Guest post by Thomas Fuller
I have been broadly correct about two important things in my career as an analyst. (I wasn’t the only one and I wasn’t the first–just far enough ahead of the curve to make a difference.)
The two things were the demographic decline of much of Europe and the rapid adoption of the internet following the release of the world wide web. I was not studying or researching either topic at the time–the two phenomena leapt out of other research I was conducting and were obviously more important than what I was doing at the time, so I dropped what I was doing and started looking at them exclusively.
So now it’s time to try for the trifecta. (No, I really don’t care about that at all–but this is the third Capital Letter Issue that has jumped out at me, so what the hey…)
Inadequate projections of latent demand for energy are leading to poor decisions now and are muddying the debate about both climate change and energy policy for the rest of the century.
The U.S. Department of Energy and the United Nations both project global consumption of energy at 680 and 703 quads respectively by the period 2030-2035 (a ‘quad’ is one quadrillion btus, roughly the energy you could liberate from 36 million tons of coal).
However, consumption trends, if extended, are far higher–they could reach 2,100 quads by 2030, if adequate energy was available consistently and at decent prices. This is because of the confluence of several important demographic trends.
The overall population is rising–it will be about 8.1 billion in 2030, the equivalent of adding another China to the planet. The comparison is fairly apt, as most of these new humans will be born into societies that look like China does now, or like China did 15 or 20 years ago.
These new humans will be stepping onto the energy ladder and consuming vastly higher quantities of energy than did their parents–if it’s available. They will be moving from farms with no electricity into slums with a minimum of electricity–but shortly thereafter, development and globalization will start them on the road to refrigeration, television, washer/dryers, computers, motor scooters, cars, ad infinitum.
These new humans will be joined by yet another virtual China–existing people who benefit from the same processes of development and globalization and jump on the energy ladder with both feet and both hands.
Obviously, many of both type will actually be in China. But even more will be in places like Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, large swathes of Africa and the rest of the developing world.
They will want what they perceive as a modern lifestyle–in America that amounts to 327 billion btus per person per year in energy consumption. In Denmark, it’s a much more modest 161 billion btus. But in either case, latent demand for energy will far exceed the 700 quads currently projected by the DOE and the UN.
Assume 7 billion people will be on the energy ladder (changing from wood and animal dung on their way to coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear and hopefully arriving some day soon at the promised land of renewable energy). This means there are 1 billion people we have failed. (And I don’t want to ignore them–I just want to present believable numbers for this exercise.)
If those 7 billion consume energy as Americans do it comes to 2,289 quads. (The total will obviously be less, as they won’t all be near the top of the ladder by 2030). If they adopt a Danish model and develop towards that (efficient use of combined heat and power, high taxes on gas, generally high prices for energy, conscious drive to conserve), global energy demand will be 1,127 quads.
Although I would wish that people new to the modern world would automatically choose the far better Danish model, I predict that they will opt for the easier, softer American model and their energy needs will skyrocket.
However, in either case, we will need far more energy than is currently predicted. If they do not get it, they will not fully participate in what the modern world has to offer–education, good healthcare, clean air and water. Nor will they participate in the modern economy, further enriching the rich world with purchases of video games and expensive perfumes. We all will lose, although the losses of the poor will be heartbreaking.
It may well be that the DOE and the UN have correctly identified what governments are willing to build and provide in the way of new energy–but if they are correct, we are condemning billions of people to needlessly live a wretched existence that they would avoid if they could. Because using energy is not just a sign of success at development, or a reward for doing it right or a ‘welcome to the club’–it is often the key mechanism that enables development.
The poor–the two new Chinas–will fight and scheme to get the energy they need. They will burn coal, oil, whatever is available to escape the life sentence of the poor–lives that are nasty, brutish and short.
This conversation is not really about global warming at all. But it is certainly relevant to discussions of our planet’s future climate. China has doubled its energy consumption since 2000. There are two new ‘Chinas’ eager to do exactly the same, mimicking our behaviour of the last two centuries and following the original China’s current example.
The sources and quantities of energy we make available to the world will determine what our planet will look like in the medium term.
There’s no getting around that.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
The much-derided Tommy Malthus pointed out the big problem centuries ago, as did the Club of Rome in their modelling exercise.
The only material difference between Malthus and the Club of Rome is that Malthus was man enough to admit he was wrong. Don’t be deceived by the false equation of geometric vs. arithmetic. The population is an S-curve. Technology is is currently looking like a J-curve (though it may S out — eventually).
