Coal in an Engine does not need Fischer Tropsch
Posted by Heading Out on February 5, 2007 - 11:05am
There has been a fair amount of discussion about the need to form liquid fuels from coal. As the more conventional liquid fuels get more expensive, and less easy to find and produce, an alternative source of fuel has been suggested in the Fischer Tropsch conversion of coal into diesel and gasoline. Can I ask why?
No, not in the sense of do we need the fuel, but rather why go through this long, complex and relatively inefficient process of making the liquid, when, for just the price of grinding it down to micron size, you can mix the coal with water and happily drive your vehicle away. “Preposterous !” I can almost hear the splutters from here, but no, actually it is not, and I thought I would revisit a program that General Electric and others carried out in collaboration with the Department of Energy, between 1982 and 1993, which explains what some of the problems were and how they were resolved.
My initial reference can be downloaded as a pdf from ref. 4 here . The pre-cursor work comes from Jerald Caton’s overall review, which can be downloaded as ref. 7 from the same source.
The idea itself is not new. Rudolph Diesel ran one of his engines with a powdered coal fuel back in 1896, though the test only ran 7 minutes, before being stopped to see what the dry coal dust had done to the engine. Dr Caton considers it likely that the coal was at around 100 microns in size, and left the engine gummed with a considerable amount of sludge (the coal had perhaps 10% ash). There were later tests of differing engine designs in Germany, all using coal dust, from different sources, but mainly using the German lignite, which has about 20% ash and particle sizes in the 75 – 100 micron range. The coal was introduced in a compressed air stream ( about 90 psi), but the engines still underwent high wear rates, sludge accumulation and a lack of reliability and control. These issues had not been solved by the time that the Second World War came to an end and development stopped.
After the war the research largely moved to the United States, with the coal being mixed with various liquids, including diesel itself, in part as a way of getting around the problems of feeding coal particles in compressed air, since this can be an explosive mix, and is difficult to control and provide a constant feed. Some of the problems can be seen from this reported result
The slurry was used in a commercial Caterpillar diesel engine with an unmodified mechanical fuel injection system. During the testing the fuel injection system repeatedly failed due to pump plunger and injector nozzle pin seizures. A wear rate 35 times the normal level was recorded for the piston rings and cylinder liner. Performance of the engine remained similar regardless of the type of coal mixed with the diesel oil. Scope limitations and budget constraints ended the research. The final conclusions were that fuel-injection problems were severe, energy-release characteristics of coal fuels in engines were poor, and that significant wear problems were caused by ash and incompletely combusted particles.
To understand part of the problem with the ignition of the coal, with the higher rpm engines consider that the fuel is injected into the cylinder as a fan mist, and that the fuel must then atomize, ignite, and be totally consumed all within about 10 milliseconds. This becomes more of a problem as the coal particles get larger, and conversely it meant that by making the particles smaller, it became easier to get the coal to completely combust.
By using 2 micron coal, though only at 15% concentration in diesel oil, it became possible to get a diesel to run reliably, although the coal was specially prepared to have negligible ash content and nozzle blockage problems still persisted. Gradually the concentration of coal was increased, to the point that, with a slower cycling engine, it proved possible to run 31% coal in the diesel, with the coal in the 2 – 10 micron size, and the potential economics of making the transition also began to become evident, as oil prices began to rise in the 1970’s. It was about this time that the switch was also made to running the coal particles in water, rather than diesel oil, and with mixes up to 34% coal in water. Some cited advantages to making the switch (apart from improving the economics) were that the combustion temperatures would be lower, reducing disassociation reactions and the oxides of nitrogen.
By the beginning of the 1980’s the potentials of the change in fuels were becoming more evident, as well as a clarification of some of the technical problems that would have to be overcome for the technology to reach the market. And so the Department of Energy began a program where they worked with major diesel manufacturers (Caterpillar, Cooper-Bessemer, Detroit Diesel, General Electric and General Motors) and a program at Sandia looked at ways to improve the injector systems. The Caterpillar program was directed more at an intermediate stage conversion of the coal to gas, but the other four focused on the coal:water combination.
Cooper-Bessemer developed a technique that led to an engine being tested for more than 750 hours, using a coal:water mixture in which the 12-micron sized coal mixed 50:50 with the water, to give a consistency similar to paint. They concluded that, in 1993, the technology would only be economic with power plants above 8 MW, and were planning at that point, to launch a product line. At the time it was anticipated that the engines would come on market in the 2005 to 2010 time frame with an installed cost of $1300/kW (1992 dollars); an efficiency of 48.2%; NO2 emissions of 0.11 lb/MMbtu; SO2 emissions of 0.37 lb/MMbtu (equivalent to 0.3% sulfur diesel oil); and particulate emissions of 0.01 lb/MMbtu.
To reach this point it had been necessary for the manufacturers to solve the problems of the injectors (while CB used ceramic, GE had moved to the use of diamond nozzles – a product increasingly now available); hardening the piston rings, cylinder liners and valves; and improving the emissions controls. The increase in coal concentrations not only increased the economics, but since around 1% of the coal is required to evaporate a 10% water fraction in the mix, obviously the greater the mix, the better the engine performed. For stationary engines it is more cost competitive to ship the coal dry, and then do the final preparation and water mixing at the engine site, saving the cost of the freight. The paper was written in 1993, and projected that the use of such an engine, today, would produce electricity at a cost of $0.0611/kWh, against the cost of an oil/gas plant which was estimated to cost $0.0625/kWh. The oil/gas price was assumed to be $4.50 per MMbtu, coal price was anticipated to be $1.63 - $1.74 per MMbtu. The entire economics, with those input prices, however was based on the assumption that the preparation costs for the coal slurry fuel would not bring the overall price above $3.00 per MMbtu. The engine would require a higher maintenance cost $0.0036/kWh as opposed to $0.0016 for conventional. (More detailed costs are given in the paper).
Detroit Diesel focused more on large off highway haulage trucks and marine applications and had, by 1993 reached the point that they could achieve auto-ignition and get a combustion efficiency of around 99.2%, the application required a higher rpm engine, and this, in turn, mandated a smaller droplet size (20 microns).
General Motors were oriented more toward locomotive manufacture, and looked at a variety of liquid fuel bases for the coal combination, however, it was the GE team, through their Transportation Systems division, that had the greatest success, with the program reaching the point that a fully modified 2500 hp locomotive was run, during November and December 1991, around the GE test track, with equivalent power outputs to those of the conventional diesel oil powered plant.
Among the major accomplishments of this program were the development of specialized fuel injection equipment, for coal-water slurries, diamond compact inserts for the nozzle tips for wear resistance, and an integrated emissions control system. Over 500 hours of engine operation was accumulated using coal fuel during the duration of this program A major milestone was attained when, during November and December 1991, a coal-fueled diesel engine powered a locomotive on the General Electric test track. . . .They estimated that the coal-water slurry would be about half the cost of diesel fuel, on an energy basis.
In 1993 the further drop in the price of oil, and the discontinuation of the programs at the Department of Energy brought all these programs to a conclusion, and interest faded.
However as the GE Review concluded
GE has developed the critical technologies in the completion of the second phase, electronically controlled fuel injection engine with all durable parts and a complete emissions clean-up system. When the market environment again becomes favorable in the future, the technologies can be further improved and packaged into a commercial system very quickly.
.Well it would appear that we are now entering into those times, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes for this technology to be resurrected.
Some years ago I seem to remember seeing either on TV or on a news show at the cinema (for this was in the UK) the then Chairman of the National Coal Board driving around London in a car powered by this coal:water fuel. Unfortunately my memory is not good enough to remember the source, and though the folks that now have custody of the NCB films have searched diligently they cannot find any reference, so if anyone else can remember I would like (among other things for my own peace of mind) to hear about it.
