Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumFossil fuels could be phased out worldwide in a decade, says new study
The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK.
Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past.
But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns. And that effort must learn from the trials and tribulations from previous energy systems and technology transitions.
In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture.
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uos-ffc041516.php
SoLeftIAmRight
(4,883 posts)...
Bubzer
(4,211 posts)Director of the Sussex Energy Group.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)this transition instead of put road blocks in the way.
Kip Humphrey
(4,753 posts)Let's make it sooner.
OKIsItJustMe
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Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use.
But this time the future could be different, he says the scarcity of resources, the threat of climate change and vastly improved technological learning and innovation could greatly accelerate a global shift to a cleaner energy future.
The study highlights numerous examples of speedier transitions that are often overlooked by analysts. For example, Ontario completed a shift away from coal between 2003 and 2014; a major household energy programme in Indonesia took just three years to move two-thirds of the population from kerosene stoves to LPG stoves; and Frances nuclear power programme saw supply rocket from four per cent of the electricity supply market in 1970 to 40 per cent in 1982.
Each of these cases has in common strong government intervention coupled with shifts in consumer behaviour, often driven by incentives and pressure from stakeholders.
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NNadir
(33,545 posts)...challenges of this enterprise, which may be technically feasible, is neither politically nor psychologically feasible, because the entire conversation is dominated by wishful thinking and hand-waving.
The abyss is now approaching faster than ever.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)i.e. It could, but
NNadir
(33,545 posts)He's one of the biggest fools who is responsible for this state of affairs.
I had a brief conversation with him online, unpleasant, and on his part dishonest.
He knows very little about energy in my opinion, is another of those people who shoots his mouth off on subjects he is unqualified to address.
He's a lawyer, not a scientist, although he did get a social science Ph.D. in a disipline called "science and society." One need not know too much science to get that degree, apparently, as his discussion continuously and repeatedly shows.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)NNadir
(33,545 posts)...quite good, but much of it is garbage.
I know who Sovacool is.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)This pdf is a reprint of Smil's 2014 article published in Scientific American, entitled A Global Transition to Renewable Energy Will Take Many Decades. I'm posting a link to the pdf because the SA article is behind a paywall.
That is what well-known advocate Amory Lovins envisaged in 1976. He claimed that by the year 2000, 33 percent of Americas energy would come from many small, decentralized renewable sources. Decades later, in July 2008, environmentalist Al Gore claimed that completely repowering the countrys electricity supply in a single decade would be achievable, affordable and transformative. And in November 2009 Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi published A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030 in Scientific American, presenting a plan for converting the global energy supply entirely to renewables in just two decades.
Yet from 1990 to 2012 the worlds energy from fossil fuels barely changed, down from 88 to 87 percent. In 2011 renewables generated less than 10 percent of the U.S. energy supply, and most of that came from old renewables, such as hydroelectric plants and burning wood waste from lumbering operations. After more than 20 years of highly subsidized development, new renewables such as wind and solar and modern biofuels such as corn ethanol have claimed only 3.35 percent of the countrys energy supply.
The slow pace of this energy transition is not surprising. In fact, it is expected. In the U.S. and around the world, each widespread transition from one dominant fuel to another has taken 50 to 60 years. First came a change from wood to coal. Then from coal to oil. The U.S. is going through a third major energy transition right now, from coal and oil to natural gas. Between 2001 to 2012 Americas coal consumption fell by 20 percent, and crude oil was down by 7 percent; at the same time, the consumption of natural gas rose by 14 percent. Yet even though natural gas is abundant, clean and affordable, it will be another decade or two before gas use overwhelms coal consumption, which still generates more than a third of U.S. electricity.
Renewables are not taking off any faster than the other new fuels once did, and there is no technical or financial reason to believe they will rise any quicker, in part because energy demand is soaring globally, making it hard for natural gas, much less renewables, to just keep up.
I think Smil is on much firmer ground than Sovacool in this debate.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2921
Now, how about if we were actually willing to deal with increased cost for electricity?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Two caveats:
1. The NOAA report doesn't even mention the hot potato of transportation.
2. The report is American in scope, not global.
The problem becomes significantly more complicated when you factor in the realities of transportation, along with 180 other competing sovereign nations with wildly varying geography, politics, economies and energy needs.
Because of this, I think Smil's view of the situation is more realistic. But we'll only have to wait 14 years to find out who is closer.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)I think there is a much larger factor in all of this: Inertia.
The issue of climate change has been known and understood for decades. However, to date, significant efforts have not been made to head it off.
While it may be technically possible to convert the power system in 15 years, or even in 10, I dont believe there is sufficient will to overcome inertia.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)There is enormous institutional, political and economic inertia behind fossil fuels.
In the decade from 1990 to 2000, fossil fuels contributed 78% of the growth in world energy consumption. Thanks to China's expansion, from 2000 to 2014 it contributed a full 85% of the world growth. These numbers reveal the extraordinary degree to which fossil fuels are embedded in the world's growth patterns.
