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
Joe Lalonde says:
September 16, 2010 at 7:26 pm
a jones says:
September 16, 2010 at 12:03 pm
So you are stating as fact that EVERY molecule of energy except 5% touches and moves a turbine blade with NO deflection or interference in the angles of the water hitting the blades? In that whole circle that the turbine turns in, all that energy is efficient in the current design of turbines.
Efficiency is having every molecule of energy working together and in the current design, it is made for BULK water harvest and not individual molecule efficiency.
__________________________________________________________
I do not understand what it is you are saying or trying to say. You seem very confused.
Today we can measure this to about a precision of about one part in ten million, our Victorian forebears managed about one part in a million.
Thus modern Pelton wheel turbines are built to shaft powers of up to 100 Mw and achieve across the turbine efficiencies close to 97% : and average if the throttling design keeps the flow pressure and speed constant about 95% through the power range.. Earlier designs of a hundred years ago were a little less efficient but of the order of 90% or better.
This figure does not include losses to the feed supply, the penstock, or the loss of head, water gauge, needed to clear the water the water from the bottom of the turbine.
For example if you have a dam with a notional 200 foot pressure water gauge you would probably need to reject the water from the turbine at between five and ten foot water gauge to ensure it flows away cleanly without back pressure. A loss of a few percent from the ideal limit.
With respect all this is all textbook stuff: tried tested and accurately measured. And recorded.
So I repeat I do not understand what it is you are trying to say. From what you say you seem to be very muddled with little idea of the basic physics or mechanics.
Where you get your peculiar ideas from I really don’t know. But I do know that they are completely wrong. Physics is physics and mechanics mechanics and I as said above these things can and are measured to high degrees of precision.
To clear your mind I suggest you consult any of the excellent texts on the subject.
Kindest Regards
Bart Verheggen says:
September 16, 2010 at 4:48 am
“Julian Braggins,
Thanks for updating me that basic physics, discovered over 150 years ago, is not valid anymore. I’m sure planet Venus will set her temperature back by a few hundred degrees to become in accordance with the new scientific discoveries that are reported here.”
Yes, the science was established IN THE LAB. Did they know conditions in the upper atmosphere? (including a 100 times variation in Extreme UV of the Sun between highest and lowest activity cycles resulting in a 41°K variation, (Judith Lean) ).
Even NASA has suggested that the anomalous temperatures on Neptune may be caused by equator to pole circulation in a dense atmosphere, establishing a continuous lapse rate. And the lapse rate on Venus with her ~100 bar pressure has been discussed here, together with the differing properties of CO2 at near saturation rate, obviously without convincing you?
Julian Braggins,
Obviously not. Have you read anything about Venus’ climate except on this blog?
Yes, but most assume that the Stefan-Boltzmann’s Radiation Law can be applied as per the IPCC. There is much dispute about this as can be seen here.
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/search/label/black%20body%20radiation
And as the article by Nasif Nahle points out, emissivity varies inversely with pressure.
a jones says:
September 16, 2010 at 9:41 pm
How much energy is left in the water before the turbine and after the turbine?
This is easily measured by the speed of the flow as the density of the water creates torque.
Next, why does all hydro-electric turbine have to be in an exact amount of flow of not too much and not too little to turn?
Centrifugal force becomes an increasingly huge problem the faster the flow.
Mr. Jones, I am just trying to show that has been promoted as efficient power, really is not. In an enclosed area, centrifugal force is the parking break to the current turbine designs.
Reply to Bart Verheggen
September 17, 2010 at 2:47 am
Another speculation on Venus’s heat is argued here, but I appreciate that is not peer reviewed science!
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9aqt6cz5&pf=YES
“That brings us to the assumption that the infernal heat of Venus is due to a greenhouse effect. That could only be so if we ignore everything we know about greenhouses. “The much ballyhooed greenhouse effect of Venus’s carbon dioxide atmosphere can account for only part of the heating and evidence for other heating mechanisms is now in a turmoil,” confirmed Richard Kerr in Science magazine in 1980. Nothing has changed since then. The greenhouse theory does not explain the even surface temperatures from the equator to the poles: “atmospheric temperature and pressure in most of the atmosphere (99 percent of it) are almost identical everywhere on Venus – at the equator, at high latitudes, and in both the planet’s day and night hemispheres. This, in turn, means the Venus weather machine is very efficient in distributing heat evenly,” suggested NASA News in April 1979. Firsoff pointed out the fallacy of the last statement: “To say that the vigorous circulation (of the atmosphere) smooths out the temperature differences will not do, for, firstly, if these differences were smoothed out the flow would stop and, secondly, an effect cannot be its own cause. We are thus left with an unresolved contradiction.” In another paper, Firsoff argues that Venus’s high albedo results in the absorption of less solar energy than does the more transparent atmosphere of the Earth. “Increasing the mass of the atmosphere may intensify the greenhouse effect, but it must also reduce the proportion of solar energy reaching the surface, while the total of the available energy must be distributed over a larger mass and volume. Indeed, if the atmosphere of Venus amounts to 75 air-masses, as is assumed by Rasool and de Bergh, the amount of solar energy per unit mass of this will be about 0.01 of that available on the Earth. Such an atmosphere would be strictly comparable to our seas and remain stone-cold, unless the internal heat of Venus were able to keep it at temperatures corresponding to the brightness temperatures derived from the microwave emission.”
