Energy Grades and Historic Economic Growth
Posted by nate hagens on August 24, 2007 - 10:30am
This is a guest post by oil and energy economist Douglas Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Graduate Director of Economics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and author of "Scarcity and Growth Considering Oil and Energy", and "Alaska and North Slope Natural Gas". Doug has a prior guest post on theoildrum on The Energy Utilization Chain. This post offers a different but related perspective on energy comparisons and transitions than last weeks post on Energy Transitions by Professor Cutler Cleveland.
1. Weight Grade
The weight grade determines how much energy there is per pound of energy resource. For example, coal has about 12.7 thousand BTU/lb, natural gas about 10 thousand BTU/lb, oil about 19.3 thousand BTU/lb, and an electric battery typically has 100 BTU/lb. Electric batteries then are very heavy compared to their energy output which is why electric cars do not have very good driving ranges.
Professor Reynolds' paper is below the fold.
Introduction
In 1709, William Darby invented the coking process which led to the use of coal in 18th century England. From an economic stand point, one could say that this event more than any other ushered in the industrial revolution with its dependence on coal and steel produced from coal. However from an engineering perspective, there is another cause of the industrial revolution that is more subtle. This cause is the physical make up of the energy resources available to England.
According to Simon Kuznets, an economic epoch, which is a period of time defined by rapid population increase for a given region, "is determined and shaped by the application and ramification of an 'epochal innovation'." i.e. new significant technologies. (1)
Rondo Cameron further states,
A possible explanation for the correlation of population growth/stagnation/decline with income movements can be fashioned by analyzing the interaction of the fundamental determinants of economic development (land, labor, capital and entrepreneurial capacity). With a given technology, the resources available to a society set the upper limits to its economic achievements ... technological change by increasing productivity and opening up new resources has the effect of raising the ceiling. (2)
This emphasizes technology as the major ingredient for periods of high economic and population growth. However, we believe another ingredient, equally as important as technology, is the grade or inherent value of energy resource inputs available to an economy. This has to do with productivity. Each type of energy resource has an inherent physical potential for being more or less productive and that potential is the energy grade. Higher grade energy resources have more potential for being productive than lower grade energy resources.
Energy is the driving force behind industrial production and is indeed the driving force behind any economic activity. However, if an economy's available energy resources have low grades, i.e. low potential productivity, then new technology will not be able to stimulate economic growth as much. On the other hand, high grade energy resources could magnify the effect of technology and create tremendous economic growth. High grade resources can act as magnifiers of technology, but low grade resources can dampen the forcefulness of new technology. This leads to the conclusion that it is important to emphasize the role of the inherent nature of resources in economic growth more fully.
To see better how this very subtle idea is a not so subtle cause of the industrial revolution, and possibly other economic epochs, we must look at some simple physics of energy resource characteristics. We believe that the most important resources for economic achievements are energy resources, therefore, we look at ways to compare energy resources.
The Energy Resource Characteristic Grade
In order to understand why some energy resources are better than others, we need a way to compare them. One way to compare energy resources is the energy grade concept defined here. This concept identifies the physical characteristics of competing energy resources that allow the economy to more cheaply extract services from each BTU (3) of energy. There are four grades.
1. Weight Grade (BTU / lb.)
2. Volume Grade (BTU / cubic foot)
3. Area Grade (BTU / acre)
4. State Grade (Liquid, Gas, Solid, Field)
Consider these grades in detail:
1. Weight Grade
The weight grade determines how much energy there is per pound of energy resource. For example, coal has about 12.7 thousand BTU/lb, natural gas about 10 thousand BTU/lb, oil about 19.3 thousand BTU/lb, and an electric battery typically has 100 BTU/lb. Electric batteries then are very heavy compared to their energy output which is why electric cars do not have very good driving ranges.
The weight grade determines energy performance. Usually, transportation devices must carry their fuel source along with them during use. The lighter is the weight of the fuel they use, the less energy they require to carry that fuel around which is why consumers and producers will be willing to pay a premium for higher weight grade energy resources.
2. Volume Grade
The volume grade determines how much energy there is per unit of volume of the energy resource. Natural gas is very bulky at about one thousand BTU/cubic foot at standard atmosphere and pressure, and 177 thousand BTU/cubic foot at 3000 psi. Oil, though, has about one million BTU/cubic foot. The volume grade is important again, because it determines performance for certain energy uses. For example, if we had to use natural gas in place of oil for cars, the volume of the fuel tank would have to be much bigger and thus much heavier, or if it was the same size, then refueling would need to be done more often.
A low volume grade energy resource is also difficult to transport. For example, a low volume grade resource like natural gas can be many times as expensive to obtain from an over seas source, such as the Middle East, than from the North American continent due to storage expense during transportation. So here again consumers and producers will be willing to pay a premium for higher volume grade energy resources.
3. Area Grade
The area grade determines how much energy there is per area of occurrence of the energy resource in its original state, i.e. how much energy per acre. For example, the area grade of wood is roughly 1 to 5 Billion BTU/acre because wood is spread out in forests over many acres. Its original energy state, then, is much more spread out. The area grade for oil is usually tens or hundreds of billions of BTU/acre, as it is found in thick under ground reservoirs in a high volume grade state.
The area grade determines how much service including cost savings the economy can extract from a given energy resource. If the energy content of the resource is spread out, then it costs more to obtain the energy, because a firm has to use highly mobile extraction capital, which must be smaller and so cannot enjoy increasing returns to scale. If the energy is concentrated, then it costs less to obtain because a firm can use larger scale immobile capital that can capture increasing returns to scale. Therefore, energy producers will be willing to pay an extra premium for higher area grade energy resources.
4. State Grade
The state grade defines what form or state the energy resource occurs in. The four major state grades are the following:
1. Liquid
2. Gas
3. Solid
4. Field
1. Liquid
The liquid state grade is simply where the energy resource occurs in a liquid form at standard atmosphere and pressure, such as oil does. This state is the highest state grade, because energy resources that are liquids are easier to transport and use than any other energy state. For example, a machine can use less moving parts to inject, burn and remove a liquid in a burning chamber, such as a piston cylinder, than it can a solid. Less moving parts usually means less costs. Also one can more easily transport and store a liquid, than a solid or a gas, since a producer can carry a liquid in un-pressurized containers or pump it through pipes. This makes liquids cheaper to use than energy resources that occur in other states.
2. Gas
Gas at standard atmosphere and pressure is the next highest state grade. A gas is more difficult to transport and use than a liquid, because it by nature must have a lower volume grade and must be kept under pressure. However it is still fairly easy to use. A machine can inject gas into a burning chamber just like a liquid.
3. Solid
A solid energy resource is the third highest state grade. It is simply an energy resource in solid form at standard atmosphere and pressure such as coal or wood. Solid fuels are more difficult and thus more costly to use, because in order to burn them, complicated mechanisms must continually place them in a burning chamber and remove the ashes once they are burned. A machine cannot pump the fuel into place but must mechanically move it. This makes solid fuels more costly to use per BTU than liquid or gas fuels in many energy uses.
4. Field
A field energy resource includes such phenomena as radiation fields, like solar and nuclear power, and pressure fields, like wind energy and hydro power and are the least useful state grade.
The main problem with fields is that they are difficult to store. For example, one of the biggest problems with solar energy is storing the day time heat energy for night time use. The only field that does not have this problem is nuclear fields, but they are difficult to contain from creating environmental hazards.
There are four different physical manifestations of the field state grade:
1. Pressure
2. Electric
3. Magnetic
4. Radiative
1. Pressure
The pressure field is where there is a difference in pressure. An example of such a field is like the wind pushing a wind mill. The wind creates a pressure differential that in turn pushes the arms of the mill. Another such field occurs with hydro power. Firms often use pressure fields to make electricity.
2. Electric and
3. Magnetic
Electric and magnetic fields are most often used in energy conversion processes only after another energy resource is used. Therefore, they are not sources of energy.
4. Radiative
A radiative field is like solar energy. The sun's light radiates on the Earth. That radiative energy in turn creates heat or even electricity. All nuclear power too is a field type characteristic grade, since nuclear fuels, like Uranium, radiate alpha, beta or gama particles.
Energy Resources and The History of Economic Growth
In Table 1 and figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 (not reproduced here), there is listed and shown many energy resources and their characteristic grade values. These show how the different energy resources compare with each other. Note that oil is one of the most valuable energy resource since it leads the other resources in most categories.
This comparison gives us a new way to analyze economic history. Many of the greatest economic epochs in history seem to occur at the point in time when the economy starts to use a high grade energy resource. Examples are ancient man's switch from hunting to farming, which created the great ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia; England's switch from wood to coal in the 18th century, which helped to create the industrial revolution; and the U.S.'s switch from coal to oil in the 20th century, which created the modern mobility revolution, also identified by some historians as the second industrial revolution (4). All of these were changes to higher grade resources.
From these grades, we can infer that as humans have advanced over time, they have used higher grade energy resources. We believe that one of the causes of human economic development is the fact that humans used higher grade energy resources which created lower costs for production. Furthermore, we believe that much of economic growth is not due to better technology alone, but rather due to a combination of technology and higher grade resources.
It can be said that technology was the reason for the use of higher grade resources, and thus it is technology that is the only reason for human economic growth. This is true. However advances in technology without the availability of higher grade resources would surely not have created as much economic growth success as was possible with the availability of these higher grade resources. This gives some evidence that the degree of success in human economic growth was determined to a large degree by the grade of energy resources available. Consider the example of England's energy switch in the 18th century.
18th Century England's Change From Wood to Coal
To show how the grade level of different energy resources affects the overall cost of using energy, consider England's energy resource switch in the 1700's from wood to coal. England needed wood throughout the Middle Ages for fuel and building. However, by the 18th century, England's forests were very depleted, and it threatened England's economy. 5 The price index of wood charcoal quadrupled in 100 years from 1560 to 1660 while the price index of everything else doubled in the same time span. This signaled problems with getting enough energy. 6 Eventually though, coal replaced wood for energy.