Thanks!
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Heading Out,
Don't you know that Coal is one of those four-letter curse words. Coal is a natural mineral which serves as Nature's human exterminator. We should leave this accursed mineral in the ground rather than sacrifice our existence for the sake of electricity, automobiles and consumerism.
But we humans are not willing to make any sacrifices. Consider this enlightened statement from the governor of Texas:
Governor Perry won't sacrifice texas' economy but he is going to sacrifice Texas' people. Is it any wonder that Homo sapiens is headed towards certain extinction?
We are going to burn up all of these fossil fuels and then Nature is going to burn us all up. Nature will survive, but humankind will not.
Problem solved. The sun will keep on rising and the Earth will recover and life will flourish and the Universe will forget that Homo sapiens ever existed and God will look down from Heaven upon the human-less Earth and say, "good".
Coal has already damaged the Earth too much. It is time for humankind to stop, otherwise Nature will stop humankind forever.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Lots of money to be made supplying coal for electricity.
http://www.prosefights.org/coal/northantelope/northantelope.htm
How long will all of this last? Senior citizen wonders?
www.prosefights.org/reigps/reigps.htm
David, thanks for stating the (what should be but obviously isn't to some) obvious.
Coal contains the opportunity to end life on earth.
Is the Oil Drum indifferent to climate change? Is climate change any less an established fact than the coming of peak oil?
Proposals to make coal more usable are proposals to end human life on earth that much faster.
Is this article included because the Oil Drum is just interested in any scientific proposal that relates to our energy situation?
I'm genuinely curious about why such an apparently horrible idea (the more likely it is to work, the more horrible it is), is deemed worthy of an article.
Sigh...
DMathew1 and Oegon7, Heading Out isn't advocating the use of coal to deal with Peak Oil. He's discussing the science so that we are better informed.
Hello IntoTheBlack,
If Heading Out doesn't speak about the negative consequences of using coal in this manner he is doing the readers a disservice. The fossil fuels industries prefers to not think about the consequences.
But the consequences are important to me. Coal is an obscenely dirty fuel source. The carbon in coal is best sequestered in the ground as coal.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Sigh...
IntoTheBlack, I was afraid that what was going on. He is taking a "just the facts" approach, and it is being published because the facts are believed to be morally neutral.
So... a serious discussion of a new way to build an atomic bomb is just an exploration of physics and engineering... an informed public discussion of a new way to build a computer virus for Windows Vista is just an exploration of practical computer science issues... an IBM sale of computing technology to Nazi Germany in the 1940s was just a way of helping a foreign government keep track of details....and so on?
It is certainly possible to have a discussion about oil and its alternatives, but let's not imagine that such a discussion can be value neutral when the recent IPCC report suggests that we are on a sinking ship.
People on The Oil Drum like to take the big picture about the future of the global economy... shouldn't we consider how the choices made in the global economy affect the global ecology? Is it really possible to discuss technologies that could if successfully promulgated kill the planet and human life on it as value neutral alternatives?
I suppose you could say climate change is beyond the mandate of The Oil Drum... but isn't the word "future" in "discussions about energy and our future"?
Is there any more basic fact about our future than the fact that the earth is rapidly warming due to global carbon emissions.
So, sigh, no, I don't see how it is possible to have a value neutral discussion about potential ways to use our vast coal resources to enable the economy to keep chugging along and using the atomosphere as a carbon sink.
I just don't get an effort at value neutrality when coal is involved.
I'm not against a discussion of the science/engineering of using coal as a fuel... but I'd expect at least a few comments by the author to the effect that, "if scaled up to widespread use, and if the technological challenges are met, this technology has the potential to enable the increased use of coal, which could hasten the end of human life on earth."
Just a note. A little comment. Some indication of contextual awareness. Since he didn't provide it, I found it necessary to do it myself.
I'm going to assume that your view does not allow for ANY type of fuel infrastructure whatsoever. Am I correct? Not being snide, just getting the impression that you are opposed to ALL fuels.
If it can be done with coal then it can be done with charcoal. It appears the critical processing step is grinding the fuel into micron and submicron sizes. I had thought about if mixing charcoal dust with biodiesel would work since both products can be made on the farm. Apparently the answer is yes and the biodiesel may not be needed since water will work. Now the question comes can this be a substitute for gasoline?
What would be the energy density (BTUs/gallon) and mpg of such a mixture?
The energy content would vary according to heat content of the coal and the percent blends.
For example, a low-ash, high BTU coal (say 12,000 BTU/lb) in a 50% water mixture would be 6,000 BTU/lb. This is about 1/3 the heat value (on a BTU/lb basis) of gasoline, if my calcs are correct.
The MPG would also suffer accordingly, and since water does not burn, that's a lot of weight to haul around, not to mention the issue of keeping the coal in solution. This is one reason why producers don't like shipping water if they can ship a product that's as low in water content as possible.
I don't know what the heat content of charcoal is. Wood runs around 5,000 btu/lb assuming a 25% water content. Considering the temps Iowa has experienced the past 3 weeks perhaps a 70/30 ethanol/water mix would be more appropriate. Homegrown 140 proof moonshine requires considerably less energy to produce than the 200 proof stuff required by gasoline blenders.
Carbon is 14,500 Btu/lb. Charcoal is (mostly) the fixed carbon part of the wood and the ash. It looks like something on the order of 12000-12500 BTU/lb is about right.
Two things come to mind.
Steam engines.
Stirling Engines.
These are both external combustion technologies that pre-date the
internal combustion engine and both have been used in automobiles
as recently as the 1960s. The coal can be delivered to the burner in
powder form without mixing with water. These are entirely practical and
mature technologies. I am not sure of their efficiencies, but I bet they
beat coal to oil hands down.
I'm not passing judgement about the ethics of extending the automobile
age by employing this fuel source, and I'm sure they meet none of the
current emissions standards in the US or anywhere else. However, I
expect to see them being used in the not too distant future.
My initial reaction to the "new" fuel (coal) was to post something to do with Choo Choos: http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/newsteam/modern12.htm
Most of coal grinding schemes currently in use are primarily rather dodgy tax scams intended to gain govt subsidies.
Practically speaking, there is still an important place for coal. Logically, used to produce stationary electricity. If clean coal burning plants were actually built, CO2 properly sequestered, coal becomes more practical then ever more scarce, natural gas. With one new coal burning power plant going up in China each week, no wonder many here are frightened. Even this aberrant growth may be self regulating.
Party aperachicks, like 19th century London power elite are just as unwilling to see their children sicken and die in orange air..
Let's encourage any new technology that will afford the world truly clean (burning) coal. If we don't, WHEN (cheap) NG runs out, with little or no progress replacing aging nuclear, the air will be too dirty to hang out that wash in any case.
I keep hearing and reading people mention carbon sequestration, but I have yet to hear about a working power-plant that sequesters its carbon and is net energy positive. I have also not heard a viable plan to create said power-plant. It is possible, of course, that one exists and I just haven't heard of it, but I doubt it. If anyone has some intel for me, I would appreciate it.
Until then, any mention of carbon sequestration as a solution will be filed along with fusion reactors under "Check back in a couple of decades".
http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2004/Dec/15-595073.html
Weyburn, Saskatchewan, whose CO2 comes from:
http://www.dakotagas.com/
which is a gasification plant, but in principle no difference from a gasification power plant like
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/cctc/summaries/wabsh/waba...
So the technology exists. There are about 20 operational IGCC power plants in the world. What remains is to hook the pieces up.
