of a budget deal on Capitol Hill between Republicans and Democrats. In an earlier context I used the term, on a limited private basis, to refer to a potential deal on energy policy between Republicans and Democrats following George Bush’s election as President in 2000.

Grand Bargain

The thought of a ‘grand bargain’ on energy policy suggested itself to me as soon as it became clear that Republicans would be declared the winners of the 2000 presidential election. Having listened carefully to the energy statements by both sides during the election campaign I expected strong White House support for fossil fuels and nuclear but little support for renewables. My only hope was that President Bush would be sympathetic to wind energy as he seemed to be as the Governor of Texas. This turned out to be a forlon hope as energy policy in the Bush Administration appears to have been under the thumb of Vice President Cheney.

The idea of the ‘grand bargain’ was simple: with the Bush Administration unlikely to provide strong support for renewables, and a Democrat-controlled Congress unlikely to support oil drilling in ANWAR (Alaska National Wildlfe Refuge), the deal would have been to trade enhanced and increasing support for renewables for carefully regulated drilling in ANWAR using modern oil drilling techniques. Federal revenue from ANWAR could help support the increasing support for renewables.

I was willing to consider this kind of tradeoff in light of improved oil drilling techniques in recent years and the possibility of limiting the oil drilling footprint in a national outdoor treasure. Most importantly to me it was the only way I could see to get increasing Congressional funding for progress toward a critically needed and inevitable renewable energy future in the next four or eight years under a Republican Administration.

Well, it didn’t happen and strong support for renewables only began under President Obama and still has a long way to go. The U.S. still lacks an energy policy that would create significant incentives for development and investment in renewables, while legacy incentives still provide large public support for mature fossil and nuclear energy. As a result the U.S. is falling behind other countries in manufacturing, marketing, and deploying renewables – e.g., offshore wind. The U.S. Is also not benefitting as much as it could from the associated job creation and other economic benefits. It will take a less obstructionist and forward-looking Congress to change this situation.

Anticipating the Future: It Can Be Difficult

I am a long-time science fiction buff as well as a long-time fan of Arthur Clarke’s writing, both fiction and non-fiction. In the non-fiction category I have long been enamoured of Clarke’s 1962 book
‘Profiles of the Future; an Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible.’
Trained in physics and mathematics, Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel and in 1945 he was the first to propose a satellite communication system. Ray Bradbury, also an eminent science fiction writer, once said of Clarke: “Arthur C. Clarke is one of the true geniuses of our time. I envy him his brain.”

Arthur Clarke
Arthur Clarke

In his 1962 book, updated in 1982, Clarke talks about the difficulty even the most distinguished people in a field have of accurately seeing what is coming down the road. He gives several examples. It is a lesson I have never forgotten.

His book is perhaps best remembered for the Three Laws he enunciated:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, (s)he is almost certainly right. When (s)he says it is impossible, (s)he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (note: this is the most widely quoted of the three Laws).

Long fascinated by the themes in Clarke’s book I have collected examples over the years and once even taught a university-level course based on his ideas. My eighteen collected examples are listed below, with my favorite being #18. What is yours?

Failed Visions of the Future

1. “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
(Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science,
1949)

2. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
(Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943)

3. “I have traveled the length and breadth of this country, and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won’t last out the year.” (The editor in charge of business
books for Prentice Hall, 1957)

4. “But what is it good for?”
(Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,
commenting on the microchip)

5. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
(Ken Olson, President, Chairman and founder of Digital Equipment
Corporation, 1977)

6. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of
no value. (Western Union internal memo, 1876)

7. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”
(David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for
Investment in the radio in the 1920s)

8. “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn
better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”
(A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s
paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on
to found Federal Express Corporation).

9. “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
(H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927)

10. “I’m just glad it will be Clark Gable who is falling on his face
and not Gary Cooper.” (Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the
leading role in “Gone With The Wind”)

11. “A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research
reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy
cookies like you make.” (Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of
starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies)

12. “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
(Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles, 1962)

13. You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across
all of your muscles? It can’t be done. It’s just a fact of life.
You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an
unalterable condition of weight training. (Response to Arthur
Jones, who solved the “unsolvable” problem by inventing Nautilus)

14. “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
(Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929)

15. “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
(Marecha Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure
de Guerre)

16. “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.”
(Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872)

17. “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from
the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.”
(Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, Surgeon-Extraordinary to
Queen Victoria, 1873)

18. “640K ought to be enough memory for anybody.”
(Bill Gates, 1981)

The above should bring a bit of humility to those of us engaged in scientific and engineering work.

Concentrating Solar Power: A Viable Option For Desert Regions

It has been reported for more than 2000 years that Archimedes used mirrors to concentrate sunlight and set Roman ships afire during the seige of Syracuse in 213BC. While much evidence has been presented to refute this claim, it is probably too powerful a legend to die. Nevertheless, the legend supports the saying heard often in the early days of modern solar energy that if solar had been a weapon of war it would have been fully developed by now.