Consider this transition in detail. The area grade for wood is roughly 1 to 5 billion BTU's per acre but coal can have 10 billion to 1 trillion BTU's per acre. In fact, it often averages about 50 billion BTU's per acre or more. Therefore, coal's area grade is about 10 times greater than wood's. This allows miners to set up and use large scale production machinery, because they do not have to move the machinery from coal bed to coal bed since one coal seem has a lot of energy per acre. This is in contrast to wood charcoal where the gathering of wood required relatively more mobil capital. The result was that coal mining could have increasing returns to scale. Even such archaic mining machinery as they had in the 18th century benefited from that, which was why coal at that time was cheaper.
Since fuel is the largest input for making iron, iron furnaces were located closer to the fuel source than the iron ore. So it was the fuel source that determined the economies of scale of iron making. With coal as the new source of fuel for iron, producers could set up larger and more iron production furnaces close to a single coal seam. When iron production depended on wood, which was expensive to transport, wood being half the weight grade as coal, then that meant that the size of an iron furnace could only be as big as the supply of wood would allow. So charcoal furnaces had to be kept smaller and more spread out which caused lower returns to scale and so higher costs. Ashton gives some examples,
A single furnace associated with a single forge was clearly the predominant order (before 1750). ... In 1549, there were 23 men working a furnace at Sheffield (Sussex) in addition to the two wainmen who attended the fourteen oxen and at a forge in the forest of Worth 33 men were engaged. ... at Duffield in 1691 it appears that 105 tons of metal were cast in 18 weeks, and that 75 tons of this pig iron were required to make the 50 tons of bar iron which were produced at the forge in six months. 7
So there were comparatively few laborers and low outputs.
However these furnaces often needed a lot of extra labor just to get the wood fuel. Again Ashton says,
"... at Backbarrow (using the method of wood charcoal casting) ... there were in 1714 no fewer than 130 people supplying fuel to the works - sometimes in almost minute quantities". (8)
However a few decades after Abraham Darby invented coke, furnaces began to be located near coal mines. The furnaces were bigger, there were more of them located in one place, and outputs were higher. Ashton states,
"...by 1803 Richard Crausby owned ... six furnaces and employed over 2000 men at Cyfarthfa." (9)
Most furnaces in that day produced 40 tons of iron per week, which is about a seven fold increase per furnace. (10) So with coal it was possible to have larger operations closer together creating increasing returns to scale. Plus the coal mine operations themselves could be bigger and enjoy increasing returns to scale.
However, in addition to having the larger returns to scale, the operations of mining and iron production were all in one place which allowed for more specialization and also greater technical interaction which created new technological advancements. As Raistrick says,
... it was now (from 1760 onward) an economic proposition to apply a large cylindered (watts) engine to mine pumping. This in turn made much deeper and more extensive mining possible and a cycle of development by interaction - foundry - engine parts - deeper and better pumping - easier and cheaper ore and fuel - larger furnaces and foundries - larger engines - was soon established. (11)
So we see that larger scale operations with more specialization and greater technological progress was a direct result of the high area grade of coal, because more operations were located closer together. If England ran out of wood and had to use a lower area grade fuel for iron production such as grain turned into alcohol or renewable forests, then surely England could never have had the economies of scale and so the technological leap that it did with high area grade coal. If England did continue to use wood however, it may have required the use of farm lands so that it could not support as many of its citizens as it had. This leads us to conclude that there would not have been as large a bang in the industrial revolution, nor may never have been an industrial revolution, without a high area grade resource like coal. Furthermore, we cannot see technology as being the only ingredient for an economy being able to overcome a resource shortage. Rather, it is technology applied to a new abundant higher grade resource that more often than not saves an economy hit by a resource shortage.
Another way to view the importance of high grade resources is to ask, what if England of the 1700's had today's technology but still only had wood, grains, wind and solar energy as its primary energy resources, without even the coal it used for heating, would the economic growth for England of the last 200 years have been possible?
The answer is that even today it is more expensive to use these alternative energy resources then current high grade energy resources of coal, oil and natural gas. The fact that England's economy, and all industrial economies, choose not to use those alternative energy resources during the oil price shocks shows that it is more efficient to use the high grade ones. This implies a loss of GDP if our economies were forced to use the lower grade resources, which further implies England's growth of the last 200 years was greater with the high grade resources than without them. The magnitude of the impact of having a high grade resource available is not possible to find.
An Energy Theory of Value
At this point one might ask if it is possible to compare competing energy resources on a price per BTU basis. Such a price per BTU criteria would allow us to have a better basis for comparing past energy transitions and future energy transitions. Unfortunately, such a criteria does not work as a comparison because competing energy resources have different characteristics that BTU content cannot capture. For example, consider the following problems.
An electric car using electricity at $1.50/MMBTU is less costly to run per mile even with maintenance costs than a regular gasoline car using gasoline at $8.00/MMBTU, 12 yet most people drive gasoline vehicles rather than electric vehicles. The reason for this is the overall service of gasoline vehicles. Gasoline vehicles have a range of 200 to 400 miles or more before needing to be refuelled where as electrics can only go 30 to 60 miles. Plus it takes five minutes to refuel a gasoline car but an electric requires 30 minutes to 8 hours of recharging depending on the system before it is ready to go again. So electrics are inconvenient. Thus the price per BTU does not account for the difference in service provided and so cannot take into account consumer preferences nor total producer costs of using such alternative fuels which in turn will decide which energy resource is best.
Another problem with the cost per BTU concept is that when energy resources are converted from one form to another, there is typically a 10% to 90% reduction in energy even while there is a cost associated with such conversions. Thus natural gas at a well head can cost as little as $0.10/MMBTU, but when it is converted into methanol it will cost about $8.00/MMBTU and there will be a loss of 40% of the original energy content causing greater scarcity of the natural gas. 13 However, this change in cost may be worth while, because the change in energy characteristics from natural gas to methanol may be worth the extra cost. Nevertheless, the cost or price per BTU concept does not capture that added value gained by turning natural gas into methanol nor does it explain the higher loss of the natural gas source.
Another problem is that location of energy can change the price per BTU. Natural gas for example that is produced in say Saudi Arabia would cost at least $4.00/MMBTU delivered in New York city where as natural gas from Pennsylvania can cost as little as $0.35/MMBTU in New York 14. The reason for such a huge difference is that natural gas from Saudi Arabia must be shipped in cryogenic tankers that cool the gas to a super cooled liquid state in order to minimize the cost of transportation. The energy required to get the gas that cold and keep the gas super cooled during the duration of transit costs so much that it causes the price of the gas to be more costly for such long distances even though that is the cheapest method of transport. Thus the location of an energy resource affects the price per BTU. Then the question is which price does one use, the price of origin of the gas or the price of destination, and if we use the price of destination then do we use the price of gas coming from Pennsylvania or the price coming from Saudi Arabia.
Given these inadequacies, the price per BTU of energy does not adequately capture the real value of competing energy resources and so cannot determine which energy resources are most competitive. This means we cannot simply compare energy resources on a price per BTU basis nor even a simple BTU basis, but must compare them on a grade basis. Further, when energy statistics are presented in BTU terms and not grade terms, then those statistics tacitly assume one to one substitution per BTU between energy resources of different grades. This is clearly is not the case. We recommend that energy statistics for supply and demand of different types of energy not be lumped together using the BTU measure.
Future Energy Transitions
If we compare our emerging energy transition of oil to oil alternatives with other energy transitions in history, it is important to distinguish the change in the grade level of the competing energy resources from changes in technology. Low grade energy resources create higher cost production than high grade resources, which in turn produces a drag on the economy. This leads to the conclusion that humans have made several energy transitions before in history and enjoyed growing economies during or after these transitions, but that most of the more successful energy transitions in history were transitions to higher grade energy resources not to lower ones. Therefore, we are concerned with how successful the next energy transition will be. We propose three alternative scenarios for the future transition from oil to oil alternatives.
1. The economy goes to a higher grade resource, creating a successful energy transition.
2. The economy goes to a lower grade energy resource with better technology, creating a less successful but palatable energy transition.
3. The economy goes to lower grade energy resources with virtually unchanged technology, creating an unsuccessful energy transition.
The first scenario suggests we go to a higher grade energy resource. However, the question is, what other high grade resources exist. Most alternative energy resources such as natural gas have mostly lower grade characteristics. The only alternative energy resource that might be of higher grade is solar energy or nuclear energy resources, all of which are fields. Solar energy is hard to store. This makes solar energy impractical to substitute for oil for transportation and other purposes. Nuclear energy has other problems.
Nuclear fusion energy, which is the energy of the sun, uses water and would have an extremely high area, weight and volume grade. However, fusion is only possible in large scale facilities with multi million dollar lazars. It can therefore only be used for producing electricity on a large scale. Because of the highly technical and specialized capital, materials and labor it needs, it does not look to be any cheaper an energy resource for producing electricity than coal is currently. Nuclear fission energy, or conventional nuclear power, also has a high area, volume and weight grade for its energy source of Uranium. However, Uranium is extremely toxic and difficult to keep contained from the environment, and unless breeder reactors are used, a highly dangerous proposition, then uranium supplies will shortly run low. Furthermore, conventional nuclear power is too unsafe for using in numerous small scale operations such as running trucks.
The second scenario suggests we go to lower grade resources but with improved technology. This is like how western civilization has achieved greater productivity in farm production over time due to new technology even though soils are the same. If technology does advance fast enough, than maybe the negative effects on the economy of going to a lower grade energy resource will be minimized.
The third scenario suggests the worst possible out come, that the world's economies will endure an unsuccessful energy transition and have very low growth rates or even economic decline. As the economies go from the high grade resource of oil to lower grade resources, there could be drag on economic productivity. Whether technology will or will not come through for us is very open to debate.
Concluding Remarks
We believe that many economic epochs in history should not be defined as being caused mostly by epochal innovations, but rather by innovations as well as the change in energy grade to higher grade energy resources. Furthermore, both technology and high grade energy inputs deserve equal status as causing economic epochs. The greatest economic epochs seem to occur when there are energy transitions from low grade to high grade energy resources. The economic intuition behind this is that higher grade energy resources allow for increasing returns to scale since they are either less spread out, more concentrated when in bulk, or more flexible in use.