It might be 20+ years from universal use, but it's 10 years or less from practical wide scale deployment.
Fusion by contrast is 50 years out. Even the advocates think it is 50 years out.
Pulverized coal (PC)is a mature technology but dealing with coal fines is quite problematic. A typical PC burner is dealing with coal ground to the point of 85% through a 200 mesh screen for an agglomerating bituminous coal. Agglomeration occurs for many eastern bituminous coals when they are exposed to the heat of the burner flame, causing the coal particles to stick together and reducing the effective surface area for the coal particle.
The coal be a slightly more coarsely ground for non-agglomerating subbituminous coals (65-70% through 200 mesh screen). But subB coals tend to be wetter and harder to grind. And they both suffer from a serious problem if the coal particles are stored...
A spark and air and...boom.
Early PC systems used a blanket of inert gas to keep this from happening. PC systems quickly adopted a direct firing with no intermediate storage (ground coal blown down the pipe to the burner). The drying/conveying air in most modern PC burner designs is about 15-25% of the stoichiometric air required for combustion. This typically keeps the possibility of explosions/fires to a minimum though pulverizer fires are remarkably common at coal-fired power plants.
Your combustion efficiency (heat to steam) depends upon design. Modern large scal esystems accomplish remarkable heat transfer effciency. It becomes more difficult with smaller sizes and lower pressures and limited superheat. In addition, the steam thermodynamic cycle has it's own limits and it won't be the >30% efficiency that we associate with modern coal-burning power plants. The combination of low heat transfer effciency and low thermodynamic stema efficiency would probably put the coal burner much lower than you might expect.
We've been through this on another thread.
The short answer is: No.
External combustion engines do not beat the combined mine to wheels efficiency of a CTL machine.
On top of that there is the mechanical handling of raw coal vs. the convienience of liquid fuels.
Plus the localised pollution control aspect. Coal burning is much better off done at centralised plants with emission controls.
Andy
I would suspect that your conclusion makes some basic assumptions about both mining and crushing the coal that may not be correct. There have been some interesting thoughts from Russia and elsewhere on the combination that might make quite a difference in the numbers for energy costs that should be used.
I was intrigued by the comment that it might be unethical to "extend the automobile age". You mean it might be unethical to find even good solutions? Is our civilization so evil that it needs to be destroyed?
Civilisation is not evil, but your post implies that you see it as impossible without
the automobile. I see it the otherway round, if we are not do destroy civilisation through
catastrophic climate change, then the car has to go. We cannot afford to burn that much carbon,
and once oil runs short, the amount of carbon burnt will get worse as we revert down the chain
to burning coal. Renewables will never provide enough energy.
China did very well without the car until 10 years ago, India about 20 years
ago. Europe will get by if forced to do without it. I can't speak for the US, but I can't
imagine that it will by it self, reduce society back to olduvii gorge.
Civilization is not evil, but it is lethal to all life. Civilization is a natural phenomenon every bit as much as a violent volcanic eruption or a forest fire or mold on cheese or a supernova. When all the right conditions for civilization are present and the ingredients are readily available, civilization has a chance of happening. Like any other complex natural phenomenon, there is a lot of chance involved in the particulars of exactly what kicks it off, but if the conditions are right, it will
take root and grow. For moldy cheese, the conditions are cheese, the right temperature and humidity, a mold spore, and being left alone for a while. For civilization, it's
a bit more complex, but the most important ingredients are energy, the means to exploit the energy, a reproducible change in the balance of power that involves the exploitation of that energy, and the inertia of competetive escalation.
The change in the balance of power is the thing that trips it off. In the first stage of civilization, it was the beginning of food production which led to a huge boom in food supply and the density of food supply, in all likelihood in its origins an essentially random change in the ongoing evolution of cultural idiosyncracies. Most such idiosyncracies are harmless and quaint- they don't affect the balance of power. Some of them did, though, and by the time anyone noticed what had happened the process had probably been going on for a long time.
Once the population practicing the particular idiosyncracy which affected
their food supply in a positive way, and their population increased, the particular idiosyncracy was also being practiced more widely. Sooner or later this led to a population pressure which forced the paractitioners of that idiosyncracy (which for many many generations must have not seemed like anything
important to anyone) to spread out more, and since they had a more intense exploitation of the resources of the environment, over time their population prevailed over or simply outbred others - or the idiosyncracy was adopted by
the neighbors. This self-reinforcing process only became more intense over time,
but the process was very slow. It probably kicked off and died out dozens of times before ever getting out of the stone age- the technology of stone tools
was sufficient for there to be an opportunity for the past 12-14 thousand years, and the climate after the last ice age made other conditions favorable in that timeframe as well. Thousands of years later people were aware of the process and
since the total environmental impact was still minor, began to enthusiastically pride themselves on their superiority because of their set of self-reinforcing cultural idiosyncracies which affected food production. These were the first village and town dwellers.
From there, the escalation of civilization has progressed, and from a very early time people were aware that by playing that game they were living beyond their means and only postponing the day of reckoning at the cost of making the reckoning worse when it finally came. Sumerian philosophers five and a half thousand years ago were lamenting this in their mythologies of the origins of cities (which were the protoype for later mesopotamian mythologies of the conquerors of the sumerians, who are the ancestors of the present inhabitants,
and the cultural progenitors of the modern-day dominant religions) and recognized the inescapable 'deal with the devil' that they had entered. For it is true that
while that escalatory game is being played, there is no escape- everyone present has to play or be out-competed by someone who does. Since then there have been countless attempts to hold back the process or mitigate its awful and destructive effects, but of course we all know that at the very best those attempts have turned into moral admonitions and the rest flat out failures.
Only when the game itself starts to run out of fuel does the whole thing start to break down and alternatives begin to for the first time present any kind of opportunity at all. The viable long term strategy for H. Sapeins is, and will remain, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Civilization, like any other positive feedback loop, is a self-correcting phenomenon. We have the blessing and the curse of living in the interesting times where we get to observe the natural processes of conservation take their due. Driving hybrid cars and recycling won't do anything to change the matter, and
moral arguments don't really have anything to do with what's essentially a physics problem. PO is only one of the parameters which are contributing to the
new regime of the escalation game having entered the conditions for collapse, but
it is a significant one and worth discussion. Investing in renewables without leaving the technological paradigm behind is a shortsighted and failure-prone approach (though stocking up on canned foods and building a bunker in wyoming is equally shortsighted and failure-prone.. both are extremes.) The real 'renewables' are the ones that have been here long before civilization and will be here again long after even an archaeologist would have a hard time finding any evidence of civilization's rise and fall.
Sir! Lay down that keyboard and step away from the computer! It is a product of... civilization.
You can pick up your stone tools at the local center for de-civilisation. Your clothing will be replaced with a decency loin fur for the beginners. Please do not complain to the attendant about the fleas in the fur, they are perfectly normal. So is an initial allergic reaction and the rash that usually follows. Once you survive both, have your tape worms implanted and get used to the other natural parasites, your immune system will rapidly learn to adapt to the host of diseases that are common in de-civilised people. Your life expectancy will not decrease by more than 40 years if you are 30 years of age or younger.
Lessons in how to distinguish edible maggots from poisonous ones will be held next full moon. Until then you are well advised to starve because you will not receive any form of medical treatment from now on. Please do not eat any types of red berries, no matter how hungry you are. Most types of tree bark is safe to eat, albeit not very nourishing, some are medicinal and you will figure out the ones from trees to avoid all by yourself. Please try to remember what poison ivy looks like. We had a very unfortunate case of a person filling up on it last year. Very tragic... we all remember the muzzled screams of the suffocating young man all too well.
