The Magical Power of the Kilowatt-Hour
Guest essay by Tom Scott
The typical follower of this blog is likely more knowledgeable in math and the sciences than the average reader, so many of you will find the following quite obvious on an intellectual level, but the facts below may still stimulate a new awareness of just how powerful is the concept of energy available at the flip of a switch.
The incentive to write down these brief thoughts came while reading from Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog the other day. There I came across this stupefyingly dumb quote from our White House Science Advisor, John Holdren . In a 1975 newspaper article in the Windsor Star, entitled “Too Much Energy, Too Soon, a Hazard”, he wrote:
“Finally, less energy can mean more employment. The energy producing industries comprise the most capital intensive and least labour intensive major sector of the economy. Accordingly, each dollar of investment capital taken out of energy production and invested in something else, and each personal consumption dollar saved by reduced energy use and spent elsewhere in the economy will create more jobs than are lost.”
To evaluate the above quote, consider the difference in productivity between the solar and coal power production industries. Both industries support about 174,000 jobs in the U.S. while coal provides about 150 times more power at this time (about 0.25% to about 39%). Hardly a winning substitution.
But can’t we (or the third world) live just as well without electricity?
To answer this, lets start with the term “horsepower” as it is rooted in real-world imagery. One horsepower is defined as 550 pounds of force displaced one foot per second. In other words, with one horsepower at hand one could start at sea-level and lift a 550 pound weight 1 foot higher every second. It was thought that a horse could do this kind of work on a reasonably regular basis, thus the name. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a human generating this kind of power for more than a few seconds at a time.
It so happens that a kilowatt is about 1.34 times “larger” than a horsepower, or about 737 lbs raised one foot each second, or 100 kg raised 1 meter each second. If we assume than our electric motor and transmission are about 75% efficient (1/1.34), we would be right back to an output of 550 ft-lb of useful work from each KWH purchased. For each KWH we pay about 0.10 to $0.15 at retail prices here in the U.S.
The U.S. median household income is about $50,000 per year, which spread over 2,000 work hours would be $25 per hour. Historically an employer has loaded costs of about 1.4 times the pay rate, so the cost to the employer would be about $35 per hour. How does that wage compare to the work which can be done by the kilowatt-hour? At a price of 10 cents per unit, an employer could substitute 350 KWH for each man-hour of payroll. Assuming 75% efficiency, this equates to lifting almost 8000 one hundred pound bags of concrete 40 inches (one meter) each hour, eight hours per day, 250 days per year. For the rest of the world that is about 7,200 fifty-kilogram sacks raised one meter each hour. Would you be able or willing to do such work for 30 years in order to modestly raise a family and fund a small retirement? Not if you are human because it would be physically impossible.
So the next time you hear someone suggest that killing a job in the coal-based power industry and replacing it with one in the solar industry will lead to a better world, realize that each job so displaced will come with vastly reduced productivity. And the next time you hear a green advocate suggest that you can do manually what we are currently doing with the “help” of evil electricity, consider your child’s working life spent lifting 8000 one hundred pound sacks every hour for 25 or 30 years. Or until he/she dies trying.
Such is the magical power of the kilowatt-hour.
Here is a mystery.
“To evaluate the above quote, consider the difference in productivity between the solar and coal power production industries. Both industries support about 174,000 jobs in the U.S. while coal provides about 150 times more power at this time (about 0.25% to about 39%). Hardly a winning substitution.”
According to the solar foundation (http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data) “there are now nearly 174,000 solar workers in the US”
How can the number of jobs be the same between 1975 and today unless Holdren was referring to something other than direct employment.
any fool can create a job.
It takes a lot more to create wealth…
Here’s an experiment. Remove all women from political office and gather them together along with all the wives of male office holders, turn off their electricity in exchange for wood and plumbing in exchange for a bucket at home (don’t bother installing solar or wind cuz ain’t enough horsepower), take their cars away, remove most of the niceties of kitchens, bathrooms, and closets, plow up the manicured lawn and plant veggies, then give them an apron, and make them work every day before the sun comes up till after the chillin are put to bed and the candles burn too low to continue to work.