In our own day, we must eventually move to lower grade energy resources as we slowly run out of oil. Therefore, we might expect the transition from oil to oil alternatives to be a decisively less successful energy transition than previous energy transitions in history, since all the previous transitions were from low grade to high grade energy resources, and the coming oil transition is from a high energy resource of oil to lower grade energy resources. Greater technical progress should help our impending energy transition, but certainly we need to expect a lower growth rate during and probably after the next energy transition. Since industrialized country growth rates seem to be lower after 1973, the year oil production limits became apparent with high prices, then this could mark the beginning of lower growth rates due to the world's economies having to transition to lower grade energy resources with their corresponding higher costs of production and lower productivity for the economy.
Footnotes:
1. Cameron, Rondo. A Concise Economic History of the World. Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 187.
2. Ibid. p. 9.
3. The term BTU stands for British Thermal Unit, which is the energy required to heat one gallon of water by one degree fahrenheit.
4. Barnes, Harry Elmer. An Economic History of the Western World. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1942, p. 445.
5. DeVries, John. The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis: 1600 - 1750. Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 166,167.
6. Cipolla, Carlo M.. Before The Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000 - 1700. W.W. Norton and Company Inc., N.Y., 1976, pp. 266, 268.
7. Ashton, Thomas Southeliffe. Iron and Steel in The industrial Revolution Manchester University Press, 1924, p. 96.
8. Ibid. p. 187.
9. Ibid. p. 96.
10. Ibid. p. 6-7.
11. Raistrick, A.. Dynasty of Ironfounders London 1933 p.148, in Alan Birch The Economic History of The British Iron and Steel Industry. Franck Cass and Company Limited, London, 1967, p. 59.
12. Starr, Gary. The Shocking Truth About Electric Cars. Earth Options, Santa Barbara, California, January 1991.
13. Othmer, Donald F.. "Methanol is the Best Way to Bring Alaska Gas to Market". Oil and Gas Journal. November 1, 1982 p. 84.
14. International Energy Agency. Natural Gas: Prospects to 2000. Paris 1982.
(this post adapted from paper posted here)
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http://science.reddit.com/info/2ibpk/comments
if you are so inclined...
Nice article.
[- snip -] edited out my silly question
Dr. Reynold's post provides an excellent foundation for understanding energy sources as well as the unfounded optimism among many economists that inovation and technology can substitute for high quality energy. I cannot recall any other analysis which has
used the weight/volume/area/state method - certainly none of my thermodynamics coursework in mechanical engineering explained the feasibility of energy conversion technologies so clearly. And Dr. Reynold's analysis can be comprehended by any intelligent layperson - and perhaps even a few liberal arts majors!
Hans Noeldner
"Civilization is the presence of enlightened self-restraint"
As a liberal arts major, I wholeheartedly concur. A couple of minor additions, though.
When you are considering Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) like in the Middle East gas to New York example, a very large percentage, about 40% is used to supercool and then warm up the gas. This has to be considered in any economic comparison.
Also, much if not all of the Pennsylvania gas that is given as a comparison, is coal bed methane or shale. Coal bed methane has to be dehydrated then compressed to approximately 1,000 lbs. per square inch to transmit in a pipeline and the fresh water produced injected in a disposal formation. The same with shale gas, another big Pennsylvania resource, although we're talking frac water, not formation water. Also, I'm seeing no comparison of the drilling and production costs and environmental costs, which are assumed to be equal even though a well in Qatar can easily produce as much as 100 times the production of a Pennysylvania well.
Its a great comparison, but very oversimplified when considered for an economic analysis.
Bob Ebersole
One thing that seems to be missing is the size of the engine needed to utilize the resource. Thus a "coal" engine is much larger in general than a gas/liquid engine.
Another small item missing is powders which lie between solid and liquid. And example of a coarse powder is wood pellets.
Also of course you have slurries.
I bring this up because we might want to consider multi-fuel concepts post peak. What this means is the refinery concept is moved either near the end user or attached to the engine. Allowing it to utilize any energy source. Concepts such as microchannel reactors could be used. Also of course micro engines etc. This brings up another point that is missing which is the issue of a homogeneous energy resource. We no longer have the infrastructure to deal with coal delivered to end users for example. So the adoption of a unified energy source is important. Coal for example was around for a long time and used but the infrastructure was build around wood. Coal usage grew only once wood became unavailable in England and of course the ready availabilty made experimentation of interest leading to coking.
In the US we have done this sort of experimentation with excess peanuts milk corn (Whiskey) etc. So this supply or even oversupply spurs further innovation with the resource.
I disagree with Reynold's claim that solar thermal energy is difficult to store over long periods of time. A simple coaxial pipe extending hundreds of feet underground through which heated oil or molten salts circulate could store useful heat for many months. It may take many months to build up the thermal charge but once charged the heat could be used whenever needed. If the water table is too close to the surface then a mound of cheap sand and gravel could be built and thermally charged.
It Aint So Bad
There is a central flaw in this energy analysis of history. That is the lack of depth in recognizing solar power, and other alternatives. The PHEV, nearing reality with each passing day, will result in radical reductions in fossil oil demand. Our existing power grid is up to the task, as PHEVs can be expected to re-charge at night, when demand is lower. Meanwhile, solar offers the ability to bost grid output in sunlight, and effectively. We have nukes too.
Since the PHEV promises to be a reality before China and India acquire large fleets of cars, the expected increases in fossil oil use in those countries could in fact turn out to be decreases. India is moving heavily into jatropha, an oil-bearing shrub.
World oil consumption rose just 0.7 percent last year, after a 1.4 percent hike in 2005, and a 3.1 percent bump in 2004 (BP stats). It appears the world is already de-linking economic growth from fossil oil use, even though the price signal (higher oil prices) is rather recent. It is worth noting that the 0.7 percent increase in demand is far below the 2,2 annual increases in fossil demand most modelers use. We can expect more effective conservation and fuel-switching going forward.
OPEC a few days back released a report saying it expected less, not more, oil demand in 2008. Okay, they could be hiding their inability to produce more, or they could be posturing, or they could be telling the truth.
Whatever OPEC intends, it is becoming increasingly irrelevant. The good news is that fossil oil demand may recede more quickly than declining oil output, and certainly could with minimally clever government policies.
Likely, we are seeing Peak Demand in 2007, and a surprisingly easy transition to a Post-Fossil Economy, one in which oil demand decreases every year, even though economic growth is okay.
Viewing history through technological lenses is valuable, and I wish history courses were a little more oriented that way. But, one must be careful to anticipate innovative responses to "shortages," which has propelled technological breakthroughs time and time again.
Itaintsobad
Are you smoking pot this morning? Solar doesn't work except in the middle of the day, and you are talking about the time when photo electric vehicles are in use.
Wind Turbines are a different matter.
Bob Ebersole
Oilmanbob, you would agree that increases in battery techonlogy such as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-sulfur_battery
Adding these to the grid could store this solar power during the day for use at night. I wouldn't count solar out yet, as I say think 3 dimensionally.
theantidoomer
I didn't count out solar, which I wholeheartedly support, along with wind. What I did was criticise a stupid statement for being stupid. How can anyone expect to win an uphill argument against the inertia of America with arguements that don't make sense, or poorly researched data?
Bob Ebersole
I understand where you are coming from, Bob, The first thing I can think of to rectify the discord is called "extra battery pack". That way, the batteries are charged during the day, switched out when you drive into the garage, and you are ready to go for the next day.
If an easily swapped battery tray under the car is too difficult, then think about simply getting 2 cars. One would charge, and one would be driven.
The cheapest solution (and the most sensible to me) is to only work 4 days a week, and charge the car the other 3.
We have to stop thinking that we NEED to replace the current auto-oriented sytem with another wasteful system. Most people aren't driving to jobs where they operate machines any more. They are driving someplace to sit on their arse and punch keys or look at each other in meetings. That can easily be done at home now. Those that do have to go to a particular place can be picked up by their employer if they are so valuable, and be charged a fee by the employer, or coordinated by all local establishments (schools, churches, employers) to create a convenient system, including rental car pools for emergencies and errands.
Meanwhile a lot of cars can be idled to get charged for occasional use.
The cheapest scheme is to move the energy from where it's being produced to where the car happens to be parked, thus eliminating both the need to swap batteries and the capital expense of another set.
I understand that this is possible with a great invention known as the "electrical grid", combined with another really neat product called "extension cords". I'd love to live in a world where everyone has heard of these things.
I could see swappable batteries for fleets, like taxis, which rarely get parked for 10-20 hours per day.
Otherwise, too much trouble. Batteries are charging faster & faster these days.
And indeed the Modec - a commercial delivery van - notes it has easily-swappable batteries.
A 53kWh battery (like in Tesla's car) hooked up to a regular 220V, 20-amp circuit could theoretically recharge from dry in about 13 hours, adding ~18 miles/hr of range. From the sounds of it, it's a little slower than that, but not much.
Considering that the average commute to work in the US is just 16 miles, that's only 2 hours of recharge time per daily commute.
The typical dryer circuit is more like 30 amps.
If you're not afraid of welding cable, it's certainly possible to feed 500 amps or more over reasonably flexible wires. The Tesla Roadster battery pack operates at 375 volts nominal. If you could push 500 amps into it, you could put 53 kWh into the batteries in 17 minutes.
"Solar doesn't work except in the "middle" of the day????????
Can we have a source on that one?
RC
Roger, how can solar work when the sun is out of sight? And its a heck of a lot more effective when the sun is directly overheadT.hat seems pretty self-evident. I'm sure solar cells work a little with from sunshine at an obliqe angle, but all the concentrators and motore adjusting the angle of many solar cells to a 90 degree agle seems to argue that design engineers want the sun where there are smaller shadows and the sun's rays don't go through as much atmosphere.And thats the middle of the day.
Even a liberal arts major is capable of observation.
But, I was on a tear yesterday. I apologise for being a horse's ass, and that means to It Ain't So Bad. I get worried about other things sometimes and have been known to take it out on others, and that was bad manners.
Bob Ebersole
Solar works ALL of the time:
I write at night and my office and computer are solar powered, running on batteries. By 10 AM the next morning my batteries have recharged from the night's work. During the rest of the day, the office runs directly from the panels until sunset, then it is back on batteries. They also charge my electric car and pump water from my well. The primary purpose for this solar system was to provide emergency power during a blackout, but it is always available, so I use it.