The center for de-civilisation is proud to announce its annual success figures. Over 31% of all participants have learned in time to hunt small animals before they died of protein deficiency last summer. Of all surviving participants in the program the oldest is 42 years of age and going strong (he lost only a couple of toes to frostbite last year). And even though he lost all his teeth to scurvy last recently and has a hard time chewing raw meat, he is very hopefull to make it through summer and probably even survive until next spring.
The center for de-civilisation has decided not to allow the annual meeting of hunter-gatherers any longer because they violated the statutes. Some of them have been seen building shelters from natural materials.
:-)
Hello IP,
De-civilization is a process which future humans will undergo by necessity, not choice. I don't imagine that many will survive the process because technological civilization has destroyed, degraded and polluted all of the ecosystems which formerly made life possible in the pre-industrial age.
Such is the price humankind will pay for the foolish, destructive and failing experiment in civilization. When the bill becomes due billions will die. Such is fate of humankind.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
I stil find it amusing that people, like IP, use such pathetic arguments. The idea that arguing against the prevalent society requires that you argue from the position of someone who has already formed that other society is logically retarded. It is like saying that we cannot argue global warming unless everyone who is against it gives up any and all carbon production first.
As a member of western society, I swim in tech everyday. I am assaulted by it at every turn. An alternate society does not exist yet. That does not mean that tech is okay because we MUST use it to make our points.
You may as well tell American revolutionaries to stop busting King George's chops until you already have a country.
Sad, sad monkey.
I stil find it amusing that people, like IP, use such pathetic arguments. The idea that arguing against the prevalent society requires that you argue from the position of someone who has already formed that other society is logically retarded. It is like saying that we cannot argue global warming unless everyone who is against it gives up any and all carbon production first.
As a member of western society, I swim in tech everyday. I am assaulted by it at every turn. An alternate society does not exist yet. That does not mean that tech is okay because we MUST use it to make our points.
You may as well tell American revolutionaries to stop busting King George's chops until you already have a country.
Sad, sad monkey.
My point was that the poster that I was replying to seemed to be suggesting that, for ethical reasons, we might not even want to determine whether a technology was a good one because maybe we should have the objective to end the age of the automobile. This to me is a kind of Eager Doomer mentality. I have read this kind of thinking often here so I am sort of picking an argument because I think this kind of talk does more than almost anything else to marginalize and discredit the Peak Oil "movement". I do not think the mainstream community is going to take us seriously if we seem to be cheering for and working towards the end of civilization.
I can see the value in a smaller population but I am not about to work to enable a big die-off. I am not about to dismiss mitigations that might preserve many aspect of life as we know it now. I do not think it is time to man the lifeboats. If we do not all hang together, we will all hang separately.
I'm sick of these "Eager Doomers" too. Not to straw man, but the "Eager Doomer" position sounds a lot like the Khmer Rouge ideology whose goal was to get rid of industrial society and modern influences, and to go back to a society based on self-sufficient subsistence agriculture. They actually tried to implement it -- by whatever means necessary. Not pretty, but after the regime collapsed, Pol Pot insisted the whole thing didn't work because of "errors in the implementation". Might have even muddled along if they hadn't been so dumb to attack Vietnam. If it had we would have been able to send all the "Eager Doomers" to live there.
LOL.
Yeah, let's keep that automobile alive. Let's put ALL the ancient carbon sinks back into the atmosphere. Let us not be too eager to get away from a species killing technology. There are still a few years left in our poisonous paradigm.
I also find it amusing that these people who chide the so-called "doomers" believe that civilization must contain automobiles, or computers, or chocolate or whatever particular particular element they have arbitrarily decided constitutes "civilization."
Nature will reign us in. That is a fact. Sure, we can help make it particularly bloody by extending the poisonous paradigm. Nature does not care. The environment is the environment is the environment. Question is, do we want an environment that will prove a blessing to humanity or one that only harbors roaches living off the detritus of our failed species?
You make your choice obvious with every tech worshipping comment you make.
Its just the typical desire to see the transition between one age to another. I expect many people will be disapointed in fifty years to see even more automobiles than there are today.
I second that.
I'm afraid I see a lot of wishful thinking going on... we are not even close to an oil scarcity problem yet and we see people dismissing many potentially feasible (and dirty!) alternatives (CTL, methanol, PC, tar sands, oil shale etc.). With the (should I say "naive") assumption being that when oil becomes scarce, people are simply going to choose to walk away from their cars and MacMansions in favour of becoming organic farmers. Not going to happen.
Do I hate coal? Yes.
Would I use a coal powered car to go to work? Probably not.
Would I use a coal powered car to go on holiday? Maybe.
Would I drive a coal powered car to take my wife to hospital? Yes.
Would I drive a coal powered tractor on my farm? Yes.
Would I operate a coal powered generator to run my PCs & run my wife's washing machine? Yes.
We may do it slowly ... but we WILL burn ALL the coal ... and chairs and park benches ... and books ...
Yours is a weird comment. You hate coal, yet you are burning several lbs. of it every time you turn on your computer for a couple of hours. What do you do that for? Why don't you have solar panels? They will still allow you to turn your computer on and you wouldn't be burning any coal, at all.
And why do you want to burn books? They have a very low heat content and are much more useful as insulation material for your home. If you want to destroy them, at least do it in a way that makes sense.
I would (almost) NEVER burn books ... but others certainly will!
Even major eco-warriors take low cost flights ... and I am no better.
If the people who care nevertheless use tons of energy and natural resources then the human race has no chance ... the aware & caring souls will use quite a lot ... and the "masses" will gobble up EVERYTHING else.
Be honest: how many people do you know have given up almost all energy & resource consumption?
Even if you know 3 or 4, they are the amazing exceptions.
To keep my family healthy I am prepared to use energy & resources.
Maybe not much ... but probably way too much for a healthy global future ...
We are so stuffed!
Amazing. Its like some people never heard of nuclear power or any other fossil alternative.
Heavily emotionally invested in the Eager Doomer mentality.
Yeah right, it's all smooth sailing from here huh! ;)
It is going to be tough. If we make wise decisions we can have a pretty good outcome. I am not predicting that we will. The kind of political leadership we have had recently does not inspire optimism. But, I can envision a world that I will be glad to leave to my children. I am in favor of working toward the best possible outcome.
LOL.
Yeah, let's keep that automobile alive. Let's put ALL the ancient carbon sinks back into the atmosphere. Let us not be too eager to get away from a species killing technology. There are still a few years left in our poisonous paradigm.
I also find it amusing that these people who chide the so-called "doomers" believe that civilization must contain automobiles, or computers, or chocolate or whatever particular particular element they have arbitrarily decided constitutes "civilization."
Nature will reign us in. That is a fact. Sure, we can help make it particularly bloody by extending the poisonous paradigm. Nature does not care. The environment is the environment is the environment. Question is, do we want an environment that will prove a blessing to humanity or one that only harbors roaches living off the detritus of our failed species?
You make your choice obvious with every tech worshipping comment you make.
Cherenkov,
I see you save a lot of effort by using the same posts several times.
I realize that I should resist the temptation to respond to your incoherent, angry rants.
My thought is first you evaluate a technology and see if it is effective and clean. Then you decide whether you are going to use it. Would you object to a zero carbon vehicle, like one that ran on batteries and used a nuclear or solar power plant to charge it?
I am chiding doomers for not having an open mind about what might be the best possible outcome for humanity and the planet. You seem to be against civilization, however you define it. I think there is a lot of good in it that we should continue to build on.
Yes, I am a fan of technology. I want to insure a good life for my kids. It also appears that I differ from you in that I do not hate humanity.