In one year’s time, we will rid ourselves of this idiocy in Washington and in every state capital.
C’mon now. He said this 4 decades ago. Let’s give the guy a break and judge him more on what he has stated recently………as in just over a year ago, when extreme cold hit the Midwest and Eastern US and this was added to the growing list of things caused by global warming.
Seriously, his position is that greenhouse gas warming will increase extreme cold like the US has been seeing recently. This is not a misrepresentation of his view or attempt to mislead. He even created a special educational video straight from the White House that stated:
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues,” Holdren asserts. Watch it:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/01/john-holdren-video-polar-vortex
The most incredible thing is that his video, a blatant damage control attempt to spin a speculative story to explain the embarrassing lack of warming from global warming was applauded by the brain washed faction of recipients of the propaganda. They got the hoped for science authority to reassure them that the contradicting reality that they seemed to be experiencing(cold and snow) did not really mean what they feared the most…………………that the dangerous global warming/climate change ideological agenda was not rooted in authenticity.
Cognitive bias, when powerful enough will cause you to believe anything that lines up with your belief system or religion.
Over the past 10 years, I have not found a better example of this than the John Holdren “global warming will cause increasing frequency of extreme cold” video.
No, Ron. Read what was written, instead of jumjping to conclusions. A “screw loose” was only one of several possibilities. The least problematic one, in fact.
This is the same kind of thinking that declares that if we get rid of power equipment and make people build houses with just power tools we can make employment sky rocket.
And from just that standpoint, they would probably be right. But the problem is that each of those workers would be dirt poor, because their productivity would have been reduced to nearly nothing.
It is productivity that allows us to be wealthy, not lots of available work.
The root premise here is totally flawed – the original article (1975!) states a 150 times increase, when in fact it is 15,500 percent difference in energy output. A hundred fold error in very basic high school math where you compare the results of two numbers.
With that basic an error how could one consider anything else the author states as valid?
Is Mr. Holdren still adhering to that nonsense? I don’t follow US politics enough to know…(I’m in Canada, and we have our own problems).
The Reply system is currently broken ???
“I can’t think of any other possibilities…” Sounds much like the CO2 supposition.
Don’t read the “out of context” quote, people, read the whole thing. I think it’s worse.
A very confusing article with several vaguely related ideas brought together:
– rapid energy growth (how much is too much?)
– buying the metaphoric “hole in the ground” at a high price (hello Uramin!)
– pressure on natural environment (like burning wood?)
– health effects of energy use (like burning wood?)
I think it’s obvious that desperate people can do desperate things, and desperate search for energy is not a good thing. When people destroy the natural environment in search of energy, that isn’t good.
Of course the answer to that is not reduced energy use, but enough reliable energy production to satisfy people’s needs.
The environmental impact of energy use depends on types of energy uses and energy sources, not just total number of barrels of oil or kWh of electricity. You can use more energy but less polluting energy.
I think all the science advisor was trying to say:
1) Energy use doesn’t bring happiness. Increase of energy use shouldn’t be the goal of human life.
2) Energy efficiency doesn’t bring unhappiness. Optimisation of energy use shouldn’t be avoided(*).
(*) It remains to seen how many people in the US are actively avoiding energy efficiency.
And he could have just said that. Of course such obvious statements would have left the audience unmoved.
I would like to add:
3) American-style overcool buildings in makes people sick. And the overcool trend is spreading in France too, and I hate that!
Also, Holdren compares the US with European countries, including Switzerland. Switzerland is a small country with very high salaries (compared to many countries in Europe) and a very specialised high-end industry and also financial services. (Banking is just a part of what makes Switzerland a rich country, but it’s still a significant part.)
I don’t think a very large country could get nearly as economically specialised as Switzerland.