Big problems coming down the pike 🙁
Unless the Bakken shale turns out a bust. Since Carter sounded the alarm, we have multiplied out potential reserves many times. And there’s virtually unlimited secondary supply, and I haven’t even touched on how we’ve tied our own hands.
I thought solar power was supposed to be on a level footing with oil by about 2018 – probably through the printing of solar panels (or spray on). (That doesn’t to my mind justifying investing in renewables now because you can’t prejudge the area which will lead to the innovation which cuts the cost – installing solar now is just shifting it from where it would most cost effectively be applied). When that happens rational investors will always use solar on external surfaces (and windows by default will probably generate electricity). Cars like the volt would automatically recharge, and I suspect the speed with which it will happen will be breathtaking. There are so many technologies that are getting slowly more cost effective, that as soon the price of fossil fuels start to rise they will cut in. The current greens will probably delay it by diverting funds to the wrong technologies but the trend is pretty clear (although I have seen the argument that the profit on oil in places like saudi arabia is so huge that when solar becomes cost effective they will simply drop the price). The amount of energy mankind uses is miniscule compared to the amount of solar radiation coming in .
On a final note to peak oilers out there: While both Peak Oil and AGW theories originated with the Club of Rome, they are mutually contradictory. For instance, the IPCC fossil fuel consumption projections in AR4 estimate that we will consume 10 times more oil over the 21st century than Peak Oilers claim is in the ground. Both claims cannot be true, yet they are both promoted as true, usually by the same exact people (particularly those in the Pickens crowd).
Hi all,
Many thanks for the comments so far, including the gentle criticisms. Keep ’em coming.
A couple of things I’ve noticed so far–regarding population growth, I am not a Malthusian at all. The projected 8 billion for 2030 is a large decrease from earlier predictions. We can be fairly confident of it, because the mothers of the next generation have already been born. I got it from the (ahem) UN, but it is supported by many other studies. (And think about it–we’ve grown from 2 billion to 6.7 in my lifetime–what’s another 1.4 billion more?)
Nor do I think human ingenuity will fail us. The point of my post is that governments relying on the official estimates for energy consumption are going to make bad decisions–and some of those decisions will be about how to spend our money. I am a bit concerned that many believe that the sexy technologies getting all the press right now–solar, wind and next generation biofuels–will make a material difference in our energy supplies in the near term.
I have high hopes for solar power. I think it will explode and be a major force. The other two, not so much. And for solar to really help us, we will need parallel improvements in energy storage, as pointed out above.
There is no question in my mind that nuclear power must be a part of our thinking–and doing–right now. But we literally can’t build enough nuclear power plants in 20 years to take the load. So we need other avenues to exploit at the same time.
We are not doing nearly enough with combined heat and power plants or waste to energy plants–and these are proven technologies. And we need to be more rigorous in adopting energy efficiency techniques the minute they come to market.
I am confident we will figure out how to do this. My message is aimed at those who think we already have. We have not.
There appear to be some assumptions in the OP that don’t reflect reality well nor the march of technological progress.
The poor lead short brutish lives? Hardly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
The short brutish lives are overwhelmingly in Africa. Largely due to being war ravaged with corrupt governments, high tolls from HIV & malaria, subsistence farming, lack of adequate sanitation, and so forth.
For the rest of the world life expectancy at birth ranges from 70 to 80. Where life expectancy at birth is 70 years that’s not short or brutish by any stretch of the imagination.
The United States is far from the leader of the longevity pack at #38 yet it has almost the highest per capita income and energy consumption. Leading a healthy lifestyle and being born of parents with long lives is what makes the big difference. Per capita income and energy consumption has little to do with it in comparison. Lifestyle is largely a matter of culture (nurture) and while we can’t choose our parents that isn’t a matter of energy or economics but rather of genetics (nature).
Rate of natural increase (birth rate – death rate) rate decelerates as average life span goes up. Many nations are now below 1%, a few are below 0%, and the trend is almost exclusively downward as seen in the list below by country comparing 1990-1995 average RNI country with the period 2005-2010.
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/138.html
So longevity we find is not very much a matter of energy consumption or per capita income.
