In defense of sustainable energy.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

This is not a global warming thread, let’s leave that out.
For some reason the issue of energy became very black and white, if you believe in CAGW, you have to be anti-oil and pro-renewable energy. Alternately, those of us who don’t subscribe to the Catastrophic, or Anthropogenic adjectives, automatically are presumed to be anti-environment, anti-progress and pro-oil.

Well, I for one believe there is a convincing case for the need for sustainable energy without invoking the dreaded climate change. I don’t say renewable, because an energy source can be renewable without being sustainable( think whale oil) or sustainable without being renewable ( think Thorium or other abundant minerals, assuming the waste processing is sustainable). I use the word sustainable, because the word alternative is a nonsense PC feel good word that doesn’t mean anything, much like alternative lifestyle.
First off, I greatly appreciate all the benefits of fossil fuels; energy dense, cheap to obtain and process, portable, indefinitely storable, large reserves, one only needs to look at the progress human kind has made since harnessing fossil fuels to appreciate their value. I’ve often said they could be 10 times their current price and still be dirt cheap compared to anything that came before them. But, as the name fossil indicates, they are not renewable on any reasonable time frame. Given growth rates of energy consumption, even if we were to double known reserves tomorrow, it would hardly gain another generation worth of supply. While recent discovery and extraction techniques may make fossil fuels appear limitless once again, so is our demand for energy, at some point the sad reality that we have consumed hundreds of millions of years’ worth of stored solar energy in just a few generations, and left very little for the next generation will hit home. Then, at the time when we need energy the most, to adapt, to research, to retrofit, and to build the infrastructure for whatever will replace it, we will have the least quantity, and economically viable energy to do it.
Next justification is that extracting, processing and burning fossil fuels does create a host of really nasty by-products. While it is true that the advances in standard of living and health care afforded by this energy fuelled society have more than outweighed the side effects on our health, as indicated by increasing life spans et al., but imagine how much healthier we could be when our world is not full of: Carcinogenic diesel fuel exhaust, carcinogenic gasoline, lead lingering in everything from decades of leaded fuel, mercury and other heavy metals, Benzene( ever wondered why full serve gas stations are disappearing, the fumes from one fuel up far exceed the occupational limit for benzenes, it is very serious stuff) and a host of other inevitable toxins that permeate the air we breathe, water we drink and food we eat. Much of this stuff will be with us for generations to come, even if we stopped producing it today, lead is a perfect example. Regardless of emissions controls, these things are inevitable by-products, or the products themselves, we are doing a much better job of minimizing their release, but they will still exist at some point in the processing or combustion process, or need to be stored indefinitely.
The modern oil and gas industry in the western world is beyond paranoid about their environmental footprint, although the same cannot always be said for all regions or historical production. The legacy of those will be with us for generations to come. If we let it reach the point where we are trying to recover every last drop regardless of cost, there will no longer be the profit, nor the surplus energy to safely decommission the existing infrastructure, corrosion, and tectonics will wreak havoc, we need an exit plan while we still have excess energy and resources.
We will likely still need fossil fuels for some uses, even after something better has replaced it for our everyday uses. If you need to store vast amounts of energy for backup power in the arctic, and need to fly it in, fossil fuel may still fit the bill, but if we extract all of the economic reserves before looking for something better, that would not be feasible.
Industry will continue to need lubricants long after the internal combustion engine is extinct. Currently 6% of oil ends up as lubricants.
Asphalt, I can’t think of a scenario where asphalt from hydro carbons won’t be necessary, even if we all fly our own personal flying machines everywhere, they will still need to park, land, and take off.
Long after we don’t need oil for energy, we will most likely continue to need it feedstock for most synthetic products, possibly even for sustenance. Our grandkids might think we were recklessly insane to be burning this resource in our cars at sickeningly low efficiencies when they need it to create the necessities of life.
So, back to looking for sustainable solutions. So far, human progress has been fueled by progressively better energy sources, cheaper, denser, safer, easier, more reliable etc. We are currently contemplating and experimenting with the first giant step backwards in progress since we first harnessed energy. Currently according to our governments and many academics, the best we can look forward to is replacing fossil fuel with much more expensive and unreliable wind and solar (so far). As much as I believe we need to ration our use of fossil fuels for the reasons I listed above (and many more), I truly hope that we can find solutions that also work on a calm December day in northern Canada while also being cheaper, denser, safer etc. than fossil fuels.