These people are obsessed with controlling everyone else, and they imagine that they know how.
Of course, real life is full of unintended consequences and strewn with victims of their failed schemes.
I’ve witnessed third world bureaucratic industries first hand, and it ain’t pretty. For example, if you want a schedules for the trains or buses in a city, you won’t find them at bus or train stations. No. You’re forced to travel across town to a different government building, where you’re told to take a seat and wait your turn, while one worker out of half a dozen idle workers helps one customer read the schedule pamphlets that can only be obtained here.
But at least they employ many more people than a free market approach would have.
The scary thing is that this man is an advisor to anyone about anything.
I think Holdren really meant: “Finally, less energy can mean more manual labor.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/30/what-are-your-fears-about-global-warming-and-climate-change/#comment-1847727
[excerpt]
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
– H.L. Mencken
Maybe Schwarzenegger was right. In california.
Conan, the barbarian.
‘do not muzzle the ox while it is treading.’
and right also for his ancestory in Steiermark.
Times, they ar’a changing. Oxens and barbarians are of diminuishing quantity in Styria.
Times, they ar’a changing. Hans
happy easter 2015.
Hans.
I did a similar exercise and worked out that if every penny spent on renewable energy had been spent on energy efficiency it would have actually saved money over generating more energy. One simple one was miniature heat pumps that used triple glazed windows with the heat cooling the outer panes and warming the inner ones. For some reason the subjective improvement was far greater than the degrees warmth would have suggested/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/18/anatomy-of-a-collapsing-climate-paradigm/#comment-1886588
A few observations (we formally published most of these conclusions in 2002 – we’ve known this for a long time):
1. CO2 is the basis for all carbon-based life on Earth – and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient.
2. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
3. Recent global warming was natural and ~cyclical – the next phase following the ~20 year pause will be global cooling, starting by about 2020 or sooner.
3. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature and atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales (published in 2008).
4. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society.
5. Green energy schemes (scams) are responsible for driving up energy costs and increasing winter mortality rates.
I suggest that most of the above statements are true, to a high degree of confidence.
All of the above statements are blasphemy to warmist fanatics.
It is truly remarkable how the warmists could get it so wrong.
Regards, Allan
(Petroleum Engineer / Earth Scientist)
______________________________________________
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/30/what-are-your-fears-about-global-warming-and-climate-change/#comment-1847733
Hypothesis:
1. The next act of this farce will be characterized by global cooling starting by about 2020 or sooner, cooling that may be mild or severe. Global cooling will demonstrate that climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is so small as to be insignificant. The scientific credibility of the warmist gang will be shattered and some may face lawsuits and/or go to jail.
2. The scientific community will gradually accept the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, and that temperature (among other factors) drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
3. The foolish green energy schemes to “stop global warming” will be shelved and dismantled, but not before they contribute to a significant increase in Excess Winter Mortality, especially in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America, where energy costs are much lower (thanks to shale fracking).
4. The warmist thugs will still be bleating about a warmer world, wilder weather, etc., all caused by the sins of mankind, but nobody will listen.
Regards to all, Allan
Famed economist Milton Freeman visited India and saw men with shovels digging a ditch near a railroad. He commented the job would be faster and cheaper if they used a back hoe. His host told Freeman that this was a jobs program. To which Freeman replied, if it’s a jobs program you could employ many more if the men used spoons.
This is the mentality behind Holdren’s green jobs comment.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
– Milton Friedman
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/milton_friedman.html#c0jiZlGwzvo2tiLk.99
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/08/nzclimate-truth-newsletter-no-320/#comment-1470144
Global warming alarmism has never been about the science. Science has been corrupted to fit a political agenda.
The following treatise explains the rationale supporting global warming alarmism – and it’s not about the environment either.
TODAY is the 24th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Wall was opened on November 9, 1989.
