Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Over at Bart Verheggen’s weblog, Bart (who is a climate scientist who looks at aerosols) writes about innovation, implementation and efficiency, saying,
“Often, innovation (of new/improved energy technologies) and implementation (of existing energy technologies) are presented as if they are binary choices. Lomborg is a champion of that kind of rhetoric.
They are not: Both are needed, and both serve a different purpose (or at least, they are different, and complementary means towards the common goal of transforming our energy system towards a more sustainable one).
Innovation doesn’t actually reduce emissions. Rather, it is expected to allow for deep, fast and/or cheap emission reductions in the long term. Its pay-off though is inherently uncertain.
Implementation is needed to get started on emission reductions. It’s the cumulative emissions that are of concern, so earlier cuts in emissions are more useful to climate stabilization than similar cuts made later.
Counting on innovation as the only mitigation strategy risks postponing doing anything until a silver bullet comes along that may never will. Hence this strategy is sometimes referred to as fairy dust.
Counting on implementation only risks high costs to achieve needed emission cuts (or an effective inability to reach needed emission cuts, if we don’t want to pay for it).”
Bart is probably on the wrong side of the fence for many readers here, but he’s a good guy–more reasonable and reasoning than so many activist bloggers, and willing to at least discuss issues, rather than lecture and hector in the Rommulan or Tobitian mode. I urge those of you who haven’t visited his blog to give him a chance–you probably won’t agree with him, but his discussions are at least interesting.
But he’s missing one or two important points.
There is another way of dividing this problem up. Using renewable energy sources (possibly including nuclear, depending on the level of religious fervor you have) and improving the efficiency of our current means of generating, distributing and consuming energy.
The innovation strategies are not the same for each, obviously.
For renewable energy sources, the technology most likely to reach price parity with fossil fuels is solar power. The improvements needed to make it inexpensive enough to convince die-hard American Republicans that we should use it are well-understood. The complementary technology to make it scalable, grid level storage, is also understood, but farther off.
The appropriate innovation strategy would be to publicly finance research and development of storage, and offer tax incentives for accelerated deployment and development of solar. This is important as the last generation of fabs for solar cells still has mileage on it, and the owners want to milk the last penny out of it.
The dilemma nobody talks about (because nobody wants to advertise it) is the first mover’s disadvantage.
Anthony has kitted out his house with state of the art energy efficiency technologies, because he actually understands that it makes sense to try and make a difference. I gave up driving back in 1991 (with a clean driving record, I’ll have you know), because it seemed like the quantitatively most significant action I could take. I don’t regret my choice, and I doubt if Anthony regrets his.
But if I owned a business with a location in a warehouse with a flat roof facing southerly, I would still hold off on buying solar panels to cover it. There would be two reasons for my hesitation.
First, I am not certain that I won’t get a better deal from the government on tax incentives, depreciation and Girl Scout cookies later on. They do talk about such things quite frequently, both in Sackamenna and Washington. So even if it made sense in other ways, I might hold out for a better deal.
Secondly, and more importantly, I know that solar power gets 20% better with every generation. Two more generations and it will be so inexpensive and higher quality that it would be insane not to use it. Sound business principles suggest that I wait.
On a higher scale, the same decision-making process affects large industrial producers and consumers of energy. Take hydroelectric power. Uprating the turbines of a hydroelectric power plant can increase power output by 35% or more. That ain’t hay.
But turbines are increasing efficiency by at least 1% per year. If my current facility is operating profitably and I wait for 10 years before uprating it, I don’t have downtime for the plant, don’t incur the expenses of retrofitting, and have extra money in my pocket before uprating to an even more efficient turbine 10 years down the road. If I do it now, it’ll be second-hand news in 10 years, and who knows when some really dramatic innovation occurs that makes it impossible to resist.
In my personal life I am willing to put up with some inconvenience and risk a bit of unplanned obsolescence in my energy choices. But as a small business owner I do not have that luxury. There are people who depend on me making the right choices from a financial point of view.
