Nature’s (Not-Quite) Perfect Battery
by Indur M. Goklany
The major drawback of solar power and other renewables is that they cannot be relied on to deliver energy at their rated capacity for every hour of every day of the full year. Hence, the dollars, effort and human capital devoted to developing more efficient and low cost batteries.
But Nature has already solved this problem for us a very long time ago. It developed a system to capture solar energy and store it underground for future use in gas, liquid or solid form — to be used any time or anywhere we want, in rain or shine or in windy or calm conditions.
We call this energy capture system, “photosynthesis”, and this battery, “fossil fuels”.
Nature would never have thought that elements of humanity would look this gift horse in the mouth. That—even as they use it to turn night into day and make their labor more productive, allowing them to devote much of their waking hours to activities more fulfilling than the constant pursuit of food and sustenance—they would complain about returning the basic building block of its energy store, CO2, back to the atmosphere whence it came, particularly, since this building block sustains much of the living world, including humanity itself.
Some human beings have gone so far as to favor newer storage sources (AKA biomass) over fossil fuels. But biomass itself returns its carbon to the atmosphere. So long as one uses carbon-based combustion, the chances of reducing CO2 emissions are nil, whether one uses new biomass or a fossil fuel. In fact, since newer carbon sources are also associated with higher moisture content in the fuel, burning them would increase CO2 per unit of usable energy.
But Nature’s battery is not perfect, it does release air pollutants. However, CO2 isn’t a pollutant. And the air pollutants that it emits are today cleaned relatively easily without suffering a massive energy or economic penalty.
Should we not celebrate Nature’s (not quite perfect) battery, even though it isn’t perfection itself?
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Um… sorry but no. Batteries are something to which somebody stores energy intentionally for later use. There’s no intent on Nature’s side.
It’s not even certain “fossil fuels” are entirely fossil, there’s quite a lot of carbon in the primary material the Earth was made of and it can be “processed” to oil by internal heat. So there’s a chance the energy available in oil was not stored there by photosynthesis.
Can anyone explain to this dumb layman just how oil is formed from fossils?
Which branch, animal or vegetable? What volume of ‘fossil’ biota was needed
to produce not only today’s known reserves but also the huge quantities already
used and how come the ‘fossils’ got so deep into the rock structures?
(seven miles down was last report I read)
Gareth Phillips,
Whether you pay your electricity bill out of your savings account (fossil fuels) or your checking account (newer biomass), your total wealth (checking + savings) is the same (assuming the bill is paid out with equal efficiency, i.e., all fees are equal, whichever account you use). From the electrical company’s point of view, its revenues are also the same. So, it makes no difference which account you use.
Although paying it from your checking account makes your savings account larger, you are no better or worse off, on net. What will make a difference is being able to decrease your electricity bill or increasing the amount you bring in to your checking account. But if you want to pay your bill, it makes no difference which account you use.
That using biomass is any more sustainable than using coal, for instance, is based on compartmentalization (between checking and savings accounts). What is more “sustainable” (or “sustainable” for a longer time) — note the quotes, I use the word advisedly, but that’s another story — is either to reduce the use of energy or to generate biomass more rapidly (without displacing something else that would generate equal or more biomass).
I’ll have to sign off for the next couple of days, so won’t be able to respond rapidly. My apologies to all, but thanks for reading.
The real problem with solar power, and wind, isn’t that it is not available 24/7 but that you can’t depend on it at any time. If solar produced full output in the daytime and zero at night, you could deal with it. Knowing that solar power can fail at anytime means that you must have backup generation running. This not only imposes a operation cost, but a capital cost.
If solar power was priced by market forces and not government edicts, it would only be worth the cost of the fuel saved. Which means it would never be built.
Then we have the hydrocarbons apparently emanating from the Earth’s core as natural gas and petroleum. It’s clear that natural gas from 12,000 feet down cannot be from fossil material that was once something like a swamp. Some may derive from subduction zones at tectonic plate edges, but the widespread occurrence of gas almost everywhere we drill deep enough suggests, as do isotopic analyses, that it comes from even deeper down.
There would be more natural gas than we find, if the lithosphere really was impermeable, but there has probably been leakage to the surface over the eons to some extent in many places, which explains the methane found in many groundwater sources.
So, this battery stores nuclear energy as hydrocarbons for later use—if we do not use it, it will eventually leak to the surface and be lost to natural processes from which we gain no advantage. It may be considered selfish to want to help ourselves. It certainly appears that the Greens think we should push away all really useful and available resources that make our lives pleasant.