Thomas Fuller
Thank you for answering my previous questions. However, I would like to question you further on a couple of points.
“Philip Thomas says:
September 13, 2010 at 6:09 am
‘[Major media campaigns] ignore IPCC scientists so they could insist that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.’
I was under the impression that this claim was made by the scientists in the IPCC report. These facts were reiterated on numerous occasions by Rajendra Pauchari.
Here is the IPCC’s statement on the matter.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/himalaya-statement-20january2010.pdf
Unless I have greatly misunderstood what you have said, it seems completely incorrect to say that the media pushed these errors in the face of IPCC protest.”
You answered:
“Mr. Thomas: An IPCC scientist brought the news of the IPCC’s error to Mr. Pachauri’s attention in (I believe) 2004, but Mr. Pachauri paid no heed and in fact was rather dismissive of it all. But the scientist was from IPCC.”
It was well reported that the Himalayan claim was questioned by scientists outside of the IPCC before the report was published and long before they claimed the mistake had been brought to their attention by IPCC scientists. I believe the internal revelation was damage limitation on the part of the IPCC.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/himalayan-glaciers-melt-claims-false-ipcc
Your answer does not support the direction of your original article that the IPCC and its scientists are innocent and the media is to blame for excessive AGW claims. Pauchari does not fall into the media category by a long stretch.
Secondly:
“On Googling your name I was led to a testimonial you gave: http://www.pep-partnership.co.uk/testimonials.asp
‘Bill understands how business happens in the governmental sector, especially the European Commission. He’s a hard worker and next time I need a big proposal for an E.C. tender, there’s no doubt that he’s the guy to go to.
Tom Fuller, Managing Director, nQuire Services Ltd’
[Edit: PEP partnership specialise in EC grants]
Can you elaborate on your business interests with the EC? Do you worry that the tenders would be less forthcoming if you were critical of the accepted climate science consensus?”
You answered:
“..and if you found my recommendation for Bill Blakemore, how is it you could find so little about me? My tracks are much easier to trace. I have no current interests with the EC, btw.”
Your on-line biographies suggest you have worked in market research and marketing for most of your life but nothing jumps out as an obvious link to ‘a big proposal for an E.C. tender’ unless you were you offering marketing products/services to the E.C.
You have previously stated that you are not a scientist (it seems that you are a journalist and market analyst/salesman), which begs the question, why were you a green technology consultant to the UK Government? Was this in a capacity as a market research or salesman capacity?
This piece you have written today recommends our heavy investment in green technologies. Do you see a need to make your interests in green technologies, if you have any, explicit?
Please excuse my hard interview.
Joe Lalonde says:
September 17, 2010 at 3:51 am …..
I am sorry I just do not understand what you are trying to say. It is about as clear as mud.
Water is a dense, incompressible fluid the flow of which can easily be directed so the water velocity is low and very high impulse turbine efficiencies are easily achieved: so high indeed as I pointed out above, that care has to be taken to ensure enough potential energy remains in the water to allow it to flow away from the turbine after discharge.
Gasses have low densities and are eminently compressible, so as working fluids the velocities are very high: so that necessarily for any reasonable efficiency a number of turbine stages in series are needed. This was understood two hundred years ago but all early attempts using velocity step down stages, such as the Curtiss turbine, failed because the turbulence and frictional losses are too great and effectually only the first stage extracts energy from the flow. Parsons solved the problem by throttling the gas between each stage ensuring that each stage worked over a limited and small pressure range: and his solution is still used today. With gasses as a working fluid there is also the problem of windage because some of the gas escapes past the edges of the blades. Which is why it is very hard to build turbines using gasses as a working fluid to efficiencies across the turbine much better than the mid 60% range.
Except in designs of radial turbine specifically intended to exploit it for various reasons centrifugal forces play little or no part in the process: and far being some kind of limiting factor as you suggest the effect on efficiency is actually very small.