The key is solar tracking: My eight panels are set up on a refrigerant-powered tracker that works from solar heating to cause the tilt to change- always looking at the sun. A tracker increases collected energy by approx 40 percent, and extends the solar day from sunrise to sunset, and does not require additional energy for operation.
I can also judge cloud cover by the collector current. It decreases during a rain storm, but fog is hardly discernable. During heavy cloud cover, charging may take until noon to complete.
The location is west of the Cascades in central Oregon. If solar will work here, it should work nearly everywhere.
I can also measure a small collector current during a full moon, by reflection from the sun. The tracker doesn't work without solar heat so this current is only available when the moon passes over the collectors- whatever their position.
Yes Solar works!
I have written two books on this system: Emergency Electricity From Solar Energy- Vols 1 and 2. by Ralph W. Ritchie,
Vol 1 is how it was designed and built and Vol 2 is operation and applications. They are my proof.
Questions? ralph-ritchie@comcast.net
The PHEVs re-charge at night. In the United States (and, I assume, all over the world) electrical grids reach peak loads in the day. The PHEVs, largely, at that time will be in use, on the road or parked at work. We need solar to boost the capacity of our grid for other uses. Wind power too, and nukes, I don't really care what, as long as it is not fossil fuel (sorry, anti-nukies, everything has a cost).
The main point is that we can obtain economic growth, even while fossil oil use declines. We are close to doing so now, on a worldwide basis, and PHEVs have not even been introduced yet. If oil rises in price, you can be assured they will be (although I contend automakers should first introduce PHEVs as luxury cars, not enviro-mobiles).
Between biofuels (read up on E3's ethanol plant, and jatropha) and PHEVs, we can easily obtain radical reductions in fossil oil use, while decreasing pollution, and enjoying economic growth. Indeed, if oil ever crosses over $100 a barrel, this will be a likely outcome.
The real problem is that the United States does not want to tax gasoline consumption. That would really put the nail in the coffin of the fossil fuel use coffin.
Already, reductions in fossil oil demand are threatening to collapse oil prices, as has happened many tims before. OPEC is cutting production, even while so many oil nations are run by unstable governments which effectively reduce production (think Libya, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, even Russia and Mexico) anyway. Thus, the successful introduction of PHEVs could be retarded for a decade or so.
Some Peak Oilers are saying 95 mbd by 2012 will be the peak, others say 2005 was the peak. Who knows? In any case, demand will probably fall even more quickly than supply.
With PHEVs, the reductions in demand will be steady and continual, as they replace non-PHEV vehicles.
The point of this observation is that we have broken the link between fossil fuel use and a growing economy.
I've been saying the same thing for some time. A quieter car, which requires fewer trips to the gas station and can start its climate control at full bore with the flick of a switch (even a remote switch), is a better car and ought to command a better price.
"A quieter car, which requires fewer trips to the gas station and can start its climate control at full bore with the flick of a switch (even a remote switch), is a better car and ought to command a better price."
PHEV's also have better performance (initial acceleration is much better at most speeds), and much greater range. They'll need much less maintenance. Designers will have much more flexibility (batteries can be placed much more flexibly than gas tanks, and electric motors & support equipment take less space).
I think GM is starting to realize just how big a hit the Volt could be in 2010, but I think they'll imitate the Prius: moderate base pricing, with mandatory expensive options as long as demand exceeds supply.
The Saturn Vue plugin isn't getting much attention, but GM is promising it for 2009. I'm not sure if that's model or calendar year, but either way it's pretty close. Toyota has vowed that no one will beat them to li-ion hybrids. It's getting interesting...
Jim Strange
In your comment, I think you may be mistaking PHEV (plug in hybrid ev) for photo-electric or photo-voltaic. PHEV is more or less an extension of HEV technology that uses onboard plug-powered charging and discharging for V2G (vehicle to grid) power exchanges. A dramatic example of lead time and incentives required despite promising technology.
PHEV is especially useful in load management, distributed renewable sources and standby power applications, but early days yet. The promise is resilience and significant efficiencies that may (even) offer the prospect of overall payout if charging cycle lifespans are sufficient. The following link is a good and fairly current resource:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/symposium/presentations/presentatio...
Jim Strange
For clarity, my comment regarding PHEV was to oilman Bob.
What you are talking is nonsense. The "thermal charge" will be dissipated in the surrounding rocks, unless you provide some way to isolate them. Even then the thermal losses will be huge. Consider that an insulated molten salt heat storage in solar thermal is only enough to provide heat for several hours after sunset.
The Drake's Landing solar subdivision in Alberta has a solar "Borehole Thermal Energy Storage" system for 52 homes. The borehole is 37 meters in diameter and 35 meters deep. It will take 3 years to fully charge, is insulated mostly with silica sand, and will provide 90% of space heating needs.
It will store sufficient heat for nearly an entire heating season.
Wow laurence, cool stuff, thanks for the link.
Clearly nonsense!
/facepalm
PartyGuy = Hothgor?
That's a great idea Laurence. Wonder what it cost to set up?Do you know how groundwater affects the system? Bob Ebersole
The system was paid for with a $5 million (Canadian) grant, which equals $40,000 (Canadian) per home. The system will pay for itself in savings from heating costs over the lifetime of the homes, or in a shorter period if the cost of heating fuels rises significantly.
The borehole is lined with a polyethylene sheet, so I assume it must be protected from groundwater intrusion.
Soo this is basically a re-hash of the first 2 weeks of my thermo course.
It is obvious that people would be looking for an infinitely dense source of energy which is easy to convert to work.
The thrust of this paper seems to be your addition of "fields" which exist in engineering and nature, but you make no real strong points with this. Energy can be taken from ANY differential in energy, the amount and quality of which is dictated by the enthalpy and entropy of the process employed. (these differentials include, pressure, kinetic energy, gravitational, temperature(average kinetic energy of a system), magnetic, electrical, and the strong/weak nuclear forces.)
Lower gradients are harder to work with and require greater capital investments. Low specific energy transportation incurs a much greater logistical(movement) cost, as the increased weight sucks up power. By definition; if the consumer and producer surplus begins to shrink because the PRIMARY industries (farming, energy) can no longer deliver (the consumer/producer surplus from primary industries is used FIRSTLY to ensure survival) enough energy for additional economic activity, the standard of living will drop as productivity declines(less free energy to construct machines to replace the labour of people).
The inclusion of your "fields" is really confusing. You would be better off removing that and using standard engineering definitions of specific/volumetric power/energy.
the solar energy can be accounted for using a 2d field, not a 3d. W/m^2 obviously. A simple indication of the max possible (~200W/m^2 average), and current level would probably suffice.
also the solar->grain->animal transition steps seems messed up, because you are attempting to cast a field type to grain+animal, but do not propagate the field type through the grain and animal types. This leaves the reader confused.
paper ranking 1.5/5, mediocre+some confusing aspects+no solutions offered beyond wait and see. Identification of future solutions with higher energy quality would greatly improve this paper by 2 points in my humble opinion.
Hi Gilgamesh,
I'd welecome your writing up what you talk about here - perhaps putting forth your own version of an essay on this topic. Any chance?
I imagine having some way to organize and think about energy and the different sources of energy would be very useful for the lay peson. (Say, adding examples and expanding on your second paragraph, etc.)
And, personally, I'd also be interested in your take on the "identification of future solutions" you mention. I wonder if there are some useful concepts that might apply to design, and the "best case US energy policy", as well.
If you believe Wikipedia, consumer li-ion batteries are 280 Wh/kg. If my calcs are correct, this is 434 BTU/lb. Much better than the 100 BTU/lb figure used in the article.
Errrr... where did you get 280Wh/kg? Wikipedia gives 160Wh/kg - see table top right. Which is 248 BTU/lb. If you consider the extra weight of cell enclosure and controlling system the real world figure might be less than 200 BTU/lb. Also the original article might have referred to NiMH batteries (the only ones currently used in cars) which have even lower energy/weight ratio.
(I am following battery technology and I thought 280Wh/kg looked too high)
Sorry, LevinK, I should have given the reference. See line 1 of the Chemistries table here.
I agree, real world figures (Tesla, A123) seem to be about 130 Wh/kg or 200 BTU/lb as you suggest. Electrovaya have just announced 330 Wh/kg or approx 500 BTU/lb.
And while coal and oil may have several 1000 btus for each pound, one can not ignore the 'usable' energy we derive from those sources. For instances, an ICE for your typical car is only about 12% efficient. Instead of having around 20k btu per pound, your actually only using about 2400 btu per pound. Since we know Electric cars are vastly more efficient, and start off with maximum torque, simple logic tells us a similar electric car wouldn't need anywhere near that much power, so a 500 btu per pound battery is ALREADY COMPETITIVE.
And lets not forget all the 'hidden' weight associated with oil. Your gas tank, for instance, weighs several hundred pounds. The drive shaft another few hundred pounds. Your v8 engine another few hundred pounds. Your breaks collectively a hundred pounds, etc etc. All of these parts are replaced by a much lighter electric engine (or wheel engines) and a bit of cabling. The weight difference is much less than you might expect...
At 330Wh/kg we could pack 33kWh in only 100kg battery. At 110 Wh/km this would mean 300 km or almost 200miles. Impressive!
Unfortunately this is not enough. The real problems about batteries have always been 1) recharge time 2) life length
With gasoline you can fill up for couple of minutes and your gas tank would outlast millions of fill-ups.
Until these problems are solved (as with the proposed swappable battery solution) we are not going make batteries an adequate replacement of oil/gasoline.
LevinK, I present to you the already proven tested altairnano battery.
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1258
Charge over thousands of cycles and with a special transformer in less than 15 minutes.
"The weight difference is much less than you might expect..."
Yeah. The Tesla has 900 lbs of batteries, but only weighs 2-300 lbs more than the Lotus Elise on which it's based.
Perhaps I'm dreaming, but I'm hoping we can put this silly "batteries aren't sufficiently energy dense" idea to rest once and for all...
Of course, 900 lbs of gas will take an Elise 3000 miles, more if you're careful ...
