From the University of Oregon a clue as to why green energy isn’t making much inroads. For example, compare these findings to what we learned recently from Matt Ridley about the big fat zero of wind power in the bigger scheme of things.
Wind and other alternate energy is essentially no more than a rounding error. – Anthony
Focus on technology overlooks human behavior when addressing climate change
Study shows it takes 10 units of alternative electricity sources to offset a unit of fossil fuel-generated power
EUGENE, Ore. — Technology alone won’t help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says University of Oregon sociologist Richard York. In a newly published paper, York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable.
Many nations, including the United States, are actively pursuing technological advances to reduce the use of fossil fuels to potentially mitigate human contributions to climate-change. The approach of the International Panel on Climate Change assumes alternative energy sources — nuclear, wind and hydro — will equally displace fossil fuel consumption. This approach, York argues, ignores “the complexity of human behavior.”
Based on a four-model study of electricity used in some 130 countries in the past 50 years, York found that it took more that 10 units of electricity produced from non-fossil sources — nuclear, hydropower, geothermal, wind, biomass and solar — to displace a single unit of fossil fuel-generated electricity.
“When you see growth in nuclear power, for example, it doesn’t seem to affect the rate of growth of fossil fuel-generated power very much,” said York, a professor in the sociology department and environmental studies program. He also presented two models on total energy use. “When we looked at total energy consumption, we found a little more displacement, but still, at best, it took four to five units of non-fossil fuel energy to displace one unit produced with fossil fuel.”
For the paper — published online March 18 by the journal Nature Climate Change — York analyzed data from the World Bank’s world development indicators gathered from around the world. To control for a variety of variables of economics, demographics and energy sources, data were sorted and fed into the six statistical models.
Admittedly, York said, energy-producing technologies based on solar, wind and waves are relatively new and may yet provide viable alternative sources as they are developed.
“I’m not saying that, in principle, we can’t have displacement with these new technologies, but it is interesting that so far it has not happened,” York said. “One reason the results seem surprising is that we, as societies, tend to see demand as an exogenous thing that generates supply, but supply also generates demand. Generating electricity creates the potential to use that energy, so creating new energy technologies often leads to yet more energy consumption.”
Related to this issue, he said, was the development of high-efficiency automobile engines and energy-efficient homes. These improvements reduced energy consumption in some respects but also allowed for the production of larger vehicles and bigger homes. The net result was that total energy consumption often did not decrease dramatically with the rising efficiency of technologies.
“In terms of governmental policies, we need to be thinking about social context, not just the technology,” York said. “We need to be asking what political and economic factors are conducive to seeing real displacement. Just developing non-fossil fuel sources doesn’t in itself tend to reduce fossil fuel use a lot — not enough. We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone.”
The findings need to become part of the national discussion, says Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation at the UO. “Research from the social sciences is often lost in the big picture of federal and state policymaking,” she said. “If we are to truly solve the challenges our environment is facing in the future, we need to consider our own behaviors and attitudes.”
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Sorry, but this is one of the more obvious findings of basic, uneducated human psychology.
People don’t consider energy consumption. They buy things, they plug them in. Period. I don’t actually CARE where the electricity comes from, and neither do most normal people. I pay a bill. If I can afford the energy-consuming gadget, gizmo, TV, or whatever, then I can afford to power it as well.
Not only that, but I find it horrendously irresponsible that utilities fail to provide increased capacity to handle new construction, new subdivisions, increased demand because of plasma screens or whatever comes along. We need electricity to separate us from the third world. Increasing the price without actually increasing the capacity should be against the law.
If the people wetting their panties over CO2 emissions just understood even the most basic aspects of human nature they would realize this. I don’t WANT to have my behavior altered to “save energy”, especially not by people whose motives are suspect. I highly resent people telling me to “go green”, especially people barely intelligent enough to comprehend their own waste.
The whole thing about more efficient engines leading to larger vehicles should have been about the most obvious outcome imaginable. It says something about the thought processes of anyone who would think otherwise.
To many sociologists have been influencing energy solutions in Europe and the US for several dacades. Why will more of their “solutions” not continue to make our situation worse. A free market in energy solutions is worth a try.
Filter out the sociology jargon and this is economics 101. Except where they display their ignorance of economics.
York said. “One reason the results seem surprising is that we, as societies, tend to see demand as an exogenous thing that generates supply, but supply also generates demand. Generating electricity creates the potential to use that energy, so creating new energy technologies often leads to yet more energy consumption.”
No it doesn’t.
What is happening is that new energy technologies require additional energy consuming activities that are not otherwise measured. For example, a maintenance worker has to repeatedly drive out to a wind farm to perform various monitoring and maintenance functions. Or in a case I know about, drive 2,000 Ks to get a spare part.