Hello Deakin,
I have heard of nuclear power. I oppose nuclear power.
The other fossil alternatives are also really bad ideas, too. Humankind needs to live without because otherwise Nature will exterminate the primate pest and move on without remorse.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
I was only wondering about the slight off-centeredness of your post, not about your true intentions. People who really burn books talk differently.
There is nothing inherently bad about low cost flights. First of all, there is no other way to get from A to B in an energy efficient way if A and B are separated by an ocean. Secondly, most planes are reasonably fuel efficient these days. Way better than most American cars, anyway. And if you look at the total amount of CO2 generated by aviation, FOR NOW it is being dwarfed by the amounts used for electricity generation and heating. Obviously, you want to start saving where saving makes the most sense. Aviation won't be the right choice. This does not mean that at some point in the future we do not have to offset the CO2 from aviation. We do, but only after we are done with the easier stuff.
"Be honest: how many people do you know have given up almost all energy & resource consumption?"
Nobody. And I am not looking for those. I want everybody on average to conserve a couple of percent a year. That's the key to the solution: make small changes at a time, beginning with the most obvious and the easiest to fix problems.
Installing CFLs is one of those things that everybody could do right away and it would save massive amounts of energy.
Turn the power settings on your computer on and disable that stupid screen saver... your LCD does not burn in like your CRTs did and will be turned off anyway once the power saving scheme kicks in.
How about dring clothes on a line in summer?
Increasing the tire pressure in your car?
Drive at the speed limit and not 5mph faster?
Then, check your apppliances. How old is the fridge? Old enough to be an energy hog?
How about using a fan instead of the AC in summer?
How about better insulation for the home? A new, more efficient car? And so on... I know that the doomer scenario of pillaging hordes is more attractive than people actually saving energy the right way, but that is not what we need to be interested in. Compare that to religions. How useful are those which preach that the end is near, the rapture will occure next Tuesday and that you better kill yourself now because death by a flaming sword will be so much more painful than the poison "the leader" will give you?
If we had nothing but the things under control that come almost for free, like the CFLs, the clothes line, tire pressure and speed limits, we would be saving 10%+ of energy easy at home and on the highway. The less modest investments in efficiency and conservation can buy us another 20+%, albeit at a much higher price. Finally, investment in renewable generation will get us another 30% down from where we are and will save disproportionate amounts of carbon.
We are not stuffed. We just have to learn to pay attention to how we are doing things.
I, for instance, just got my Kill-A-Watt. Tonight I will make quantitative measurements where I used to guess what my consumption was.
Where did you get your Kill-A-Watt?
Easy find. Try Google.
A local environmental group I'm on the board of decided to purchase a bunch of these sort of meters to lend to folks. We looked at the "Kill-a-Watt" but found a similar device, the EM100 by "UPM Products", to be a better choice in our opinion.
One of the big advantages is that the EM100 has a small battery in it so that it retains its stored data even if unplugged or if there is a power failure during recording. With the "Kill a Watt" you need to get down on your hands and knees to read it while its still plugged into the wall, or it forgets. Also a somewhat nicer set of functions.
The EM100 is sold at "Canadian Tire" stores if you are up this way (Canada), web info for them is here:
http://www.upm-marketing.com/products/ProductDisplay.cfm?CFID=225336&CFT...
I think the really bad phase of peak oil re-adjustment will start when people stop discussing when the ship will sink, what pieces of their luggage they're going to bring with them, and how to do the back stroke and start discussing who they're going to kick out of the lifeboat. ;)
Hello LevinK,
If humankind chooses this path it is certain that Homo sapiens will go extinct. Not that I have any objections to that ...
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
David,
Human kind does not "choose" paths. In the grander scale of things human kind evolves, just like any other species on this planet. If it reaches the limits of its ecological niche it will adjust one way or another. You say it will do it by going extinct - that's fine for me, if you can live with that thought. But there are examples when species have adapted and you still have to convince me why humans are not one of those species. Ecological history shows quite the opposite actually - that we are the most adaptable species that has ever lived on this planet. Just consider what we have achieved for mere 10,000 years.
What we are doing here is nothing else but trying to increase our personal and collective adaptivity level. The goal in the end is to reduce the impact and try to avert the worst possible scenarios... not that I believe that discussions on the internet can do it, but it is much better than nothing.
Your constantly expressed hatred towards humans is the most distructive thing I've seen on this blog recently. In the grander scale of things we are not "good" or "bad" species, we just "are" species. Mother nature is patient and will survive even if we indeed fail.
Hello LevinK,
I see what humankind has done over the last ten thousand years and it looks like a catastrophe to me. Humans have destroyed, depleted, polluted and degraded the Earth in a fashion which will make life extremely difficult over the next several centuries.
As to the question of humankind's ability to adapt: Human's don't adapt. Humans modify the environment to suit our own whims and desire for comfort. Have you noticed all of the air conditioners, automobiles, grocery stores and restaurants? These are all evidences that humankind simply cannot survive without the technological crutch. When all of these things are gone it is difficult to imagine how humankind will survive. I suspect that we won't, but we'll have to see about that.
I don't imagine that this is the case. It appears to me that more than anything else people on The Oil Drum are seeking to protect their careers and investments. Adaptability, survivability and sustainability are not the primary concern especially in threads such as these.
Homo sapiens are a terrible species. Homo sapiens are a plague upon the Earth. Homo sapiens have polluted the entire globe. Homo sapiens have driven numerous species to extinction.
Yes, humankind is evil. The worse sort of biological evil that this world has ever experienced over the last six hundred million years. But this is a mistake which Nature can, and will, fix.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
In the Paccala/ Socolow 'wedge' model of reducing carbon emissions, they assume:
2 billion cars in 2050, vs. 500 million now
1 wedge (1bn tpa carbon abatement) is doubling the average fuel economy of that fleet, to 60mpg.
It's a big number, but hearteningly, all the technology to achieve it exists now (if not at the right expense): carbon fibre boy parts, plug in hybrid electric diesel technology etc.
Batteries is the breakthrough point, as it is in terms of renewable energies in general.
'my battery, my kingdom for a battery' -- Richard III by William Shakespeare
Hello Dezakin,
But I think we all can agree that five hundred years from now there won't be any automobiles or airplanes at all. Do we agree on that much?
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Nope.
Hello Dezakin,
Would you describe the future, as you see it, circa 2507 A.D.?
Thanks,
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
I see an orb of glass and steel, strip malls and highways as far as the eye can see with shredded, tamed farmland and parks and all wild lands subjugated and destroyed. Machines with the minds of men slowly replace and devour the earth with more machines and start to spread throughout the solar system as a plague of life and metal; They are poised to rip through the galaxy as a swarm of locusts.
Hello Dezakin,
You have spent too much time reading science fiction, evidently. But if that is the future you dream of, suit yourself.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Sorry, one could just as easily say the same thing about your neoprimitive return to nature fantasy.
Hello Dezakin,
The return to nature idea is one which I know will never happen simply because humankind has already thoroughly destroyed Nature. What shall happen is that when technology fails humankind will suddenly discover that the remaining local environments can no longer support 6.5 - 9 billion hungry mouths. Billions will die and civilization will collapse and soon after Homo sapiens will go extinct.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
See? Pure post-apocalypse sci-fi.
Why would homo sapiens go extinct?
Unless you're postulating that the collapse of civilization will wipe out almost all life on earth - which would be really quite hard to do - then there's no particular reason to believe that homo sapiens will be particularly worse off than any other large mammal. Indeed, even with the most primitive of technology, history shows us they'd be much better off than most.
