Throw everything at it!

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/2/9/151024/2055

Small is ugly if it means we keep burning coal
Big is beautiful if it breaks our dead-dinosaur addiction
Posted by Gar Lipow (Guest Contributor) at 7:59 AM on 10 Feb 2009

Gar writes: "We have start deploying everything we know how to do at a reasonable cost, which includes stuff that is more expensive (not including social costs) than fossil fuel".

Choppa responds:

This is perfectly true, but definitely needs spelling out for the nuclear, gas and coal lobbies and their deluded followers. And the clearer it is spelt out, the clearer it also becomes for the rest of us, and the angrier we will get at the suicidal short-sightedness of our own dinosaurs.

Buildings - retrofitted, insulated, covered with thin-film PV and solar water heaters, running heat-exchangers for air and rock, using rooftop greening to provide moisture retention, heat moderation and recreation on-site, and lower built-up area heat extremes. Constructed with energy-use optimizing windows and glass, and using optimal angling for shade in summer and sun in winter - and light conduits to reduce power for lighting.

Water - heat-exchange source; groundwater from different levels for grey water (non-drinking, lawn-watering) use, and clean water; running water providing electricity from river-turbines, as well as more recreational and economic (fish-breeding) water given reduced cooling needs. Seawater providing tidal and wave energy.

Earth - geothermal with its huge resources (volcanic areas); heat exchange (plenty of experience worldwide with small-scale HE, less with just as feasible district or urban scale HE); (speculation: why not try and tap earthquake movements and tension pre-catastrophe?); underground construction for say industrial purposes; crops and greenery for multiple uses.

Wind - windfarms and small-scale highly efficient urban turbines, etc - this is well-enough known.

Sun (water, earth, wind, fire!!) - pull together all we know about - PV, CSP, water-heating; small-scale, large-scale etc, and throw it all in the mix at every geopolitical level.

THEN THINK BIG!!

Gar hits the nail on the head when he mentions HVDC. This High Voltage Direct Current will transform our electricity transport and usage the way Tesla's LVAC project did. Imagine that! Not only could sunrich areas produce energy for many industrial and residential at once - the whole of Southern California, at least, frinstance, plus the cities of Nevada and Arizona - but on a world scale we could harness the solar resources of the Sahara to supply the whole of Europe. This last project is already being studied, and there's a trial HVDC line already being operated in Sweden.

So, if we THROW EVERYTHING AT IT NOW, we'll be well on our way. And every development over the next couple of decades (and as with AC electricity, these will follow thick and fast) will add to the goodness and savings. And if we're lucky, renewable energy will take off with the enthusiasm and diversity and unimagined human empowerment generated by computerizationa and the internet.

Sorry about the length - hard to add to what Gar said without referring to the breadth and depth of areas already working or projected or shown to be feasible.

by ChoppaM at 12:05 PM on 10 Feb 2009

Lovins knows best I still like an HVDC super grid following electric rail corridors though. And large wind farms, large wind/wave/ocean current floaring platforms offshore, and large concentrating solar on factories. Will these large renewable systems be necessary when solar cogeneration reaches 70% efficiency, batteries reach 10 minute charge and 1/4 the energy density of liquid fuel, and superconducting electromagnetic energy storage goes into mass production? Nope. Keep the HVDC super grid and the factory CSP, and recycle the wind and wave machines when that happens. Meanwhile all sorts of people in single family homes, living on farms, and communities large and small who don't mind timing their power use and putting up with ocasional emergency backup power systems can go renewable immediately if not sooner. http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 7:27 PM on 11 Feb 2009 [ Reply to This ]

Throw everything at it! (This is ChoppaM again) As amazingdrx points out, the rail corridors provide a good solution for HVDC. What this means is a really mind-boggling surge in the potential for dealing with varying needs at varying times (collecting the output of thousands of any-scale generations) not just in the US, but in Canada and Mexico too, both of which countries can add pretty substantial fuel to the flames (so to speak :-) And this is early middle term which can be planned and trialed now, as it is being (on a near-term basis) in Europe. Which means that once more the US runs the risk of lagging behind in perhaps the most important single development in relation to the usefulness, dimensions and feasibility of renewable energy. Think of the role of transport/transmission infrastructure for industry and turnover times in past leaps - rail and steam engines for knitting countries together and making large-scale industry possible in the best locations - roads for cars and trucks - and AC transmission for electricity. While not renewable energy in itself, and not available right at this moment, it presents such an attractive solution to all the problems raised by sceptics in relation to renewables that I think it is perhaps the single most important factor in the equation for every actor in the wind, solar, geothermal, construction, wave and tidal, heat exchange industries. Which means it should be the focus of concentrated research, development and deployment immediately.

by Choppa at 12:48 AM on 12 Feb 2009 [ Reply to This ]

That's it Chop

I'm thinking of the political and financial blockage erected by the status quo industrial lobbyists and those "politicians they keep in their pockets" (to paraphrase "The Godfather") thusly: It has already lost, but we don't realize it yet. As lovins says the big investment money has abandoned coal and nuclear power already, will oil be next?

Oil is showing signs of that effect, investors are afraid to put up 100s of billoins for new oil exploration, offshore drilling, and refining unless/until prices rise and show some sort of long term trend. Those billions won't produce profits otherwise.

Wind shows profits immediately.

Here's where we are really at: over 50% of us want to go green. Under 10% of our energy use is renewable and conservation and efficiency combined barely have the combined figure reaching 10% of our energy use.

Over 50% of us are willing to sacrifice some convenience and adjust our lifestyles to do it. We would be willing to give up always on 100% centralized grid power and gas guzzlers, and go for smart grid power timing and ocasional emergency backup power and plugin hybrids that make us actually pay attention and plugin our cars.

So we have 50% of us demanding change and willing to sacrifice for it, and less than 10% market pentration of green energy conversion. There is huge growth potential, only capital for mass production is missing. Government stimulation could set a fire under this commercial wave.

As it rolls out why bother with the other 50%? Let them laugh and deride and resist, who cares? We will eventually be selling them their daily dose of kwhs.

It will take years to get to 50% so let's just enjoy it, invest early in solar cogeneration on our roofs, and ground source heating/cooling, and plugin hybrids and sit back and collect our gains.

We have the numbers to demand that we be allowed to sell our power over the grid and improve grid design to accept this green energy re-evolution. mosr of our detractors, the drill baby drillers, will join in around 2020, with the final 10% cursing us until the day they go to their rewards.

The bottomline is that we have won the political battle in terms of public opinion, but the public does not realize the technology is already here, waiting for capital for mass production. We have to wake them up by example, by highlighting successful renewable smart grid and conservation efforts.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin