From the University of Oregon a clue as to why green energy isn’t making much inroads. For example, compare these findings to what we learned recently from Matt Ridley about the big fat zero of wind power in the bigger scheme of things.
Wind and other alternate energy is essentially no more than a rounding error. – Anthony
Focus on technology overlooks human behavior when addressing climate change
Study shows it takes 10 units of alternative electricity sources to offset a unit of fossil fuel-generated power
EUGENE, Ore. — Technology alone won’t help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says University of Oregon sociologist Richard York. In a newly published paper, York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable.
Many nations, including the United States, are actively pursuing technological advances to reduce the use of fossil fuels to potentially mitigate human contributions to climate-change. The approach of the International Panel on Climate Change assumes alternative energy sources — nuclear, wind and hydro — will equally displace fossil fuel consumption. This approach, York argues, ignores “the complexity of human behavior.”
Based on a four-model study of electricity used in some 130 countries in the past 50 years, York found that it took more that 10 units of electricity produced from non-fossil sources — nuclear, hydropower, geothermal, wind, biomass and solar — to displace a single unit of fossil fuel-generated electricity.
“When you see growth in nuclear power, for example, it doesn’t seem to affect the rate of growth of fossil fuel-generated power very much,” said York, a professor in the sociology department and environmental studies program. He also presented two models on total energy use. “When we looked at total energy consumption, we found a little more displacement, but still, at best, it took four to five units of non-fossil fuel energy to displace one unit produced with fossil fuel.”
For the paper — published online March 18 by the journal Nature Climate Change — York analyzed data from the World Bank’s world development indicators gathered from around the world. To control for a variety of variables of economics, demographics and energy sources, data were sorted and fed into the six statistical models.
Admittedly, York said, energy-producing technologies based on solar, wind and waves are relatively new and may yet provide viable alternative sources as they are developed.
“I’m not saying that, in principle, we can’t have displacement with these new technologies, but it is interesting that so far it has not happened,” York said. “One reason the results seem surprising is that we, as societies, tend to see demand as an exogenous thing that generates supply, but supply also generates demand. Generating electricity creates the potential to use that energy, so creating new energy technologies often leads to yet more energy consumption.”
Related to this issue, he said, was the development of high-efficiency automobile engines and energy-efficient homes. These improvements reduced energy consumption in some respects but also allowed for the production of larger vehicles and bigger homes. The net result was that total energy consumption often did not decrease dramatically with the rising efficiency of technologies.
“In terms of governmental policies, we need to be thinking about social context, not just the technology,” York said. “We need to be asking what political and economic factors are conducive to seeing real displacement. Just developing non-fossil fuel sources doesn’t in itself tend to reduce fossil fuel use a lot — not enough. We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone.”
The findings need to become part of the national discussion, says Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation at the UO. “Research from the social sciences is often lost in the big picture of federal and state policymaking,” she said. “If we are to truly solve the challenges our environment is facing in the future, we need to consider our own behaviors and attitudes.”
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Richard York’s a sociologist, right? That’s all we need to know. And I doubt he knows much about his field either. One doesn’t just change the behavior of someone else.
That graph rather neatly also explains why here in Oz we have some of the highest electricity prices in the world when we’re also sitting on almost unlimited amounts of coal. I’d wager we’d have one of the highest rates of solar PV uptake in the world, made possible by the massive incentives that made it a no-brainer investment if you happened to have the capital for the initial outlay.
Result: the poor and taxpayers pay the utility companies to pay exorbitant rates for the pitiful amount of electricity generated by the wealthy. And you get a destabilised grid to boot. At least govnts have twigged and canned the subsidies. Of course the utilities can keep jacking up the prices as they wish. Anyone make small coal powered steam turbines? I might get one for our block, we can probably get the coal for a pittance!
A few years ago, several area schools organized protests of the proposed coal-powered Sunflower electric plant being built in western Kansas. I always wanted to attend those protests and setup a booth where we collected the protesters personal electronics — cell phones, iPods, etc., — in order to demolish those devices and reduce the protesters’ needs for electricity.
Anybody know why the Sunflower plant is to be built in western Kansas? It’s to supply electricity to Colorado. Seems the Colorado greens have managed to shut down new sources of conventional electricity generation in that state, but they haven’t reduced their need for the juice.
“In terms of governmental policies, we need to be thinking about social context, not just the technology,” York said. “We need to be asking what political and economic factors are conducive to seeing real displacement. Just developing non-fossil fuel sources doesn’t in itself tend to reduce fossil fuel use a lot — not enough. We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone.”
Yeah, we need to study this miracle of carbon reduction. Plenty of social context, political and economic factors, ample suppression with next to no technology. A precarious combination which nevertheless seems to do the job.
That’s the ticket. Dress everyone in togas (the U of O is famous for togas), gift them each a pot of soil, and issue spades to every human. Don’t forget the “seeds”. That way we are sure to generate real intellectual, uber-expensive, high-end research technology needed in order to create a cheap renewable energy source. What these greenies grow they will smoke and leave the rest of us who work for a living to the task of inventing stuff.
I WROTE ABOUT THIS AS WELL, I don’t like nuclear energy
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/nuclear-energy-not-save-and-sound
@polistra says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:52 am
///////////////////////////////////////////////
Solar thermal in the right country is very good and worthwhile. I am surprised that it is not more actively marketed.
I am presently living in Spain and Solar Thermal is very popular. I am about to construct my own system, I have bought a few radiators (which I shall paint black and possibly but only if needed enclose in glass) and a central heating pump, with piping this has cost me less than GBP100 (about USD155) and I have a spare tank (so that was free). I have a suitable Sout/South West facing roof and I expect that this will provide all my hot water requirements year round. For example, this winter, December to March 21, we have had only 3 rainy days and perhaps a couple of cloudy days. Apart from that it has been sun every day and certainly sufficient to keep a tank fully warm. The sun is surprisingly quite strong even in late December/early January although the hours of sunshine are short. During this period we had a number of days in the mid twenty degC range which is much like a summer’s day in the UK!
Even commercial units are only about GBP1000 (USD1555) I think including fitting and hence the pay back on investment can be measured in a few years. Further, the system is largely maintenance free.
Solar is ideal for low grade heating (my swimming pool is solar heated) but not presently suitable for high energy demand and/or where electricty storage is required.
I guess there is not sufficient profit (may be the subsidies are less) so that solar companies are not promoting them to the full. No doubt, the grid buy back/ feed in subsidy scam is financially a more lucrative market. A shame (but not altogether surprising in this mad eco world) since solar thermal for the consumer is a much more viable option (provided that the consumer lives in a sunny climate).
Wind and Solar don’t have strong infrastructure as yet. Therefore as baby energy sources cannot be taken into account. So any comparison with fossil based fuels 1 to 10 less/more would be an issue when the subsidies on fossils are clearly specified. My question is why Independent Power Plants have stopped power generation and they receive their required power from government facilities except where the power is not available by the authorities. Is that due to subsidized power?
York said. “… We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone.”
One more idiotic statement from one more social dictator.
York apparently does not understand that “alternative energy”, specifically grid-connect wind and solar power are so grossly expensive, inefficient and ineffective that they simply drive up electricity costs and destabilize the electric grid.
Note the huge subsidies Ontario pays for this “alternative energy” nonsense:
13.5¢/kWh for worthless wind power and 64.2¢/kWh for worthless solar power (Source – The Globe and Mail).
To compare, natural gas-fired electric power can probably be generated today for about 4 cents per kWh.
Furthermore, natural gas generated power is available when you need it, unlike erratic wind and solar power. Because wind and solar power are not available on demand, the actually amount of their subsidization is not “3-times” or “16-times” as the above ratios imply, it is much higher, perhaps hundreds of time more expensive.
This is not new knowledge. We published this conclusion a decade ago, when we said
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Sigh…. here’s the crux of the study….“We need to be thinking about suppressing fossil fuel use rather than just coming up with alternatives alone.”
The problems are two fold…. well many fold, but two are the starting points……first, their implementing the technology wrong. The way it’s deployed, it will never be successful.
And secondly, and probably most importantly, for an economy to grow, economic activity must rise at a rate of about 3% annually.(depending upon population growth) So, for the renewables to be successful in extinguishing fossil fuel use, it must grow faster than the economic growth in terms of total energy used.
Or, we can do like the author suggests and suppress human progress and prosperity, which was always the primary goal of this madness to begin with.
Goodnes, there’s a bunch scumbags out there. Totalitarian Malthusian misanthropists.
I would love to know exactly how a smart meter informs you what your usage is and how to reduce your energy consumption. A standard meter does that. You read it in the morning, then read it the next day and you know how much you have used.
So what is the big deal, I dont think there is any for the consumer, only for the provider.
I stopped reading at
But think of the children!
Meanwhile the dimwits running the province of Ontario hand over billions to Samsung to build essentially bird chopping machines.
Energy is wealth. With abundant low-cost energy manufacturing stuff is cheap, and everyone benefits from lower costs. Obama’s $800B stimulus would have been much better spent on building nuclear power plants. Besides a short-term boost in construction jobs, there would have been a long-term boost in the US economy.
Sorry, I lost interest after “sociologist” and “not sustainable.”
Tell me when the government is going to get out of the way or how it wishes to cut back on it’s porcine like consumption of 38 billion dollars in average annual fuels taxes (≈ 48.5 cents per gallon national average. Federal State and Local)
Tell me how that additional 555 million dollars in taxes (from using E10 rather than normal gasoline) is being wisely spent.
Maybe then he will have my interest. Until then, he can go peddle his scam somewhere else.
richard verney says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:30 am
“I am presently living in Spain and Solar Thermal is very popular. I am about to construct my own system, I have bought a few radiators (which I shall paint black and possibly but only if needed enclose in glass) and a central heating pump, with piping this has cost me less than GBP100 (about USD155) and I have a spare tank (so that was free). I have a suitable South/South West facing roof and I expect that this will provide all my hot water requirements year round…..”
1- Fossil fuels resources do not exist everywhere, and the advantage is the fuel can be taken everywhere and the infrastructure to do so is very well defined.
2- Solar and wind are the same. But the resource cannot be transported. The advantage is no network and infrastructure is required.
3- The US residential energy requirements is %4 of the total energy consumption which is a solar maintained energy.
4- Subsidies is going to be a problem for the EU governments. Recently, Spain government has changed the regulation about the Renewable subsidies (including CHP). Because of this change and trying to anticipate the new regulation, micro CHP less than 5kWel is going to be an idea.
http://smipp.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/mini-chp-mchp/
Not going to take time to read all the comments, but hopefully someone else, too, pointed out that this is simple economics and that if we just allow free market pricing to prevail it will all sort itself out without the need of the bureaucrats intervening for “our own good.”
As long as oil and gas remain relatively cheap, people will continue to use them. Right now, we’re discovering it faster than we’re using it, so it could stay relatively cheap for some time compared to alternatives. In fact, if something like cold fusion really comes into play, it could get even cheaper relative to alternatives in time.
People need to relax, let the markets work by signaling excesses and shortages, let human ingenuity run amuck in response to the price signals, and we’ll all be fine in the end. On the other hand, if we let the bureaucrats get total control of “solving” this “crisis”…well, we’ve already had 500 or so years of “Dark Ages” created by bureaucrats; get ready for another run at it.
Allan MacRae says:
March 21, 2012 at 6:48 am
“….Note the huge subsidies Ontario pays for this “alternative energy” nonsense:
13.5¢/kWh for worthless wind power and 64.2¢/kWh for worthless solar power (Source – The Globe and Mail)…..To compare, natural gas-fired electric power can probably be generated today for about 4 cents per kWh. ”
Any thermal based power generating system @ur momisugly zero rate the fuel, just for Energy Convergence is min 4 cents/KWh and for Distributed Generators 6 cents/KWh. In the Mid East it is max around 8 cents/KWh. The energy for the GAS based generators is 1 M3 ~ 3.6 KWh. Considering the GAS unit price as whatever it cannot be less than 6 cents/KWh it comes 6+6=12 cents/KWh not subsidized, how much do you really pay? This is the subsidy amount. For the wind power that 64.2 cents/KWh should be revised, I did not get it. For solar it seems not so far from fossils as you say and if you agree with the above estimations.
Rod Everson says:
March 21, 2012 at 7:35 am
“Not going to take time to read all the comments, but hopefully someone else, too, pointed out that this is simple economics and that if we just allow free market pricing to prevail it will all sort itself out without the need of the bureaucrats intervening for “our own good.”
“As long as oil and gas remain relatively cheap, people will continue to use them. Right now, we’re discovering it faster than we’re using it, so it could stay relatively cheap for some time compared to alternatives. In fact, if something like cold fusion really comes into play, it could get even cheaper relative to alternatives in time. ”
Great. This is true.
We pay Richard York to write this? Science? WTF?
“potentially mitigate human contributions to climate-change”?
Is this a good reason for what?
Most disinteresting piece in WUWT in a long time, sorry.
I’ve yet to see it in comments, so I will say it directly. I reject the presumption that fossil fuel use is something to avoid. The primary argument for suppression is its limited resource. If we run out, we will run out. For the next 250 years, the problem is not depletion, but suppression based on presumption. Why?