I hope this is clear and repeat that there many excellent texts on the subject which you might consult to some profit.
Kindest Regards.
A minor pet peeve nit pick. The quote uses “innovation” as a sort of synonym for “invention” as in ‘create a new technology’. While this is widely done, it is wrong. Technically “innovation” is the process of taking an invention and making it present in the marketplace, spreading it into use. It’s a marketing and manufacturing function. Yeah, I know, all the technogeeks in Silly Con Valley don’t use it that way… but they are wrong 😉
OK, everyone likes to think the issue is a shortage of R&D and if only we did enough we could find a way to make energy from moonbeams and cow emissions. That’s not the problem. We have LOTS of well done R&D on the self, ready to go. The problem is cost. (And yes, I know you can use R&D to lower costs). As soon as you are talking about increasing R&D you miss THE major point. It’s not a “need new technology” issues, it’s a “need cheaper methods” issue.
One other minor nit-pick: The “solar is closest” is probably not correct and for the reason mentioned. Lack of storage. Wave power is more consistent (waves happen around the clock) and systems are being installed NOW in Hawaii and California along with parts of Europe. Costs are fairly low and production reliable. IMHO, it’s the one with the best potential Real Soon Now. Though right behind it is solar THERMAL as it can used thermal storage in salts to cruise 24 x 7. (Or be co-located with a geothermal and use solar during the day and geo-heat at night).
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ocean-power-tech-scales-up-buoy-generators-2010-04-16
http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/projects.htm
(Disclosure: I own a tiny bit of OPTT as a ‘toy’ though I’ve mostly lost money on it)
The fly in the ointment of all these systems? The ultra efficient combined cycle gas turbine is about 50%+ efficient even without waste heat re-use. With same it can rise to 80% thermal efficiencies. And it is fed on Natural Gas that we have in such great abundance (thanks to new ‘tight shale’ cracking techniques) that the price of gas has crashed to about 1/2 or 1/3 the price of gasoline. Just incredibly cheap.
So you have to beat one of the most efficient machines on the planet using one of the most cheap and clean fuels on the planet. Not going to happen any time soon.
Thus all the government driven subsidy and mandate programs to try to force more expensive solutions into success where they would fail on their own.
And it is not for lack of invention (R&D), nor attempts at innovation (sales, marketing, advertising, demo sites) in its proper sense. It’s simply because the economics can not compete with that low cost high efficiency reliable alternative.
BTW, there is a whole branch of economics devoted to finding the optimal solution to this class of problem. Linear Programming. Solutions of multiple simultaneous linear equations for price, cost, and profit. It’s just a matter of running the numbers for when ROI is highest. I’d guess that it will be at the point where maintenance costs on the old plant start the end of life ramp up. And that will be different for each hydro and other plant. So they won’t all wait an infinite series of 10 year resets. Each plant will reach the point where new more efficient product makes more net present value than maintenance on the old plant. (And that point will change with the dominant interest rates, presently dropping fast, so you can make such upgrades happen sooner with lower interest rates.) The analysis in the article is a bit light on this point (but understandably so… most folks don’t want an article on solving linear programming problems…)
And this leads to why ‘mandates’ for particular behaviours are ALWAYS broken. They do not allow for individual optimization of the individual linear programming problem. If I simply MUST use a one spigot washer (loved that note, BTW) I can’t use my free solar water heat nor use cheap natural gas if the washer is electric (as I would expect it to be). Basically “One size fits all – doesn’t” and mandates are “one size fits all”.
Oh, and on innovation (in it’s proper meaning) of a new technology: There are plenty of opportunities for incremental implementation. I can start replacing hydro turbines one per 5 years. For a 10 turbine cluster that lets me spread costs (and benefits) out over 50 years while constantly improving. If I’m a major utility, I can install a new tech gas turbine in the new plant, eventually shutting down old plants when their contribution to profit drags down the average too much. There really isn’t a whole lot of difficulty finding the optimized profit point for the rate of adoption of new tech. Just need the costs, interest rates, profit function and a few other minor things; then solve the equations.
Intro examples:
http://people.hofstra.edu/Stefan_Waner/RealWorld/Summary4.html
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/linprog.htm
“”” 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. “””
Well this paragraph sums up this whole essay for me.. Gobbledegook is the sicentific term I would apply.
First question: Give a short list (no more than ten entries) of “renewable energy sources” BESIDES SOLAR !!
Sorry,;you get an F on question #1. The short list of renewable energy sources other than solar, contains no entries; there aren’t any. And Solar won’t ever reach price parity with fossil fuels. If it could, it already would have; people have been working on forms of solar energy for at least 100 years. Well they tapped out all the damable rivers for hydro-power; so there isn’t any more of that to be had; and environmental interests would like to remove most of the hydro-power plants that already exist.