“… it took more that 10 units of electricity produced from non-fossil sources — nuclear, hydropower, geothermal, wind, biomass and solar — to displace a single unit of fossil fuel-generated electricity.”
Well, that makes sense. Those watts from coal and oil are blue collar, so they’re probably bigger and stronger than the wimpy watts from other sources. I’ll bet the fossil watts even bring guns when the non-fossil watts are expecting a knife fight. Just another example of what happens when well bred, socially acceptasble PC watts go up against bitter clinger watts.
Of course, nonsense like this would come from a “sociologist Richard York.” If nobody explains the concepts of energy density, base load, peak load, etc. to him, he’ll likely remain mystified.
“Study: it takes 10 units of alternative electricity sources to offset 1 unit of fossil fuel-generated power;”
Perhaps this is one reason why!
From a very comprehensive study on UK wind power under the auspices of the “John Muir Trust”
Analysis of UK wind Power Generation [ http://www.jmt.org/assets/pdf/wind-report.pdf ]
Quoting from this study;
This analysis uses publicly available data for a 26 month period between November
2008 and December 2010 and the facts in respect of the above assertions are:
1. Average output from wind was 27.18% of metered capacity in 2009, 21.14% in 2010, and 24.08% between November 2008 and December 2010 inclusive.
2. There were 124 separate occasions from November 2008 till December 2010 when total generation from the windfarms metered by National Grid was less than 20MW. (Average capacity over the period was in excess of 1600MW).
3. The average frequency and duration of a low wind event of 20MW or less between November
2008 and December 2010 was once every 6.38 days for a period of 4.93 hours.
4. At each of the four highest peak demands of 2010 wind output was low being respectively 4.72%, 5.51%, 2.59% and 2.51% of capacity at peak demand.
5. The entire pumped storage hydro capacity in the UK can provide up to 2788MW for only 5 hours then it drops to 1060MW, and finally runs out of water after 22 hours.
During the study period, wind generation was:
• below 20% of capacity more than half the time.
• below 10% of capacity over one third of the time.
• below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve.
• below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month.
The discovery that for one third of the time wind output was less than 10% of capacity, and
often significantly less than 10%, was an unexpected result of the analysis.
The real fun starts when people start squabbling over what to turn off.
Once you’ve donned your woolies, turned the heating down a bit, jumped on the bus, gone to the farmers market and bought local veggies, plus crossed this year’s holiday flight off your diary, what’s left to cut?
Say a measly 5% cut isn’t enough. Say we need to cut 50%. Who’s up for leccy rationing, say, 4 hours a day of use? Gas rationing? Water rationing? Rationing of all products?
Who’s up for removing most products involving steel production and other energy intensive processes?
Just how much of this mythical “wastage” is behaviour change supposed to prevent?
As the math guy pointed out, if a lot of people make a small change, it all adds up globally to a… small change.
Build all the electrical power production you want but I will still need fuel for my car, buses, trains, planes, and trucks.
Electrical vehicles are not going to happen in a big way because the energy density of batteries will never equal the chemical potential energy of hydrocarbons. Only electric trains work because they follow the circuit, which has limited utility in a big country.
Of course, the UN”s goal would be to have the entire 500 million of the Earth’s population living along electrical train routes and the other >75% of the planet would be a wild forbidden reserve.
Sounds a bit like a chicken/egg argument. If you didn’t have all that energy, you wouldn’t want the energy consuming devices; if you didn’t have those energy consuming devices, you wouldn’t want all that energy. Takes a professor of sociology and environmental studies to figure out that the preferred energy sources are better than the new and so-called environmentally friendly ones? What is sociology and environmental studies, anyway?
BTW: Cute ad. The standard smoke stacks belching carbon pollution into the sky with banner about climate change deniers. Small picture, but it looks like that evil pollutant, water vapor, strikes again.
Okay, so….10 renewable units for one 1 fossil.
1 renewable costs 10 fossil.
So……, how do we drive up the cost of fossil to reach renewable?
Keep electing Democrats. Isn’t that correct Kalifornia?
A simple way to greatly increase the amount of solar heating generated would be to improve the design of houses. In the UK, most of the new build housing is about the size of a rabbit hutch, with small windows which mostly don’t face South. Just a little bit of imagination from the builders could reduce the amount of energy required to heat the property. Where’s Kevin McCloud when you need him?
The study merely shows that the roll out rate of alternative energy supplies is not keeping pace with society’s ever increasing demands for energy. That in itself is not a case against alternative energy. No doubt ‘greenies’ would argue that the study shows that more must be done to roll out alternative energy supplies quicker.
Others have commented upon human nature and that most people simply buy consumer goods without thought of the energy consumption. That is no doubt correct.