But I'm guardedly optimistic. If the Altairnanos have the shelf life they claim, that's certainly good enough.
Doesn't the Tesla have a carbon fiber body that the Elise lacks?
I recall that was done to offset the additional weight of the batteries.
Think about it, The Tesla ha 900lbs of batteries where the Elise has 50lbs of gasoline.
"Think about it, The Tesla ha 900lbs of batteries where the Elise has 50lbs of gasoline."
An EV can dispense with a lot of components needed to support the ICE, and the electric engine itself is much smaller.
"Doesn't the Tesla have a carbon fiber body that the Elise lacks?"
That I haven't researched. Could I impose on you to do that?
An EV can dispense with 850lbs of components?
Remember the Tesla is a very expensive 2 seater sports car with a carbon fiber body (if I recall correctly). Its very very light. You try and turn a minivan or even just a full sized sedan into a full EV and you are going to need a lot more very heavy batteries. A lot more weight in batteries than you're going to save trading out an ICE with an electric motor.
Battery weight is a major issue.
edit:
Here's a link about the carbon fiber body. Looks like they went to great expense and trouble for that, so weight must have been a big issue for them.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=50
Here is a full electric van set out to compete against diesel in UK:
http://www.modec.co.uk/
Remember that gasoline trucks and cars don't pay for the people killed or crippled by air pollution.
Max speed 50mph, no range listed. Its an NEV at best.
How much do the batteries weigh?
You can get lots of details on their FAQ:
http://www.modec.co.uk/faq
As discussed below, top speed is artificially limited. Range is advertised at 100 miles which is fine for the targetted market.
http://www.modec.co.uk/vehicles
"5.5 tonnes (i.e. 3.5 tonnes curbside weight + 2 tonnes payload)"
Battery technology is: "Sodium Nickel Chloride (Zebra) packs are used (which have 85kWh). This new technology delivers a fantastic range of 100 miles from a single overnight charge."
Zebra is here:
http://www.betard.co.uk/
In their technical data, they rate their battery energy at around 100 Wh per kg which says that for 85kWh you need 850 kg of zebra battery.
Clearly not - the Tesla weighs 2700 pounds as compared to the 2,000 pounds of the similar Elise. Apples-to-apples comparison (i.e., factoring out the 50-pound savings from the Tesla's carbon fibre body as compared to the Elise's fibreglass body), the Tesla weighs about 750 pounds more. (Mind you, it's also got 30% more horsepower, so it's not a perfect comparison. The 2100-pound Exige S is arguably closer in terms of performance characteristics.)
Of course; the Tesla's batteries weigh 1000 pounds.
Noting that the Tesla (after factoring out carbon fibre) weighs 650 pounds more than the similar-performance Exige S, there's apparently about 350 pounds of savings to be had in the electric drivetrain. The Tesla's engine, for example, weighs only 70 pounds.
The range is given on the front page as 100 miles with two tons of cargo. For a commercial delivery van - frequent short trips inside a city - both the range and the speed seem quite adequate. Indeed, the top speed of 50mph is an artificial limit: "Modec is governed at a maximum speed of 50mph. Although the vehicle is capable of more, it is designed for urban use".
In fact, the range is more than adequate for most commuters - 70% of journeys to work are under 6 miles with an average of about 8 miles, and even in the US the average commute is only 16 miles.
Interestingly, even the artificially restricted top speed would make little difference to commute times. In England, the average commute is 8 miles and takes 20 minutes, which is an average of 24mph; in the US, the average 16-mile trip takes 26 minutes, which is 37mph, and even on days when traffic is good (19 mins), average speed is only 51mph. Ungoverned, the van would most likely be perfectly adequate for highway use, and for the vast majority of commuters.
"An EV can dispense with 850lbs of components?"
No, but it can dispense with a good fraction of that 850. Pitt seems to have addressed this well, although I had the impression that the comparable Lotus weighed more. I'll have to reearch it, when I get the time.
"You try and turn a minivan or even just a full sized sedan into a full EV and you are going to need a lot more very heavy batteries."
A large SUV needs 80% more kwh's (.45 vs .25/mile), so it would need 720 more lbs. That's manageable, especially given that you probably woudn't have to scale up from the size powertrain used in the Tesla, which gives 0-60 in 3.9 seconds for the Tesla's slightly over 3,000 lbs.
"Battery weight is a major issue."
There's an essential distinction which is often lost on TOD, between competitiveness and viability.
Battery EV's, and PHEV's, have been around for more than 100 years, and have always been viable. They simply weren't as cheap as gasoline (until recently, when gas went over $1.75), and not quite as convenient (the EV-1 could do 140 miles per charge, according to owners, so you had to plan where and when to charge for 3-4 hours, on long trips).
Weight can be an inconvenience for designers, but it isn't a big deal, as far as basic viability: a vehicle design might have to change, but will work just fine. Remember, weight is a concern for an ICE vehicle largely because greater mass requires a larger engine, which makes an ICE engine less efficient. OTOH, a larger electric motor is more efficient. Furthermore, regenerative braking eliminates the majority of the efficiency penalty of greater mass, because the greater energy required for acceleration is recovered. All that's left is the greater energy loss caused by more tire flexing, which isn't that big a deal.
TOD'ers often see EV's criticized because they weren't quite competitive, and report that they aren't viable. The original post makes the same mistake, stating that EV's have some kind of basic physics flaw, which is really, really far from the case.
I hope we can put this to rest.
Nick, I never said that EVs weren't viable because of the weight issue. So I guess your rant was directed at TOD at large and not me.
Reread Pitts analysis. He comes to the conclusion that there is only 350 lbs of saving in an electric power train. (without specific numbers I'll go along with that as it seems reasonable to me)
The batteries weigh in at 1000lbs.
Weight is a major issue to designers and one of the problems that are keeping EVs from being competitive on the open market.
I'm not sure why you think weight isn't a big deal to designers. Why else would Tesla have gone to such huge expensive and difficulty for a carbon fiber body? Especially when according to Pitt it only saves you 50 lbs?
Hopefully newer battery techs will help to alleviate that problem.
"Nick, I never said that EVs weren't viable because of the weight issue. So I guess your rant was directed at TOD at large and not me."
It was directed at the Original Post, which implied that EV's were not viable due to battery energy density.
"...Pitts analysis. He comes to the conclusion that there is only 350 lbs of saving in an electric power train."
Yes, so that's a 35% reduction in the weight penalty. That's significant.
"Weight is a major issue to designers"
Sure, that's what I was saying.
"and one of the problems that are keeping EVs from being competitive on the open market."
Weight is a pain, but I don't think it's been a key factor. Very cheap fuel has been the key factor, with the increasing marginal cost of additional range coming in 2nd ($1.75 gas fixed the 1st, and the PHEV concept fixed the 2nd). Do you have any info on that, say, examples of vehicles where it was a key problem?
It doesn't make sense to me that Tesla would go through huge expense & difficulty to save 50 lbs. The key problem created by weight would be acceleration, and 50 lbs would only reduce it proportionately, i.e., 1.6%, or from 3.9 sec to 3.96 seconds 0-60. If I have time I'll look more at that.
It doesn't make sense to me either. I suspect the weight savings must have been much greater than the number Pitt came up with. But I'm too lazy to look it up myself.
The carbon fiber body was chosen specifically for its weight. The engineer in the Tesla blog made that very clear.
Sure it is. You have to make major compromises on the rest of the vehicle to balance out the half ton of batteries.
Take a look at any electric vehicle you can buy today. They are all tiny flimsy little vehicles, clearly engineered to be as light as possible. This significantly limits their mass market apeal.
But weight is just one of the problems EVs face before they are competitive. Cost, range and reliability are also huge problems that need to be solved. Weight issues hinder attempts to address these other issues. Its a viscous circle.
New battery techs seem to address these problems so a limited degree. I remain hopeful but skeptical.
"The carbon fiber body was chosen specifically for its weight. The engineer in the Tesla blog made that very clear."
hmmm. Well, they're competing with Ferraris. They need that 3.9 from 0-60.
"You have to make major compromises on the rest of the vehicle to balance out the half ton of batteries."
Well, you don't have to. Keep in mind that 1) I'm talking about viability, not competitiveness, and 2) we don't really need full EV's yet. Full EV's are viable, but not competitive (yet), but PHEV's are competitive.
"reliability are also huge problems "
What are the reliability problems you're concerned about?
I don't think it was as expensive as you're suggesting. From the same article the 50 pounds figure is from:
"If you think the Tesla Roadster is expensive now, you should consider how much it would cost if we added several thousand dollars worth of autoclaved carbon panels."
i.e., the Director of Body Engineering seems to consider several thousand dollars to be a very high price for a car body, at least relative to what they actually used.
The process used - resin transfer molding - doesn't seem too expensive; every link about it is touting it as a low-cost alternative. Tooling for pieces as large as the hood of a pickup truck can be had for under $30,000, with injection equipment for another $90,000, and can produce a mold about every half-hour. The Tesla molds were doubtless more expensive, since they were more complex, but it seems like they'd be ready to go for a few hundred thousand dollars, and the materials cost is only about $80 per 50-pound body.
My best estimate is that removing that 1-2% of mass cost 1-2% the price of the car; i.e., not a big deal.
The Tesla weights 2700 pounds. The Modec (loaded) weighs 5 tons. Both of those can be bought today (for delivery later this year, admittedly), and neither one is tiny or flimsy. Indeed, the Modec is intended to be a commercial workhorse.
Electric vehicles were glorified golf carts; that is no longer the case.
A drive shaft a few hundred pounds? It's quite telling that no one called Partyguy on this - working on cars is obviously something not many people here have ever engaged in.
I think for the most part people just ignore partyguy. I mean a fuel tank weighs a couple hundred pounds?!?
The fuel tank, mounting, carborator, filter, etc all take up weight. We're talking about replacing the entire engine bloc, fuel tank, drive shaft and breaks with 4 small electric engines and some batteries. Even if the weight of an all electric 'engine package' is 50% more than what is currently on the vehicle, you are still realizing a much improved 'mile per pound' ratio when comparing the two.