You might find it a nice fantasy (which says volumes...), but extinction is exceedingly unlikely. We're like cockroaches with opposable thumbs.
Hello Sterling,
In answer to your questions:
1. Yes, it is unethical to save the automobile.
1a. Yes, it is unethical to burn coal for electricity, industry, the automobile or for any other reason. (You didn't ask this question but I answered it anyway.)
2. Yes, our civilization is so evil that it must be allowed to die.*
* This simply is not a matter of choice. Our civilization will die simply because it is the natural, inevitable fate of all civilizations. Civilization's collapse is an essential component of a civilization's life cycle and it makes no difference at what scale a civilization exists (whether city-state or global civilization): All civilizations collapse.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
I don't see any mention of removing the sulphur from such a mixture.
I would tend to agree with some of the other people who have commented - this coal should remain in the ground.
The environmental aspects of the products, based on a variety of feeds, are addressed in the papers that I cited, but in the interests of space, I did not include much discussion of this in the post. (which may mean that I will revisit the topic in another post later).
You mean you don't want another tax payer financed Rube Goldberg device?
Why not? They are such fun!
:-)
Quote of the day!
I have some questions:
How about CO2 emissions? Coal is still coal, even at 2 microns, so the exhaust would have 50% more CO2 than normal gas (more or less).
How to deal with impurities? Sulphur and the like? SO2, Acid rains?
Is there an idea about the mean EROEI linked to this kind of energy source?
How do you see a city street filled with coal-burning cars grinded in heavy traffic?
Cheers
Phitio
How to deal with impurities? Sulphur and the like? SO2, Acid rains?
I think that would be the biggest issue. We are presently moving to lower and lower sulfur fuels (ULSD and ULSG). This would be a huge step in the opposite direction. You would have very large sulfur emissions, contributing to acid rain, unless someone could devise a technology to capture the sulfur emissions. Nevertheless, I would hope that the choices we make in the future do not involve a large scale return to coal as a transportation fuel source. However, I fear that this will be the case as we deplete the liquid reserves.
Since new diesel engine technology is being introduced in 2007 to take advantage of the ULSD, I will repeat what a representative of the trucking industry said to us about it...
"Once it's introduced and makes inroads in to fleet replacement, we can never go back. If the fuel (ULSD) is not available, we will have no choice but to park our vehicles until it is" His comment was a timely statement around the higher sulfur diesel fuels that were left and available to us after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Since ULSD is required to have the 3-way catalyst work effectively, and there is no way to unpipe it or the engine control technology, he has a point.
One also had to pay particular attention to grocery store shelves and the effort that employees made to give the appearance of adequate supplies of everything as fuel and other resources became contricted, if only for a few days. You could not hide the longer waits for fuel at the service stations.
ULSG will allow current automobile emission control technology to work better and more efficiently. All ODB II autos (everything since 1996) should require less "unburned fuel" to have the 3-way catalysts work effectively (sulfur and phosphorus are catalyst suppresants).
It makes absolutely no sense to use coal for powering light vehicles. The use of pulverized coal/water mixtures to power light vehicles has to lead to hugely increased releases of green house gases.
It makes far more sense to use coal for stationary power sources with good pollution control and CO2 sequestration until these plants can be replaced with wind, tidal, solar, or nuclear power plants.
Why was there no discussion of the option of electrification of transportation in this article?
In addition, it is likely that the suggestion that stationary power plants will not be clean and will not have good CO2 sequestration. Check out the story at this link from the Toronto Globe and Mail about what the Chinese are doing with their huge expansion of coal power. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070203.wclimatechin...
Expanded use of coal is a failure in planning and a failure in dealing with the occurrence of Peak Oil.
Do I perhaps detect a bit of naivety here?
CO2 sequestration of any sufficient magnitude and reliability is an entirely imaginary technology. One just about might have asked for antigravity drives to fling toxic waste past pluto.
Look, we already have superb sequestration technology better than any other engineered product we know about for nuclear fission wastes. It's enormously easier, being a dense solid of comparatively miniscule volume.
And yet people are still going bonkers about it, even though certainly for timescales of 500-1000 years just about nothing is going to happen of any significance to the waste.
The best form of carbon sequestration is to leave coal alone, undug.
Please, let's go to electrification, powered by nuclear, geothermal and wind.
Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
Let It Be Known that another useless technology is looking for an application. Tax advantages are welcome but the inventors are willing to go through any pains necessary to let the market decide that they are not worthy. Especially dumb money from private investors and clueless fund managers is welcome and will be added finely ground to the coal slurry where it will burn just as fine as in any other Wall Street combustion engine.
:-)
Hopefully, this idea will be strangled at birth. Good luck sequestering co2 while using coal in a mobile device. And don't forget what a great job the coal companies are doing restoring all those mountain tops in West Virginia that have removed. Not to mention all the valleys they have destroyed.
Increase fleet average mpg by 100%. Reduce miles driven by 25%. Then come back and talk about liquid or not so liquid alternatives to the current liquid.
We have a lady in town who drives her brand new Land Rover to the Post Office and then leaves it on while she jaws with the Postmistress and anyone else she can find in the post office. Don't ask us to fund these kinds of alternatives when you have these kinds of people who care so little for the current environment much less for the future.
If GE's so called emissions clean up system can get rid of CO2, then go for it. Somehow, I doubt that this is what they mean by cleaning up emissions.
Increase fleet average mpg by 50%. Reduce miles driven by 70%.
Call it "Europe".
That change would reduce world oil consumption by about 10%. It'd take years of work, of course, but I suspect rapidly rising oil prices could make it happen in surprisingly short order.
Twelve trace elements of environmental concerns for the Powder River Basin coals in Wyoming are antimony, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, selenium, and uranium. Of these, arsenic, mercury, and selenium are the trace elements that seem to be of the greatest environmental concern... [link]
Powder River Basin is relatively clean and easy, compared to many other deposits. The quicker we run through that the quicker we'll start burning the really nasty stuff. Conservation and renewables are the answer.
At first I was appalled at the idea of doing this (as most commenters obviously), but on second thought it might be the lesser evil than CTL. CTL has some 60% efficiency, meaning that eliminating it will result in emitting 40% less CO2 per mile driven. I am not sure about the SOx and NOx emissions though... it may be that CTL will end up being better for those.
Personally I hope both of these technologies stay buried deep underground. But hoping does not equal thinking - what I actually think is that in reality we are going to have both of them, with CTL picking up as the easiest to implement in the short term. And I also expect carbon capture to never happen on any significant scale.
To chose between the lesser of two evils only makes sense if you have no other choices. However, since we already know how to build clean wind farms and solar panels and could eliminate most uses of carbon and hydrocarbons, why not go that way? Going all renewables is a real choice, it's just not the cheap bastard's choice. But then... who wants to be a cheap bastard? Right?
But then... who wants to be a cheap bastard? Right?
Everyone. Everyone wants plentiful and affordable energy. I see you are suggesting that wind and solar can do it, but you need to walk quite a few extra miles to convince me in this. Not everyone gets the paycheck of George Clooney you know.
"But then... who wants to be a cheap bastard? Right?
Everyone."
I don't. It wouldn't kill me to pay twice as much for electricity, natural gas and gasoline and it won't kill you or anyone else, either. Are there people who can not afford it? Sure. Those are the same people who work minimum wage jobs and never had health insurance in their lives. If you want to help those, how about repealing the tax cut and increasing the taxes for the rich? How about taxing me a couple thousand more a year? I can afford it and the money could do a heck of a lot of good. And I don't even mind. I was never cheap in my life. It's just not in my nature.