There is an important demographic issue here. For example, in the UK over the past 30 or so years there has been a significant increase in immigration leading to a significant increase in households. Further, during the same period, marriage has broken down and also there has been an increasing tendency to go it alone and to be a single parent. Again these trends have led to a significant increase in households. Where in the past you had one family unit with one TV, one fridge, one washing machine, one house to power, you now have many cases of double. This has happened a pace in the UK (and in many other countries) and this the real reason why energy supply has not kept track with demand.
“York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable.” I do not accept that argument. Continued growth in energy consumption is sustainable, at any rate for the next few hundred years. There is no shortage in nuclear. If nuclear was to be rolled out it could meet our energy demands.
More significantly so can coal. There is at least a 1000 years worth of coal. It is now difficult to see the case against using coal. The warmists argue that the reason why temperatures have stalled these past 15 years notwithstanding China’s expansion is that aerosol emissions from their coal powered stations is a negative feedback. OK so let’s build coal station with Chinese emission control standards and then there will be no problem. Alternatively, if the reason why temperatures these past 15 years has stalled is down to natural variability and low CO2 sensitivity, then it follows that CO2 is not such a demon and again there is no case against the use of coal generation. Either way, it appears that coal has a future without the need for CCS.
There will come a time when the politicians realise that they can no longer afford to bind themselves to the ‘greenies’ and their ‘casue’ and when that happens, we will have a sensible energy policy that will fully cope with future needs and demands.
Perfect example of Jevons Paradox.
” Jevons paradox has been used to argue that energy conservation is futile, as increased efficiency may actually increase fuel use. Nevertheless, increased efficiency can improve material living standards. Further, fuel use declines if increased efficiency is coupled with a green tax or other conservation policies that keeps the cost of use the same (or higher).”
Suppose we’d better get used to the smell of carbide lamps again.
The obvious question is why do so many “research papers” buy the concept of CO2 driven AGW. Could it possibly be the huge amount of money spent on propaganda proclaiming that CO2 driven AGW is a problem.
Who can forget Richard Feynman on ‘social science’:
A quick search of Richard York’s previous work reveals such gems as, Gender Equality and State Environmentalism:
“The findings indicate that nations with higher proportions of women in Parliament are more prone to ratify environmental treaties than are other nations.”
http://gas.sagepub.com/content/19/4/506.short
The assumption that energy policy is a significant influence on climate is one that should be challenged based on the lack of evidence supporting that particular part of AGW dogma.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
“We need to be asking what political and economic factors are conducive to seeing real displacement. Just developing non-fossil fuel sources doesn’t in itself tend to reduce fossil fuel use a lot — not enough. We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone.”
Mr. York left out something important, something he implies that will be needed for suppression of fossil fuel use. He left out police and military force. We, the citizens, need to guard against such.
This isn’t new. EPA puts out a graphic and information regularly that shows it:
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html
The graphic specifically is here:
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/images/comparison70.jpg
The take-away is that energy use tracks population despite efficiency gains, with a recent drop for regulatory and economic reasons, but miles-driven tracks with GDP, and GDP growth exceeds energy use growth because of efficiency gains. Hmm… Not hard when you think about it a little.
Regarding regulations, the graphic also shows that the air quality has improved EVERY YEAR since 1970. We have cleaner air than has ever been in our lifetime. Yet, the politicians, and especially the bureaucrats, say we need more regulation. I think it is obvious we passed the point of diminishing returns long ago. Our regulations are harming more people than air pollutants now.
it’s all downside with our desal plants in Australia, now that the rains keep coming:
14 March: Herald Sun: Stephen Drill: Wages, deadline blowout for Wonthaggi desalination plant
THE wages bill for the troubled Wonthaggi desalination plant has blown out by $1.7 million a week, but the project is still expected to be a year late despite increased manpower.
There are now 758 electricians on site, twice as many as last year when contractor Thiess Degremont sacked 160 of workers over low-productivity claims.
Overall, the number of workers on the project is now 2870, well above original estimates that only 1700 would be needed to build the plant in two years.
Workers on the desalination site, which has been described as a “treasure island”, make $4000 a week…
But AquaSure, the consortium that has the overall contract, has demanded the State Government provide a $1.3 billion loan to refinance its debt, and a 12-month deadline extension.
The desalination plant will cost Victorians $24 billion over 28 years through higher water bills…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/wages-deadline-blowout-for-wonthaggi-desalination-plant/story-fn7x8me2-1226299537722
9 March: Australian: Sarah Martin: Adelaide desal debt will take a century to pay down
DEBT associated with the Adelaide desalination plant will take 100 years to be paid down by taxpayers, South Australia’s government-owned water utility has revealed…
Opposition Treasury spokesman Iain Evans said South Australians would be paying for the plant for decades to come.