Following the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74 and increased U.S. interest in energy issues, the U.S. Department of Energy started a concentrating solar power project called Solar One. It involved hundreds of ground-mounted reflecting mirrors, called heliostats, that followed the sun and directed their sunlight to a water receiver at the top of a 400-foot centrally-located tower.

image

The heated water was converted into steam and fed into a steam-turbine electricity generator. Construction of Solar One was completed in 1981 and was operational from 1982 to 1986. It was then redesigned to incorporate molten salt (60% sodium nitrate; 40% potassium nitrate) as the thermal collection and storage medium and relabeled Solar Two. The redesign was needed to address the instability of Solar One when sunlight was disrupted by passing clouds. Solar Two was successfully tested at 10MWe using molten salt but operation was eventually discontinued in the mid 90’s when the industry was unwilling to share further development costs with DOE. The Solar Two tower was eventually demolished in 2009; the heliostats are now being used for astronomy research.

CSP also comes in two other ‘flavor’s, parabolic trough and dish-Stirling, both of which are discussed in the attached PowerPoint (‘Concentrating Solar Power’) that I presented in 2010 to a meeting of utility executives. I did so for two reasons, to make sure the executives were familiar with CSP (which had been of limited visibility for a number of years) and to catch up on the current state of the technology which was beginning to reappear.

Concentrating Solar Power

I will end this blog by emphasizing one of CSP’s major advantages over intermittent renewable energy sources such as PV and wind – it comes with storage. The major barriers to its greater utilization are its requirement for unscattered (direct normal) radiation (you can’t focus scattered sunlight), cost, and the need for cooling (water or air). Deserts, which usually have few clouds and therefore little scattering of sunlight, are natural venues for CSP power plants. Unfortunately, deserts are also known for their lack of water. These issues are discussed in the PowerPoint.

Solar Energy: The Unstoppable Transformative Technology

As most readers of this blog will know solar energy comes in two broad categories: photovoltaics (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP). The latter category includes concentrated solar thermal power (as in parabolic troughs, …) and concentrating photovoltaics (CPV). This blog will focus on PV; concentrated forms of solar energy will be discussed in a subsequent blog.

PV is a now a well-known and widely deployed form of renewable energy in which radiation from the sun is converted directly into electricity via panels of solar (or PV) cells. They can be roof-mounted or ground-mounted, as shown below, or used in many other ways to provide smaller amounts of electricity to handheld calculators, roadside telephones, battery chargers, remote microwave relay stations, solar lanterns, water pumping, and numerous other applications. It is a modular technology that can be scaled up in kW size as needed. It also lends itself to integration with various building and other materials – e.g., as roof tiles, building facades, blankets, clothing, and other flexible materials. There is an extensive and rapidly growing literature on PV – one hardly knows where to start. One useful starting point I would recommend is
http://wwww.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=solar_home-basics-k.cfm
Another useful source of information is the web site of the Solar Energy Idustries Association: http://www.seia.org

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Roof-mounted PV

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Ground-mounted PV

There are two energy technologies that I consider transformative (some people prefer the term ‘disruptive’), i.e., they change the way we generate and use electricity. These are fuel cells, which use hydrogen as a ‘fuel’ to generate electricity, water and heat (and will be discussed in a future blog), and PV, the focus of this blog.

PV is transformative because it can be used wherever the sun is shining (e.g., in space to power satellites and space stations, and even on Mars to power robotic vehicles), it can generate power where it is needed without the need for power lines, it is modular, and its cost is coming down significantly as more and more PV is manufactured. Our infrastructure is already highly dependent on PV – think about satellites used for wireless telephony and GPS, and terrestrial PV that increasingly is supplying electricity to individual homes and businesses as well as utilities.

i would also note that our use of terrestrial PV is only beginning. An industry that started in 1973 in the U.S. (PV had been used earlier for space applications) now employs more than 120,000 people in the U.S., will add more than 4 gigawatts (yes, I said gigawatts) in the U.S. alone in 2013, on top of 8.5 GW already installed in the U.S. and 102 GW worldwide. Global additions in both 2011 and 2012 totaled 31 GW, and PV today is, annually, a multi-billion dollar industry and growing.

The above discussion clearly indicates that PV is an unstoppable energy technology, as the German electric utilities have learned and U.S. utilities will eventually learn as well. The problem that PV presents to utilities is its decentralized nature and the fact that PV generation is maximum at peak periods of electricity demand when utilities are used to charging higher than average kWh prices. If this peak demand on the utility systems is reduced by home- or business-generated electricity then utility revenues are adversely affected based on current utility business models.

It seems clear that this business model will have to change, and, based on experience, that utilities will resist this change as long as they can. The German utilities faced this problem first because the German government introduced a feed-in-tariff (FiT) for PV in the 1990’s, stimulating a massive deployment of PV in Germany ever since. Today Germany leads the world in PV deployment with about 30 GW installed. I would even note that on one very sunny summer day last year more than half of Germany’s electrical demand was met by PV. When faced with this reality German utilities got into the PV business and are now even offering energy storage services to the German public.

The U.S. federal government has not yet seen fit to offer a FiT to the American public but several states are taking the lead in stimulating PV and other renewable energy use. U.S. utilities are clearly behind the German curve and some are resisting the new PV reality by making hookup to the grid unnecessarily complicated, by proposing extra charges for homes that install PV and battery storage systems, and not incorporating PV into their own generating systems. This will change, hopefully sooner rather than later, as utilities take advantage of these new business opportunities.