And that’s the dilemma pretty much in a nutshell.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
BTW Fuller. I live 32 kilometers away from the nearest grocery store. I am just one of many, many people that must drive to get food! I guess I need to be taxed even more so twits in the cities can feel good about themselves? I have a proposition. Apply all of your idiotic ideas for emissions reductions where they might be needed. Cities. Leave everyone else alone!
What on earth are you doing here?
@INGSOC says:
September 15, 2010 at 5:52 am
” You keep sneaking AGW talking points into your essays without addressing why they are needed in the first place. Cart before the Horse. Just like all the other media dupes. …Sorry Mr Fuller. I ain’t buyin’ anymore.”
Hear, hear!
Re: Larry
Washing machines are probably a good example of where the “green” mandate has gone wrong. Here in the UK every washing machine used to have 2 inlets, one for cold water and one for hot water. Now they only have one inlet for cold water and the washing machine heats that to the required temperature. The reason for this is because the washing machines can not get energy efficiency ratings if they dont heat the water themselves. This means that it doesn’t matter how efficient you water heating system is you can not use that hot water in your washing machine, it has to heat up cold water itself.
RichieP said: “I have no issue with sensibly reducing *real pollutants in whatever context but as long as the CO2 myth remains in power, the world remains at risk from those who propose reductions. ”
You don’t need one iota of belief in carbon dioxide climate change to see some benefit in reducing CO2 emissions. So long as we remain a fossil fuel-based economy cost effective measures to reduce emissions of CO2 are a good thing – it saves money regardless of whether you view it as pollution or plant food. The key is that they should be cost effective.(and that depends on individual circumstances)
Unfortunately our leaders and advocates of climate alarmism understand this as well, which is why they continually seek to inflate the cost of energy through taxation and regulation. They are trying to force PV and other options to become cost effective by making existing energy supplies more expensive.
Going even further than that there are campaigners calling for investment markets to be fixed in favour of eco-wibble. The UNEP Finance Initiative, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change to name but two.
Tom, I have only a couple of things that bother me.
“The improvements needed to make it inexpensive enough to convince die-hard American Republicans that we should use it are well-understood.”
We now have established your ideology.
“The appropriate innovation strategy would be to publicly finance research and development of storage, and offer tax incentives for accelerated deployment and development of solar.”
We now understand that it is the government that must force the innovation by making everyone pay for the cost of innovation including those that are having problems supporting themselves. With this I disagree, innovation comes from the inventor and developer’s belief that they have a marketable alternative and will risk their own monies on the development of the new process of production, what ever the process it must produce profit on its own merit to be worthwhile.
Now as I understand it our current energy production is cost effective and the technology is improving for cleaner and more efficient production. This will allow for time to develop the technologies to produce alternative energy production that is competitive on the market with out the government funded (read that taxpayer financed with out return on investment) that will necessarily remove funding from other important government responsibilities.
Now we have converted to the curly cue light bulbs that last only about 1/5th the life span advertised on the box at about a 400% increase in personal cost for a 65% decrease in energy usage per bulb. (by the way these new bulbs don’t help heat the home in the winter, should we buy both and exchange them according to the season?) We have implemented growing our own veggies saving on transport cost to acquire part of our food. I do live in an area where Solar would be a good alternative. The question is about life span of equipment and storage of energy during times of lack of sun light. (affordability of initial cost) We have equipped our home with the most efficient heating and cooling available and have supplemented it with waste wood heating to reduce cost of publicly produced energy. Sorry but we live in a rural area and the distance to retail outlets and other amenities precludes the bicycle/pedal power alternative.
But we are doing our best mostly for cost reduction. That is the secret for any new technology to become popular, cost reduction.
I guess that makes me a die hard republican not a conservative and there for a non-thinker. (see first quoted statement)
Bill Derryberry
It is all very well to feel warm and fuzzy about installing green energy sources, such as solar and wind.