Continued in next post.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Continued from previous post

As far as I know we only have three potential energy sources:
1)The sun, which includes wind, all types of solar, tide, biofuels, hydro, all fossil fuels, wood, dung, peat, draft animals, slaves, algae, bacteria, lightning; basically almost everything we’ve tried so far;
2)Atomic energy of all types
3)Geothermal ( which is still atomic energy, but the reaction and heat production part has been taken care of safely out of reach)

Any of which easily have the potential ability to power a planet with 9 billion people living at western standards of living if we can find an efficient and sustainable way to harness them.
Sun In-spite of the hype and the investment, wind and solar are still virtually insignificant. It seems like we have latched onto these two at the expense of all other options, and are willing to risk it all on their success of failure. In principle, they seems like the only reasonable way to capture the suns energy, but so far are failing miserably at doing it at scale or cost efficiently. While I will acknowledge that their capital costs are becoming competitive, storage costs are so far not. Would it not make more sense to be investing in energy storage research, or improving transmission losses and integrating the grid worldwide such that places with daylight send power to those in the dark, than it does to keep subsidizing non profitable stand-alone wind and solar installations? Then, when the infrastructure is in place to fully utilize the intermittent energy, the free market will build them because they will be profitable. Perhaps they are the answer, we have just put the cart before the horse. Are there other ways of capturing solar energy that are being ignored while governments picked winners (wind turbines and solar panels) and losers, or are those really the best possible method of harvesting sun? These are some hair brain concepts, that come to mind: Consider the potential energy in the mid-Atlantic current(and many others), particularly at northern latitudes where the cold dense water is sinking, has the advantage of not being in anyones backyard, and not intermittent, just very technically difficult to harness. What about temperature differentials, even where there isn’t enough sunlight for solar panels. Look at the huge temperature swings we get this time of year, can easily be 20 degrees C throughout the day, much more in the sun. Could that power a slow motion heat pump? Look at the expansion force water has when it freezes, can the freeze thaw cycle be captured on a large scale in some efficient way? As a farmer, I ask, is it more efficient to capture sunlight with a plant using photosynthesis or a silicone panel using electrons, and is there a more direct way to harvest the energy from that plant than what we do now?

Atomic power has been almost entirely a by-product of the nuclear arms race. And developed a bad reputation almost entirely as a result, there were and are better options. As we move beyond that, if molten salt reactors or thorium etc. or others yet to be discovered are developed, will societies ever embrace atomic power again, or is it tainted forever? Could progress be made in nuclear waste management, perhaps a biological means of converting it to something safer? If atomic energy research received as much funding as subsidized wind and solar installations have received would we have drastic breakthroughs by now?
Geothermal, Iceland is at 25%, big island of Hawaii is at 20%. Doesn’t get much more sustainable than that. Unfortunately, most places on earth have a long way to drill to reach that kind of heat, or at least enough heat to be worthwhile. Then require a lot of energy to pump water (Hawaii’s refills itself from the ocean then boils it and sends it up all by itself). Has the progress in oil and gas drilling made geothermal any more feasible? Are there more direct ways of capturing that heat? Are there ways to improve the efficiency of shallow geothermal which is in use around here, perhaps a combination of solar and geothermal, with the geothermal also acting as energy storage for the solar, could have some synergies? What about vents on the ocean floor, we now have drilling technology to drill deep under the ocean, the water is already there.