Remember, the US government REQUIRES all new cars to weigh 2000 pounds. Advertising and safety facilities are telling us that ONLY the big SUVs and Trucks are truly safe for Joe Soccer Mom to protect themselves in. We're going to grocery stores and shopping malls in 4500 pound behemoths. Lunacy at best...
PartyGuy is obviously either clueless or a troll. The only reason I didn't jump on him is that I was playing disc-jockey for most of yesterday, backing up 38 GB of data onto CD-R's. Now I am about to enjoy the fruits of this labor, getting my main computer back on the internet!
FWIW, driveshafts weigh pounds to tens of pounds. Modern gas tanks are plastic and can be lifted with one hand. The major heavy components are engines, transmissions and drive axles (differentials). If you look at a clean-sheet design like the VentureOne, all of these can be greatly reduced and some are potentially dispensible.
Ummm... "off thread" I know, but time to spend $40 on a DVD drive? Pays for itself in media costs within 2 full backups.
One of the goals of the upgrade was to get to a kernel version which supports DVD media reasonably. Believe me, if I could have done it any other way....
Why CD-R's? Do you feel they're more reliable than DVD's?
30 to 40 lbs, maybe...
And no mention of CO2? A serious emission. And omission :)
Or any other pollutant or disposal cost. The acreage factor is also way off. Wood from trees is renewable every 20 years or so a new crop, dependent on species. Coal strip mining permanently impairs the surface, while underground mining doesn't while some oilfields have produced as much as 1 million barrels per surface acre, according to Michael Halbouty's "Salt Domes Gulf Region United States and Mexico" and the surface is still useable.
I think its a valid comparison, just don't cherry pick the data.
Bob Ebersole
Since I accused professor reynolds of cherry picking his data, I figure i need to get very specific. In Chapter 8, Economic Significance of Salt Structures, Halbouty states
" Spindletop dome, Texas has produced 142,974,000 barrels of oil from a total productive area of aprroximately 500 acres...total cumulative cap rock production of approximately 55 million barrels-more than 48 million barrels in the 1901-1925 period and an estimated 7 million barrels in the 1925-1964 period-has been recovered, an average of 220,000 barrels per acre. Flank production, also limited to aproximately 250 acres, has totaled about 352,000 barrels an acre. Several small flank traps have produced in excess of a million barrels an acre. The area of flank production is less than 1,500 ft outward from the periphery of the salt stock.
Per acre recoveries of this magnitude are common to several Gulf Coast domes. Good examples include: Barbers Hill, Chambers County Texas (2,500 surface acres-115,641,000 barrels); Humble, Harris County Texas (4,000 surface acres-149,399,00o bbls.) Jennings, Acadia Parish louisiana(3400 acres, 107,698,000 bbls); Weeks Island, Iberia Ph. La (4500 acres-113,769,000 bbls)".
I'm not dredging this up just to be contrary. One of the biggest criticisms of alternative energy is the amount of energy density per acre, and it needs to be considered. But when I see a guy with a doctorate and two books, a professor at a State University either cherry picking data or with bad research, it really gives me pause.
I guess I did the same thing yesterday with my comment on Dave's column about tertiary recovery by showing 3 prospects in the city of Houston with 1.2 billion barrels of possible tertiary recovery and backing it up with DOE Research. And those aren't blow-off prospects, the Humble field is on both that criticism and on this. If we cherry pick our data or do poor research it weakens an arguement that need a fair hearing if we really want to change the energy paradigm in the U.S., possibly fatally. Look how the climate change deniers have jumped on the wrong temp data from the 1930's. I am not a technocornucopian, we need to conserve very radically starting today.Exponential growth can't continue.
And I'd also like to note that the three prospects I mentioned yesterday are real. ExxonMobil can't make money on them because their size makes them like a brontosaurus in a Llano Estacado short grass prairie, but little independents can get very wealthy. They're shallow-from 1,000-ft to 8,000 ft, cheap to drill, and have excellent chances of making 20,000 barrels a well up to 50,000 barrels a well. And 3D seismic will show up a million barrel acre, if they are still out there. My email is bobebersole2004@yahoo.com. Bob Ebersole
There's nothing like oil, is there?
I think that summarizes it all.
Doug, I think you're paying too much attention to fossil fuels and biomass, and not enough to wind, solar and the electrical systems that they power.
1) Electricity is worth 3-6x heat, so 160 wh/kilo, equal to 248 BTU/lb (LevinK, ICE's don't include supporting equipment in density calculations) really gives you about 750-1,500 equivalent BTU/lb. That's 7.5-15x the value given.
2) EV's with 30-60 mile range? The EV-1 had 120 mile range (with NIMH). More importantly, PHEV's can reduce fuel consumption by 90% (or 99% if you use the backup generator just for emergencies), and bridge to pure EV's as batteries get cheaper. The GM Volt will have 650 mile range, and no compromises that would limit consumer acceptance. The Tesla will have 200+ mile range: the only problem is price, which is an economy of scale problem, not one of physics.
3) Electric rail deserves a mention, and just because nuclear has problems doesn’t mean we won’t use it.
4) Both wind and solar have very high "grade". Wind deserves more emphasis, given that it's currently price-competitive with fossil fuels.
5) Wind & solar can be stored perfectly adequately in the form of electricity, and will allow a high growth economy (assuming no other barriers, like climate change, or other resource limits). Long distance transmission and scheduled charging of PHEV's will buffer wind & solar variability, and there are more than enough ways to store and manage electricity (pumped storage, flow batteries, PHEV/EV V2G, biomass electrical generation as backup (much more efficient than biofuels), demand management, etc).
If the transition to renewable electricity and electrification has to move very quickly (as is very likely), the replacement of assets before the end of their natural life will be expensive and slow down (or temporarily reverse) economic growth. But in the longrun, high grade energy is abundantly available.
Nick,
If you are an American then you need to realise we are importing 68% of our oil, and about 99% of our transportation is oil dependent. This puts us at incredible risk of an oil embargo. The present administration are not good guys, they have the whole world terrified by their attempted conquest of Iraq and threats to drop nuclear weapons on Iran.
The only way the rest of the world can pull the teeth of the US Military is by an oil embargo, because that 700 million odd barrels won't last very long, and the US Military uses 14 gallons per soldier per day.
I'm scared, and I think rightfully so.
The other problem is climate change. If the rest of the world wants us to go carbon nuetral and the President and Vice President refuse to talk because of their arrogance, the only option is an energy embargo. You can't fight a shooting war with madmen in control of nuclear weapons.
We are well past the time for debates about this. It just plain has to move swiftly. Bob .Ebersole
"about 99% of our transportation is oil dependent. This puts us at incredible risk of an oil embargo."
"The other problem is climate change... It just plain has to move swiftly. "
I agree completely. Uhmmm...that's not directly related to my post, right?
I'd love to see aggressive government action: pushing car-pooling (we could reduce our oil useage by 15% in 6 months); that new car & trucks go 75% PHEV in just a few years; rail; carbon taxes with per-capita rebates, etc, etc.
Nick,
I thought your post is full of excellent ideas. I was trying to say why I thought we need to move forward quickly. Because of our government, its going to take people personaly taking initiative. Bob Ebersole
Yes, of course, you were replying to my paragraph about speed of implementation.
I should have been more precise: I think definitely speed is essential, but how quickly we'll actually move, I'm not so sure.
While they are at it, require vehicles to last or be easily repairable for at least 1 million miles, cut the number of vehicles produced by 90%, and put all taxes onto consumption of all products, not just fuels.
Sound ridiculous? Only because with a little thought, it scares the hell out of people who are addicted to oil and marketing of new cupholders.
Sorry to be pedantic, but a BTU is the amount of energy
required to raise the temperature of 1 POUND of liquid
water at its maximum density (which occurs at 39.1 deg.F)
by 1 deg.F ; and not 1 GALLON as stated in the above footnotes.
There's an error in converting from MJ/kg to BTU/pound; it states that natural gas has less BTU/pound than oil, which is incorrect, although the correct figures in MJ/kg units can be found in the table.
And, I have to concur with Gilgamesh that the field concept as used in the article is very confusing and misleading.
This "The Energy Utilization Chain" link, first paragraph is ,dead.
Fixed it! Thanks.
My pleasure. I've read this post with great interest, and it doesn't brighten the overall picture. As usual here at TOD. Which is unfortunately justified
This is all very interesting, but speaking on behalf of all the other "Joe's" out here in the real world, I'd just like a straight answer to a simple question. Am I going to be able to continue, and hopefully improve on, my current lifestyle (including those near and dear to me) or not? I really don't give hoot in hell about what powers it all or where it comes from, as long as it's powered and doesn't put me in the poor house.
BTW, the above is only half in jest, so y'all don't get yer panties in knot. :)
Gene,
It depends. If your current lifestyle is as a completely off grid self-sufficient individual, then chances are you can continue it. If your lifestyle is not currently off the grid and completely self sufficient, and you define "improve" as a move toward lower energy utilization, Nature will probably provide you that opportunity. Hope this helps!
ej
Read your bio. Boomers huh? My brother-in-law retired a couple years ago. Senior Chief on a boomer (don't recall which one ). Lives outside of Bremerton now. Retired Marine myself ('83). Dad was Navy. He served on the Astoria back in the late '30s, among others. I digress.
I appreciate your answer, and it's the kind of straightforward non-technical answer people are looking for. Unfortunately it's also the kind of answer that nobody, especially politicians, wants to hear. The reasons are obvious of course, and the inexorable conclusion is also obvious, and equally unacceptable to most people. Goes back to an old song; "Those not busy being born, are busy dying." Not a pleasant prospect. From a personal perspective, I reckon I'm as close to being "off the grid", as most anybody these days. Not much choice if you live in rural MS. :)
Gene, you are a long-enough attendant of TOD to answer your own question. I don't know what your current lifestyle is, but if you have food, water and shelter secured you can consider yourself successful.
Yeah, you're right. I can answer it for myself.