“Water prices will pay for the operating costs and the debt costs, but the debt won’t change just because we are not using the water,” he said. “They have built a desal plant that is bigger than we needed, they have totally mismanaged the project and South Australians are going to be paying for that through water costs for a long time to come.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/adelaide-desal-debt-will-take-a-century-to-pay-down/story-e6frgczx-1226294107119
Interesting that solar heating beats the other hippie stuff, even though we don’t hear about it and nobody subsidizes it.
If logic had any part in this, the method that works best would get the most subsidy.
Trouble is, solar heat is more of a construction technique than a product, so there’s no way China can make money from it. Thus Western governments, whose sole purpose in life is to serve China, have no reason to help solar heat.
This sounds like a pretty crappy paper. But then again, it is social science. Yet it is published in a Nature sister journal. Very sad.
At almost every sentence I have quite obvious objections to either the question they thought they were asking, the interpretation, or had obvious alternate explanations.
And there suggestion is that “we” simply try to change people’s behavior through political and economic means.
Why do I think this won’t be through voluntary actions and through persuasion? As long as they can get 51% of the 37% who vote to go along with something, they will try to impose all kinds of costly solutions on society for its own good, based on pretty crappy analysis.
And no, I won’t elaborate. I have to go to work and finish my own manuscript on trying to develop a new class of antibiotics.
“We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone.”
Of course, the assumption in the above statement is that fossil fuel use leads to catastrophic man-made global warming. Since that assumption is obviously not true, there is no need to think about suppressing fossil fuel use, now, is there?
Sometimes I think that the whole purpose of Academia is to take the West back to the Third World.
Technology alone won’t help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says University of Oregon sociologist Richard York. In a newly published paper, York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable.
Pure intellectual fantasy. To enforce this is a waste of resources that might otherwise keep some people alive, and certainly allow many a better standard of living.
Makes complete sense. “Alternative” energy sources are about ten times more diffuse than the concentrated sources (oil, gas, coal).
Most importantly, now the change to coercive behavior modification is on the table. Just like in the “science” about pill-based behavior modification to keep us from eating beef, this is the opening shot for coercive taxation on energy consumption. They think they’ve got the kids indoctrinated enough to pull it off now.
Many commentators have commented on human behavoir. In the UK we are rolling out smart meters to help inform people how much energy they are consuming and help persuade them to use less and hence save energy.. It will never work. People want to watch the TV. Sit in a room with lights, not have to fumble around a dark hallway for the landing light, want to be able to cook a meal, the kids do not wish to mix with adults and will watch TV, play games, surf and chat in their own room or den. This type of human behavoir will not change.
The only way to save energy is to have a more energy efficient product. Washing machines (and this really means detergents) will need to be able to wash as efficiently at 15 to 20degC as they do now at 40 to 60degC. The amount of water used in the wash and rinse needs to be less, Ditto dish washers.
There is a limit to efficieny savings due to the physics involved. Most kettles are about 3kw. You could have a 1kw kettle but it would save no energy since to boil enough water for a pot of tea would simply take 3 times as long. You need a fundamental change, such as the change to microwaves or perhaps sonic cleaning.
It is a physical law of nature as to the amount of energy required to cool the volume of air within a fridge. Of course, insulation in fridges can be increased. However, when you want to get something out, you have to open the door and hence lose energy. It is these sort of problems that make it difficult to significantly increase efficiency of demoestic products.
There is no doubt that new homes can be made more energy efficient with better insulation etc. However, for a country such as the UK where housing stock is old and of generally of poor quality, it will be difficult and very expensive to make much improvement on that front. Many of my neighbours who installed double glazing ended up with damp problems, alternatively had to fit many air bricks to allieviate the damp problem the fitting of which largely eroded the added insulation of double galzing! My wife being a smoker, we always have the window open so no point in fitting double galzing, but the upside is no damp.
Electric cars are a non starter. My dad (who was a techno freak and so what eccentric) had one some 25 years ago. The batteries never lasted long and repeatedly required replacement. They were very expensive (gel type). It was OK around town. In fact it was a novelty and when my dad use to go to the pub or a restaurant, the pub/restaurant use to run an extension cable to my dad’s car so that he could recharge it. Even in the HIgh Street, some shops would do that! A few hours on charge made a big difference. Living in a mountainous area, the range was really no better than about 30 miles (particularly in winter) no matter what clams were made by the manufacturer. If electric cars are to have a future, interstates/motorways/trunk roads need to have a power supply like a tram or scale-electric car so that the electric car simply slots into that and the batteries are only used for the short trip to and from the inter-state/motorway/trunk road. .
Green energy at present technological levels of efficiency is pie in the sky stuff.