How about happiness – satisfaction with life and sense of well being? Get ready for another shock. That doesn’t follow per capita wealth, energy consumption, or even longevity. It’s all about culture. Hard as it is to believe for westerners and the wealthy all over – you can be dirt poor and still be very likely to be happy and in love with life. See the list below of 96 nations listed by reported sense of well being for more than a few shockers for those of you who think happiness is related to longevity, per capita income, and energy consumption.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsmedia/pr111725/pr111725.pdf
With those things cleared up the OP author seems to presume there are no breakthrough technologies on the way that will solve many if not most of the sustainability issues now and in the foreseeable future. What most everyone misses is the exponentially advancing field of genetic engineering and artificial genomes. We are literally on the cusp of designing and harnessing simple single celled organisms with wholly artificial genomes. The engineering and medical opportunities that flow from that make today’s farming, energy generation, medicine, and manufacturing look stone age in comparison.
The earth gets a tremendous amount of solar energy and we harvest very little of it in raw energy or the carbon and water cycles it drives. Through genetic engineering we can harvest so much of it that it puts fossil fuel in perspective. That perspective is that fossil fuel was a mere stepping stone on the way to the way to the next transformative technology that makes it obsolete – a rather short chapter in the book of man.
Biotechnology and bioengineering will soon be more transformative than anything that preceded it including fire, metallurgy, agriculture, money, mass production, fuel oil, electricity, antibiotics, mass transit, electronics, computers, and communications. It’s huge and its near. I’ve been keeping a very close eye on it for 23 years. The progress has been tremendous and it’s now advancing like Moore’s Law for semi-conductors. Actually the computer and information revolution was prerequisite and was predicted over 40 years ago in the 1960’s in Project Xanadu. I got involved with that in the late 1970’s and spent the following 25 years as an engineer closely associated with Intel and Microsoft R&D inventing and improving the techonology and accumulating shares of stock like a good capitalist. Can I pick some winners or what?
As an engineer with a perfect track record at predicting transformative technologies I’m here to tell you that the engineering opportunties for practical application engendered by biotechnology and bioengineering exceed every transformative technology that came before it. A world of great material abundance is close at hand. The question is whether it will increase the happiness quotient. That’s not so clear. Humans appear to be equally capable of being miserable in lap of luxury or its opposite celebrating the dawning of every day with only the barest necessities.
Nice to see you back GM… oh, sorry, Gray Monk. You two seem so similar. 😉
The best way to slow down the rate of population growth is to improve economic growth in poorer nations. By increasing the GDP per person these nations will experience the benefits of our own society: improved health care, improved education, lower birth rates and higher life expectancy. The only way to achieve this is access to cheap energy.
Instead of imposing the West’s (i.e. the UN’s) will upon them, as so many progressives are fond of doing, these countries must be allowed to take part in the global economy. For too long now, they have been dependent on the handouts (economic welfare) and are unable (or unwilling) to break this cycle, whether from abdicating their future to diktats of foreign aid agencies or internal corruption in forms of “government” that hinder innovation and growth, or both. Now, to keep these nations in perpetual poverty or to hamstring their growth, the UN and AGWers insist that these countries not be allowed to use their own resources (i.e. cheap energy) but must only use the most expensive forms of energy generation on the planet. Solar panels or turbines might be fine on the top of your modest little home in central Africa but they cannot power a steel mill or an open pit mine—and anyone who says we are close to doing just that is flat-out lying. It is economic Imperialism.
I admit that the stone in the shoe is Human Rights—how much should we expect a country to live up to OUR standards? Do we have the right to impose OUR beliefs on them or do we make it a condition of participation? The only practical and effective way to influence a country’s Human Right’s record is thru’ the free market, where individuals make the decision of who to buy from based on personal preferences (e.g. do I want to buy a cheap rug or pair of shoes that were made by children? Where exactly is the diamond in that ring from?).
There will be some who jump up and down about the effects that access to cheap energy will have on the environment in these nations. Valid points, I’m sure but, as their economies improve and standards of living rise, the more intolerant their populations will become. They will demand changes when the risks start to outweigh the benefits, and as their economies grow they will be able to afford the technologies that we enjoy to solve those environmental challenges. (China is just starting to enter this phase—the social and environmental convulsions that occurred in the US and Europe from the ’50s to the ’70s have not yet happened there… but they will as the population becomes less dependent on the government and more self sufficient.) Here again, the free market can decide the fate of a country’s economic future—Do I buy food, like garlic or tilapia, from China? Not a chance because their farming practices are sketchy at best.
It’s clear that with affordable energy poor nations can pull themselves out of their welfare dependency, replace corrupt or totalitarian governments, and become economically independent states that produce goods that have a market. And me and you, dear reader, get to decide whether these nations succeed or fail, improve or remain static, because of our freedom to decide from whom and where we buy.