And I did, quite some time ago. I was thinking more of how it should be answered for the other 200 million Joe's and Jane's in the US, who aren't so fortunate as I. You, know, the ones who got hammered by the recent credit/sub-prime fiasco, and who wouldn't have a clue how to support themselves without a massively complex logistical system of everything from clothing and food to medical and sanitary (think tampax, and most other stuff that is taken for granted ). Most wouldn't even know how to grow their own pot, let alone a veggie garden. How many midwives are still in business? As a quick example of what can go south in hurry. Anyway part of this is in my previous reply above.
Gene asks,
"Am I going to be able to continue, and hopefully improve on, my current lifestyle (including those near and dear to me) or not?"
It depends on your techncial and management skill, and yes, somewhat on you age. For the young who get properly educated and are very bright and flexible, I believe they will enjoy a quality of life that our generation (post war boomers) for the most part only dreamed of.
But I have said it before and will say it again: If you raise the kids to believe that they will spend their working lives standing in mule shiit down on the farm, you've pretty much thrown their chance at a future and their ability to compete with the other developed and developing nations right into the garbage. Period. All the U.S. has to do it use it's brains. If it refuses, that's a choice, not an inevitable outcome.
Just for kicks....check out the links below. It is obvious to me that almost no one at TOD has ANY idea how fast these ideas are converging. They keep bringing up barriers and issues that were solved 20 years ago in many cases.
There is a certain sense of back to the future here....for many folks here, technical development stopped, just STOPPED somewhere about 1970 or '75...it's a nostalgia that at times can be fun to watch! :-)
www.prometheus.org/
http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/
http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2007/08/applied-materia.html
http://www.nrel.gov/csp/troughnet/
http://www.nrel.gov/csp/troughnet/thermal_energy_storage.html
http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/pdf/pv7.pdf
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2583
http://www.2001company.com/Content_Solar/ASR%20PPT.pdf
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/education/careers.html
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/education/careers_renewable_energy.html
http://www.solartoday.org/2007/july_aug07/economic_powerhouse.htm
(Note the author, Roger Bezdek, he associated with the now famous Hirsch Report)
http://www.prometheus.org/
http://www.solartoday.org/links.htm#Photovoltaics
http://ezinearticles.com/?Careers-in-Solar-Energy-Considered&id=289658
http://www.boston.com/business/markets/articles/2007/07/01/alternative_e...
RC
Thank you Roger, those are great links on solar. I sure hope ypu're right about quick adoption of these techniques. Bob Ebersole
And Roger said: ".......... For the young who get properly educated and are very bright and flexible, I believe they will enjoy a quality of life that our generation (post war boomers) for the most part only dreamed of."
That's not very encouraging, Roger. Have you checked out the quality of "education" being inflicted on kids these days (in the US anyway)? My kids are in their 30's and older, btw, and no grandkids.
I may live to see these ideas become a reality, but the current state of the world doesn't look promising.
But the point of my post was more to prod some action on wide public awareness of alternatives, and general awareness of the issues. I'm sure you are aware of the general view of Peak Oil people - a bunch of kooks - if "normal people" are aware of the issue at all. Again, out here in the real world, very few - very few - pay any attention to anything that isn't "fun" or sexy or edible, or makes them money. The people in the energy biz have a hell of lot of work to do, if you expect to "save the planet". You need some high end marketing, and lots of it. Look what happened with the whole Al Gore climate change concert disaster. He and the others who climbed on that bandwagon are laughing stocks now, whether it's deserved or not. Why?, because they are viewed as hypocrites.
Good luck. And get some serious outside marketing help. Spend a lot of money on it. And get some credible political support and hi-powered lobbying on your side (might be tough given the current numbers for congress). Spend a lot of money on that also.
Keep in mind that the real problem is mob psychology, not technology. You have to make your issues bigger and badder, and realistic solutions better than everybody else's.
Perhaps a minor nit, but one that makes me wonder what other logic errors may be lurking
This shows a lack of deep understanding about what drives the so-called "green revolution." In fact, the soils are not"the same" -- they have been degraded to the point that they will not support farming without the massive energy inputs of artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
I submit that technology does not exist independently from energy, that the two are effect and cause. David Holmgren, Howard Odum, et. al. teach that complexity (technology) is a direct consequence of energy. I submit that energy is the determinant here, not technology -- technology cannot exist independent of energy.
I think we'll be lucky to hold on to some of our best technologies in the coming energy decline, and we must begin planning now for simpler lives, with less technology that is more easily maintained.
:::: Jan Steinman, Communication Steward, EcoReality http://www.EcoReality.org ::::
I think you are right about technology being very closely tied with energy.
I look at the huge wind turbines. If we want to keep them going we need to be able to service them. For this, we will need paved roads, some pretty big machinery, replacement parts, and workers who can get to the appropriate site.
If we are dealing with electricity (primarily from solar and wind) as our main source of energy, we may be able to produce some small cars. But how about the paving material for the roads? How about the machinery for paving roads? How about all of the big equipment for servicing the wind turbines?
In the future, we will be living more and more in a resource-constrained world. We will need to use a significant share of our energy resources, just to make more energy. We will not have the resources to rebuild all of the cars, trucks, heavy equipment, factories, homes and offices to use the latest technology--even if we had lots of new technology that might be used. It is the lack of energy that is really the handicapping factor. It is hard to see a way technology could make up for the energy lack.
Its perfectly doable to pave roads with crushed rock and cut stones. Crushing rock and cutting stone can be made with electric power and long range bulk cargo of gravel, sand and cut stones via electrified rail. And cement can be made with electric heat although tyre waste, coal, dried wood etc will be cheaper for a long time.
Input electricity, manual labour, rail investments and some biofuel for trucks, backhoes and steam rollers or real steam rollers and we can keep roads paved indefinately.
But since we have plenty of heavy oil it will take time for somthing else to be cheaper then bitumen paving.
Exactly. I highly recommend Donald Worster's "Dustbowl." IMO this is a good model for what will happen to much of the industrial farmland once FF-based fertilizers become uneconomical/unavailable.
Matt
This is one reason why systems like terra preta/Eprida are so important. We need to increase the nutrient-holding capacity of degraded soils and sequester carbon, and these appear to be ideal for the task.
Don't count out my man Dr. Bussard and his fusion research. The US navy has just restarted his funding;
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2007/08/23/fundin...
You know all this talk makes me think back in the 19th century maybe there was a club called "the wood drum circle". Maybe there was a Woodmanbob, and PeakWoodTO. A woodmanbob and a PeakWoodTO would have no idea what oil was or have any clue to what its potential is. I feel like thats where we are now with oil. Maybe dr. bussard is that man to change that maybe he's not. But there are plenty of things out there we don't understand yet. Book it.
Aargh! Nitpick here: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation! Not lazar, which answers.com defines as "a diseased person, a leper".
(laserjock here, not lazarjock)
Even if everything you say is true, woodmanbob and PeakWoodTO would be right about one thing: the age of oil was shorter than the age of coal, which was shorter than the age of wood, which was shorter than the age of hunting, which was shorter than the age of scrounging.
Whatever you imagine will come after oil, expect it to peak and decline in less than one human lifetime.
In which case, how much "better" was oil than coal, really? Coal alone - with a smaller population backed by coal alone - at least wouldn't have set us up for the risk of such a profound collapse.
Do I need to change my name?
I'm fairly sure if we switch to renewables and technologies that make us more empowered by self reliance, like individual solar and wind combined with conservation, the world will be better off. The reason I focus on oil, though is I see it as being a necesity for the transition and its the part of energy systems I know best Bob Ebersole
"The fantasies of horny 10th graders" as someone here so wonderfully put it.
Are you saying that woodmanbob and PeakWoodTO are horny tenth graders with doomer fantasies? I googled every which combo of "horny tenth graders" on "oildrum.com" and found nothing at all.
The article supports the idea that recent phenomena such as offshoring and 'Walmartisation' are underpinned by unseen use of cheap energy, mainly Chinese coal. If I recall Jerome a Paris wrote a TOD article saying that the surge in Chinese coal demand rivalled the Industrial Revolution in the west. Look how much trouble the Chinese are having cleaning up the air for the Beijing Olympics. But it could slow down sooner than we think http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/5/13/105158/220
So according to that article, if there are no improvements in Chinese coal mining technology in the next decade or so, and no further discoveries of coal deposits*, and China keeps exporting millions and millions of tonnes of coal every year, then by around 2020, it will be forced to start importing much more coal if it intends to keep using more and more coal each year. I don't see how that's "slowing down sooner than we think": I would expect that within 20 years or so China will have moved away from low-tech high-quantity (hence high-energy-usage) manufacturing anyway, as happened with Japan and Taiwan, and is happening in other SE Asian countries already. On top of this, China is rapidly diversifying its energy sources, with nuclear, hydro and natural gas.
A number of factors may well bring China to its knees in the next few decades, but I can't see that it's going to be "peak coal".
* http://www.cslforum.org/china.htm claims 4 trillion short tons of "potential reserves"
Wiz we'll soon know who is correct. You seem to be saying Chinese coal will peak in 2020 while Eurotrib is saying 2009. Of course a country with low wage costs is helped by a higher fraction of economically recoverable reserves. This topic will be front page if Olympic endurance athletes refuse to compete due to air pollution.
Where are you getting 2009 from? The chart appears to peak just before 2020.
Note that China is importing more and more coal, not because of geological domestic supply restrictions, but a combination of the fact that it's actually cheaper to ship it by sea from Australia, and the fact that so many of their mines are horribly unsafe they've been forced to close many of them down.
The headline on the article is
Another nitpick, Supercooled hasa different meaning to very cold.
Douglas - I live in Aberdeen Scotland - its late here on a Friday evening and I should really go to bed. I started to read your article and just got irritated by some of the terms you were using - to the point I couldn't read on.
You use this term:
What is that? I understand standard temperature and pressure - normally 1 bar (or 1 atmospheric pressure) at 20 Celsius.
You also talk about area grades - a 2D concept - OK for forest and berries, but pretty inappropriate for coal, oil and gas - which are 3D stratal systems. So the key point here is Man accessing the third dimension.
And you talk about making hydrogen from coal or electricity. Coal is made from carbon - so is this the stuff of mediaeval alchemy? My understanding is that hydrogen can be reduced from water (H2O) - either by electrolysis or by reduction through reacting steam (hot gaseous water) with coal.