Are we currently wasting not only precious non-renewable (land, copper, rare earth metals etc) resources building renewable energy for almost no energy return, while simultaneously burning through our irreplaceable reserves of fossil fuels like they have no end, while a better solution has yet to be found simply because we misdirected our resources? If we find a solution, will we have enough energy and time to implement it? Is this as good as it gets, and are we doomed to a future where expensive unreliable energy replaces fossil fuels as they deplete, and for the first time in modern history, progress goes backwards?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

On a related note. Ill informed consumers have been led to believe that energy consumption is no different than energy production, and believe that electric or hydrogen fuel cell cars, trucks, etc. will magically solve an energy production problem. Equally energy illiterate governments have gone so far as to schedule bans on internal combustion engines, and are spending copious quantities of tax dollars to force this implementation against the free markets will. I have almost nothing good to say about infernal combustion engines, when compared to electric and would be gladly replace every last one I own with reliable, simple, maintenance free, efficient electric motors, which always start at 40 below, and have torque eliminating the need for transmissions, no exhaust fumes, no need to warm up and cool down, no emissions controls necessary etc. Unfortunately, there are just a few pieces of the puzzle still missing:
-Cheap reliable and sustainable electricity production. I'll even add the loaded word clean.
-Cheap, reliable, sustainable, energy dense, safe, quick charging, temperature independent on board energy storage that doesn't require more rare earth metals than the earth contains.
-A grid capable of connecting the two.

Why have we put the cart before the horse once again? Forcing uneconomical electric cars onto the market with massive subsidies, instead of investing that same amount of capital into solving the three problems above first? We have proven that electric drives are feasible for decades already, in locomotives, mining, forklifts, golfcarts etc. Tesla et al. don't need more incentives(from our tax dollars) to put that existing technology into a car and combine it with existing cell phone battery technology. Why not spread that money among electricity generators, distributors and storage researchers? When those pieces are in place electric cars won't need subsidies, us consumers won't be able to replace our antiquated Internal Combustion engines with electric machine fast enough, given all the advantages.

Or better yet, quit taking tax dollars away from productive segments of society to give to parasitic schemes such as most current green energy projects, and the productive members of society will have the resources to solve these problems on their own, instead of allowing scientifically illiterate governments and bureaucrats to pick winners and losers?

[sumdumguy]

Best sustainable energy is coal. Lots of it and no end in sight.

[tmyrfield]

pretty self explanatory for all except the small vocal minority alarmists trolling this website

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Best sustainable energy is coal. Lots of it and no end in sight.

I tend to agree, of everything we have tried so far, coal has been by far the most successful, we have also quite successfully cleaned up the actual particulate pollution (not to be confused with capturing harmless CO2 which is a costly energy inefficient process)from its combustion process. But is it actually sustainable?

From the world coal association:


There are an estimated 1.1 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide. This means that there is enough coal to last us around 150 years at current rates of production. In contrast, proven oil and gas reserves are equivalent to around 50 and 52 years at current production levels.

https://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-coal-found

Proven coal reserves are not the same as recoverable resources, which would be much smaller, and there is no indication that rates of energy consumption growth are going to stop, so 150 years is likely not attainable. There is a good possibility that someone born today could still be alive 150 years from now when those (currently known) reserves are exhausted. I don't consider one human lifetime of resource remaining to be sustainable? If we were to switch to all electric cars trucks tractors as the powers that be want us to, that 150 years suddenly shrinks to a fraction of that.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

[ATTACH]2524[/ATTACH]
pretty self explanatory for all except the small vocal minority alarmists trolling this website

I'm playing devils advocate here, but just because solar and wind are such obvious failures as of today, doesn't mean that we should give up on ALL potentially sustainable energy sources, when we can be 100% certain that someday we will need them if we hope to maintain our current energy dependent lifestyles. If you read my diatribe, I'm suggesting that we should be investing in researching any and all potential sources of sustainable energy, instead of wasting precious time and resources building wind turbines and solar panels which do not currently make economic sense in most situations. But perhaps someday they will when improvements to storage and grid have been made.