Let’s go for the concept that a happy and healthy human race will produce a happy and healthy world!
The primary problem I have with this article is that it takes as a given that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at current levels is a very bad thing and should be prevented. Usually this is based on a perception that the greenhouse effect temperature rise is directly proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, when in fact, absorption-band self-masking, makes this rise proportional to the logarithm of the CO2 content. Also, water vapor appears to be the primary greenhouse gas controlling temperatures in the lower atmosphere.
BTW, I think the term ‘renewable’ is somewhat misleading, as most resources will be replaced, if given enough time—perhaps millions of years of geologic activity. I prefer to use the term ‘renewing’ to indicate those resources that are continuously being regenerated at their current rate of use.
I have said here and other blogs that coal should be considered the original bio-fuel. Dead corn-ethonal. Dead grass/leaves/trees -coal. What is the real difference?
And research should be done to find a inexpensive way to get methane-hydrates from the ocean to pipe lines to consumers not solar or wind. We have thousands of years of energy available with hydrates.
Fossil fuels: 100% natural!
When there is no wind for wind turbines …
When there are no tides for tidal generation …
When there it is night..
then we should use the batteries from the carboniferous.
Do you run your battery torch during the day when there is sunlight to see with? No – you of course turn it off and use the renewable source.
Power stations running on fossil fuels CAN be turned down or even off if their energy is not required.
Even if the station is running as spinning reserve (a few seconds to full power) then its power consumption can be greatly reduced. (remember a full 1GW is required to run as spinning reserve to back up a nuclear plant (in case of scram) but only 7MW is required to back up a windtubine crash!)
Obvious question: what do you do when this battery runs flat? For oil that seems to be approaching soon.
CO2 circulates between the atmosphere, the biosphere, the oceans. There is some leakage into the earth’s crust, but this is replaced by the release of CO2, among other gases, from volcanoes. The earth/s interior is warmed by radioactivity, mainly U 238 U 238 has a half life of about 4.5 billion years, comparable to the age of our planet, so it isn’t producing as much heat now, so presumably volcanic activity has ALSO been dropping off.
As a result of the gradual cooling and slowing down of the CO2 replacement pump, less CO2 leaking out of the atmosphere, biosphere, and. oceans is getting replaced. As a result, the earth’s biosphere is now going on a starvation diet. That may be the reason grasses have evolved.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692178/pdf/9507562.pdf
“T. E. Cerling1, J. R. Ehleringer2 and J. M. Harris3
1Department of Geology and Geophysics, and 2Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
3The George C. Page Museum, 5801Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036, USA
The decline of atmospheric CO2 over the last 65 million years (Ma) resulted in the `CO2-starvation’ of
terrestrial ecosystems and led to the widespread distribution of C4 plants, which are less sensitive to CO2
levels than are C3 plants. Global expansion of C4 biomass is recorded in the diets of mammals from Asia,
Africa, North America, and South America during the interval from about 8 to 5Ma.”
So our putting part of the leakage back into the atmosphere is just taking us off a starvation diet-
– A. McIntire
Gareth-
Your comment regarding sewage and poop is a non-sequitor. These are things that clearly have harmful effects no matter their classification. If you wanted to be more accurate you could say something like- “Co2 is also not a pollutant in itself, neither is water vapor which can make for useful water, but I’m not sure I would like to see increasing amounts disposed of in my environment without being well processed.”
If THAT statement was believeable you might be on to something.
Another way to address energy and waste needs is through “energy recycling;”
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3766591
“U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., announced the federal grant from the Federal Economic Development Administration.
If completed, plans call for the plant to process about 100 tons of municipal garbage a day to generate 40,000 BTUs per hour of synthetic gas in addition to steam that could be used for industrial use or used to generate electricity.
Under the proposal, an electric-powered plasma torch would blast the garbage at 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit — hotter than the surface of the sun — in an oxygen-starved reactor chamber. The process turns organic matter into synthetic gas that can be made into steam or electricity. Inorganic matter in the waste stream becomes a glass-like material — about one ton for every 10 tons of waste. Instead of burying that byproduct like incinerator ash, it can be ground up and made into ceiling tiles or flooring tiles, or as aggregate or asphalt filler for roads or trails.
Supporters, including Oberstar, said the process could revolutionize waste disposal in the region while creating a low-cost, clean and local source of energy.”
“Always trapped below impervious rock because it cannot raise to the surface.” what about natures big oil spill in Alberta which man is cleaning up?