However, neither is likely to make any practical (wind doesn’t blow, or blows too hard and when the sun doesn’t shine) or economic sense (capital cost is prohibitive) until the equivalent of a giant battery, or some other similar technology, to store large amounts of energy is invented.
Also, the future economic power houses of the world in Asia and South America don’t give a rat’s xxxx about the type of future energy sources they have, as long as they have them. So anything we do in the West to create green energy will be trivial in comparison to the hundreds of coal fired power stations, which will be built there over the next few decades.
Nevertheless, there is nothing wrong with having a warm and fuzzy feeling about green energy, as long as it is voluntarily self-generated. The problem is the plethora of greenie fundamentalist individuals and organisations using bad science to try and guilt-trip us all into believing that policies of economic suicide are worth it in order “to save the planet”.
Sean says:
September 15, 2010 at 3:55 am
“I am surprised that you did not bring up a major corporation that is going “green”, Walmart. ”
If Walmart was truly serious about going green and cutting emissions it would return to Sam Walton’s made in the USA philosophy. What is green about shipping products halfway across the world to markets? Making the products in the US where the market is would be the green thing to do.
Two Comments:
1. Equipment is upgraded when the old equipment fails; it would be foolish to do otherwise. You don’t replace your working hot water heater just to get an efficiency increase. To have the government (back by guns of course) mandate such upgrades before they are needed is wasteful, not to mention an anathema to freedom loving citizens.
Given the choice between an efficient replacement and an inefficient replacement at the same price, any sensible person would choose the more efficient replacement. The market then prices the more efficient model higher, but not so high that people will not buy it. Adding in a government subsidy or tax incentive just mean that the price is increased even more, there’s no benefit to the consumer in government intrusion.
2. Government grants for R&D and tax incentives are also wasteful. A much better and more cost-effective solution is for a government to award huge prizes to its citizens and/or companies for technological breakthroughs that the government desires. After that, let the new technology stand on it’s own. This rewards results rather than the company with the best proposal writers or political connections, and costs nothing if there is no success.
An example might be a $2B cash reward for the development of an electrical storage device (battery or capacitor) that could power a 2-ton automobile 300 miles at 70 MPH. Specific requirements could be made for size/weight, safety, recharging time, etc.
Sean:
The point is there are suprisingly substantial things that can be done to save energy and money that a holistic corporate wide push may uncover if someone pushes the limits.
Really – if a company can save money by being more efficient – and only does it because of some government initiative or some environmentalist puts pressure on them then somebody has not done their job. Frankly it is far more likely the technology comes along to save money, Walmart implements it and then sells it as a green initiative. It would have been done anyway – if it happens to be green they get good publicity.
The way it is set up nowadays with emphasis on efficiency of 1 parameter the danger is far more that people start replacing equipment to meet some government mandate on efficiency because the manufacture of the equipment is elsewhere and not included in the calculation. The simplifications of the enviro-beuaurocrats, policy makers, environmentalists are outrageous. It takes some believing that it is environmentally friendly to be increasing the pace of equipment replacement – of course to go the other way would make it difficult to get industry on board and the policy would be unsustainable.
I occasionally write in another field (education) and I have for some time been contemplating an essay on the very theme of your opening lines. (Substitute ‘replication’ for ‘implementation’ and we’re talking about the same thing. Replication is a natural followup to innovation, and left alone, market forces or plain common sense will bring it about. The problem comes when bureaucracy (not always governmental) interferes.
Yes, there is a time when you have to shoot the engineers and go into production. The point survives the exaggeration. But the humor also discloses a real problem: How to implement today’s policies without foreclosing further innovation. Large corporations can become completely calcified by not dealing with this. IBM comes to mind.