[end of rant]
People have been very harsh with the Gray Monk. Do I think that we are over-populated for the currently available resources? No. Do I think that we are overpopulated on a sustainability basis? Maybe!?
I’ll admit that I have no idea what the sustainable population of the earth is, but I think that a blind reliance on technology allowing continued growth in agricultural yield rates is somewhat arrogant. Mainly because it’s not always clear what caused the growth in land productivity. How much is new plant species? How much is fossil fuel based fertilizers? How much is fossil fuel based pesticides? How much is improved irrigation? How much is mechanization? How much is a synergistic affect from all the above combined? etc…
Even if we can answer the above questions (and I’m sure there are some people that have some of these answers), the next question you have to ask is which of these technology affects are sustainable? New plant species presumably are, provided that their main advantage is not better uptake and conversion of fossil-fuel based fertilizers. Fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides are not in the long run, though that long run may be on the order hundreds of years from now. Mechanization is possibly sustainable. Irrigation is another qestionable one. There is a maximum rate that an aquifer can be drawn down by every year without “drying it up”. Population growth taxes the amount of irrigation that can be done out of an aquifer.
I admit that Gray Monk’s post was harsh in tone, but at the end of the day it is possible that the current world’s current population is unsupportable when you take away the unsustainable technologies allowing for the type of food productivity we have today. I don’t condone genocide, and would never make a “list”. But I will allow for the possibility that we are living beyond the long term sustainability point of this planet.
If you read Thomas Fuller’s text more carefully, you will find it is
not Malthusian. The ‘movable parts’ seem to be energy demand
per capita and energy provision/form.
What maybe upsets many here is the notion of limits.
Well, although they cannot always be reliably defined today, limits
there certainly are:
– fossil fuels
– phosphorus
– groundwater
– biomass production per hectare, even taking into account
biotechnology etc
– metals
– minimum biodiversity, for instance pollinators
Population is probably one of the distant limits, but
minimum quality of life for all is here and now.
Starting with Malthus, those Deeply Concerned about Humanity have been engaged in these asinine projectional exercises. The meaning of “Stupid” is “the inability to learn”. These people are stupid.
In the market, supply will meet demand at a price. To the extent that governments and dogooders interfere, the supply will be lower and the price higher. As many above have pointed out, there is plenty of energy for all, if the market is allowed to perform. Sadly, many will push for interference with the market, no doubt with claims of noble intent. The poor will suffer.
2005 was probably the “Peak Production” year for oil.
Coal is a “finite” resource. It will peak, also. Think of a “Coal Train” 1,000 miles long. That’s what China uses, Every day.
Germany has, for the last several years, been heavily into subsidizing Solar, Wind, and Biomass. They just announced 8.8% “Annualized” Growth this quarter. We will have plenty of energy. We’re just going to be a little smarter about how we get it.
What is the biggest “hide the decline” in data analysis? It’s not about world surface temperature, but China’s TFR (total fertility rate).
Since 1990, China’s TFR went down below 2.0 owing to the state’s birth-control and the economic reform. In 2000, according to the fifth population census, TFR is only 1.22. But the birth-control ministry abandoned this number; they claim a “real” number of 1.8, and use it as constants for the twenty years (1990-2010).
So not to many people know the fact that the aging and implosion of China’s population will occur much earlier than expected; and China cannot keep the current growth for ten years, just due to aging population and lack of young labors.
This problem has already been addressed in demographic studies in the recent years. In 2009 the US Census changed the forecast:
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/international_population/cb09-191.html
As for the cause and effect of China’s birth control, UCLA’s Profs. Feng Wang and Susan Greenhalgh have numerous excellent works. China’s birth control policy warns us why people should be extremely cautious about the climate policies.
Susan Greenhalgh:
Just one child: science and policy in Deng’s China
http://books.google.com/books?id=MjLdqh9lMgcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Feng Wang et al.:
BELOW-REPLACEMENT FERTILITY AND CHILDBEARING INTENTION IN JIANGSU PROVINCE, CHINA
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a917991668
“a modern lifestyle–in America that amounts to 327 billion btus per person per year in energy consumption. In Denmark, it’s a much more modest 161 billion btus. ”
Should those figures be in something other than billions of BTUs in order to match with the totals for world usage given in quadrillions of BTUs, or am I being stupid here? Not that it makes a blind bit of difference to the point, of course.
Interesting stuff – have you considered that the energy companies are investing (government grants) in ‘green’ technologies because they agree with you that we’re going to need to increase world energy production massively?