And solar energy is heat - the most basic form of energy. Converted on Planet Earth to kinetic (wind) or potential energy (rain / hydro power).
I appreciate that your background is economics and have considerable empathy with what you are trying to convey - but just couldn't read on tonight. I'll have another go tomorrow.
Steel is produced from iron ore - mixed with coal in a blast furnace, the coal providing energy and and a reducing environment to reduce the iron from the ore.
Really!. My understanding of late is that population growth / birth rates are inversely correlated with technological development - the poor countries have population growth out of control while the OECD has an ageing population.
Really! I see technology as a means of pursuing economic growth using far less energy per capita now than in the past. Mobile phones, iPods, the internet, HVDC transmission lines, materials used in modern windmills, electric cars using LiFe batteries are all examples of technology delivering a service at lower energy cost.
Disagree. The need for Man to gather energy from low grade resources may provide the impetus for new technology. High grade energy resources have been spent on profligate waste.
See this excellent article here published on TOD earlier this week:
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2883
You are aware that nat gas powered cars have been around for decades. True the fuel tank is a bit bigger, but given that the gas is stored as LNG the volume of tank is about double that of a gasoline tank.
I think you need to provide references and links here. What is the cost of LNG imports to the USA - and why are you importing it, if as you say it is many times as expensive as indigeneous gas?
Hmm?
I can gather logs in the forest and burn them at home - but struggle to capture that swamp gas.
You are aware that in automobiles, the liquid is turned into a gas before it is combusted.
A human being with a bow saw is indeed a complicated mechanism - but not nearly as complicated as an off-shore drilling rig.
Douglas - it is saturday morning now and I'm stone cold sober. I've lost the will to read any more of your piece. Sorry to have been so blunt. As mentioned above I think this general field of research is an interesting and important one - but needs rigorous technical understanding applied.
Yours is a common misconception. The poor countries didn't have this overpopulation problem until "green revolution" technology helped them convert cheap fossil fuels into cheap foods.
It is precisely this technological development that caused their overpopulation.
The OECD has had access to cheap fossil fuels for far longer - they experienced population booms too, only much earlier. You may recall America's "baby boom" after WWII.
bmcnett - you are of course correct and I was in a sense being deliberately provocative - and am therefore glad to have provoked a response. The point I was really trying to make is that this piece was IMO full of unsubstantiated claims that all seemd to be leading to support the hypothesis with little critical examination of their validity.
The relationship between energy, technology, religion and politics with regard to population growth seems very compelx to me. You can in fact argue that the energy use in the OECD and the technological development that has resulted has been transplanted into the developing world via food and medical subsidies that results in falling death rates and higher birth rates. The realtionships are very complex and its not immediately obvious to me that they are connected to energy quality.
Yes, population growth in the 3rd world started before the green revolution, and the demographic transition is well under way in most of it. Energy is important, but the relationships are very complex.
This "energy quality" thing is a gross oversimplification, and not at all helpful for charting our future.
The production of high tech gadgetry requires an immense amount of fresh water, fossil fuel, and increasingly pure raw materials, whose production requires immense amounts of fresh water and fossil fuel.
The Internet is a great example of a service with immense energy cost. It requires air-conditioned server rooms to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. Every consumer must buy a computer made from expensive exotic materials every ten years, forever. Every server must be replaced every few years, forever. Every consumer must burn coal or natural gas every moment they surf the Internet. These coal and natural gas plants must themselves run 24/7 at peak anticipated load, for the sake of the servers and the consumers.
My grandfather had no Internet. Maybe he ordered something from the Sears Roebuck catalog in his lifetime. This required only one cheap pulpy paper catalog for him, and some office somewhere with 9-5 employees to process orders. This requires much less energy than The Internet.
Why must internet servers run on coal and natural gas?
They can be run in server rooms absorbtion chilled with the heat from combined heat and power plants burning biomass or CHP nuclear powerplants or far away in areas with plenty of hydro power and geothermal power.
The $100 computer needs very small ammounts of power and the technology developmnet that still is going strong has a very good potential for number crunching power and power use trade offs. Accept todays medium performance in the 2010 computers or 2004 performance in todays and they can run on a fraction of the power. We are running SUV computers when a mini can handle everything exept the lastest 3D games. Not that I should complain since this spending drives technology development and spending on massive sunk cost investments that hen can be used for decades if they for any reason stop getting obsolete.
Maybe, maybe not. What you say makes it sound a lot - but I would want to see the actual numbers.
These costs then need to be weighed agianst savings and benefits.
Redundancy has been an issue to date - driven in part by technological development and corporate greed - I'm thinking about Microsoft introducing new op systems every few years. At some point, the development will slow and the terminals may last for 20 years?
Must also remember that when folks are surfing it stops them from doing something else - like driving or shopping.
I download a lot of music from iTunes - that saves me having to go to the shops.
The energy efficiency of the internet though is an interesting point - one for Nate.
This all boils down to
Human Utility / Entropy.
What is 'enough'? If I can have more, I will. We need to focus on the ends, then the Mearns will fall into place...;)
You left out one entire field, gravitational. River dams store energy by keeping the water mass at a higher potential. Likewise wind and solar energy can be stored by elevating a mass from the earth's center. Indeed, the invention of dams have to rank right next to the control of fire and the ramp as one of the great human innovations in energy engineering.
The gravitational field also comes into play when we talk about tidal energy.
Hi, didn't have too much time to read through this, but here are a few nitpicks.
Lazar? Do you mean Laser? I assume you mean one of the inertial containment methods. Anyway, this is not the only method being researched.
I also think it makes more sense to categorize Uranium as a solid.
Nate, interesting. When looking at fig 3.1, I thought of the Dutch and their use of wind & water power, and their Empire, then the British use of coal, and their Empire, and then the USA, oil, & the decline of Empire. I would offer that each of these energy sources introduces an another step in your step plot, if one were to take a more detailed look @ the last 500 yrs.
Greetings -
I felt compelled to write in on this topic since so many within this thread touched on a subject which is cosmically misunderstood. In nearly all discussions it is ASSUMED that less available, cheap energy means less QUALITY of life, in general, of course, it does not. It may mean less QUANTITY of life, but there is a vast difference. And unfortunately we are almost locked into two Generations (Boomers and X'ers) who believe in Quantity equals Quality.
I would submit that our understanding of satisfaction, if changed, could easily lead to greater Quality of Life with far less (and / or greater cost) energy than we have now. And I don't mean if we all built a 'green' 4,000 square foot home in Aspen we would be set. I mean, (in the early 80's) when I was 16 I had the proverbial gas guzzling, always broken down, crummy pickup. Did I WANT the new Mustang convertible, ya you bet. But I only wanted it because I had been 'conditioned' by consumerism to believe that having that car would make me more happy, cooler, get the chicks, etc.
Fast forward 20+ years, if I were 16 now, would I want the Cadillac Escalade or the GEM car as my first car? Lets, see - the Gem is zero maintenance, plug it in at night and go, never has to go to the dealer for a 'Check engine light', etc. Or the Escalade, owned by superstars and what I need to feel like someone big and important and will put me in debt for 10 years. Hmmmm, tough choice.
In the end, of course, history will determine whether or not we 'declined' as a civilization as our energy resources declined. Or if, instead, we 'grew' by disassociating our perception of quality of life based solely on consumerism.
Very well said.
Quantity is not quality, in either the energy sense or the human utility sense. I will be writing shortly on this concept - because we typically discuss the means, and assume the ends are given. We should focus on the end, then determine the best means to accomplish them. Thanks for your post.
OTOH, you could get a PHEV at the same as the average price of light vehicles today, and get something which uses 0-25% of the fuel of the average vehicle (depending on how much mobility you want - it would be 0% if you stuck to the GEM range), and have something much better than either.
I tend to rant, but maybe I'll try and write an essay along these lines, but oriented toward the usefulness of our activities.
We are all so eager to evaluate energy density per pound, EROEI, etc, but not willing to apply the same logic to human activities and the density of usefulness that we produce.
When we build a factory, a house, a car, or school, how useful are these products after 5 years, 10 years, 100 years (from the standpoint of our children, not the investors)?
How many people are taught to come back to their childhood home to make a useful fortune, vs. being encouraged to seek the "Big Time" for the sake of more dollars?
Another article today about Walkability of a place measures all the places registered to sell products or charge taxes (libraries and schools), but there is no entry for whether or not you produce your own food, tend to your own land, or have your own library to share.
I'm drifting O.T. here, but the general applicable point is that we should evaluate our activities as well as we evaluate the resources we use. If we don't, then the cost of the resources is kinda moot, since we aren't measuring (whether quantitatively or qualitatively) the end result of human behaviors. A high standard of living should not just be measured by how much energy we use or how much money we spend, but in how effective and robust our children's futures will be. This would have to include air quality, cooperative functions, political discourse, infrastructure that doesn't require non-renewable resources, diversity of local systems, diversity of skills across population groups, and minimal outflow of skill sets from communities(Outflow of skills means that those skills will be used via trade, taxes and distance, rather than utilized locally: limited exchange of skills and people is a diversifying asset, but relentless outflow just drains the Commons).
Nice simple article, but, I feel one should pay hommage to the foundation work of Cutler J. Cleveland, Robert K. Kaufmann (kaufmann@bu.edu) and David I. Stern (sternd@rpi.edu), “Aggregation and the role of energy in the economy”, Ecological Economics, 2000, vol. 32, issue 2, pages 301-317, download available at www.bu.edu/cees/people/faculty/cutler/articles/Aggregation_role_of_energ...
It amazes me that they are not cited more, although that may be because their work is not easy to read. I saw an allusion to an analysis of Chinese economic growth and its relationship to energy calories vs energy forms, but could never find the article. I wonder if anyone can point me to it.
Cleveland et al also found no relationship between the quality of ‘transformity’ (Odum) and the versatility of fuels for human social needs in industrial societies over the period examined. The authors illustrate this with the example of coal: “Users value coal based on its heat content, sulphur content, cost of transportation and other factors that form the complex set of attributes that determine its usefulness relative to other fuels." etc.
Sheila Newman
(Ed. prospective 2nd Edition of The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Books, UK, which is a collection of scientific peak oil and associate peaks articles.)