In education, the replicators typically come at us in the name of ‘reform.’ They have discovered something new that really worked somewhere. (Actually, it usually is not new at all–only new to them.) Now they think everybody should replicate their ‘innovation’ and front line teachers get saddled with it in situations where it may be completely inappropriate.
Commenters above (Larry, et al) have given good examples of forced replication leading to absurd outcomes. Perhaps I can add another. A few years ago, legislators in California created rules that made it difficult, if not impossible to convert from gas to electric heat for your home. The justification being that gas was more efficient in energy use. Today, the same bunch is mandating ever increasing percentages of renewable sources for electricity. So with one hand the state demands that renewable energy be available, while with the other discourages anyone who would switch from fossil fuels.
Better the state keep hands off and let the people decide for themselves when it is appropriate to adopt something new.
@gareth:
‘You don’t need one iota of belief in carbon dioxide climate change to see some benefit in reducing CO2 emissions. So long as we remain a fossil fuel-based economy cost effective measures to reduce emissions of CO2 are a good thing – it saves money regardless of whether you view it as pollution or plant food. ‘
Please could you explain this to me Gareth? If CO2 is non-polluting, beneficial for plant growth, and relatively insignificant in relation to warming (beyond a certain point), why spend *any money on controlling it? And how does spending that money, time, effort etc thus save money? This is not a trick question, I’d like to understand this better.
John says:
September 15, 2010 at 4:35 am
Couldn’t agree more.
Anyone who’s purchased computers over the last 20-30 years understands the problem. There’s always a better/cheaper one being released if you wait just a little bit longer…
Tobitian.
ha. luv it tom.
Notice the continuing thread, “If we can just get them to admit that some CO2 is manmade, and that it causes some warming, then they’ll buy into the need to reduce it.
Tom, it’s nice to not have shouting, but you aren’t paying attention to the data.
Given that we’re barely 11, 15, k-years out of the last ice age, do you really want us to start cooling? 20K years ago there was 1/4 mi of ice on Madison, Wisconsin.
There is more than adequate evidence to show that the Arctic has repeatedly been ice free, at the same time, the Greenland ice cap was substantially smaller. So since we know that for the past 1 million years, the CO2 levels have oscillated, why does change scare you? What’s the deal about “control?”
Sean says:
September 15, 2010 at 3:55 am
“Walmart, Here is a company that originally sought to improve the fuel efficiency of its truck fleet by 25% over 10 years and then after taking a close look decided to make a target to reduce its energy consumption in the entire logistics network by 50%.”
Have you seen Walmart’s fuel bills? Last I checked they spend something like $500 million a year on fuel.
Alternative energy is the wave of the future. And always will be.
Took you folks a long time to tumble to Tom.
wsbriggs, my concerns are as follows:
I personally believe that ‘global mean’ temperatures will rise somewhere around 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century due to a combination of human causes including CO2. (Others include changes we make to land cover, deforestation, etc.)
I do not believe that that level of temperature rise is in and of itself catastrophic. I think we will adapt successfully and that there will even be some winners because of it.
However, having it occur in a fairly compressed timeframe is quite likely to pose some problems for specific regions. (I don’t believe in a ‘global’ climate. All of this is regional in nature and effect.) And I think it quite likely that some of those regions will include places and populations least equipped to adapt to it.
I am also mindful of non-climatic effects of human activities. If my calculations are correct, the conventional pollution from the amount of coal used over the next few decades will be staggering, and have huge consequences for human health and the state of the environment.
Finally, although I do not subscribe to peak oil theories, it does seem evident that easy and cheap access to petroleum based products will decline quickly, causing prices to rise. This will have a negative effect on developing countries.
I therefore think a ‘no regrets’ policy of reducing consumption where it is easily possible, investing in sane alternative sources of energy (I favor nuclear and solar at present), and improving the efficiency of our manner of generating electricity, distributing and consuming it is in our best interests.