It seems as though the graph provided represents “cherry picking” by Lynn Orr, a global warming advocate who has a large stake in Government grants at Stanford. If you look at his presentation on the “end of oil” presentation, he even admits that this chart varies considerably from other sources.
The graph shows oil peaking at around 30 billion bbl/year in 2020 whereas the DOE estimates provided show oil peaking at 53 Billion barrels/yr. in 2037, and there has been a lot of oil discovered since 2004. Looks somewhat like the kind of adjustments NASA makes to the data
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html
“Thus, if the USGS mean resource estimate proves to be correct, if 2 percent production growth continues until peak production is reached, and if production then declines at an R/P ratio of 10, world conventional crude oil production would be expected to peak in 2037 at a volume of 53.2 billion barrels per year.”
The problem with renewable energy technologies is that they are all inherently much more expensive than coal and oil. It doesn’t matter if you subsidize them to be “competitive” — that just moves the location of the drain on wealth to the government side (which, with bureacracy, results in even greater overall wealth losses).
If you force renewables on the world through mandates or subsidies, the increased global cost of energy will flow into the price and availability of all products. Economic multipliers make this impact severe, particularly for food and medical care.
Standards of living will fall everywhere. This means that people who are almost starving, will starve. Frequency and severity of epidemics will increase.
If you institute vast aid programs to help the 1-2 billion poor cope with the increased costs, then the economies of the developed world become heavily compromised. Production falls, costs go up even more. You kill the golden goose.
The end result is catastrophic. The whole world falls into a poverty crisis. A very large number of people die.
Every government mandate, every tax, and every subsidy always end up causing increased human suffering, often in places far removed from those that vote them.
The crisis of course will be blamed on capitalism, “unsustainable” technologies, and the greed of the United States.
evanmjones says:
August 13, 2010 at 8:05 am
“Since Carter sounded the alarm, we have multiplied out potential reserves many times. And there’s virtually unlimited secondary supply, and I haven’t even touched on how we’ve tied our own hands.”
Amen! The tying of our own hands because of greenie whining is the only thing that humans are to blame for in matters of energy and climate. I’m not saying there is no pollution going on or that we should stop true environmental problems (like the abundance of kindling if the forests or big industries dumping tons of nasty chemicals into a river), but let’s use the fuel we know we can get to for as long as we can and find new solutions over the course of however many decades or centuries we have until they run out. Let’s add new refineries to lower the price of gas and therefore the price of transportation and therefore the overall cost of everything! By the time we run out of the misnomered fossil fuels, maybe fusion will be a reality and then we can all jsut worry about where we will store the highly toxic and radioactive plasma by-products (yes, that a joke).
“Louis Hissink says:
August 13, 2010 at 4:20 am
Some points:
1. Peak Oil theory is not a scientific fact.
2. Petroleum is buried biomass is not a scientific fact.
3. Plate Tectonics is not a scientific fact.
4. The Big Bang is not a scientific fact.
5. AGW is not a scientific fact.”
I’m with you on all except number 3? Not proven physically, measurement, observation??
cheers David
\\I also see plate tectonics is beyond a mere belief. #3
HC
Oil (oleum) from rock (petra) is a scientific and reproducible fact:
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/17/10976.full
Lakes of methane on Titan is a scientific fact.
“Underground oceans of the stuff” on Earth is a scientific fact:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_15/b3727001.htm
Replenishing wells in the Gulf of Mexico is a scientific fact:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf124/sf124p10.htm
And I have an estimated 500 year supply of peak coal in my backyard:
http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&safe=off&q=victoria+coal+500+years
Kum Dollison:
Germany has, for the last several years, been heavily into subsidizing Solar, Wind, and Biomass. They just announced 8.8% “Annualized” Growth this quarter. We will have plenty of energy. We’re just going to be a little smarter about how we get it.
———-
I don’t know where you are getting that 8.8% figure because it is reported to be 2.2% for Q2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703960004575426572933053474.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Of note:
“Economists say growth is likely to slow in the latter half of the year as stimulus measures run their course and governments cut spending to reduce their budget deficits.
“The quarter-on-quarter growth rate in [the second quarter] is unlikely to be sustained in the second half of the year,” said Ken Wattret, chief euro-zone market economist at BNP Paribas. “Our feeling is that 2011 growth will be significantly weaker than 2010.”
Thomas Fuller,
Thank you. Your post is a stimulus to look beyond the veil of the current energy paradigm.
For a world future where there are predominately free capitalist economies, there is no problem to be solved for future energy supply of any amount or on any timeline/schedule. It is what they (capitalists) do and do profitably.