I don’t know for the life of me what “”” die-hard American Republicans “”” could possibly have to do with renewable energy sources. So does this fit into the category of non-scientific Political threads, that already caused a donnybrook up there at the top of this blog, that lots of people are complainign about.
I know lots of people who are dead set against having their tax dollars poured down some bottomless rat hole by any spendthrift government that doesn’t understand the difference between economic feasibility, and technological feasibility. Alternative energy sources will come on line just as soon as they are technologically feasible; and it doesn’t have anything to do with economics. And I have seen no evidence that any of the existing political parties has any lock on ways to waste (other people’s) money on pie in the sky boondoggles.
When alternative energy technologies are developed, private enterprise will invest in their exploitation; and no government subsidy intervention will be required to bring it to market. The best thing that governments can do is to get the hell out of the way of private enterprise, and let them develop what makes sense. That is the way it has always been; and it isn’t going to change, just because soembody with an MBA from Harvard or the Wharton School of Business, thinks he can outsmart the shell game
The City of Los Angeles got $110 million (or thereabouts) in Government Job creating stimulus funds from the current “Yes We Can” government.
They report; that that money created 55 (temporary) jobs. That is $2million per job (but don’t worry; they are only Temporary.)
That is what happens when your Government “invests” your hard earned tax dollars in what they perceive to be your best interests.
For a jones & others discussing with Joe Lalonde.
Joe is a disgruntled inventor who believes his turbine to be significantly more efficient than current designs.
He believes that the manufacturers want to sell more units so will not invest in his design, he cannot see that if his design was really that much better, a manufacturer would jump at the chance to corner the market.
As I understand it, he has no working prototype.
DaveE.
“”” Michael Tobis says:
September 16, 2010 at 8:21 am
The consensus opinion is indeed that climate disruption is approximately proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions. Whether it is right or wrong, I suppose, will continue to be a topic in these parts. But you all might as well at least understand what we think is going on. That means, as Bart says, that reducing CO2 emissions earlier has a bigger payoff than reducing CO2 emissions later. So we should look at what has the most long-term integrated effect that we can do now. “””
Howzatt again ? That [snip] Holdren just coined the Climate Disruption gimmic yesterday; and already the science is settled and there is a concensus.
And just who is this “WE” that thinks something is going on that WE all should bcome informed about; that’s mighty [snip].
Well it so happens that WE absolutely know for damn sure that your conjecture is quite false:- “”” climate disruption is approximately proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions “””
So let us go back to the preCambrian 600 million years ago , when CO2 in the atmosphere was 7000 ppm and think of ALL of the CO2 emissions that have happened since that time; and YOU conjecture that :- “”” climate disruption is approximately proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions “””.
So we are living in the age of simply staggering climate disruption; the like of which the earth has never ever witnessed before (as asserted by YOUR own conjecture) that the concensus is that the accumulated CO2 emissions is what the cause of disruption is.
Is your concensus also aware, that (every single year) the atmospheric CO2 in the arctic (almost from +60 deg N to the pole) drops by 18 ppm in just five months.
That’s a whopping 3% drop in just five months. At that rate the entire elimination of the excess of 110 ppm (over and above the magic perfectly satisfactory and desirable) 280 ppm of atmospheric CO2 will take only 2.5 years. Well it probably would be an exponential decay so it would take five time constants or 12.5 years to get rid of 99% of the excess. That is almost instantaneous, in the climate scale of things. It has only been somewhere in the 12.5 to 15 year time range; that the global warming, that preceeded the climate change, and now Climate disruption era, stopped and the modern cooling era began.
Well it is so nice to have you here to educate us all, on just what it is the YOU want US to learn From YOU and YOUR CONCENSUS.
[try to avoid “shouting” please ~ac]
E.M.Smith says:
September 17, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Hammer meet nail!
Only wave power is anywhere near consistent enough to be renewable. Solar PV is only good for niche rôles. Solar heating on the other hand is applicable nearly everywhere.
Only hydro & single cycle gas turbines are viable as back-up for unreliable renewables! Anything that has to be regularly turned off & on is going to be inefficient & wear out quicker than an always on solution like CCGT.
The 500Mw units on Deeside take about 15 mins to run up & synchronise the 1st cycle & an Hr to run up the second cycle.
DaveE.
David A. Evans says:
September 17, 2010 at 2:17 pm
For a jones & others discussing with Joe Lalonde.
_______________________________________
Ah milk in coconut.
Thank you.
Kindest Regards