As a liberal Democrat, I am probably more willing to look to government assistance in achieving these goals than most readers here at WUWT. But I’d be thrilled if I saw a roadmap that didn’t require government assistance.
Sadly, the truth is that I don’t see a roadmap from either public or private sector that even seems to grasp the correct scope of the issue, with activists exaggerating it and contrarians minimizing it.
Which is why I write these things.
“If energy efficiency was a priority, governments would be in charge of manufacturing companies.”
“Government leaders at times have big mouths on promises but do very little but impede progress. ”
Those two sentences completely contradict each other Joe LaLonde 🙂
Which is it? The government is much more efficient than private business, or all government generally manages to do is impede progress??? Both sentences logically cannot be true. In my opinion, the 2nd sentence is true, but the first is most certainly not.
The universe is not sustainable.
The Sun is not sustainable, it has maybe 4.6 Ga left on the main sequence.
As it gets older, the Sun gets brighter, it’s estimated the Habitable Zone will move past Earth ,a href=”http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qlifetime.html”>in the next 500 to 900 Ma.
Extinction level impacts (of the Alvarez level) are estimated to occur on Earth approximately once every 100 my, the Chicxulub impactor was 65.5 Ma ago.
Humanity cannot deal if any of these future challenges with “renewables”. Nor with a civilization restricted to just one planet.
RichieP said: ” If CO2 is non-polluting, beneficial for plant growth, and relatively insignificant in relation to warming (beyond a certain point), why spend *any money on controlling it? And how does spending that money, time, effort etc thus save money? This is not a trick question, I’d like to understand this better.”
The way Governments are behaving will not save money. They are trying to convince people to change their car/oven/telly/heating/lighting to more efficient models through two things: subsidies and taxation. Subsidies make the expensive efficient stuff appear less expensive to buy. Taxation on energy or on carbon emissions makes the existing relatively inefficient stuff more expensive to operate.
Spending money controlling CO2 emissions is not the same as merely trying to make more efficient use of the fuels and that is something people left to their own devices have been doing for centuries in order to lower their living costs. It is much, much slower than Governments are prepared to wait though. If you buy into the alarmism you must also be of the mind that large changes must be forced on everyone now despite now being the most expensive time to do it.
Gareth: your remark about driving up the cost of conventional industry to the point where alternative sources can be competitive is spot-on. It’s the same thing as the government leveling the playing field by cutting off the heads of the taller players!
Thanks Gareth.
Tom, let’s suppose that the cost for fossil energy rises, say to $500/boe, and let’s specify that it doesn’t happen overnight, rather over a couple of decades – short, but to prove a point. (I happen to believe that the concept of “Peak Oil” is very misguided, there is every reason to believe that a large amount of the hydrocarbons we consume are produced deep within the earth by conversion of carbon containing rock).
In a free market, as the price rises, several things happen, people who are marginal in income seek to minimize their fossil energy consumption, others seek substitute patterns in consumption of energy, and others seek to profit from the increase in prices by offering appliances, HVAC systems, and transportation which minimizes consumption of expensive energy. The latter group affects the first two groups in that potential solutions to their problems are available. Note I said free market.
Some of the solutions will be poorer choices than others, and consumers will learn which work, and which don’t. The very poor may choose wind, they do today in some areas. Others may choose solar, or limited hydro. The drive to solve the problem will focus huge amounts of brain power, for the simple reason that everyone in the world is affected. This is not the case today, as with natural gas prices below $4/mmcf and not very likely to rise for the next decade, there is a superabundance of energy all over the world. If you don’t believe me, take a look at how much gas is flared off in the Middle East.
The point is, when real problems arise, real solutions arise. Imagined problems, or future problems get as many brain cycles as it takes the average person to see that they’re not yet affected, and probably won’t be within whatever event horizon they personally hold critical.
Mostly, I don’t think people are terminally stupid. They mostly want to be left to themselves and their own devices. This is why the Constitution was written as it was. The central thesis is Leave Them Alone.