For a world future where there are predominately government-controlled-economies, there is no solution to the problem of our future energy situation. This is because the basis of those governments control (existence) requires there to be problem. This scenario is the high tax burdened government dominated (less free) one.
As for mixed economies, well you start our getting mixed results that degenerate (because of for example an incomplete solving of the energy problem) into fully government controlled economies. In my view the “mixed economy” approach is the worst because it tends to lend credibility to the government control of the economy at the expense of the free capitalist part. But the capitalist part is the only one doing productive and effecient work.
Thank you for listening to my version of “economics in one lessen”. My apologies to Henry Hazlitt for using his terminology.
John
The folks I talk to at Xcel have quite a lot of experience with wind, and they aren’t happy about its utility factor, cost, or how it changes the way they have to operate their coal-fired plants at present.
It is difficult to install wind for $2/W. Where do you get these numbers for solar?
That’s 1/2 of our entire electrical consumption from waste heat in just steel mills?
This sounds pretty good, but Fiberight’s website reads more like a brochure, and they really only speak of a pilot plant at this point. A 2007 special issue of Science was a good deal more cautious in its estimates about cellulosic ethanol–the beer for example could only achieve about 4% ETOH, compared to over 10% using grain–and other renewables. They were projecting costs like you quote somewhere beyond 10 years out. The proven technology at present is SYNGAS from municipal waste, or for biofuels is ethanol from grain, and I figure that to reach 50% of US gasoline consumption (i.e. produce 60 billion gallons per year) would just about destroy the environment of North America.
Do you have some references to back up these claims?
More good comments. I’m heading out the door, so I’ll limit my response to Dave Springer.
The corollary of my argument is obviously a closer look at the technologies that actually will shape the 21st Century, and they do include nanoetechnology, genomics and proteomics and their applied use in biotechnology. And I think they are directly applicable to both energy production and energy efficiency measures.
In fact, one of the reasons I did this research and wrote this piece was to help myself understand why we are focusing so much of our time and resources on technologies that are either millenia (wind) or centuries (solar and biofuels) old and ignoring the potential of bio and nano technology.
Unlike Mr. Springer, I don’t see the exponential growth here that I would like. It grew very rapidly for a decade, but it seems to have stalled–due in my mind to obstacles in our current intellectual property management systems.
I very much would like to see bio-engineered organisms that eat CO2 and provide energy in return on a large scale, and nano-coatings that reduce friction for roads, tires, train-tracks and wheels, aircraft fuselages, ad infinitum.
But spending ever more money on ever more expensive offshore wind farms in my mind is a vanity purchase and is not advancing the cause.
One excerpt summed up the problem:
“It may well be that the DOE and the UN have correctly identified what governments are willing to build and provide in the way of new energy”
If it is left up to governments and the UN, then there will definitely NOT be sufficient construction of energy generation. Governments only have incentive to provide to the most politically connected groups, while taking away from others. In fact, there’s a perverse incentive to maintain a scarcity, so that the politicians can gradually promise to “solve” the problem for different groups of people over time to get elected, and blame the other party (in the US at least) for getting in the way of providing more power to the losers. If there is no problem, then how do you get people to vote for you? “We wanted to raise taxes to provide more power for the children and elderly, but those evil, child-hating SOB’s on the other side blocked this tax increase.”
The technologies for generation similarly are not selected, sized, and located based on efficiency or return on investment, or any of the things that a business would seek to achieve. Only those who can have the largest tales of woe or are the biggest donors will be favored. Of course there would be some oscillation of which groups are favored as leadership changes.
If the opposite direction is taken, letting producers and consumers freely exchange money for energy rather than being dependent on government and taxes, can the energy needs of the world will be met. Even in the US, where there is a great deal of regulation but generation and delivery is still left to the private sector, we have enough energy to support the freedom of the citizens. In Denmark, they use less energy, but spend more money on it (higher taxes), and certainly have less freedom in using it. Do you want central planners in Washington to decide what temperature to keep your house and at what time you can wash your dishes or clothes (drying them outside, of course)?
Trolls accuse others of what they themselves are doing. We get accused of getting Oil Money–I wish!
One of the Climategate e-mails was about getting funding from Shell Oil.
This article shows why–demand for oil won’t stop because of “Greenie” nonsense. But supply can be cut, and that boosts prices–and profits.
Energy is life. We all need a certain amount of energy to live. There are people who will die or never be born as a result of the energy lost in the Gulf Oil Leak.