Five months earlier, in July 1989 I had travelled through the Wall via Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin
I was with colleagues on a business trip. It was not a fun trip , but it was highly educational. East Berlin and East Germany were everything Ronald Reagan said they were – repressive, backward, and evil – families were spying on each other and ratting to the Stasi, the dreaded East German Secret Police. We left a day earlier than planned – none of us could stand the place any longer.
The reason I raise this point is that Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, made particular mention of the fall of the Berlin Wall in this essay written in 1994 – see paragraph 2 below.
Keep in mind that I am not saying this, rather I am quoting Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace – but I tend to accept his analysis.
For more evidence, read http://www.green-agenda.com/
Regards, Allan
http://www.ecosense.me/index.php/key-environmental-issues/10-key-environmental-issues/208-key-environmental-issues-4
[excerpt]
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth.
The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tragedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are criticized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is absurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are successful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
**************
Don’t the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch live the life style , without modern power sources , that Holdren is proposing?
I suppose, by definition, no one from that community is represented on this blog to tell us how feasible it would be for the whole of rural North America, but presumably there are academic studies of the economics and social well being of such communities?
You don’t need Amish to tell you how feasible. When I was a kid, I went with a friend’s family to visit one of his uncles on a farm near Moosomin, Saskatchewan. We ate dinner by coal oil lamps and took a lamp each to our bedrooms. It was fun as a kid but it was an obvious burden to a fellow making his living on a prairie farm. My father’s family grew up in a prairie sod house near Neepawa, Manitoba – homestead land free from the government in the 1880s. They had American neighbors who had gone to Texas for the last of the give-away land there but were a few days too late. A Canadian government official had a set up down there in Texas at the time to attract homesteaders to the Canadian plains and a fair number took the offer. The first winter was enough for some and with time, farms ended up paying a decent income. The first thing they did when they could was build a big house and heat with coal and latched onto electricity when the lines came through.
We could widen/deepen the Panama Canal with tens of thousands more workers with spoons if counting numbers of workers is the objective.
John Holdren is to science what Stephen Hawking is to Olympic sprinting.
Replace all tractors with peasants. Voila – full employment.
Replace all Mercedes at climate conferences with Sedan chairs and voila – full employment.
John Holdren … White House Science Advisor. It explains everything about Obama’s stance on catastrophic man-made global warming which is not actually happening. It’s a recipe for very bad policymaking!
I find it interesting that you cherry-picked a quotation out of context from a New York Times Op-ed piece 40 years ago, the year after OPEC turned off the spigot in a world far different from the one we live in now.
Hug?
Care to explain how the article is anything but dumb?
Please explain how the historical context makes any difference.
Peter Haug,
You want quotes? Here are some quotes.
Explain them, if you can.
The coal industry could be regulated to increase labour intensity and employment.
We should regulate that coal can be extracted and transported using no tool bigger than a spoon.
Obviously the entire enterprise will then need to be supported via public subsidies.
When we are done, the economics of the coal industry would look quite similar to those of off-shore wind.
5x the retail price and 10x the jobs, per unit of energy delivered.
Hurrah…Medieval warming, plus Medieval technology.
And then all we need, is to start burning deniers, for crimes against the great truth.
I would like to thank Anthony for publishing my work here on WUWT, and would like to thank readers for their comments which were almost all positive, and universally helpful. Based on the feedback and a re-read, I do have some updates.
First, the quote from John Holdren should have only included one paragraph. The following paragraph on proportional productivity is mine and should have been outside the quotation box. The jobs estimates are for 2014.
Secondly, there is the estimate for the work done, the 8000 – 100 pound sacks. This should have reflected a reduction of 25% to 6000 sacks. But wait, its even worse than you thought, for this quantity of work is only equivalent to one KWH! So the value of lifting that much material is only about 11-15 cents in the US. To earn a median household wage, one would need to do 300+ times this amount of work each hour. Impossible. By several orders of magnitude.
Of course, all human endeavor cannot be valued by tonnage. But the ability to handle huge jobs with the twist of a knob frees us to pursue activities which require heart and intellect instead of brawn.