[Guest]

I'm playing devils advocate here, but just because solar and wind are such obvious failures as of today, doesn't mean that we should give up on ALL potentially sustainable energy sources, when we can be 100% certain that someday we will need them if we hope to maintain our current energy dependent lifestyles. If you read my diatribe, I'm suggesting that we should be investing in researching any and all potential sources of sustainable energy, instead of wasting precious time and resources building wind turbines and solar panels which do not currently make economic sense in most situations. But perhaps someday they will when improvements to storage and grid have been made.

I agree 100% never quit improving and learning , but dont throw thebaby out with the bathwater like theyre doing right now .!

[furrowtickler]

Well presented thread , thx A5, common sense hopefully remains at play here from both sides of the debate.

[tubs]

agree alberta the most important aspect of electrification of becoming the main power source is the storing of this energy. Ease of transporting it and 'battery live'

[chuckChuck]

From Alberta5
"Or better yet, quit taking tax dollars away from productive segments of society to give to parasitic schemes such as most current green energy projects, and the productive members of society will have the resources to solve these problems on their own, instead of allowing scientifically illiterate governments and bureaucrats to pick winners and losers?"

So are you also in favour of cutting subsidies to fossil energy producers? The estimate I believe is 3 billion per year in Canada. And that doesn't include external costs such as environmental damage, pollution, and additional health care costs.

[GDR]

I think part of the future might be more small scale production and less waste. Not sure how grid ties would work though. Every day we see constant waste in our lives, energy is no different. Lots of oil wells venting gas cause it don't pay to pipe it, put a mini generator on site, every manure lagoon capture the methane released, on site generation from that. Bio digester for organic waste. Radiators on engines just take the heat produced and disperse it, why not find a way to harness it. Harness static electricity. Compression force of gravity and weights? Even exercise machines, millions of people use everyday and there energy is just wasted when could be small scale generation. Gotta be someway to generate electricity from highway traffic be it friction, wind something. The solar shingles they've come up with seem smart compared to regular solar panels. No end to small scale ideas.

On a large scale basis I like ethanol production, may be biased as a farmer but seems to make sense and by products are valuable.

When all else fails just take a lesson from Marty McFlie and catch some lightning bolts!

[samhill]

NRG

Meanwhile, saving fossil fuels by converting much of today's transport to almost all rail and (tic) water by wind and solar.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

From Alberta5
"Or better yet, quit taking tax dollars away from productive segments of society to give to parasitic schemes such as most current green energy projects, and the productive members of society will have the resources to solve these problems on their own, instead of allowing scientifically illiterate governments and bureaucrats to pick winners and losers?"

So are you also in favour of cutting subsidies to fossil energy producers? The estimate I believe is 3 billion per year in Canada. And that doesn't include external costs such as environmental damage, pollution, and additional health care costs.

I am in favour of removing subsidies from all industries with the exception of well focused research. I especially include farmers in that.

I was looking forward to your review of my post, And that is the worst you can find to find fault with?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I think part of the future might be more small scale production and less waste. Not sure how grid ties would work though. Every day we see constant waste in our lives, energy is no different. Lots of oil wells venting gas cause it don't pay to pipe it, put a mini generator on site, every manure lagoon capture the methane released, on site generation from that. Bio digester for organic waste. Radiators on engines just take the heat produced and disperse it, why not find a way to harness it. Harness static electricity. Compression force of gravity and weights? Even exercise machines, millions of people use everyday and there energy is just wasted when could be small scale generation. Gotta be someway to generate electricity from highway traffic be it friction, wind something. The solar shingles they've come up with seem smart compared to regular solar panels. No end to small scale ideas.

On a large scale basis I like ethanol production, may be biased as a farmer but seems to make sense and by products are valuable.

When all else fails just take a lesson from Marty McFlie and catch some lightning bolts!

Yes, so many potential sources of energy and efficiency gains, ignored while we heavily subsidize turbines, solar panels and electric car production, at the expense of all other potential sources.

I know it is minor in the big scheme of things, but when I see an electric motor driving a treadmill, not the other way around, I can't help but shake my head at where societies priorities are.