To reiterate another comment: Renewables are limited by their diffused nature – in other words, physics. To add to it, the real limits on nuclear are man-made by sociologists, politicians and other activists.
Stefan says:
March 21, 2012 at 4:33 am
The real fun starts when people start squabbling over what to turn off.
Once you’ve donned your woolies, turned the heating down a bit, jumped on the bus, gone to the farmers market and bought local veggies, plus crossed this year’s holiday flight off your diary, what’s left to cut?
Say a measly 5% cut isn’t enough. Say we need to cut 50%. Who’s up for leccy rationing, say, 4 hours a day of use? …..
________________________________
Stefan, the EU is not talking a 50% cut they are talking an 80% cut!!!
I did an analysis of what the “aim to reduce the bloc’s carbon emissions by 80 percent by the middle of the century” actually means to the rest of us using the United States as an example since we are “The Big Emitters” targeted. I did it in response to a comment that:
“The cost to reduce CO2 output by 80% has been calculated, and that’s the low end of numbers estimated to “remove” mankind’s footprint of warming…..”
We get all types of “Soothing” crap from the propaganda machines and economic model projections about how it really is going to be “painless” So Let us look at what real facts tell us.
The average for the USA is 335.9 million BTUs per person.Link (Our Total population: 246,081,000)
In 1949, U.S. energy use per person stood at 215 million Btu.Link So that is still way too high. The U.S. in 1800 had a per-capita energy consumption of about 90 million Btu.Link (Total population: 5,308,483)
If the USA reduces its energy consumption by 80% it equals 45.18 million Btu. per person. Given the increase in technology, nuclear and hydro power lets use the 1800 consumption level of about 90 million Btu. per person for reducing our CO2 foot print by 80%.
What does that mean?
This site helps us figure that out.
Farmers made up about 90% of labor force in 1790 and 69% of labor force in 1800. (2.6% in 1990) In 1830 it took about 250-300 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels (5 acres) of wheat with walking plow, brush harrow, hand broadcast of seed, sickle, and flail . In 1987 it took 2-3/4 labor-hours produce 100 bushels but that takes lots of oil.
1810-30 saw the transfer of “manufacturing” from the farm and home to the shop and factory. So that means now centralized factories. It wasn’t until the 1840′s that we saw factory made farm machinery, labor saving devices and chemical fertilizers became common. It was in the 1860′s that kerosene lamps became popular. (Think replacing whale oil) Also up until the 1850′s dung and wood were the major source of energy. Link
In other words for the USA to use HALF the energy per person that was used in 1800 we must abandon ALL factories and 90% of the population must return to subsistence farming using animals. Solar and Wind just are not going to produce enough power to keep us in anything but a few lights and if we are lucky a refrigerator per village. FACTORIES use a huge amount of power and that is why cotton mills and other primitive factories were built on rivers.
Anyone who tries to tell you differently is talking baffle gab because at present less than 9% of the US labor force is in manufacturing. The USA (and the EU) has already gotten rid of most of its really energy intense industry like smelting the ores to make machines. The USA shipped most of its factories overseas.
To understand what they are actually trying to do Look at Sustania
The small green areas on this map are where we would be allowed to live
2009 bill Implementing the Wildlands Project
Other Bills introduced to make it happen
What the Wildlands Project has morphed into since it was “outed” The Rewilding Project
To me it looks like we will be herded into “slave encampments” and denied the right of access to most of our country. That is what denying us Access to Energy is really all about reducing us back to SERFS with our “Blessings”
In my country we have a phrase that we use to describe a futile and useless activity that produces nothing of value: >>SHOVELLING SUNSHINE<< This decribes perfectly the share that PV's have of the total global energy production (zero). It is just shovelling sunshine.
You’re entirely off point. Wind and solar aren’t viable for large-scale power generation because they are unreliable. We have to build additional capacity into the system to make up for the fact that we can’t control when or where the wind blows or how sunny it will be. For every megawatt of capacity wind and solar are capable of generating, there needs to be another megawatt of on-demand electricity available. Do you have the money to pay for that extra generation capacity, to build it, staff it, maintain it? Does it really make sense to you to build an expensive solar plant and a backup gas-fired plant when you could just build the gas-fired plant instead?
The fact that we have to build additional infrastructure for wind and solar makes them even more expensive.
So that means now centralized factories => So that means no centralized factories.