The question is not going to be decided between those with George Clooney salaries and those who scrape the bottom of the barrel. The question will be decided by those who earn an income above the median. And it can be decided by many different means. I, for one, am trying to conserve 10% of my electricity and heating bill every year (in terms of consumption, not money I owe). That is my personal goal: 10% a year for the next five years. None of the measures I am going to implement will cost me a thing in the long run. In the end, they will all save me money.
The very same measures would save money for those who can't afford them. They just might need a little bit of financial help upfront. I think, as a society we can afford to help them. If we can afford to spend a couple trillion dollars to kill suicidal guys in Iraq, we can probably afford to spend money on people here at home and to make the country energy independent.
What you are missing is the multiplier effect which cheap and abundant energy has on all (at least on all substantial) parts of the economy. This means that if we go for expensive and/or technically constrained resource like wind, everything we produce and manifacture will become expensive or/and constrained in volume.
Ironically so will be the means of energy production. If we build for example an electric grid with wind and solar only (plus some expensive energy storage), the sheer cost of the system will translate in the wind turbines and their infrastructure in the next step. Clearly once you remove cheap and plentiful inputs, the whole system will begin contracting in unstoppable downward spiral.
Your suggestion that you personally can put up with twice as high electricity rates is quite shortsighted. The real question is are you going to be able to put up with twice as low living standard?
An effect which you're overestimating.
The average cost of electricity to industrial users in the US in Jan 2006 was about $0.065 per kWh, vs. about $0.115 per kWh in the EU. And yet EU countries like Germany are exporters of manufactured goods.
The experience of Europe suggests that energy prices double those seen in the US have quite a minor impact on an economy.
If it's so clear, you should have no trouble backing that claim up with evidence, no?
'cuz the evidence I've been able to find doesn't agree with you.
That's not a real question at all - that's just alarmism.
The average cost of electricity to industrial users in the US in Jan 2006 was about $0.065 per kWh, vs. about $0.115 per kWh in the EU. And yet EU countries like Germany are exporters of manufactured goods.
Like I said I am talking about cheap and plentiful energy. For example Germany has vast coal reserves, providing for more than half of its electricity. Wind provides only 6%, in spite of all generous subsidies, feed-in tarrifs etc. Its neighbour Denmark has the highest wind penetration in the world - 20% (at least on paper). Incidentally it also has the highest electricity prices in Europe (30c/kwth for households, number from memory).
I can only imagine what would happen with the Germany export economy if it had to give up the plentiful coal resources and replace them all with wind turbines. Again I am stressing on the reliability and plentifulness of supply as the biggest advantage of fossil fuels. Unlike renewables or nuclear, fuels like coal are easily accessible and are fast to scale up because of low upfront costs and abundancy of supply. The same is far from true for renewables which in addition are quickly to reach their technical and economic limits.
Right now I am not ready to back my living standard claim with extensive economic arguments. But I am absolutely certain the EU leadership knows exactly what I am talking about - otherwise how to explain the panic attacks in response to short interruptions of Russian supply for example. I think they are well aware that unreliable energy supply will have devastating consequences on their economies and are ready to fight for it. If it was so easy and affordable to go to solar and wind instead of fossil fuels, why Germany is still at 6%?
As the quote shows, you were talking about cheap OR plentiful energy, and making the implication that expensive energy would make everything else similarly more expensive. That implication does not appear to be true.
If you're now claiming that your main point was about reliability or abundance of supply, well, that just makes your response to a post about:
a little bit of a non sequitur.
23.6c/kWh, 58% of which is tax.
I do agree with you that wind electricity is more expensive than coal electricity. I just don't agree with you that a substantial increase to the price of electricity - or energy in general - would cause substantial problems in the US.
23.6c/kWh, 58% of which is tax.
And how much of this tax is in fact covering the explicit subsidies to the wind industry?
Regarding the "duality" of my point - in economics abundant and reliable usually translates to cheap via the mechanism called market. Thus I did not have two different inconsistent points - just two ways to express one and the same thing.
I intend to leave my assertion that our level of prosperity depends on availability of cheap and abundant sources of energy (and electricity in particular) without extensive proof - count it as unbased personal opinion if you wish. Anyway - I'd like to see just one country running its economy on wind and solar only, so that we can analyse how it affects living standards. No such thing? Forgive me for not being surprised. Wind and solar energy at their current level depend on subsidies, so they represent anti-economy from the worst sort. Some of the subsidies are explicit, and the others are more subtle - provided by the fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro serving as a backup to their intermittency. By ignoring all economic logic and persisting with expanding them we are going to face rising costs and deteoriating living standards everywhere. Mark my words.
A fair amount, but not likely to be most, I would expect - the cost of generating electricity with wind power has apparently dropped sharply in the last 20 years, down to where it's not much more than coal-fired plants (~5c/kWh).
Much of Denmark's capacity was likely installed a while ago, but even at 10-15c per kWh the production cost is well under the price paid by residential customers.
Hiring people to turn handcranks all day to produce electricity is abundantly available (lots of people) and reliable (cranks-per-hour is easy to predict in a large group), but it certainly wouldn't be cheap.
By "without extensive proof" you appear to mean "without a shred of evidence".
How about "expensive and abundant" - what level of prosperity would that allow? The European experience seems to suggest it'd do just fine.
Given that effective wind and solar are quite new technologies, and electrical infrastructures are large and long-lasting public works projects, it's nonsensical to act as if the non-existence of all-wind/solar electrical grids is evidence of their flawed nature. That's just as silly as saying the 2007 model of cars is a flop because most of the cars on the road are older versions. Well, duh - there hasn't been enough time to adopt the new stuff yet.
Moreover, it's also nonsensical to "demand" 100% wind/solar to prove it has value. Would you "demand" 100% coal, 100% gas, or 100% hydro before admitting those can be a useful part of an electrical grid?
I guess I'll have to mark your words, since your evidence is nowhere to be found.
Wind/solar clearly can be used for a substantial fraction of a nation's electricity generation - it's being done - and the sky hasn't fallen yet. It's more directly expensive than coal, but the negative externalities of coal (e.g., respiratory diseases) may make up the difference, and at any rate that difference is shrinking rapidly (for wind, at least).
Besides, as the original point said, less-cheap energy won't kill us. Evidence suggests it won't even particularly hurt us. Which - considering the negative externalities of CO2, SO2, and particulate emissions - may be more than can be said for sticking with the immediately-cheapest solution.
Wind/solar clearly can be used for a substantial fraction of a nation's electricity generation - it's being done
Where? Is 1% "substantial"?
West Denmark is the case in point.
Spain is certainly scaling rapidly.
The argument has been made that W Denmark is really relying on its strong grid links to Scandinavia (Hydro) and Germany.
It is also the case though that Denmark is a heavy user of CHP-- again fitting into the 'renewables' schema.
I think the reality is that it's going to be a balance. 20% windpower seems quite doable, whether a nation can get further than that is very dependent on factors like its grid interconnection, the amount of pumped storage available, etc.
At the speed certain countries are scaling, 20% renewables will be sooner, rather than later. It's probably the fastest introduction of a new power technology since at least Combined Cycle Gas Turbine, if not faster.
(CCGT is, I think, about 10% of power supply in the developed world. This took about 16 years I think (first CCGT in the UK was 1991)).
Interestingly, one of the places which is 'going large' on wind is Texas. As you would know, Texas is effectively independent (by design) from the rest of the US power grid. But they have great wind resources, and lots of land, and cooperative farmers.
Conversely in Eastern and Central Europe, there just isn't the wind resource that there is on the Atlantic fringe, AFAIK. So I don't see getting to those levels of penetration. The solution may well be more nuclear plants.