By comparison, renewable energy contributed 2% of the growth in the first period, and 7.5% of the growth in the second.
Nuclear power went from a 10% contribution to world energy growth from 1990 to 2000 to 0 after that. Nuclear power appears to have stalled because it doesn't have either the pre-existing inertia of fossil fuels or the technical and political attractiveness of renewable energy.
Hydro's contribution across the two periods stayed the same at around 9% - it expanded at the same rate as energy demand overall.
NickB79
(19,258 posts)That sounds like a very large endevour to undertake, with substantial costs.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)In identifying low-cost solutions, researchers enabled the model to build and pay for transmission infrastructure improvements specifically a new, high-voltage direct-current transmission grid (HVDC) to supplement the current electrical grid. HVDC lines, which are in use around the world, reduce energy losses during long-distance transmission. The model did choose to use those lines extensively, and the study found that investing in efficient, long-distance transmission was key to keeping costs low.
MacDonald compared the idea of a HVDC grid with the interstate highway system which transformed the U.S. economy in the 1950s. With an interstate for electrons, renewable energy could be delivered anywhere in the country while emissions plummet, he said. An HVDC grid would create a national electricity market in which all types of generation, including low-carbon sources, compete on a cost basis. The surprise was how dominant wind and solar could be.
NickB79
(19,258 posts)The US Interstate system took decades to build at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in today's dollar value.
Do you have any cost estimates for an HVDC grid nationally?
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)The HVDC transmission network assumes a cost of about $700 per megawatt-mile and another $182,000 for each substation. The authors note that economies of scale allow for that price for the HVDC line, which becomes substantially cheaper once the lines are longer than about 300 miles. Costs for renewables were fairly conservative, with medium cost-assumption estimates nearly in line with todays costs for wind and solar.
A benefit of HVDC, besides connecting generation to load centers more efficiently than high-voltage alternating current, is that it reduces the need for frequency regulation that comes with a high penetration of renewables.
To realize the scenario laid out in this study, the U.S. power sector would have to embrace HVDC in a way that it has not previously. There is very little HVDC in the U.S., although it is being used more frequently in Europe and China. One of the largest projects in the U.S. is the 1,000-megawatt Clean Power Link in the Northeast that was recently green-lighted.
But large-scale transmission projects are difficult to site and often challenging to get approval for, especially as they move across state lines. Another benefit of HVDC, which PowerLink took advantage of, is that it can often be buried along existing rights of way, eliminating many of the battles that traditional transmission faces.
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hunter
(38,326 posts)... when, from the environmentalist's perspective, it was not.
Subsidizing the rapid expansion of fossil fueled transportation and suburban commuter lifestyles did not make the world a better place.
Electric railroads and higher density communities would have had a much smaller environmental footprint.
The expansion of electric grids beyond local regional control has similar adverse environmental impacts, enabling environmentally destructive developments such as giant hydro projects, coal plants, desert solar, and wind farms on previously undeveloped land.
People ought to live with the energy supply choices they make. Of course that's not possible with fossil fuels because the carbon dioxide and other undesirable waste products are dispersed throughout our planet's atmosphere and waters.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)as natural processes could repair on an ongoing basis.
To accomplish this we'd need a limit on total global power consumption, of perhaps 10 gigawatts. With a world population limit of 20 million people, this would give us an average of 500 watts each - enough for a comfortable lifestyle equivalent to today's Pakistan or Philippines. And a limit on physical resource usage of no more than 10 tonnes of any metals and/or hydrocarbons per person/lifetime.
That situation would probably be sustainable for quite a while, and would leave room for a lot of wildlife to rebound from our attempted extirpation.
NNadir
(33,545 posts)...makes fun of Amory Lovins, whose nonsensical speculations were for some reason taken seriously, causing huge damage to the planet, some of which is now clearly irretrievable. (So thanks for providing that reference which I hadn't seen before.)
His review of Lovins book "Natural Capitalism" was not only right on in a technical sense - but was a classic display of ironic writing.
Rocky Mountain Visions, A Review Essay
It begins with Smil's comment on the note on the dust jacket of the book, which advertises itself as an oracle from the "world's best brains," which is of course, Lovins, the consummate fool, describing himself.
I often find myself disagreeing on some points with Smil, but whenever I question what he has written, I challenge myself to look very deeply at the problem and question myself since he is probably one of the top ten thinkers on the problem of energy and energy supply in the world.
The scientific community has a deep respect for Smil; one seldom reads a paper in the primary scientific literature on the subject of nitrogen fixation in which his classic work "Enriching the Earth" is not cited. (I discovered Smil many years ago when I was looking into nitrogen fixation and found him referenced in a Nature paper.)
If the world had listened to Smil, and not Lovins, or silly Lovins wannabes like Sovacool, we'd hardly be in this awful state of affairs.