Forest fire smoke has choked our communities lately, even though far away from the actual fires. The wind carried it aloft and dumped it on us. Imagine what it was like when fire suppression efforts were nonexistent! The amount of particulates in the air, along with carbon soot, must have been tremendous year in and out. But they now put the fires out so our air cleared after just two days. I question the contention that the pollution we spew from the burning of carbon based fuel is worse now than it used to be in past centuries. Highly question it.
And evidence abounds. All you have to do is look at soil layers in fire-prone areas and downwind of fire prone areas to know that CO2 levels were likely much higher in the past on a local basis than far away ice cores have indicated.
While we can acknowledge that “nature’s battery” is providing power for all of human kind’s benefit, we must not ignore the fact nature’s other battery is the very food that we, and every other living creature on earth, eat. Carnivore’s eat herbivores and/or omnivores. Herbivores eat…ta da!… sunlight and carbon in form of plants! Plants store carbon, sunshine and trace minerals. They, too, are batteries. The batteries that sustain all of us through the cold of winter when the sun is doing its job in the other hemisphere. Grass is strawberries is corn is fir trees is stored sunlight and carbon. Whether used for fuel in living beings or burning as a log in fire place, we all benefit from the batteries with which we have been blessed since Ug struck sparks and stated the fire in front of his cave so many years ago.
“You’re comparing CO2 to sewage and excrement?”
I’d recommend some pretty serious mouth wash, in that case.
The USA has a few centuries worth of coal. If we start exporting large amounts for world-wide needs, then the supply won’t last as long, of course. But like oil, the problem is not in lack of deposits but in having a large number of deposits declared off-limits by the state.
I don’t understand the nature to complicate the nature of nature’s energy storage. For pete sake ever heard of oil, gas, coal, uranium, and diamonds?
The diamonds are notably the greatest storage vessel for energy in the known universe, it is in fact an observable fact, just give a six carat diamond to a woman and the energy released is beyond the wildest imagination. And you can’t do that with the other stored energy sources, I mean imagine the effect of dipping a woman in oil, submitting her to gas, all the while being irradiated by uranium, although very powerful, it would still just be a very short burst of energy release. That’s also an observable fact…at least one time. :p
While the Carboniferous was a prominent period in production of coal, it is fairly minor with regards to oil and gas. Even our coal deposits are more from the Cretaceous. ( Geologists have to keep up with the grammar and spelling police!)
JPS says:
September 2, 2011 at 6:14 am
Gareth-
Your comment regarding sewage and poop is a non-sequitor. These are things that clearly have harmful effects no matter their classification. If you wanted to be more accurate you could say something like- “Co2 is also not a pollutant in itself, neither is water vapor which can make for useful water, but I’m not sure I would like to see increasing amounts disposed of in my environment without being well processed.”
If THAT statement was believeable you might be on to something.
Sounds good to me!
Coal, oil, gas .. not only natural but truly organic!
Karl-Johan Lehtinen says:
September 2, 2011 at 2:53 am
Sooner or later we have to take this “newer” coal into use since we are emptying our fossil deposits at a terrible pace where demand has outgrown supply already in the 2030s. According to IEA we would need 3-4 Saudi Arabias to meet the demand by that time.
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That, of course, assumes technology remains the same between now and then. It won’t. But, we do have 3-4 Saudi Arabias already. They just won’t let us go get it. The U.S. alone has enough resources to carry us into the next century. Canada has plenty, too! I don’t know about the rest of the world, but the western hemisphere is fine……. maybe if everyone else is nice to us……. we may share. 🙂
I have always maintained, that the only legitimate use of food for fuel, is the ability of farmers to produce their own fuel, in situ. As it stands, our food supply is entirely dependent on the world’s ability to provide fuel delivery to farmers. If any geo-political event disrupts this fuel supply, we are all in big trouble. Knowing farmers can produce enough bio fuel to continue to plant and harvest food crops, during a crisis, is a big comfort to me, as it should be to everyone else.
People must keep in mind that food security must always remain our highest priority. Nobody will argue AGW, when we are starving and listening to our children crying themselves to sleep. Our ability to argue AGW comes entirely from the luxury obtained from successful food crops. GK
JJWright @6:03 a.m. “remember a full 1GW is required to run as spinning reserve to back up a nuclear plant (in case of scram) but only 7MW is required to back up a windtubine crash!”
Are you suggesting that the average wind turbine produces the same amount of electricity as the average nuclear plant?