Although Italians are fantastic engineers, I don't know of any Italians who would support nuclear power in Italy. The Italian state and society is just too corrupt, governance too slipshod. Similarly Greece sits on tectonically unstable geology. However the wind opportunity in Greece is very substantial.
I also think CO2 sequestration will come. It doesn't solve the lignite problem (AFAIK you can't run an IGCC on coal with that low a thermal value).
On European energy in general. We have almost no autonomous supplies of energy, except declining gas and oil production, hydro power and coal. Energy in Europe has always been expensive relative to the US: one of the reasons our washing machines are so much more efficient. It's rational: energy is scarce, expensive and insecure.
Our economies are adapted around this.
If the US has to spend 2-4 cents more per kwhr to bring in a mix of wind, CHP, biomass, nuclear and Carbon capture and sequestration, then it won't kill the US economy. There's a lot consumers can do to reduce consumption ('consumers' meaning industry, commercial offices and shops, home users).
At 4 cents/kwhr you effectively trigger entry by all the different altnerative energy sources (except solar).
duplicate post
So, all this so we can drive our motor vehicles? Go to Wal-Mart? Visit Aunt Emily? Is that it? What am I missing?
"What am I missing?"
That people need or want to go places, and in many cases motor vehicles are a good way to do that? I guess the utility of motor vehicles is more obvious to me than to you. Not to say that we couldn't have more efficient vehicles, have fewer of them, and use them less.
For instance:
Usually I ride my bike to the train station to get to work. The train station is 5 miles away. I just got home. It was about 8 degrees this morning. It is 6 degrees now. There is a 20-30 mph wind. My driveway is 1700 feet long and covered with ice. I decided to drive today. I'm glad I could do that.
My daughter has band practice before school on Mondays. It was 8 degrees. Today is her birthday, so she had to carry cookies, her normal backpack, her flute/case, and her music. Because band practice is before school, she couldn't take the school bus. My wife drove her (and picked her up because she had another activity immediately after school.) If we did not have a car available, she could not do these things.
Now I am not claiming that life without driving is unthinkable, or impossible, or anything like that, but I don't think it is hard to understand why people will try to figure out ways to continue to do it. My personal opinion is that it would be much easier for people to reduce their car use than to eliminate it, and while I hope the cars of the future will be electric, I fully expect that there will be cars, and quite a few of them, and they will need to be powered by something.
Hah! Of course it's not hard to understand why people want to drive. I am just constantly amazed — well, maybe not — at the unbelievable lengths people will go to and efforts they will expend to do so ... in every conceivable situation ... like going to the 7/11 to get some cheeze doodles.
We could end up destroying this planet's climate as we have known it, and enjoy unbelievable suffering due to liquid fuel shortages in a world that structurally depends on those fuels, because nobody was willing to change their behaviour until the last minute ... when it was way too late.
mwilbert, Your point is exactly correct. Many who speak of the joys of the completely car free culture have not tried to imagine exactly what it would be like. Reduced driving and or driving with much more advanced and efficient vehicles are a WORLD apart from absolutely no possibility of driving. Driving and automobiles are part of a spectrum of living that if we were to "throw the switch" to complete off would have to be heavily modified, and entail a complete redesign of almost every aspect of existance. Can it be done? If it had to be, of course, it would be. Humans will try to do what it takes to survive. Should it be done? That is an aesthetic/philosophical question, not a technical one. There are people who feel that it is absolutely inhuman and immoral to travel faster than human feet will allow. At this moment, however, they are decidedly in minority.
Must it be done, this throwing of the switch to "complete off" as far as privately owned personal transportation (which is a much less emotionally loaded term than "car" which brings with it all kinds of cultural associations)?
The short answer is it is not provable that a personally owned and operated transportation device is not sustainable for many many decades to come (I know the above statement will be hated, but there it is, and I am waiting for someone who can provide said proof), IF, and man this is one big IF, the design and use of said vehicles is greatly modified. The use of truly elegant and efficient design could reduce the environmental and consumptive aspects of the personal transportation device down by astounding margins, even given todays level of technology, and recall that almost no one has ever really spent a great deal of time/effort/engineering on looking very hard at the automobiles life cycle consumption and improving it. So we can change levels on the spectrum of consumption/efficiency with far less disruption than we can throw the switch from on to off IF (another big if) our goal is to continue what is commonly seen as a modernist type culture that does allow for freedom of movement, or mobility, which has been considered a human desire since the dawn of history.
One more little point: If we wanted to go to a walking, non car, non modern type of culture, we picked a very bad time for it: The aging of the population makes the utopian idea of a "bicycle/foot" based culture much more difficult than it would have been in say 1970. While the aging boomers seem to live in a fantasy that they are as able to walk in driving thunderstorms and sub freezing tempetures as easily as they could when they were college aged, I will admit that at least in my own case this is decidedly NOT the case. Only a few years ago, I walked as many as three or four miles per day, for health reasons. This has proven extremely difficult to do with increasing years. I am trying to re-establish my own ability to do this, because I do think that walking and or bicycling are good for a person, but I must admit that the difficulty of this has been greater than I expected, and at times downright painful. I make no pretense that I am doing this as fuel saving measure. I and several co workers have considered joining a gym for exercise. Some of the women where I work already have. Needless to say, they drive there. They used to distance walk in town, but a combination of weather (both cold and rainstorms) and crime concerns (they were asked to give it up by the local police and to please not do it, and told they were taking their safety into their own hands). I am still often amazed by the utopian disconnect I hear in many places by those who see walking as real transportation alternative given our current situation, and simply cannot accept that people saying these things are not aware of the real conditions of existance in the U.S., and in fact the world.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom.
RC
Actually an aging population rapidly reaches the point where driving is impractical. I am primary caregiver for my mother, who is 88, and stopped driving 5 years ago. Because she lives one block from the hospital, grocery store, and bus stop in a 5 story apartment in Boulder with good transit and special transit, she does fine without a car. Everybody who lives long enough will have to give up driving eventually, which is one more reason we need to redesign our towns and cities to reduce mandatory car dependence.
Yes, your point is well taken, tommyvee, but even though many get too old to drive, they are still able to be driven. Your example of a city with good transit is also a positive thing to hear of, not many cities are so well designed....but then we face a problem: How many of the ever growing hoard of elderly could we pack around the needed hospitals, groceries, and bus stops?
One presumes the property values would become astronomical, and the density around these prime locations become unbearable very quickly.
Even in smaller cities, housing in such prime elder spots is already showing upward pressure. While I don't consider myself elderly just yet (still below 50) I recently did some shopping to move myself closer to work and other services from the small town I now live in. I found that gasoline prices could triple and I would still be ahead on buying fuel and commuting. It is the time on the highway that is a burden. The fuel even at three times the cost would be of marginal importance.
RC
Remember, we are only cubic mile from freedom
At the close of the steam railroad era, several railroads tried to develop steam engines for the modern era. One effort was a steam turbine locomotive, another was a steam electric, but the third one was built by Union Pacific and was a coal burning turbine-electric locomotive. None were successful, but the details on the tubo-electic would be interesting if the data can be found.
What they were trying to do was to use there coal based fuel infracture on more modern efficient equiptment.
GM developed a turbine car using powdered coal directly as fuel. They worked with Xerox on the feed mechanism, micron coal powder having similar handling characteristics to copier toner powder. This car was on display at Disney's EPCOT center (I believe) in the 1980s.
As soon as you ask the question about using a solid fuel like coal - it sort of begs the question - Why not use solid biofuels. We consider cellulosic ethanol to be the big pie in the sky fuel solution, but why not just power up the cellulose and burn it directly?